New Year

As I sit here waiting for my doe to give birth to her first kid I am thinking on how this new year will bring new goals, new ideas, new beginnings and new challenges. One of the best things that happened last year was the birth of my first grandchild. He is such a blessing and brightens each and every day for me.  I dont know about anyone else but I dont like to call them New Year's resolutions but I like to call them New Year goals. My goals this year are to start making more from scratch, to grow and raise more of our own foods and to rely on the grocery store less. I want to be a better Christian and be the best mom, grandma, friend, I can be. I want to blog more and I also want to be more active and get out and do things more often and watch tv and be on the computer alot less. I want to spend more time with my kids and grandchild and also to save some money. I dont know if I will accomplish all of these goals but I do think they are attainable. I hope all of you enjoy this journey with me this year and that I make alot more new friends through my blog. I look forward to getting to know you all and seeing all the comments. Feel free to share any advice, tips or just drop in and say hello.

~April

Cant think of a title so read and decide. :)

This is a picture of the trees outside our trailer now. Where did the summer go? I cannot believe it is getting near the end of October. When I signed into my blog I saw that I have not posted since the middle of September and I am sorry. I read in a course on how to have a successful blog that if you find yourself apologizing for not posting in a while then you will not have a successful blog because you are not keeping it updated enough so I will try to get on it more or I just won't apologize for not posting in a while, lol.

 These are pictures of my daughter and her boyfriend when they went to homecoming. I cannot believe she is so grown up. We have a very good relationship and I am so proud of the young lady she is becoming. I don't know if she realizes it or not but I could not be more proud to be her mother.

Another thing that has been keeping us busy is we have to make 1 or 2 trips a week to Wexford to see the pain doctor for Doug's back. I pray that they are able to heal him and he will be without pain soon. He has been suffering for 5 years now and I want so much for it to end for him. I would also imagine that he would really like to have the pain go away also.

Lately I have also been getting away from eating my natural foods and using herbal remedies and wow have I been paying for it. My body must have liked how it was then because it sure is protesting now so I have decided that right now is a great time to getting back to that. I just love that little cast iron tea kettle in this picture sitting beside the crystal mug my mom brought me back from one of her day long vacations this summer. I am not sure what kind of tea that is but my favorites are honey vanilla chamomile and mint so it would be one or the other.

I hope everyone enjoyed reading my blog for today and I will try to keep it more updated from now on. Have a wonderful and blessed day everyone! God bless!

~April

You gotta check out what we been up to!!

What have we been up to lately? That is a good question that I know is on everyone's mind.

 

This is a pic of my wonderful husband making a redneck chair to hunt out of in his blind this deer season. He is so creative. I never would of thought to do something like this. It is an old computer chair with a bar from his old inversion table hooked (probably duct taped) to it so that he can rest his gun on it.

 

                     Here is the final product. Doesnt that look comfy? Sorry about cutting your head off.

Here is a picture of my chickens making good use out of an old abandoned rabbit pen. Even my animals do not let anything go to waste around here. It was a nice place to sun themselves. Silly birds.

Yesterday I stewed some tomatoes to can. House smelled heavenly. I love the smell of tomatoes cooking. They should make a candle with that smell.  :-)   Maybe they do. I did not take a picture of the end result so right now close your eyes, I am waiting for you to actually close your eyes. (insert Jeopardy theme here) and now picture these in 11 quart canning jars. Isnt that beautiful. I always say we are never going to eat the canned goods this winter because I want to just admire the beauty of them. tee hee hee

These 2 beauties are the best thing that has happened here this past week. They were born on September 11, 2012. Arent they precious? Seriously, the one on the left is named Precious because I kept saying awwwww come here precious so I decided to name her that. Her sister's name I will not take credit for. Her name is Moo. One of my girls thought that she looked like a cow when she was born so they decided to name her Moo. Oh the names they come up with! We now have a Cheddar Fry, a Mohawk, a BabyLynn and now a Moo!! I love the names the girls pick. They are much more original then what I pick. The rest are named Nellie, Bella, Sweet Pea, Joy and Champ. Mine are boring in comparison.  Wishing everyone a wonderful and blessed day!

 

~April

 

RIP garden 2012

Here is a picture of my garden in it's early days. Wasnt it beautiful, I worked hours upon hours keeping it weed free and dreaming about all the wonderful produce it would be giving me. I could already taste all that homegrown real veggies, not the fake stuff you get at Wal Mart. I will give my garden credit, it did do wonderful for the amount of rain we got but because of lack of rain and lack of water in our well it just up and died on me!! I have come to the conclusion that you do not have to do a darn thing for green beans to survive. I got tons and tons of them, so that will be our main veggie this winter. The peppers and potatoes are also thriving but the tomatoes are another story. They did really well for awhile and I was getting beautiful tomatoes each day. It was wonderful going out each day and picking those red fruit. Yeppers, I know that they are a fruit. Did you? *wink* But as the sun got hotter and the rain got less they slowly stopped producing as much fruit and one day they literally fell over and died. The falling over might have been because when I was making my trellis for them I not so wisely used yarn. Just in case you get the idea to use yarn, it is not the best idea I have ever had. When it did actually rain the yarn stretched and weakened so the weight of the plants knocked it down. Oh well, you live and learn. This past weekend I went through and pulled up all the tomato plants since they passed away. My zucchini and watermelon did ok and I actually got an edible cantalope this year but my cucumbers is another sad story. The deer that I love watching at the bottom of my yard eating apples that fall to the ground decided it would be great fun to eat the cucumber plants in my garden, they also ate the zucchini plants but I think that they are indestructible because after I made it so the deer couldnt get in the zucchini seemed to heal itself but the cucumbers gave up the fight. They died before they even had a chance to get started but one silver lining on this dark cloud is that I found out that we all really like zucchini pickles!! Yum yum yum!! I hope you enjoyed my garden story and that everyone has good garden stories to tell, have a wonderful and blessed day everyone!

