Week 20

The rain has finally arrived. After weeks (months?) with virtually no rain, it started raining yesterday, has rained all day today, and is forecast to rain for the rest of the week. Yay.

I spent today preserving fruit. We still have a ton of apples and passionfruit to use up. I made passionfruit syrup which was very easy and very yum. Watered down it will make a very nice fruit juice for the girls. I tried making a rum cocktail out of it but didn't like it very much.

I also cut up lots of apples and dried them in the oven to eat as snacks. However I misread the recipe which I found online. Instead of baking at 200 Fahrenheit, I baked them at 200 Celsius. After an hour they were almost burnt. I did think it strange to be cooking at such a high temperature. D'oh.

Got the tractor fixed. It turned out that we were using the wrong button to stop it. Unlike a car which stops when you turn the key off, the tractor doesn't work that way. We were pulling a switch that we thought was right, that was attached to the compressor (???). And what happened was that it closed the compressor, turning off the motor, but on this occasion didn't pop back to the open position afterwards like it was supposed to. It was very easy to fix, and the guy that showed us also showed us the correct switch to use when turning it off.

Over the past month we have had a plague of flies. I think it has to do with the colder weather. Every day there are dozens and dozens of dead flies all around the windows and doors in the sunroom and the living room. I'm not sure how they get in, there must be cracks around the windows. Some days I'm literally vacuuming up hundreds of dead and dying flies. At first I felt guilty vacuuming them up when they weren't dead, but now I figure if they can't fly away then they must be almost dead anyway and I'm doing them a favour. I will vacuum in the morning, and by afternoon there are more again, lying on the carpet and the window sills. It's so gross. Hopefully the numbers will decrease when the weather gets really cold.

-M