Another day, a few more jars..........

It has been a busy day because for some reason I felt like I was behind canning. Our tomatoes are getting ripe but not a large amount at one time. So I make juice a few quarts at a time. I have a good amount of larger tomatoes that I am letting get a little riper to use for salsa. My Rob likes the homemade salsa so I guess I have to make some for him when I have extra tomatoes. The smaller tomatoes get turned into juice.

 We are getting several cucumbers now and make pickles every other evening. The okra has just went wild. I am freezing about a gallon of sliced okra every other evening as well. I use a lot of okra when I make and can gumbo and it never fails if I use store bought okra no matter the brand it always has a lot of tough fibrous pieces in it. That makes for a nasty texture when you take a big bite. Yuck, so I know if I grow it and cut it and freeze it that it wont be tough. Problem solved. Just another one of those things you can always do better yourself than depend on the store for.
After getting all the carrots pulled out of our small bed in the back yard Rodger got it all tilled up this evening and I got my mustard and turnip seeds sown. I am hoping I can get a good amount of greens to can this year. My canned greens are getting pretty low. I am the only one here that eats them but dang it when I want em, I want em. And that is another thing I dont like to buy. The store bought ones are usually chopped and have a lot of large stems chopped up in the mix and I take the stems mostly out of mine when  I can them. And I only rough chop or tear into bite size pieces not really fine.

We got our sweet corn taken care of a week or so ago and damn, the crows for sure got more than we did. I had a second planting that would have been ready probably by the end of this week. As my luck would have it, the crows feel too threatened but nothing stops the damn squirrels. They have pretty well obliterated the patch before it was even in the blister stage. So next project is the cut down the stalks and plant cover crop on the ground. That will likely be purple hull peas. I might even get some peas off the plants before frost. They will be inside the fence so the deer and turkeys cant get at them. Heaven help a turkey if it gets in the fence and cant get out. It for sure has been a battle of the wills to save things from the critters this year. We are plotting now how to deter them next year and just our luck it will be a different pest next season. I already know I am planting less cabbage and when they are planted they will be covered completely with some kind of cheese cloth material to keep the worms off. Damn those things destroyed all my cabbage this year. No kraut for me. Always something new to keep a gardener on their toes I guess. But am thankful we are able to restock our cellar this season so really should not complain at all.

I was in the summer kitchen today which is near the hen house and heard the hens raising a fuss cackling. I went out to see what was their issue. And lo and behold I got my first eggs, all 2 of em, from my 4 month old Buff Orphington pullets today. I was very pleased. So they should be laying full swing in another couple weeks or so. Needless to say this chicken momma is a happy camper.

I guess maybe these hens will at least earn their feed. Unlike the last ones I had that were really a dead expense.

I did a practice run last week on something I had wondered about for a while. I like fried green tomatoes but really dont care for the texture of them canned then fried. So I had a few that were green with just a blush of starting to turn color. I brought them in, and with a sharp knife peeled the skin off and dredged them while they were still damp in a mix of corn meal with about half the amount of flour added, a good dash of salt and pepper. Rolled the tomatoes in that mixture and put them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and froze them.  I think I left them in the freezer for a couple days. I took em out and fried them up. Oh my, they were perfect. Just the same as if done straight from the garden. So now I gots to get me busy or in my spare time (hahaha) slice more and coat them and get them frozen. Then I can bag em up to enjoy when the snow flys this winter and I can only dream of a fresh fried green mater. So if you like fried green tomatoes this method works like a charm. When I coated them in the corn meal mixture I did press it on each slice really well so they had a good coat on the outside before freezing. I guess we can say this ole gal learned a new trick.

Every year I try to grow something I have never tried before. This year I was blessed to get some plum granny seeds from Rita, a friend I went to school with. They are loaded with lil plum grannies. I picked 3 ripe ones this afternoon and brought them in the house. You can smell them all over in here. They are an interesting "thing" to learn about. They are also called pocket melons. In victorian times when a bath was a real luxury ladies would carry the pocket melons in their reticule (purse) or in their pocket to mask body odor. I have also heard or read that if they are cut and let around inside the house they will deter spiders and other unwelcome flying annoyances. The jury is still out on that one here. But in all fairness I did just bring them in this afternoon so maybe we give em time.

Certainly pretty to look at, but to my knowledge most people dont eat them. They are more for fragrance and looks and if you choose, to cover body odor. But in my humble opinion soap and water is a much better alternative. As for the insect repelling properties, I will let ya know.

So now its the end of a long day and appears tomorrow wont be any shorter. So till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

stella

Making progress

Dang this has been a long week. Stressful to say the least. Things went down hill end of last week when my mother had to be flown out to a hospital suffering a stroke. With great doctors of staff they gave her TPA clot buster drugs and she is still with us. She is stable but unable to talk or swallow. Not sure when or even if she will ever be able to eat on her own. In the meantime we opted to have a feeding tube placed so she can have nourishment till then. She had the procedure to get the feeding tube put in yesterday and they are able to feed her today. So far she is stable and may get to return to the nursing home Thursday or Friday this week. This has entailed lots of long trips for us out of town and that has been really hard on my body such as it is. But have been blessed that either Rodger or Jason was able to go with me and drive when needed. But keep mom in your prayers that she can continue to recover and be comfortable.

We did get taters planted last week. Our peas are up and look really good. Onions are up and carrots are starting to come thru the ground. My plants in the greenhouse look good and are finally growing well. Compost tea can make a big difference. I intend to water with the manure tea again tomorrow. It should be warm enough to get everything moved back to the greenhouse and out of the summer kitchen tomorrow as well.

 

 We had light snow, yeas snow, yesterday morning here and a heavy frost this morning. I knew it would be a lil too cold to leave tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse with no heat so we put all those trays in the summer kitchen. We have heat in there anyway as there is still a tote in there where the lil baby chicks are living till we butcher the meat birds this coming weekend. The lil ones are growing and healthy.

These lil guys are from the ones I hatched in the incubator. Was sure hoping to have mostly pullets but not sure as to what sex they are now.
The meat birds are really nice size. Some are almost too big to stand up so they do a lot of sitting.

Not too bad for 6 week old birds. Very nice meaty chickens. I see lots of fried chicken and lots of good chicken stock. Then this fall I will raise another batch for fall and winter meat supply hopefully.

My older hens are still laying pretty good right now and they are so friendly I really hate to butcher them off later this year but they are getting past their prime for egg laying. They also tolerate Possum the cat well as he thinks he is a chicken. Spent all his young life with them so why not.

Possum waits here or in the chicken house every night for me to close up the chickens and feed him. He knows its time to eat when I come in from closing the hens up and makes sure to remind me when he walks in front of me to the back deck to have his belly scratched at the top of the steps. Creatures of habit, much like humans. They like routine as well I guess.

Not much else happening here on the farm right now. So till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Where is our spring?

What the heck happened to spring this year. Here it is mid March and our ice an snow just melted. It sure was nice out today. I even had the patio door open most of the day. So nice to air the house out an let fresh air in after being cooped up all winter. But by this time next week they are giving rain and snow showers again. Crap!! I am so ready for it to be warm and stay that way. Pretty sure things will do better in the greenhouse once it warms to a decent temperature. But I should not complain, my lil cabbages are coming up. I also had a huge flower pot that I filled with soil and sowed some lettuce, kale an spinach in. It has come up rather thick. Really pretty and green. I wanted to get an early start on tomatoes and peppers but I sure don't want to have to keep heat in the greenhouse for the weather we have had. That can get quite expensive after a while. Tomorrow I think I will go ahead an fill my seed starting trays and put them in the summer kitchen so the soil can warm up. Once it gets warm then seed to tomatoes, peppers and a few others things I need to get started early. Most likely those trays will stay in the summer kitchen till it warms a bit more outside and stays that way. Then they can be moved to the greenhouse. Peppers need really warm temps to sprout. My buddy Randy sent me some paprika pepper seeds and I hope to hell I can get them to come up and grow this season. No luck at all last year. 

