Brambles, Brambles Everywhere!

Its Blackberry season now!

They are BIG and beautiful!!  The rain has been very good to them this year.  In fact, the primacanes - next year's producing canes - were soooo long that I had to go in with pruners to be able to reach my fruit!

We picked a full gallon of these luscious fruits and when we got home we washed them, spread them on baking sheets and they are freezing in the freezer.  They will be perfect in my Lemon Berry Cake recipe!!

And they all lived happily ever after!

Not really, because while I was picking and her Royal Highness was taking a little break, she pulled the key to the golf cart out and dropped it in the grass.

So we looked...

And looked....

And found a caterpillar....

And looked some more....

Until we finally decided we needed some divine intervention.  So we prayed for help.  And while we looked some more, Her Royal Highness asked me if Heavenly Father had a car.  I told her he didn't and she immediately asked, "Then how does he get to 'pwaces?'  Does he walk or 'somefing'? 

And then we found the key! 

Her Royal Highness said a prayer to thank Heavenly Father for help us find our key.  I'm so thankful that Heavenly Father allows us to teach our children about little miracles!

...And they lived happily ever after!!

Artichoke Harvest!

I get something yummy with my lunch today!

I don't have to share 'em either - No one else in this crooked little house LOVES them like I do!!

They are still small, but who's complaining!!  I can't believe I grew them in MO!!

One of These is Not Like the Others...

OK - I'll give you a half of a point for guessing the green egg.

But I was really thinking that the BIG egg was more obsurd in this grouping.

No dead hens laying around anywhere today.  Lucky hen, whoever she is, survived.

Do they even manufacture an egg carton to fit eggs this size?

Berry Thief

My fabulous neighbors are picking berries on shares.  Here is this morning's share!  I've been straining out a good portion of the seeds and making berry syrup.  It is sooo yummy on pancakes and ice cream!

There is one of many in my home that LOVE berries.  This one in particular will go to any lengths to get some, as you can see!!

Bread 101

A couple of weeks ago, my good friend Debbie comes over for a visit.  During the course the day she mentions that she'd like to know how to make bread.  I look at her with a twinkle in my eye and ask her if she is SURE she wants to know how.  She says she is.  I warned her how terribly addictive homemade bread is.  She seemed OK with that!  So today was the day!  Bread 101.

We planned a repeat menu for lunch and the first thing on our list was to make the french bread for our sub sandwiches.  Since I was out of cornmeal to dust our baking sheet with, we started of by grinding some popcorn in my lean mean flour making machine!

Nice!

This dough goes together really quickly.  We don't have to knead it much since it is a more rustic bread and we don't have to let it rise before shaping our loaves.

  We simply mix, knead, shape loaves, rise and bake!

You can see that we kneaded it enough to get the glutens to start forming, but it isn't a satin smooth dough.  That is where the 'rustic' comes in.

Debbie is shaping her very first loaf of bread!  You go girl! 

Two rustic loaves of bread waiting to rise so they can go into the oven!  It needs to hurry.  The children are starting to circle like hungry sharks...

No pictures of rustic bread coming out of the oven because we cut them up and made them into sandwiches for a bunch of hungry little monkeys and two hungry mommies!

And then we got all chatty and forgot to take pictures of our next batch of dough that we mixed up in the bosch.  We wound up with 5 loaves of bread and this lovely pan of cinnamon rolls.  Yummmy!

And what a fun and productive afternoon!!  Thanks for coming over Debbie!!  I had a blast!

Now its time for the ultimate test.  Baby Jesse gets a piece of bread...

She's not dumb!  She is gonna see if her Mommy keels over before she takes a bite for herself...

Mmmm!  Mommy must have survived! 

I think she gives it her stamp of approval! 

So Many Cherries, So Little Time!

My sour cherry trees produced well, and of course, since the strawberries were two weeks early, the pie cherries came during girls camp!!

The boys all pick and froze a few bags, so when I made it home it was time to get serious with them!  Since I still have jars of cherries for pies and crisps, I decided to take the sour cherry jam route!  I LOVE sour cherry jam.  I LOVE to eat it on ice cream and waffles!  So I made a bunch.  And I didn't put it in the pretty jelly jars that I have.  I chose to put them in quarts, or else we'd be pulling out a jar of jam a day!  And that sure gets old fast.

I used my steam canner instead of a hot bath.  It is more manageable on a cook top because you boil a much smaller amount of water, and steam is hotter than boiling water which equals shorter processing time!  Thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law for such a perfect birthday gift last year!!!

