God has graciously provided a very productive garden for us this year. The winter squash are so productive that they hide other vegetables. Namely cucumbers. Yesterday I went in search of cucumbers after avoiding the garden for a few days. Although I do try to get out to the garden daily and search for produce […]
An Even Dozen
Buchanan Cellars called this morning to tell us that they received more Astralorp chicks and if we wanted more we could come by and get them. Here are our two new chicks. I’ve started calling the one on the left “precious”. She is just so cute! Our new chicks are exactly one week younger than […]
Such a Busy Time of Year
Some of you may be wondering why you haven’t been hearing from me. I’ve sent very few emails and made even fewer calls. Well, it’s been busy. August begins the harvest. The pickling cucumbers have been prolific and then there were the black berries to deal with. Besides the various ways previously described of making […]
Chicks Rule
Finally. After nearly 15 years I am not the only female. Three months after getting married Michael and I brought home the most adorable BOY Beagle puppy. From then on every living thing added to our home has been a male. Moving to the farm added yet another male with the addition of Luke. I […]
A Monday of Ups and Downs and Ups and Do...
We had quite the roller coaster of a Monday. It started in the usual way of the boys and I doing school and Michael working. Then Michael left around lunch time to drive up to Sherwood to pick up our new dining room table that Wilson made for us. Who is Wilson? He is a […]
How Does Our Garden Grow– Update
I worked in the garden today for about seven hours and I thought you might like to see how it is coming along. Here is one of the pictures from July. Here is a similar shot from today. Here were our tomatillos in July. Here they are today. I have a ton of winter squash […]
Fruit Leather
Well, I guess it is harvest time. In the past two weeks I have stored up a few loads of dried apples, a couple ice cube trays of basil, keep adding pickling cucumbers to my refrigerator dill pickles, made a couple of apples pies, canned nine pints of sweet lime pickle chips and did a […]
Fire Pit
Last night we had a fire. It was more of a utilitarian fire than the sit by the fire, roast marshmallows and keep warm. After all, it was still well into the 80’s when we lit the fire. We had a ton of old base board/trim to burn. Over the past weeks Michael has replaced […]
The Good the Bad and the Downright Frigh...
There is a dark side to living in the country. No, it isn’t people turning old toilets into planters. It isn’t even the library that is smaller than my laundry room. It is the critters that live side by side with you and you don’t even know they are there until you run smack into […]
Cucumbers a Plenty
My cucumbers are growing splendidly. Not the pickling kind of course. The regular eating kind are going gang busters. I decided to try a refrigerator bread and butter pickle. I wasn’t sure that regular cucumbers would be good as pickles. Not wanting to waste time canning something that wouldn’t turn out I went with the […]
Dried Apples
One of our apple trees is called an Early Transparent. That is the only apple tree I’ve been able to identify so far. I have a list the previous owners gave me. It just doesn’t specify which tree is which apple. How did I know that this one was the Early Transparent? An avid lover […]
Another Rescued Bird and Two Dead Mice
While the lower field was being mowed Joshua found a fledgling bird hopping around. He worried that it wouldn’t survive on its own. He caught it and made a home for it in the cage previously occupied by the Mourning Dove. Cute little thing. It slept in the cage in Joshua’s room that night. It […]