This month has been abnormally cold I think for us. Normally I don't have a problem raising my Cornish cross meat birds in March and April. But dang it, this year has been different. I still have all of em, no losses yet. When our temps dropped down in the teens last week I was just afraid they would chill in their lil building so being the worrisome person I am I moved them into the summer kitchen. Yep you heard me right. I used an old quilt to put on the floor and up the cabinets on both sides of the kitchen, stapled it to the cabinets and pulled up the ends and tacked those down. Imagine a big 4 ft square basket made of a quilt. I put some stray on the quilt to help keep them dry and put them in their temporary home. The had their heat light, food an water and stayed toasty warm without me having to worry about them. Yesterday Rodger and I moved them back to their building where we used an old metal topless picnic table to suspend a quilt to help hold the heat in a smaller area to keep them warmer. All is well. You know chicks are warm enough when they don't huddle under the heat light. It was obvious from the droppings that they were warm enough to be able to move away from the heat. I won that round with mother nature. Depending on how cold it gets next week with the predicted rain and snow, they may be back in the summer kitchen. I don't care if I did spend a couple hours cleaning and sanitizing things in thee. I just cant afford to let those critters get sick or die.

I still don't have any hens setting this season so I finally gave up and loaded the incubator with eggs. So God willing, I should have baby chicks from the standard breeds about April 4th. I thought for a day or so that my incubator was dead. I could not for the life of me get the temperature up to where it needed to be. I kept turning the thermostat up, no luck. Then on closer inspection, being a dummy, I was turning the thermostat the wrong way. Aha! Once I figured that out and turned it up it warmed up to where it needed to be and I put the eggs in on the automatic egg turner. With the still air incubators the temp needs to be about 101 degrees. There are lil indention in the bottom of the incubator that need to always have water in them to keep the humidity up to mimic a setting hen. It is kinda tricky to add water and not pour it on the eggs. I have been using my plant water can that has a long skinny spout on it. Works like a charm. About 3 days before the eggs are due to hatch they get taken off the egg turner and placed directly on the mesh bottom. This is the incubation period where the chicks are turning in the shell and pressing outward with their beak to make a lid they can pop off and get out. Once they turn completely around in the egg they then break thru to the air pocket at the big end of the egg and start pushing till they are free. Once they are out of the shell you have an incubator full of lil critters that very much look like lil dinosaurs. Just another miracle of life.

This weather being first warm then getting cold has made my joints a miserable lot. I has been nice enough for a few days that I probably should have gotten out and finished pruning things in the yard. I got rose bushes that are going wild. Actually both the ones I have are old fashioned varieties and they have the best scent ever. But the smaller one near the cellar is crawling all over the place. I don't think it can be classified as a climbing rose at all. I crawls all over the place. Or maybe I should put up a taller stronger trellis for it. Maybe I can do that. Next nice day we have. I have 2 thornless blackberry plants that my friend Rosie had given me a few years back that are on the other side of the cellar door. They for sure need a trellis to climb on. One has a runner that is about 12 ft long or more. Just lots of lil things that make for a lot of work to care for around here. But I like my roses and blackberries. Thankful only one of em has thorns.

Not much else happening here on the homestead. So till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Trying to get a jump on spring

And trust me that is a tough thing to do around here right now. Seems as tho winter is wanting to linger longer than we would like, but we don't control the weather. Rodger got my greenhouse set back up a couple weeks ago and I still have not been able to get my cabbage seeds started. Its not like I need a ton of things in the cabbage family but I need what I need. I was hoping our really cold weather would ease up a lil bit before I got the seeds started an they sprout. The cabbage family can do fine in cold weather the biggest problem is damping off in the greenhouse. And that is something you really have to stay on top of or chance losing all your seedlings. I have in the past just used a peroxide water spray to control the disease. I hope to get those seeds in this weekend. But with no more than I will be starting, maybe 3 flats, less than 100 plants of all things cabbage, I am thinkin I will just use my counter in the summer kitchen for those till the super cold weather spell is past. Then hopefully it will be safe to put them in the greenhouse for the remainder of the growing period. Fingers crossed. We are forecast to get snow, ice, rain, sleet and shit and stuff and things this weekend. We will see.

Well we did decide to go ahead and build a smaller addition onto the big chicken house up here on the hill to raise the meat birds. It should be big enough to accommodate the 25 birds I am starting the season with. Rodger and Jason got that task done last weekend. They went from this:

The floor on Saturday morning was the start, and time wise, 3 days later this is what we have:

This is a 6ft addition onto the west end of the hen house. It would be so nice if chickens were not such creatures of habit and the hens would just move in the new residence. But I am sure if I tried that it would mean going out at dark and carrying each bird to the new house. They would sit down at the door of their old house. So I will leave them be and put the new babies in the new building. Then once they are butchered off and the building is empty I can put new young pullets in this section. Hopefully as I hatch chicks this spring and save out the lil pullets I intend to raise them in this new section so it will be home to them. After the young bird get close to laying age we will be butchering off our old flock and that will leave the bigger building empty to raise the fall round of Cornish for our winter meat supply. I will let ya know how my plan works out. OK stop laughing, its not done yet. I got my heat lights, bedding, feed at the ready, vitamins and all set to get my babies first of the week. They will only live here about 6 , no more than 7 weeks till they are in the freezer. When we have several days of warm dry weather forecast I will paint the outside of this building to help protect it even tho it is built with exterior grade plywood. Yep, another paint project.

Speaking of painting, I am still not done on the inside of the house as of right now. I did finally get the closet section painted in the bedroom/walk-in closet off my bedroom. I has nice heavy shelves in there to hold all kinds of stuff that was sitting all over my closet/craft room. Much neater and at least I can safely walk in there and come out with all 10 toes intact. I have had to take it easy the past few days as I have had another round of mild bronchitis I guess. Have not felt good for a few days. I did feel some better today and managed to get another coat of paint on the walls in the master bath. The paint was not old enough to really need to be totally painted but needed touch up where the paint for some reason looked thin. So another project off my list. I actually think there is enough paint left in that can if it remains good to totally repaint the whole bathroom in a few years when it needs it again. I still need to buy the paint to paint the inside of the pantry in the kitchen. Sounds like a good lil project for a crappy weather weekend we are supposed to have this weekend. IF and thas a big IF I feel better. Have to wait till tomorrow to see how that goes. That will leave the living room and master bedroom to paint and I might be done. At least till I get another harebrained idea.

I have at last got my garden seeds out and all sorted to see what all we have and want to plant. Not sure how I did it, but I have managed to let us run out of cucumber seed. Panic time!! Well not really. I did find that Lowe's sells organic and heirloom seeds. So I guess my next trip out of town will include a trip to Lowe's to pick up some cucumber seeds so we have them on hand at planting time. It is still really wet in the garden right now but Rodger thinks he might be able to get in there tomorrow and at least plant our peas. No we did not get them planted on Valentines day like we wanted to. But I think it is still early enough that they will do fine before really hot weather hits. Peas do not do well in heat. The earlier you can plant them the better they will produce and the pods of the Sugar Snap peas will be super tender and crisp. It has been to wet and cold here for us to get in the orchard an prune the fruit trees. That needs to be done really soon before they start to bud. But you do what you can and the rest has to wait.

Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

We went from winter to ......worse

Last time I looked it was still winter, at least till mid march in my mind. But this week our temps have been so nice. It has been 60's to almost 70 today. I have had the patio door open since before noon today. But as is promised with Kentucky weather, it changes often. Tonight we are forecast for thunderstorms and damaging winds. Not what I need about now. But I don't control the weather.

