The Rent is Due!

Ah - and what a payment it is too! Remember my ga-jillion neighbors? June 3rd (bottom of post)
Rent: One gallon of beautiful golden honey.

 

Matt brought this last night and I distributed today. And it is delicious! 

 

  

Not to mention absolutely beautiful! I think I will have to make ginger bread this winter - not Ellen Emlen's ginger bread - but Honigkuchen - or literally - honey cake. Honey is a natural preservative - a favorite trivial fact I learned in my liberal arts education was that after Alexander the Great died his body was placed in honey to preserve it for a trek across the desert so that it could be buried appropriately at "home." I can't find proof of this now, and maybe I've got my people mixed up... but I can find proof that honey can preserve things placed in it for centuries. Bottom line - people made Honigkuchen so that it would last over the winter. I've got plenty of honey for that! 

In other news, I've got my presses back! My dad gave my this little Adana table top press that I am really excited to try out.

 

It was being fixed for the last few months. It's been cleaned oiled and has brand new rollers. Here is it open:

 I also got the little Chandler & Price press back - which has been practically rebuild. It needed a lot of little things. John still has to send me the rollers, but then I'll should be ready to print little things. It's only a 3x5 platen - so business cards are probably best.

 

And having just taken a gold tooling and titling class, not to mention getting my presses back - it's time to deal with the heaps of type in the basement. sigh. The problem is that the basement needs TONS of work. For one thing it needs to be parged - the walls need to be re-cemented. Who'd have thought! I really didn't want to do it. It's a huge job. And for another there is water seeping in. Wally came by to finally pick up the last of the boulders and cement blocks that were left over from the porch - so I thought I'd ask him for a quote to see how much it would be for him to do the work. It was reasonable - so I decide - what the heck - I'd rather pay him. 

So he started on Tuesday - I think it was. There are a lot of bricks that need to be replaced and so he did some of that too. See the bright red bricks? Those are the disintegrating ones. 

 

They've been replaced with cinder blocks.  

 And finally - the whole wall has been cemented over. It will be grey - but I can paint it. At least it will be finished and I don't have to do it.

 And in a last bit of news - my farm share gave us something I've never had before - Ground Cherries. They taste nothing like cherries. I can't even describe them, they have a taste all their own.

 And they come in their own packaging.

It is finally threatening to rain. I'm going to go out and whack away at the weeds before the down pour. Hopefully it will rain soon and we can see where the water is coming down and making the basement damp.