The Manor is Slowly Coming Together

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We've not posted on the progress of the Ward Manor for quite a while now. We are actually coming to the very final finishes of the interior.

Our back gallery is finally complete. It is a very special room which will serve three functions, first and most importantly as a gallery for some of our Art Nouveau and Art Deco glass collection.

However, it has also been equipped with a wine/espresso bar for special occasions. And finally, it has also been designed to expose the secrets of the house. The most important of which is the fact that the home still contains two buildings that predate the manor and an older fourth foundation.

As a result, we've exposed one of these building's walls including dairy box and entrance, along with one of the original cellar exits (which was at one time on the exterior of the house). We've also exposed the oldest foundation using glass floor plates. This makes for a rather unique atmosphere.

The changes in the before and after look and feel of this room are striking.

Before: the South West room was used as an apartment kitchen

Now it is a gallery exposing the older parts of a building within the manor

One of the old cellar exits (which should be outside) is framed with wrought iron railing

The centuries old white oak staircase of the old cellar are now back in use

Glass floor panels are used to expose an even older foundation

The most extensive (and important) room is the kitchen. There we have exposed the passage way to the dining room that was behind the centre hall stair case. A major milestone however was the delivery of our stove,  a beautiful La Cornue from France with a double oven.

The "heart" of the home, our new La Cornue oven has finally arrived

The centre hall is also almost complete. The marble mosaic floor is now laid allowing us to address the front doors. We've come to the conclusion that the double doors were not original. Based on the major rework of the fittings to these doors, we suspect they were salvaged from the back of the house. Since they were not designed to work as double doors, the fit was completely wrong. Further, the stained glass was definitely not representative of the period.

Not having any reference on what the entrance would have looked like,we decided to pick up on the design elements from the bay windows and the mill work inside and outside the house. The new door is finished but still requires work. However, it does give a good indication of where we are going with this.

In the process the newly fitted door has also allowed us to remove an awkward storm door.

The original doorway as it is being disassembled

The new door and stained glass panels coming together

We will be posting more before and after pictures once everything is complete. Now we can hardly wait to start on the outside of the house and the landscaping.

Our progress in the vegetable garden is no less exciting. Our heirloom Italian tomatoes are ripening...to the point where Chef has started to introduce them in his daily specials.

We were also pleased to pick our first watermelon, a Russian heirloom called Shining Star. Perhaps because it was our first home grown melon...it was delicious (even though loaded with seeds).

A happy day: our first melon

Our foraging experiments also continue. However, since we tackled Queen Anne's Lace last week, I wanted to again make sure everyone knew the difference between these blooms and Poison Hemlock....which we also have on hand at the farm. We picked some hemlock for this purpose.

So to recap, the white blooms of the Queen Anne's Lace surround a tiny purple-red bloom. This is a key difference, but sometimes this centre bloom is wilted.

The centre bloom of Queen Anne's Lace

The second difference is the very pleasant and sweet smell of the Quenn Anne's Lace bloom.

There are other ways to note the difference between these two plants. The stem of the Hemlock is much thinner and "wiry", not fuzzy like the Queen Anne's Lace. The bloom of the Hemlock does not have such a complex pattern.

The Poison Hemlock bloom

The back of the Hemlock bloom also does not show thin leaves like the Queen Anne's Lace. This is because the Queen Anne's Lace folds into a basket or nest-like configuration before it goes to seed.

The back of the Queen Anne's Lace bloom

The back of the Poison Hemlock bloom

Queen Anne's Lace bloom going to seed

A few weeks ago, we had also challenged Chef with Milkweed pods. This had him stumped until we were visited by a customer from the Six Nations Reserve which is just West of us on the Niagara Peninsula. After discussing wild edibles, we tackled the topic of Milkweed and to my surprise she told me of her grandmother's pickled Milkweed Pods. She no longer had the recipe...but we now had an idea on how to process them.

The result: Chef's pickled Mikweed Pods

We will now wait a couple of weeks before trying them.

As fall approaches (certainly the weather makes it seem like it is near), it is a great time to forage for wild edibles. This week we started to pick Wild Grapes. Although small and a bit tart with large seeds, these small grapes make a great juice and are perfect for jellies. They seem to ripen earlier than the cultivated variety so now is the time to harvest them.

It's time to harvest the Wild Grape

The Biodome project is also progressing. The foundation is up and we finally took delivery of the geodesic structure. In a couple of weeks, we hope to have the entire thing assembled.

Our Biodome awaiting assembly

In order to get water to the dome we decided to tap on our old well. In the process we also hope to be able to provide water to some of our crops. The well was capped with a board assembly (not the safest) and was clearly hand dug to thirty feet, with 9 feet of water. The walls were lined with bricks...clearly an "original".

The old well, hand dug to 30 feet

We will remount the old hand pump, but we will now be adding an electric pump to force water down our field and to the dome.

I will conclude this week with a quick update on our Meads. It seems that our ability to make fruit wines is rapidly evolving. We are now trying different recipes and toying with the process to predetermine the dryness of the wines. It will not be long before we will need to scale our efforts to larger fermentation tanks.

Our latest wine ready for "racking"