I have been busy for the past several days. Yep I am still painting, taking lots of breaks too. I did finally get my bedroom painted. It does look much nicer. Still working on getting the "stuff" put back on the walls. I like to move art work around just for change and am stuck, cant decide what I really want to hang on the walls. For one I do want my antique quilt back up behind the headboard of the bed. I just liked it there. I don't even really have curtains up yet. The windows are kinda covered but not with drapes like I want. At this point I am not sure I want to paint the closet/craft room at all. I still have the master bedroom to do and the living room yet. Both will be a big job. I had to take several days off because I exhausted my energy reserve big time. Almost sent myself into a fibro flare. And I sure don't need that.

Rodger got my greenhouse put up last weekend. We did find time to get out of town and picked up several bags of seed starting medium. It is time to get all things cabbage related in soil to get started. They need to be grown in the cooler spring weather before the summer heat hits. So this coming weekend the plan is to get my benches back in the greenhouse and hopefully get the cabbage family in some dirt. I think just being able to get my hands in dirt will go a long way toward making me feel better. I have totally cluttered up my summer kitchen this winter with empty canning jars. We certainly have used lots of our canned stuff this year. So a big garden is a must for us. So I have to knuckle down and get busy. I did finally make a decision to order meat chicks this spring. They will arrive about march 3rd. We are thinking of maybe adding on to the existing chicken house up here on the hill, a smaller addition, to accommodate the hens and just use the big chicken house to raise the meat birds closer to the house. It sure would save a lot of worry for me with them closer. I would have a power source and could run out to check on them more often. Just better all around for all of us I think. If we add an extension to the back of the building we use now for the hens and move them, we can build a door on the west end and it is level enough back there and lots of room to put the tractor an bucket up to the door to shovel manure straight into the bucket without having to finagle the tractor to "kinda" get close enough to pitch the manure in the bucket. Then if I have my way I will have another door cut between the rooms so the manure can be pushed into the add on and on out into the tractor bucket. Easy peasy! Or at least easier. Only problem we have a short time to build this add on before the baby chicks arrive. We shall see.

Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Time flys when you are having fun

Or at least that is what they say. I just know for sure time has flown by this year. Mostly this fall. It seems like I have been away from home since early last fall. I guess I kinda have tho. Starting in September with the hunting lodge, the loss of my Aunt Ann, home for a bit, house sitting, another hunting season at the lodge, home for a few days and the final round of the hunting lodge. I think the hunting season is over for this year till September at least. Unless Carl comes up with another brainy idea. And knowing him, its possible. But I do enjoying helping out at the hunting lodge and it keeps my aunts memory alive for me.

Back at home not much to do in the way of gardening or farming. Other than keep the chickens fed and watered. Water is not much of a problem with all the rain we have had and are presently having. The temperatures are nice tho. I wont complain at all about that. It was in the 60's here today. I even had the patio door open for a while. I guess it helps that the patio door is off the kitchen and I was cooking supper adding to the heat in here. Rodger came home from work feeling like crap. He said he had been so tired all day and just felt bad. I think he went to bed around 6 , right after supper. Not normal for him. But he was up a lil bit ago and said his back did feel better. He has had several people off work with the flu and such. Some schools in surrounding counties considered calling off school due to illness. For what ever reason my arthritis has flared up pretty bad today. Not sure if its over use of my joints, the weather or just plain age. But dang, its hurty. I guess the one joint that has most of my attention right now is my big toe. OK laugh it up. But do you know how annoying it is to walk with your big toes sore, stiff an hurting? Well it hurts. I guess if that is the worst of my problems, its all good. With all the work at the hunting lodge this fall, I feel really good about my over-all well being. I did well. Not as much pain as usual. Not as much soreness as usual. I can live with this. I do still have major bouts with fatigue but IF time and events allow I can most times sleep that off. That is IF I can crash and sleep 12 to 14 hours straight. It may take a couple days but I feel better after the fact. With fibro, rest is essential or your mental clarity goes out the window. It seems life and your whole body just stalls. I guess it kinda does.

Any who, its almost Christmas time and time to spend some quality time with family an friends. In our case mostly family. Our kids, Rob, Amoy and lil Liam will be home end of this week. Cant wait to see them. We have not seen our Rob since April when we were in Nevada for Liam's birth. That lil boy has grown bunches too and is crawling, pulling up, and will probably be trying to walk soon. Time flys when ya have a lil one, they change daily. So this grammy needs to get some junk food made to spoil the lil one with while he is home.

Oh its so nice to be home in my own world, sleeping in my own bed, on the down side, I have to eat all my own cooking. I have a mental list of several projects I want to get done this winter. Yeas I said
"mental" list. I have a couple quilts I want to finish. Some crochet projects I want to work on and a few embroidery pieces I want to do. Not sure where I got the silly notion I want to make a bunch of embroidery pieces to later set up into a quilt. But the idea is kinda stuck in my mind. Although it may change after I complete one square. But those projects are for when I am house bound in really cold nasty weather if we have any later this winter. But for now I really should be in the summer kitchen getting more of our potatoes canned up so we don't have such a large loss on them. They just are not keeping as well as they should. Not sure if it has to do with the wet growing season or a disease or just what their problem is. But if I get busy and can the good ones they for sure will stay edible till spring. We had to buy sweet potatoes this fall for the first time in forever. Ours did nothing. Well they did the best they could in the grass that took over. They yielded about 2/3 of a 5 gallon bucket in 2 rows 100ft long. May as well say they did nothing. But I got those lil fellows canned up last fall too so its all good. We can use the ones we have stored fresh first before they sprout and save the canned ones will we run out of fresh. They will keep in the jar. I never did but still want to make an can some goulash like my friend Rosie makes. I still remember the taste and it was so dang good. Meat, beef or in my case venison, cooked long with lots of onion in a tomato like sauce. I remember she served it with kraut. Oh my, so good. I guess I should get her recipe to make sure I can get close to the same taste. Nothing in life is more disappointing that having your taste buds set for a certain taste and then it not meet up to your specifications.

I think tomorrow will be a chicken noodle soup day. Rodger not feeling good, its cool and rainy. Yep a good soup day. Good ole comfort food. Nothing better.

Not much else happening here, so till next time, Merry Christmas and many blessings from the McGuire homestead to your family.

Stella

We are heading into an early fall

No not a fall "down", but fall the season after summer. I am pretty sure grapes don't get ripe till sometime in September around here but mine were all ripe. Rodger went to the garden last evening to check on the tomatoes and see if we had ripe ones. He did pick a few so we have enough to use fresh with meals. When he came back in I ask him to help me pick the grapes. We cut the clusters off the vines with pruning shears. We had 3 of these half bushel baskets full of nice big sweet grapes.

This is the pic of 2 of the baskets, the other is already in the sink for washing. Yeah we still need to get the green beans put in the cellar. Rodger helped me make juice after we got the grapes picked.

We got 10 quarts of nice thick juice from those and still had a half bushel left to do. We finished off the last basket full this evening and made juice with those too. Ended up with 10 more quarts of juice. As concentrated as the juice is I do think it will need water added when we drink it. Not much work to produce grapes and not much to make juice. We only have 6 mature grape vines producing right now with 30 plus young vines that are not producing yet. I guess all in all these grapes were grown by organic methods as they had no fertilizer or chemicals on them. If I need to I can make grape jelly later but for now we still have plenty of grape jelly in the cellar. I chose not to make wine this year. The juice is more versatile anyway. I rather wait and make some raspberry wine. I need to check on the raspberries to see if they are ripening yet. I think they should be. The plants had lots of raspberries on them a couple weeks ago when we checked them. I should have a bumper crop of those this year too with all the nice rain we have had. As matter of fact it was raining lightly when I came in the house a lil bit ago, shortly after dark. If has been so nice and cool at night I think I will start opening windows at night an shutting off the central air. Might try that for a few nights to see how bad our allergies act up. Its nice to sleep with open windows and listen to the night critters at night. So nice to live in the country where you can do that.

Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Need to get my ducks in a row

But these days seems like I am lucky to just get my ducks in the same pond. I feel lost in my own lil world. I lose track of time lapse. I have been thinkin for a week or more than I need to update my blog and let my readers know I am still kickin. Well finally , here it is. By the way, where the hell did summer go? Just the other day I was starting things in the greenhouse and wishing for summer to get things planted an now here it is mid-August nearly. Actually I have lost a lot of precious time and a lot of my life trying to get better health wise. NOW maybe I can be on the uphill swing. I have stopped a couple meds that I think were making me so fatigued and making me sicker. If I can just get me past the withdrawal of those it will be better. Making progress tho. Maybe in the near future I can do a whole post on what has happened an how I am making positive progress now. So many things to do an so little time before fall and frost, then the snow flys.
Our garden has not produced as much as we are used to but no panic here because when I do have an abundance I can like there is no tomorrow. So in leaner years we still have plenty of canned stuff. We finally got the first round of sweet corn put up late last week and weekend. Will be picking over it again probably mid week. Beans, well those are a whole nuther animal. Not going to be many if any of those this year. But we have enough already canned. Our tomatoes have lots of nice healthy green tomatoes on the vines but they will be a lil later getting ripe. No biggie tho.Our potatoes did really well this year. We got those dug a couple weeks ago and are in the building curing for later storage in the cellar. I plan, but we know how my planning goes, to can some of the smaller taters for quick meals. Not to mention the fact that the very best fried taters are ones that were boiled and left over. I got this idea from my friend Rosie who said in Germany her mother always had boiled potatoes in the kitchen to use in so many ways. And I love Rosie's fried taters. When I make garlicky herbed potatoes here I always make enough to have leftover fried taters the next day. So very good.
I did manage to get the sage cut an dried last week and ended up with a 2 gallon zip top bag nearly full of crushed leaves of sage. I still need to dry some oregano and mint from the herb garden. I should be planting some parsley to chop an freeze. Parsley an chives are much better frozen than dried. Parsley is OK-ish dried but better frozen. Chives definitely better frozen. A few weeks ago when I was making dill pickles I used some dill that I had chopped an frozen last summer. Good stuff.
I had a doctor appointment in Richmond last week an before we left town we had stopped at the local fruit stand an Rodger got me a box of peaches. I think the box holds 3/4 bushel. I ate a lot of em but did manage to can several jars too. This week I am looking to get nectarines. The fellow said he would have them last week and this week. Need to purchase those right now as my lil fruit trees are not big enough to produce yet.

Ended up with 11 pints an 2 quarts. Not bad considering I ate lots of fresh peaches. Love em!! My counters in the summer kitchen are pretty cluttered for it to be the middle of what should be canning season. At this moment I have lots of empty jars out there an a flower pot in which I had started some cabbage for fall cabbage. My cucumbers in the garden ate my cabbage. Covered them up and with all the rain the cabbage rotted from all the water. But not much can be done when ya have so much rain and don't  get the cukes trellised. Plan B, start an try to grow fall cabbage. Need to be thinking about gettin the fall crop of chickens growing too. If I order now they will be big enough to butcher off before the weather gets too cold and we will be done with our late season meat supply. Probably raise about 25 more for the freezer. I still have several from the spring "crop" to last till we get more raised.
The past couple weeks I have felt a bit better with some med changes and stopping some meds. A lil more energy I guess. I even had enough energy to clean the windows outside. I had found a recipe on Pinterest for window cleaner to use outside an you just need to hose off the cleaner, no drying needed an it drys spotless. Yippee!! So I tried it an be dang, it worked. So I will share the recipe with you so maybe it will make your window cleaning life a lil easier.

Outside window cleaner
1/4 cup ammonia
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tablespoon Jet dry(like used in the dishwasher)
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon dish soap

Mix well in spray bottle an take hose an rinse window to get the dust off so as to not scratch the glass. Spray the cleaner on the window and with a brush or sponge or even a mop wash the window. Rinse with the hose again and leave it be. The windows will dry spotless. This makes window cleaning so much easier for me. I don't have to climb on a chair or ladder to reach the taller ones, and no streaks from drying either. Now I really need to clean the siding with bleach to get the "green stuff" off. Maybe when I get another burst of energy that I am not forced out of necessity to use for something else I can clean the siding.
Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Life goes forward

Life goes on, forward most days, but only one day at a time. This weather has been yucky, we have had too much rain for the garden. Might be hard to believe but the grass has about taken over. Its still far too wet to get in there to work so the grass will keep growing. We do have a few nice days forecast thru the weekend. We should also get a lil break from the heat as well with temps staying in the mid 80's. I can do 80, its those 90's that do me in. I don't acclimate well at all any more. I am either freezing or burning up. I don't have a happy middle any more. But at least my knees will be happy for a while. I got the last of the series of 3 injections in my right knee yesterday. It is a bit sore but not as bad as they have been after the injections. So there is a plus. Now if only this stuff will kick in and do its job and relieve the pain in the knee joints I will for sure be happy about that. But the doc said it would take a while and depend on a lot of factors. So we wait. I don't do well trying to squat down to weed beds and such. So guess that is out of the question. But I certainly have plenty of it to do. I did manage to finish the beds out back this evening with Rodgers help. Still need to get the strawberry bed by the drive and the remainder of the herb bed weeded. Rodger bought me 20 bags of mulch to put down on the berries and herbs to help cut down on the weeding. Maybe I can get a lot of that stuff done this weekend as it is suppose to be nice and not rain. After I get the mulch down it can rain a bit to settle it in but no downpours please.

Last week after my doc appointment we had to make a trip to Lexington to Sam's club to pick up supplies for the company and get a few things stocked back up for us here at home. As the rain destroyed our onions in the garden we bought a 50 lb bag of onions at Sam's. I have been slicing some of those and getting them dried out in the summer kitchen. I also bought carrots to dry an celery. I am surprised at how many carrots and celery flakes I use in cooking. Lots to say the least. Our carrots did not grow this year either, not sure if it was too wet or too cold when we sowed them. But we planted twice an none made it. I still have enough carrot chunks in the freezer to last another season but needed some dried to make my version of Ms Dash. It has been a challenge at best to dry things in the dehydrator in the summer kitchen for a while. The humidity is high outside and it takes longer even in the dehydrator. But we making progress. Still got a lot of onions, all the celery an carrots to dry. Maybe by time I start canning beans I will be done with all the dehydrating. Rodger did make it to the garden last weekend and picked a bunch of cukes and we made bread and butter pickles with those. Tomorrow evening we will pick again and make more. We do use a lot of pickles. Rodger will eat the pickles as a snack if I don't have a dessert made. We try to make at least 20 quarts of bread and butter pickles and about that many kosher dills every year to last all season. When I have cukes that get too big to make good dill slices or spears I usually chop those and can them as chopped dill pickle for use in deviled eggs and such. Lots easier than chopping as you need them. Just open the jar an take out what ya need for the recipe.

Our yard had gotten beyond over grown before Rodger could get it dry enough to mow. Kinda resembles a hay field right now. Wont take long for it to grow back tho. He even ran the weed eater in the garden between some of the rows of veggies to get the grass out that was really tall. Its hard to believe it is almost mid July already. Where the heck did the summer go. Well I have lost most of mine going to the doc once a week for the past 6 weeks for the injections in my knees and before that we were on vacation. With the injections I am suppose to stay off my feet for 48 hours after so that has knocked out 3 days per week of not being able to get anything done. But we done with all that.

