The Beginnings of a New Country Market

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As indicated a few weeks ago, no sooner had we finished the Mansard roof for the Victorian manor, we started on a new roof for our century old barn. This week, this new barn roof was pretty much complete and looks really sharp.

However, again no sooner had we finished the barn roof, we now started work on the new country market which will be housed in this barn. Earlier we had reported on some of the "gutting" done on the interior front of the building. This week was the start of some serious structural work.

In the front of the barn was a small extension, previously used as a garage for most of the year. During the summer it was fitted as a small shop operating in conjunction with the Berry Patch Tea Room.

Our plan is to provide a proper shopping environment for both our Tea Room guests and our country market. To do this we needed a proper structure. So this week the extension came down and a new foundation has been poured.

As indicated earlier, the Mansard roof of the Victorian house is now complete. The finish is a lighter colour than the original black. We felt this suited the old Victorian brick much better. Eventually we will be refinishing the wood trims to suit this new colour palette.

In the interior of the house, the work on "phase 1" of the renovations has progressed significantly. In fact, we expect to sleep in our own bedrooms next week. The following picture shows the before and after picture of one of these rooms, as well as the finished look for the other two. The only thing remaining are the lighting fixtures for 2 of these rooms.

To remind everyone of the work that had to be done on just these rooms, it included taking down the outer walls to apply proper insulation, new electrical (and Internet) wiring, new flooring and repair of all trimmings and door fixtures.

In the coming weeks, I hope to put up pictures of our new 2nd floor landing, widow's walk and bathrooms, all of which have been dramatically changed, while retaining as much of the historical components of the house such as these gorgeous door hinges.

The first and elaborately designed door hinges with scrolling patterns and finials are definitely Victorian. The second set are very thick metal hinges stamped Clarks Patent. We believe these to be from the T & C Clark foundry in Wolverhampton in the UK. These also seem to predate the Victorian house and are likely another remnant of the land grant homestead that was originally built on this site.

We're now so pleased with our contractor's work, we expect to engage them for "phase 2", ie. the rest of the house which encompasses some 13 rooms and includes our Scholaert Cassel glass gallery. This work should start in January.

On the farm, our back pond beaver has been very busy. In the space of a few days, he has continued to take down some major trees. This is starting to be a concern actually. I fear he is taking down some rather beautiful and healthy trees and if we ever have to control this situation, I'm not sure how to "relocate" a beaver.

With temperatures hovering around 0 deg. C, we have had a few snow flurries this week. However, the snow did not accumulate on the ground and we had a sufficient number of sunny days to work like our beavers and clear more of our land.

The focus this week was on the creek that crosses the farm to feed the beaver pond. We have made some major headway there.

To dispose of the waste, we have had to start quite a few fires (we're on our sixth site). With the strong winds from the South, we have discovered that these fires can be quite dangerous when your land is covered with a significant amount of brush...including large dead and fallen trees. This week, we inadvertently set fire to one of these (luckily we keep a lot of water at hand). This has increased our resolve to clear this brush aggressively.  One bad lightning strike could really create a disaster within what has effectively become a tinder box.

Finally, since we continue to experiment with winter squash, we have discovered two new methods to enjoy these great fruits. The first is squash pizza. You simply peel, clean and cut your squash into small cubes. Roast it for 15 minutes with onions, rosemary and garlic, with a touch of olive oil. Apply the resulting mixture to a pizza dough and place back in the oven (salt and pepper to taste) with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. The result is a great hearty meal.

Our second experiment consisted of squash gnocchi. In this case we cleaned and cut our squash into large segments, placed them in the oven (with the skin). We then created a mixture of Mascarpone cheese (one to one with the amount of squash used), an egg and some grated Parmesan. Once cooked and tender, we scooped our squash pieces from their skin and added them to the Mascarpone mix. We added a touch of salt and pepper and then a bit of flour to thicken the "dough".

Using two spoons we gently scooped "quenelles" of this mixture into boiling water. Once the gnocchi floated, we placed them on a paper towel. The gnocchi were then pan fried in butter with some fresh sage and were served with a sprinkling of Parmesan.

The result is a crispy dumpling on the outside, with a delicious squash flavoured creamy interior (definitely not comparable to your typical potato gnocchi).

I leave you this week with a picture of our "prototype" jam packaging. We decided to adopt a square jar (suitably called Victorian by the manufacturer) and we have finalized our labeling concept....now I think we're ready for production starting this Spring.