Category Archives: Country Living

Christmas can wait – We’re still in Thanksgiving mode…

It's been a week to count our blessings. Lots of things happened but everything worked out well in the end. The weather got really cold in a hurry, but we had a ready-made solution right at hand – Brunswick Stew. … Continue reading

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Starting the day with a good country breakfast

The Blue Ridge Restaurant in Floyd, Virginia, is the right place to begin a long day of hard work. This veggie omelet with home fries was just what I needed to bring peace and harmony into my day. Tom King, … Continue reading

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Camping out in our own kitchen

Camping is actually a useful training activity. You learn how to prepare and serve meals without most of the tools, work surfaces, or running water that you normally find in a modern kitchen.

If you have done enough of it, you never lose the skills you have learned. You are unfazed by circumstances that leave your house without power or water or the usual sources of heat. This week we experienced a kitchen faucet failure that required us to fall back on our old camping skills.

Working faucet The faucet that came with our new modular home was a state-of-the-art Moen faucet that looked fine and worked well for five years. Because I hadn't planned for its failure, our sink has been shut down for a week instead of a few hours.

When the faucet started leaking, I managed to make it stop for a while and started looking up replacement parts. This turned out to be a bigger problem than I expected, because I could not find the faucet model on the Moen website.

At this point I realized that this was becoming one of those dreaded "learning experiences".

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Local cooling trend continues – more firewood needed

We seem to be right on target for a colder winter this year. My store of firewood is way above last years level, but I am concerned that our wood may not last until the weather turns warm again in … Continue reading

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