My hens are all trying to set I think, I have 6 sitting on eggs and the layers are still laying with them. That is a waste of good eggs. I have 4 hens that have been setting long enough to hatch 2 batches of chicks and have not hatched one. So if its not unbearably hot out tomorrow I may try to get the eggs out of those nest an trash em. The chicken house needs to be cleaned out again but not sure how spunky I feel with a wheelbarrow. I could use the waste on the beds in back where my Lima beans and tomatoes are. The broccoli I planted late is not doing anything so I think I might get it out of those beds and put a layer of chicken manure and bedding down on the bed and cover it over with black plastic or newspaper, if I have enough here at the house. That should break down nicely and make a good spot of fall cabbage and maybe some greens, or lettuce and onions. But definitely cabbage. Not sure the cabbage in the garden is gonna do any good or not. Rodger said the cukes have taken over the cabbage row where we didn't get those trellised. Not much you can get done when the weather wont cooperate.  It has stayed so wet that we still don't have the greenhouse taken down and stored away yet. I sure wanted it nice and dry before we try to disassemble it and put it back in the box for use next year. It was dry this evening but was too late to get it taken apart after Rodger got in from work. Maybe this weekend. I think our weekend list is growing by leaps and bounds. Our plan for tomorrow evening is the pick cukes and put the net fence around the grape vines here in the yard. The vines are loaded with huge grape clusters. The nicest ones we have had yet and I sure don't want the chickens to see the grapes and start eating them before they get ripe. My luck we will fence the chickens out and then wild birds will find em and eat em all. I see a good amount of grape juice coming from all those nice grapes this fall if we can keep the critters fooled. I don't think I will make any more jelly as we still have a lot that I had made a few years ago when I had a good grape harvest.

Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

I know, I know, leave it to me

I know, I have been MIA for a while, again. No I been right here, not gone, just at home tryin to keep my oars in the water. You already know that I don't play by the rules. I am in the process of trying to get my meds adjusted as far as times that I take them so they can work better for me and not make me a zombie during the day. Its OK to be sleepy at night but dang being in a brain fog all day. Makes for some real unproductive days. But I am making progress. So on to the next project.

We got the garden planted and all the stuff is up and looks good. We still need to plant tomatoes and peppers, cabbage and broccoli, melons and squash. We have been having some rather cold nights with temps in the 40's which is not normal for us and I didn't want to plant tender crops in the garden just yet and let them get frost bit. I do think now the danger of frost is past so we will try to get those in the ground in the next few days. We had to make a trip out of town today to the bigger city to pick up some supplies and we got a roll of 6 ft wide landscape fabric which we will put in the garden, bury the edges of it to keep it in place, make crosses in the fabric and set the cantaloupes and watermelons in the holes so they can grow without competing with the weeds later in the summer. Hopefully we can take the fabric up and use it again next year. If this new roll last as long as the stuff we used up here in the yard when we first moved it will probably last us a lifetime. Good sturdy stuff. The plants in the greenhouse look good. Now to get them in the garden.

My new lil greenhouse sure has been handy this year. I finally got enough energy get in the yard and do a few more chores this past week. Our grape vines were in bad need of fruit pruning. As you can tell from this picture.

You can click on the picture to enlarge it and better see the many lil grape clusters on the plants. I did fruit prune them and take about 50% of the lil clusters off to give the ones left a chance to get bigger. Then I got another idea. I know, I know, you should not prune plants in the middle of summer when the sap is up. But prune I did. The grapevines were pretty scraggly with limbs goin ever direction. Makes it really hard to mow when you are getting stabbed and scrapped by grape limbs. So I clipped them back.
Before:

After:  

 Mission accomplished:

 I got all the wild limbs clipped and you can actually mow under the vines and this should greatly improve air circulation and prevent fungus on the grapes. There are lots of nice young growth on the ground after I finished. So I have a friend who is wanting some grapevines. I know, I know, THEY say you cant take cutting and start plants in summer time. But dang it, you know I had to try. So I took the cutting to the picnic table, trimmed em up, fixed a pot of potting soil, got out the rooting hormone, a pan of water, dipped the cutting in the water and then the hormone and stuck em in the dirt. We shall see IF they makes roots or not. I will let you know on this one.

 So once they were in the pot I put them in the greenhouse so I could take care of them till (hopefully) they make roots.

OK I was all done playing in the dirt so I moved on to the strawberry bed out back. OH my!!!!!

 I did not know there were that many berries ripe out there. So this required a trip back to the summer kitchen to get a container to pick berries.

I know, I know, the bowl will not be big enough but it is what was handy. Ended up I picked about a gallon of berries off this lil 8ft by 8ft bed. Yeah I know, I know, there are berries in the field ripe and the bed beside the driveway has a lot of ripe berries in it too. Yeah I picked the ones here at the house. Still have not got to the field to pick those. Maybe tomorrow.

After I finished picking berries Rodger came out and I suggested we go to the field and drive the post to support the new grapevines we planted the past couple years. So off we went. We got the supports put up and Rodger is way far behind on the mowing with all the rain we have had. Can ya tell?

There are about 30 grapevines in this lil vineyard once they get big enough to make grapes. There is a grapevine at every metal rod that you see. This clover we planted creeps and mats on the ground and gets rather tall It is pretty tough stuff but we had hoped it would be shorter to cut down on mowing and help keeps weeds from growing. The orchard has grass that is almost as tall as some of the young trees we have planted this year. It will look pretty tho if Rodger ever gets it mowed.

A pretty heavy thunderstorm blew in just as we got finished driving stakes and it was getting dark so I did not get to pick the strawberries that are in the field near this vineyard. Just not enough hours in the day.

We went out of town to get a pressure switch for our water pump today and to pick up a few supplies and as I already told you we got landscape fabric to keep weeds out of the melons. We went to Lowe's and I picked up 3 - 8oz containers of Valspar paint for free. I had coupons that I had saved for a free 8oz sample of paint so I took advantage of that lil deal. Got a couple colors and 1 white. I wanted the white to re-paint the base of our dining table. We made a stop at Walmart for a few other things we needed and Rodger had some gift cards that he had gotten from cashing in his reward points from one of our credit cards. Needless to say it is not safe to allow him in Walmart "lil boys" clothing section. He picked out several lil outfits for Liam. Who am I kidding? I picked out a few myself for that lil man. I cant believe how much this lil fellow has grown in just the few weeks since we have been back home. Although his daddy did tell me he is a lil colicky. Bless his lil heart, I hate this so bad. Sure is hard to see those lil ones hurting and not be able to fix em. They tole me today they are gonna change his formula to a soy based one to see if that will help some. I know Rob was on soy formula when he was a baby. I just pray this don't last long for him. I know it is hard for Rob and Amoy being so far from family and not having anyone close to help out so they can rest a lil bit. But this sweet lil boy will be worth all this and I am sure they would tell you the same things. Just precious.

                                           He looks like he is just itchin to get hold of something.

                                               Lookin all gangsta!! and cute.

 And just look at that sweet lil smile. Not long till he will be able to interact with his mommy and daddy more. I know they cant wait for those days. This Grammy sure misses that lil fellow.

Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Hope you have a safe and happy memorial day weekend. Thanks to all our service men and women, past and present for your service to our country. God bless you all and keep you.