Lettuce, Peas, Beans and Corn - Oh My!

While I was playing and having the time of my life in Colorado, I took the President down the water slide with me at the rec. center that Doug and Teresa are members at. He wasn't planning on going down this great big slide. Leave it to his mother to have other ideas! He needed to try it once and then he could tell me "No" after that. So down we went. He may have had his fingers pinching his nose before we even finished rounding the first corner!

In retrospect. He loved the slide. He really hated landing in the water. I can't understand why. What is so bad about getting a little water splashed in your face? Well, apparently lots - I just have seemed to have forgotten that little tidbit as I've grown older. On a side note, his little sister went down four times and loved it! I, on the other hand, really didn't like hitting the water either. For me, it wasn't the water splashing in my face. It was all about how my feet hit the bottom of the pool and the ensuing pain as the rest of the day progressed. I don't seem to have good luck with water parks and slides. I broke my tail bone sliding down a kiddie slide with Human Resources in Roseville, CA, when the President was a little baby. At least nothing was broken this time. My knee gave me trouble at first and after the pain went away there, I realized that I still had some minor nagging pain left in my ankle. No biggie! So I decide to run on it. Except yesterday, my ankle really wasn't very happy about that! Ended up at the chiropractor yesterday evening and am feel a bit better today. Instead of running, I spent the day in the garden, man handling a beast of a tiller. I consider that a workout! I've worked up a new garden plot for the third and final time! I wish we would have tilled up this spot our first year here! The soil is beautiful! No more gardening in sticky clay! Wow, I'm so lucky!

The Attorney and Human Resources planting Sweet Sugar snow peas and Strike green beans. The green beans were my naughty for the day. I can't seem to manage to get through the day without doing SOMETHING naughty, and this is it. Our last day of frost for our growing zone is Mother's Day. I'm supposed to plant these after all danger of frost... but I didn't. Because I didn't, we likely will end up with a snow storm and a hard freeze and I can pretty much kiss our apple crop goodbye! I guess this beautiful warm weather got the best of me! We shall see, in a few weeks, how my gamble with the elements turns out.

This picture gives a pretty good idea what size the plot is. I fully intended to use the square foot garden method from here on out. And I am! In some of my other smaller beds near the front door. But I was needing soil and it was going to be too tedious to try and get the 4 foot by whatever foot beds all figured into my slightly slanted and uneven lawn! So the plot won out.

The President and Ms. Princess are playing with Lizzy, our sweet Araucana Hen. She lays green eggs. Seriously!

I had to add this one. Fitting because we finished planting our seed for the day and so we watered. But check out his expression! Sooo cute!!

Dirty Hands - Happy Heart!

Here is how one thing can lead to another and here is how my sunny days melted away into chilly nights!

I'm preparing my soil for a cottage style garden - a garden that is a mix of flowers and yummies. Except my really handy Mantis didn't work and I had to do it all by hand!

Here is how a small project turned mammoth!

I wanted a little brick 'niche' right next to the sidewalk. This little 'niche' would be the perfect size for a table to sit two people - me and the Apple Farmer! Wouldn't that be sweet? The rest of the grass in this area would be turned and garden would be planted in it. Only problem was, I hit something hard when I started removing sod! I unearthed an old path which likely leads to the site where once stood an outhouse - a necessary edifice in the early days of our 130 year old farm house! So my little 'niche' got bumped out into the middle of my flower bed. I didn't finish un-earthing the path, or I'm sure I'd still be digging today!

Here is why I go to bed after I take Advil!

But I'm sure these onions are going to be so yummy this summer in salads and sandwiches!

Here is why my muscles hurt - not because I run - but because I plant asparagus!

My chickens like it when I dig up the dirt! They scratch and scratch! They also scratched up all the onions we planted in the above bed! The onions have officially been planted twice - that is why they will taste extra good this summer!

So now you know why my hands are dirty and my heart is happy!

Time to weed the strawberry patch! Can you see how much fun that will be? Grrr! But I'm sure I will be really happy when it looks like the north end of the asparagus bed - all cleaned up and ready to go!!

The Nursery!