~April

why I am going bald

I found this picture on the internet when I googled woman pulling her hair out and it sums up my last few days. I hope to never have to go through a time like this again. I think one of the hardest things a person has to do is watch someone they love be in horrible horrible pain and know that there is nothing they can do about it. My wonderful husband has back problems and his back gives him pain alot and for the last couple days the back of his left leg has been cramping. I dont mean a little cramp like I sometimes get in my toes I mean an awful cramp that is in his whole leg. He couldnt even move because it hurt so bad. Thankfully the pain lessened last night and he was finally able to get some sleep which meant I could get some sleep also. He still hasnt been able to get out of bed but I am praising God that he isnt in severe pain right now. Please pray that we do not go back to the pain he was in. Please also pray for my grandma, she had a hip replacement about a week ago and is still in the healing process.
God bless you all!

~April

Produce calls my name!

This is a picture of my daughter. It has nothing to do with my post today but I wanted to share how beautiful she is inside and out. She has the biggest heart of anyone I know and I am very proud to call myself her mom. 

Yesterday my mom texted me and asked if I wanted to ride out to the farmer's market with her.  Not wanting to pass up a chance to go and maybe find some good prices on produce that I can put up for winter I said yes and told her I was ready now! I actually went expecting not to buy anything (that is a lol moment). Farmers markets and Tractor supply are this girl's 2 favorite places to shop. My dream would be to walk into both those places with unlimited funds and buying anything and everything I want. But since I live in reality and am one of those shoppers who tries to only buy what she needs I leave that kind of shopping for my dreams. I do have to confess that this thrifty mom has moments of weakness, too many actually. I will confess today that yesterday we ordered calzones because I was still busy canning beans and didnt feel like making dinner. Gasp!! I hope I did not disappoint too many of you. Anyway, enough rambling and back to my trip to the farmer's market. I just love looking over the fresh fruit and veggies that are filling the shelves and my favorite sign to see is the ones saying that the produce is from their own farm. Sometimes it is from local farms also so I watch for the signs. I found a basket of apples that were calling out my name, they were saying "April, April, oh April come see us. We know you already have a crisper full of apples but we are supposed to taste comparable to honeycrisp!" I stopped dead in my tracks, What did they say? Did they say they were comparable to honeycrisp apples? That is only the very kind I have been looking for for the last few year. If I cant find the original honeycrisp then maybe just maybe I can find ones that taste just as good. So I just had to put a big basket in my buggy, those little baskets are for the kids right? Big girls buy the biggest basket there. I was like Tom Cruise in one of his Mission Impossible movies guarding this basket so that noone can take it. Even though there were close to 20 more baskets there I knew that if someone saw mine they would fight for it, cause I got the best one right? As I was walking around waiting for my mom to get  a few peppers and some other little things I saw it, I couldnt take my eyes off of it. Want to know what it was? It was a half bushel of the tastiest, prettiest looking canning tomatoes man or woman has ever set eyes on and they also knew my name. How do they do that?! How could I pass up such pretty tomatoes, and there was so many things running through my mind to do with them. I can just taste the stewed tomatoes and spaghetti sauce I can make with them. I was already drooling. I didnt even have to think about this one, if I did I might have remembered the garden with about 15-20 tomato plants in it or the freezer full of tomatoes waiting to be peeled and turned into sauce. I also might have thought about the amount of jars I have at home, on payday I will be buying some jars. After putting the tomatoes in my buggy and let me tell you a half bushel of tomatoes is heavy I caught up to my mom and we checked out. She must be used to shopping there with me cause she didnt even bat an eyelash at the produce I was buying. :-) After I returned home from our trip and lugged the apples and tomatoes in the house I remembered the 3 baskets of green beans that I had on the table to can so the tomatoes had to wait until today. I am happy to say that I canned 19 pints and 10 quarts of green beans yesterday. Yummy!

Wishing you all a blessed and happy day!

~April

Disclaimer: Some of the reactions I stated in this post about how I reacted to seeing certain produces might have been slightly exaggerated but I thought it might be more entertaining then just saying I went to the farmer's market and bought some tomatoes and apples.  Happy Sunday!

Coffee

One of the things I decided to do in my new learning to be self sufficient is to grind my own flour, cornmeal, coffee, etc. My first attempt was coffee. The grain on the table will be for my next attempt which will be flour. The coffee was very easy except for the tiredness in my arms from cranking it. This is a picture of my hand grain mill.

                                                     Coffee beans waiting to be ground up.

     Finished product. Wow did my house have a wonderful aroma while I was grinding them.

                           I hope you enjoyed seeing my first attempt at fresh ground coffee.

~April