Stella

I like to tinker

I am probably the worst person for not following directions or recipes or instructions. Not sure if it my adventurous side or rebellious side coming out. Either way I like to tinker and that is what I have done today. Now that I have this nifty sewing machine that can do most anything but jumping jacks, sewing and altering has been my focus for a week or so. I spent most of today going thru my closet and getting clothes sorted, I guess thas the right term, for winter and summer wear. I also tried on lots of pant to make sure they fit and put them on hangers in order of wear. Such as dressy, casual, jeans, sweats. Tops I did the same way. I loveeee tee-shirts. I live in those things. I have some that fit at the top and sleeves and are just a tad too long. So now that I have those pulled out I think maybe put elastic in the seams vertically on each side so kinda scrunch the sides to make them a lil shorter and more to my liking.Then I have some 3/4 length sleeve long tail button up shirts that are too long as well. Soon I will come up with a plan for those so I can at least get some wear out of them.  Then I found many articles of clothing that is in desperate need of ironing. So add ironing to that list of things to do. Did I mention I had to iron stuff? Well I do. If it ever gets warm enough to be outside during the day I wont have much time to sew and craft and tinker inside. I got lots of beds that will need my attention. Gosh we already have some ornamental things starting to bud out here and the temps are pose to be below 20 tonight an tomorrow night. Damn this global warming stuff. What the hell happened to spring?

I was in the mood to test another lotion recipe today too. Now this is where my tinkering came into play big time. I now have on hand several oils and butters that each add their own great quality to lotions and creams. Not one recipe could I find online that included all the things that I wanted in my lotions. So off I go to create my own. I broke all the cardinal rules of lotion making too by not weighing or measuring the ingredients. The only thing I did was weigh the total of the oils, butters and water so I could get the correct amount of Germall Plus(preservative) in the lotion. This is to make sure the lotion will be shelf stable and not turn into a petre dish after you stick your fingers in there to use the lotion or cream. I had also got a bottle of vanilla essential oil for use in making the lotions and oh my it smelled so nice. If you close your eyes you can smell vanilla cookies with a hint of chocolate in there. Almost smells good enough to eat. But the lotion was great. I put almond, apricot, coconut castor, avocado oils with shea and mango butter and some cocoa butter. I used my homemade herbal tea blend as the liquid or water part. I did use the vegetable emulsifier wax and a bit of stearic acid as an emulsifier and thickener. Turned out perfect, just nice and thick and not greasy. I am a happy camper with my summer supply of lotion made now. Yippee!!!

I am a lil bit concerned after my baby chicks did not arrive today in the mail. The post office always calls me when they come in and no call today and our sweet mail lady didn't deliver them either. So am sure hoping they arrive in the morning. If not tomorrow for sure I will have to refuse the shipment. Baby chicks can live fine for 72 hours after hatching without food or drink but longer than that they will be so very weak and not likely to live or thrive. I got online and tracked the order and it was due to be delivered today. Not sure what happened to em but wont be happy if they someone drops the ball and lets my lil birds die. But I have everything ready for them, a large tote with straw and a feeder, a water jar ready to give them electrolytes and vitamins as soon as they arrive and a heat light for them to keep em warm. Just sure do hope they arrive and are OK.

Once I get the lil ones settled in and happy I need to get my trays from the old greenhouse and get the potting mix in them to start seeds. Rodger don't have my benches in the new greenhouse yet so I will probably just get the soil in the trays and the seeds in and put them in the summer kitchen till the benches are ready. That wont be a problem cause the kitchen is near the new greenhouse. Not to mention I am not starting near as many plants as I have in the past years. (I don't think anyway) But I do get accused of not starting enough, but alas starting toooo many. But my thinkin is , "is better to have em and not need em than to need em an not have em". So I just keep planting .

My 3 lil setting hens are still setting and not a peep yet. I sure hope they at least hatch a few chicks. I like to use the standard breeds for making stock and canned chicken. It is better canned because I can let the chicks free range with their mommas till they are big enough to butcher or when I get time to butcher em and they by then are usually a bit tougher. So much better canned for soup and casseroles and such. But I got to hatch chicks to can chicks, so maybe best not count my chicks before they hatch.

Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

We keep puttering along

If spring would just get here and stay here I think I would feel better. I hate this feeling rotten for seems like no good reason. If I am gonna hurt like hell I at least want to be able to DO something to have reason. Not sure whas up with my joints and back unless I am in the middle of a big ole flare up. The usual things I do that provide some relief are just not working right now. So me thinks is a flare up. But I will get over this hump too like all the others. I had to spend most of last week inside because my knees hurt so dang bad and bad knees is just not conducive to going up and down the porch steps and walking around in an un level yard. So I just puttered with my toys in here. Mostly the sewing machine. I have been in need of an apron with a wider than normal top section for a while. A normal size apron leaves too much of my shirt exposed to spots of grease and other cooking mis-haps. So I started making one  just fer lil ole me with a wider top section and much longer ties so I can just cross them in the back and tied them in the front. After shoulder surgery on both sides most days it is impossible to tie on anything that requires me to put my arms behind my back. So this is what I came up with.

So now hopefully I can prevent stains on my clothing. Not to mention I am the worst for wiping my hands on the bottom of my tee shirts when I am in the kitchen. So this was one of my projects for late last week. I even added a large pocket to the front so I don't lose my phone when I am in the summer kitchen too. I know most older ladies, my grandmother for one , always wore an apron, even to the garden. An apron tail is good for lots of things. From totin orphan babies of some sort, gathering veggies, drying hand and a multitude of other things. And those ladies alas had pockets too. But us modern day grammies have to keep up with things like cell phones and cameras for blog photos ya know. So I, still in the tinkering mode, made a lil baggy to hang around my neck for the phone and camera if I am away from the house. And both mine will fit in this lil bag.

This was a fabric scrap that was left from upholstering a foot stool for Jason several years ago. Kind heavy fabric for this application but does provide a lil extra cushion if I happen to bump into something. That is where my creativity ended.
We did go pick up my lil greenhouse Saturday and did some other shopping. I picked up several bags of potting mix to start seeds in. That will be getting under way as soon as Rodger gets my benches bu9ilt for the greenhouse. He did manage to get it put together and put up today too. And it is anchored to the railroad ties on both sides.

This is before the cover was totally in place. It was pretty cold outside today and really hard to work with the plastic material. Once it gets warmed up we can maneuver it into better position. But this will be so much more convenient for me. A blessing not trudging up and down the hill several times per day to check on the greenhouse and water and make sure some critter is not in there eatin hearty.

You can see the plastic has a mesh like heavier material inside it. Easy to zip the door closed and you can then un-zip an area over the door and one in the back for better cross ventilation. It is pretty heavy for a portable greenhouse. I will be a happy lil camper to know I don't have to walk so much to care for another one. Now I have to round up all my trays and planters and get busy.

I got baby chicks that should arrive about Wednesday of this week. I think I will keep them in a Rubbermaid tote for a week or so out in the summer kitchen so I can check on them many times per day. It will be much easier to keep the temp steady for the first couple weeks in there than in a large building. By 2 weeks of age they should be much stronger and able to withstand a lil variance of ambient temps. I do think my 3 hens should hatch sometime this week too. They have been really good about staying on their own nest too. Having 3 girls taking up 3 of the 4 nest boxes on the bottom row of the laying box had put a kink in some of the girls laying habits.

The 3 girls in the bottom row are the ones that should be hatching anytime now. The buff in the top laying box inside the fence jumps the fence everyday to lay. She will make a big fuss when she is done so she can get out.The 2 nest boxes on the end are occupied and 1 lady is pacing. After I took this photo she decided she was not waiting anymore and scooted in beside the lil hen on the bottom row. Out of view is 2 more hens waiting on a place to lay. I just put this section of wire up haphazard to try an prevent hens from laying with the setting hens and it has worked pretty good.

It started raining shortly after Rodger got the greenhouse up so we had some home canned veggie soup for lunch and he went to find some scrap lumber to make the benches with while I did inside stuff. I know we need rain, ya know, rain makes corn, corn makes whiskey, but crap cool and damp and me are just not compatible any more. Who the hell came up the idea of "global warming"? They need to move to Ky. Well on second thought , nope they don't. We don't want their kind here.