After my lettuce, broccoli and artichokes germinated and wore out their welcome in my bay window in the front room, I relocated these little babies into the cold frame outside the front door. But I probably relocated just a tad early, since we are expecting 26 degrees tonight... Now if they were still in my bay window we would be enjoying lovely evenings in the 50's, but not anymore! I ruined that luxury! So there they are under glass with a brooding lamp over the top of them all. They are incubating! Well, that is except for the artichokes. They were germinated and destined for a productive life while they are under my cruel control and they are in the process of being brainwashed so that they will think that they will be starting their second year of life this summer. We are slightly too cold for this amazing perennial plant. And it will never live a perennial life here, that's for darn sure! So while the above little plants bask in the warmth of the brooding lamp, the little artichokes are left in the dark to shiver and winterize. (insert evil laugh)

Sour Dough Heaven!

Here is my final product!

And is it ever divine!

I can't count how many times I've gone in search of a good loaf of sour dough bread and have come up empty handed!

My sour dough wo's are over and a good loaf is as simple as mixing up some of my very happy starter with water, flour and salt and letting rise over night. Then I shape and let them rise for a few more hours, then bake!

We've made sandwiches with these, toasted them and they are just like english muffins, made garlic bread and french toast!

The Happy Little Girl!

Here is the picture of a happy little girl!She is a happy little girl because her mommy made a giraffe Jumper for her to wear!
She is extra happy since it is made out of polar fleece and adds a little extra warmth during this season of extreme cold!

She thinks her mommy is pretty clever to use the thrifted, sweet little vintage giraffe applique pattern and give it a modern adaptation!

Newest Farm Life!

This is the newest of living things around the farm! Meet my sourdough starter! I've started sourdough starts several times and their simple but useful lives were quite short lived. Last apple season, my hired house help and dear friend Emma and I tried a couple of starts together. I printed off a copy of instructions for both Emma and me from Sourdough Home, a wonderful site in general on the science of breads and yeasts. Once again we both met failure. After apple season, however, Emma tried the instructions again and had success, and just yesterday she gave me some of her lovely starter and a piece of sourdough bread to go with it! Wonderful bread made solely with a sourdough start (no added yeast)!

So now I'm gonna love it, and feed it and keep it nice and warm! And pretty soon, I'm gonna make some bread with it!!

I Caved and Bought Myself Some Dirt!

Can anyone blame me? We are just a few days shy of March and we woke up again to sub zero temperatures! Minus 11 to be exact! So while I was out driving my neighbors around I stopped at my favorite family run greenhouse! After my over-indulgence on homemade chocolate chip cookies that our home teachers from church brought by, I figured why not indulge some more? I've been craving dirt and sunshine for months now and since today was already turning out to be of caving to cravings I was justified and I caved big time! 40 pounds big time! 40 pounds of rich, thick and oh so lovely potting soil!

So after getting it home (and letting it defrost for a little while) and diverting everyone else's attention so I could enjoy without interruption, I set up shop on my stove top. I'm sorry if that if that is offensive to any of my readers, but as far as I'm concerned, its the only thing a ceramic cooktop is good for! One of these days I will have a lovely gas range, but in the meantime, if it takes up space in this little old house, its gonna have to serve a valuable purpose! Here is my soil, all ready to plant in. I'm starting artichoke seeds. I don't know how they will do, but I've spent the last couple of years researching how these things grow so I might try to have a successful crop here. The plants typically don't produce chokes in their first year of production, but this particular variety might bear this year if you can give the plants enough of a chill while they are still young. Its called vernalization. This will be a fun challenge. It will be even more fun if I can actually harvest something off of them!
In case you were trying to figure out what the red box under the clear lid to my seed flat was, its the antique Hopalong Cassidy lunch box my friend gave me. I store my seed packets in here. Isn't it a fun antique? Don't I have a nice friend?

11 Blue Ribbons

11 blue ribbons

3 red ribbons

2 white ribbons

I'll find out Sat. if I won enough cash for our Taco Bell dinner. Maybe I won enough to go to Pizza Hut for dinner! This is just too exciting!!

Holiday ideas category

Infants Dress Category (you can see a part of the blue ribbon red and white fuzzy lined cape I made for her Spoiled Rotteness).
Orange Cinnamon rolls

My Cherries on the left, Jessicas peach and blackberry pie filling on the right!




And, Lucy's new friend, Genevieve! She was entered in the "Doll, Original design" category.

Oh! And I now have Blue Ribbon Bread!

Now, if anyone complains about my cookin' I'll just point them to the blue ribbons that will be hanging on my kitchen wall and tell them that its their problem that their palette isn't refined enough to appreciate it!!