Not much else happening here on the farm. So till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Things that make ya go "OH SHIT"

Yep I had one of those this past weekend. I will tell you for sure my heart jumped up in my throat and was thumpin away, RIGHT there(pointing to my throat). Anyway on Saturday we finally got out and got started butchering the young roosters that have made my hens a nervous wreck for weeks now. We got 2 of em killed and cleaned and it started raining. It was a cold rain, so we decided to come inside and Rodger said he would work on the furnace while it rained and if I stopped raining we could go back out an kill a couple more between showers. We moved the washer our from the wall so he could access the furnace. He got out the screw driver and started taking stuff off and apart, using the vacuum to clean stuff as he went along. The long and short of this is he did get the elements in and sequencer in and now our electric furnace works fine again. By now it had stopped raining so we went back out to kill more chickens. Got a couple more killed and got rained out again. Back in we go. About half hour, we went back and finally after all this butchered 8 birds total. It was getting late when we finished and it was getting colder outside. I told Rodger I would just get the chicken in the big pressure canner and have it ready to cook the next day. So this is what I did. We came in late and ate supper. Jason got his buddy Jeremy to help him move the couch from our house to his and bring his fat man recliner around here an put it in our living room. All this, again between rain showers. Finally we can just chill out for the night and start again the next day
I got up a lil late on Sunday morning and about 11 or  11;30 and I went to the summer kitchen to turn the stove on and get the chicken started cookin in the pressure canner to make stock. It usually take an hour to get up to temp oh high heat if you start off with everything cold, which it was. I cranked the stove on high and I came in the house for a lil bit to get some coffee. Rodger ask me if I was ready to move the rest of the furniture and re-run the TV cables and cables to our security system. I said sure as I poured my coffee. So we unhooked all the many cables behind the TV and moved it, Rodger went under the house to re-route the cables and I was inside with one of the portable radios so we could communicate. He finally got all the cables poked back up thru the floor in the right places and limited cussin, he came out and all is well. He mentioned being hungry, I made a kettle of veggie soup from a jar, my hillbilly convenience food and we ate some late lunch. After our soup Rodger got busy tryin to re-hook all those many cables back on the TV and make it all work right. After he had all those working and he could watch TV and I got all the stuff cleaned up from under where the TV was. WE sat down to smoke a cigarette and get something to drink. When my azz hit the chair, I said "OH SHIT!!!!" Rodgers eyes bugged out and he was askin what as I headed for the summer kitchen. IF ya been following this story ya know I turned the pressure canner on about 11:30 in the morning and it is now about 3 in the afternoon. I FORGOT about the dang canner. I went out there fully expecting to find chicken parts on the ceiling and my good canner ruined. Thank God the canner was still gigglin away on 13 lb pressure and the burner still set on high. I nearly had a heart attack. That is a big no-no, do as I say, not as I do. You really should never leave a pressure canner going unattended. I am so fortunate it didn't blow the emergency plug out and spray chicken parts under pressure on the ceiling. See I tole you I turned 50 and lost my damn mind. But I bet I don't get that sidetracked again and leave my canner. None the less I got the stock strained and canned up along with some chicken. I got 3 quarts of chicken thighs, 3 pints of chicken breast meat, and 7 quarts of just stock. Alls well that ends well I guess. My friend Deb told me God watches over crazy people. I tend to agree with her now. Not sure that is the word she used, I cant remember.
Haven't accomplished much today other than got the jars of stock washed off from canning yesterday and ready to put in the cellar. Cooked supper and did some laundry. When it got dark I went out to close the chickens up for the night and gather the eggs and we were getting sleet. After about half hour of that our porch was kinda white looking. Now it is raining. So maybe the roads will be OK tomorrow when the guys head out to work. I have to go back to the eye doc tomorrow and order my new contacts script so I can continue to see.
I have plundered around online some today and came across this website with tons of good info on it for people who like to do things for themselves, the self-sufficient type, ya know. Have a look at here. On that site I found a place that really caught my attention. This is the one with the info I will be using really soon. I think I might make some homemade lotion for my new daughter-in-law and the lil grand son that is on the way. I guess ya know IF I can remember I will post some pics when I make some of those this week.
Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

A cluster of blank days

I think my life is like a calendar of blank days. Nothing filled in the days, nada, nothing. Or so it seems. Or maybe its just that I don't remember stuff like I used to. Yep I think thas it. I turned 50 and lost my damn mind. After all who in their right mind cleans carpet in winter time. Especially when their back already hurts. Well I know that was a job that needed to get done. Or maybe it was because I had to purchase a new shampoo machine and wanted to try it out. Yep thas it. And how many people move their house around just so they can have a closet/craft/sewing room? All I did was make the sewing projects more obvious and I see them everyday when I go into the closet/craft/sewing room. Now I must work on those. We still need to move the TV and will probably get that done sometime this week when Jason can get the couch out of the living room. BUT the carpet is clean under it.
I received my seed orders in the mail already this week. Now I can dream about gardening in spring. Not sure if we will raise as much of a garden as we did last year but it will feed us. Seems we have not used too much stuff from the cellar this winter, but I do guess it is early yet. In the process of talking to Josh last night and thinkin of how he could raise a small garden in his backyard in the subdivision this summer. We came on the idea of planting in straw bales. Use square bales of straw set on the ground with the strings running parallel to the ground. Water the bales with manure teas or compost tea to start the bale composting. After the bale is wet and warm in the middle, not too hot, then add a layer of compost on top and plant your seeds. I am thinkin this might be the perfect way for even me to raise onions and carrots so the grass and weeds don't take them over. I know I am going to try this with some lettuce in spring and may even plant some onion sets to see what they will do. If I can manage to do it, I will post pics along the way. You are thinkin "yeah right", but all I can do is hope I can remember to take the pics.
Well we have our plane tickets for our trip to Vegas. Rodger has shoes to wear with his existing suit. I got my dress in the mail today AND IT FITS! yippee for me. I am really looking forward to seeing our son marry the love of his life. We love her as much as he does. And wish them a lifetime of love, peace and happiness.
The parts came today for our furnace and we are waiting on our niece's boyfriend to call and install it for us. I am hoping he has time to do it as I sure don't think I want to hear Rodger cuss as he tries to install the heating elements.
Rodger finally got all our corn picked and in the cribs. All the cribs are full and then some I think. We will sell most of it. We have lots of white corn for grinding into cornmeal for sell as well. Not sure I even need cornmeal this year as I still have lots left from last years grind. But maybe we will grind some anyway "just in case". I need to get in the crib and get some of the corn out to send to my homesteading buddy Randy in central Ky so he can get a start of the white corn for his cornmeal every year. It is suppose to be warm this week so maybe I can get that done. Tomorrow I have to see the eye doc and hopefully order my new contacts. I am happy that I can finally read and see at a distance with just contacts and not have to use glasses too so I can read. Thas a pain.
Later in the week I plan to soak some dried beans to make and can some more mixed bean soup. We have used all the first batch that I canned. It was so good. I still have my small sweet taters that I need to can up also. I need to get this done so we can hopefully if weather permitting butcher off some excess roosters this coming weekend.
Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Yipee, it was my 50th birthday

Well probably by the time this posts, my birthday will have passed. I can tell you that turning 50 is not for wimps. I got more things that hurt than most people 70 years old. This sucks. But I am amazed that I made it this far and am so very thankful. I got a ton of good wishes on Facebook today, hubby offered to take me to Red Lobster to eat but with our weather forecast I told him maybe we should wait and do it when the weather was better. I didn't want to get iced in out of town on my birthday. So instead we went to the store to get a box of hair color. OK so I color, deny my age, I will. No seafood for dinner but we did make a big kettle of potato soup and fried cornbread with onions. So dang good.
I have got some things done that needed doing today. I got our garden seeds ordered that we are gonna need. I ordered from both Baker creek heirlooms and Seed savers exchange. In the past few years we have tried a few varieties of beans, corn and such and have decided on the varieties that do best for us here and that is what we are gonna stick with so we can save our own seed. Although we are planting 2 varieties of sweet corn, Golden bantam and Stowells Evergreen. The Golden bantam will sprout and come up in cooler ground and can be planted earlier in the season in our area. It is a good old fashioned variety of yellow sweet corn. The Stowells Evergreen is a white sweet corn that can be planted a lil later to extend the harvest. As for green beans, we like the taste of the Kentucky wonder. Neither of us here have a good back so if we can stand up and pick beans all the better. So my friend Randy from central Ky sent me some Ky wonder pole beans, the variety we like only in a climbing variety. So we can save seed from those as well. A gentleman that Rodger works with gave us some white half runners that we love also. So that will be our beans for the coming year. The seed corn I did order so we can have sweet corn that is true to variety and a pure strain. I also replenished our carrot seed supply. All the other seeds we need, we already have from saving them from last year.
In all this online ordering I ordered a dress to wear to Rob and Amoy's wedding in February in Las Vegas. Gosh that is not far off. Rodger bought a new pair of dress shoes for the wedding. I still will need to find shoes to wear. But that is taken care of. The plane tickets, hotel and transportation are all taken care of as well.
My regular readers may remember a few months back when I was fussing about my carpet shampoo machine breaking. Well I found one almost identical on Amazon.com for a really good price plus I had a gift card to apply to the price. Yippee for me, now I have a carpet machine on the way. That should give me something to do this winter.
It is almost time for lots of folks to start making New years resolutions. I don't make resolutions I guess I just try to better "me" every day. Some days I think I succeed, some days, not so much. But in the coming year I do want for Rodger and I to try to take better care of ourselves. That will include cutting way back or stopping smoking. I have already told Rodger that after new years day we cant smoke in the house any more unless its an electronic cigarette. My sweet son Rob bought me one of the electronic cigarettes and I think they help a lot to cut back. Now I need to order cartridge refills for them.
We are hoping that the weather cooperates a lil more tomorrow so we can get our deer skinned out and processed. I really need my summer kitchen. I am out of home canned mixed bean soup and need to make and can more of that. Also still have the small sweet potatoes that I need to can. Rob bought me one of the magnetic knife racks to keep my knives sharp and safely stored in the summer kitchen and I have not been able to get in there to get it mounted on the wall. Maybe after tomorrow. Jason and I are cooking our holiday dinner tomorrow of turkey and he is making the ham. Yummy!! Jason makes ham but putting ham of your choice in roasting pan and adding apple cider about half way up the ham and adding about 1 cup brown sugar making sure to coat the top of the ham well and bake in 200 degree oven over night. Oh my, this ham is sooo very good. You should try this method sometime, it is awesome.
Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Seems we gonna be busy

For the next few weeks it will be kinda busy around here on the farm. First off I have to leave on Thursday to go to western Ky to help my aunt with the hunting lodge again this year. Sure cant do the physical part of it anymore but will more or less be just keeping things in order and make sure things go smoothly. And I get to baby sit her lil dog Jack. Please keep my sweet aunt Ann in prayer as she starts her battle with cancer this week most likely with chemo and radiation. It will be tough for all of us for a while. I hope to be able to relieve her stress by taking care of the deer hunters and seeing that they are fed an have a clean lodge. I wont be back home to my house till November 18th. Rob and Amoy will be home that weekend so I must come home to spend the holiday with them. Rodger and Jason and probably Mary Kay will all be deer hunting for the next couple weeks. Not sure which ones are staying on the farm an which ones are going north to hunt. Be nice if I also bring home deer meat, ya think? I do enjoy working at the lodge but my body cant handle the long hours on my feet anymore. But back at home we will have Thanksgiving with Rodgers family on thanksgiving day and then I will fix dinner on Saturday for us here so local friends can come down and see Rob while he is here. The next week we will skin and process what deer we have harvested and get the meat in the freezer and canned up. Some time in all this mess Rodger and Jason will have to pick the corn and get it in the crib or sold, which ever comes first. We still need a few more good frost on the corn to get the moisture down so it will store well. I didn't get my sweet taters canned that I wanted to so that will get done after the holiday too I suppose. Maybe we get some snow the first part of December so I can just hibernate till spring. I just know that wont happen.

Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

The good, bad, and lovely

It has been one of those weeks. Ya know, the kind when ya feel the urge to do a certain task all to find your tools don't work, or ya don't have what ya need to do the task. That is exactly what happened to me on Tuesday. I had the intention of cleaning the carpet in our house. I got out the vacuum cleaner and got the carpet shampooer out an filled it with cleaning solution. Vacuumed the den and flipped the sectional over to clean under it. Started to shampoo the carpet an couldn't figure out why so much water in the carpet. Well the dang shampoo machine was leaking the solution out an soaking the carpet. SO that was not gonna work at all. Set it out on the porch and thankfully I have a Rainbow sweeper that can be used to pick up water and got the water out of the carpet. Put the furniture back and decided it was gonna have to be enough to just move all the furniture and clean really good. Not a good day. I know I over did it again.

Wednesday was spent polishing the wood furniture. I have lots of antique furniture pieces that I try to put a good coat of oil on several times per year to protect it from wear and stains an such. Dang where does all the dust come from. I think some of my dust bunnies had great grand kids in here. All evicted now tho. I even cleaned windows in all this. Ya know its hard work to keep a house clean and livable.

Today I made some chocolate chip cookies so Rodger has something to snack on so he is not always asking "what ya got to eat?". He seems to thing we don't have food if he don't have something sweet to snack on every evening. When I make cookies I usually make a big batch and freeze about half of them on a cookie sheet for later. I chill the dough and then roll it in lil balls and freeze then on a sheet pan and once they are solid I remove them from the sheet pan and store in the freezer in a zip top bag. So when we think we need warm homemade cookies its just a matter of heating the oven and baking them. I am gonna make a few more batches for use through the holidays when my other kids are home. Might just save my sanity. I also want to make an freeze some waffles. I will do that the same day I make granola. I just use a good waffle batter, bake the waffles, cool them, then store in the freezer in a zip top bag. To serve just crisp them up in the toaster and eat. I keep forgetting to get Jason's big crock pot to make the granola. Its easier to make in a crock pot as there is less chance of burning the mixture. Or I may just do it the old fashioned way in the oven on a cookie sheet. I will post the recipe for the granola when I make it. One of my sweet readers suggested I consume flax seed and sesame seed daily to  combat the inflammation in my body so I intend to add those to the finished granola. I also have some raw pumpkin seeds to add as well as some almonds.So hopefully it will be a good breakfast food when the kids are home for the holidays.

Jason's girlfriend came by after she got off work today. She left her other job after having a better offer. She is now assistant manager of the Dairy Queen in her town. She got an increase in pay, better work hours and just an all around better job.

We are all very proud of Mary Kay. I had no clue the amount of training required to work in food service. Plus all the things involved in being assistant manager. So congratulations to Mary Kay.

Rodger is working on the big tractor trying to get some grease fitting replaced and airing up a front tire. He has plans to get the old garden spot turned and put to bed for winter. It will help a lot to have all the dead plants turned under so they can rot down an make organic matter in the soil. Just as one garden is finished we are already preparing for the next one. This weekend we will be boxing our sweet potatoes up for storage so we can have them all winter. Rodger still has his deer hanging in the summer kitchen with the air conditioning on to keep it cool. The deer will be skinned out an processed this weekend and put in the freezer.

Our weather this weekend is supposed to turn cold an stay that way for several days. We have the big cold front of the year moving in from the north west and  the remnants of a tropical storm moving in from the south. They are even giving snow flurries this weekend. Oh my!!!! I do not want snow at all. I can tolerate cold just don't like snow at all. I know it is good for the ground and soil but not for me. If its cold I guess I will just stay inside.

Not much else happening, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella