So here we are again! It's 2012!

Last night we spent with family and a friend popping fireworks and visiting.

Today we're making the traditional southern new years meal. Cabbage & black eyed peas. With it we're having grilled pork steaks and un-fried jalapeno poppers. (the recipe for the poppers is on here just click on recipes)

As with every year I've taken inventory of much in my life. I have decided to make some changes and improvements. Getting back to a schedule, budgeting, and meal planning mostly. Another big one is we're changing homeschool curriculums.

My daughter has improved greatly in her reading and math skills so it's time to move it on up because I feel like what she has now is mostly busy work and she needs some new stuff!

With great consideration and prayer we've decided to switch to Ace School of Tomorrow homeschool version.

I have also started clearing out my homeschooling books. I plan on putting quite a bit on our local homeschool board. If it doesn't sell there I'll do ebay.

So I hope to keep up more on my blog but I say that alot and life just gets busy. I will really try though.

Hope ya'll have a wonderful new year!

There is only one TRUE GOD!

I have recently been exposed to some false or "half-teaching" of "preaching" For this I thought I would share this scripture. It is sometimes hard to tell what is true or not especially when it's coming through someone who is a leader is proclaiming to have a revelation of sorts. I have gone back to reading through the whole Bible again. Also if I have a specific question I look to the front of the Bible or go to a site like www.biblegateway.com There you can type in specific verses or key words and get some CORRECT info.
I also have a book that we use regularly for the children called "What Does the Bible Say About That?" a really great resource.
If someone, anyone tries to tell you something and cannot back it up with the word of God then I say move it along, and quickly...


Galatians 1:5-9
New Living Translation (NLT)
5 All glory to God forever and ever! Amen.
There Is Only One Good News 6 I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ.[a] You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News 7 but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.
8 Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. 9 I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed.

Our Saturday

My daughter & I got up early and went to a bunch of yard sales. We didn't spend much but did bring home a few treasures!
Then the kids went to a local fall festival parade. Hubby & I took a drive over to a farm where they sell feed corn for a better price than the feed stores. We bought 10 bags. This will feed the pig & the cracked corn the chickens. They also had sweet potatoes in 40lb boxes for sale. We bought one of those too.
While there the nice farmer showed us around. We got to see how the grain grinder thing worked & another machine that filled and then sewed the bags shut. He also shared with us all about how they started the farm there over 50 years ago, about the big grain bins, elevator & more. It was very interesting & we both appreciated the information.
After that drive we stopped off at a little convenience store out in the country & got some cream soda's. ~yum~
We took the long way home & arrived just about the same time the kids did.
While hubby and kids fed the animals & fixed the tiller I got dinner started.
We had baked sweet potatoes (of course) and grilled pork chops. We also had some left-over blueberry pound cake from the other day.
My daughter & I played around on the trampoline, son visited his girlfriend, and hubby watched a little tv.
Now we're about ready to go to bed. It was a long, fun day!

LABOR Day...

So the guys are off from work today!
We've been enjoying the unordinarily cool weather in the 80's. So my husband decided with the 3 day weekend we'd get going on the new pig pens. We've got the main beams concreted in the ground. -This took much time & muscle from my husband & son as the ground back there is soooooo hard.
They have gone to home depot for the wood to frame the roof. The actual roof will be tin that we got for FREE! Woo hoo! We already have the gate & most of the pannels so other than the roof it's not costing us too much. (Wood has gone up like everything else though)
Yesterday after a day of working we made a trip to Sams and then enjoyed the evening out on the porch. We made bbq chicken, mexican corn, baked potatoes, & lemon pound cake. The cake was on sale at Sams and oh my is it good! I see that as a yummy breakfast with my coffee for the next couple of days....I'm so bad. lol
Today we'll be grilling again this evening. Hamburgers this time & probably just chips to go with them as we'll be busy.
I will share some pictures of the pen when we finish & also probably have it on our youtube channel. --I'm really enjoying the youtube!
Hope ya'll have a fun labor day.

A productive Monday

I got quite a bit accomplished today. Deep cleaned the living room & kitchen AND got my new craft room in order.
Now next week for the fun stuff. Get some bright fun things for the craft room...material for curtains, peg board, etc. Since it's not in the house I am going to go with some really fun colorful decorations. I can't wait!

Mid August Around the Homestead

So it's mid August so I thought I'd share a few things that we've been doing around the homestead.

~Once a week baking - on the porch of course as temps have not been below 100 in quite a while.

~ 4 batches of soap made

~Canned some pinto beans for the first time

~ Organized all the pantry's and freezers

~Made a small koi pond

~Died our big pond blue (it's really neat looking)

~Doing some evening fishing

~Getting ready for a rummage sale

~Homeschooling (Started back Aug. 1)

~Lots of swimming
~Got my daughter signed up for dance class

That & probably more I'm forgetting. Along with making sure the animals don't run out of water. It's been a hot, hot summer with no rain. Most plant life around here is shriveled up.

I'm ever so ready for fall!

Kittens

Our kitten babysitting job ends today. Do you think they are going to miss each other???

(Ours is the striped one)

FLYing again

A few years ago I read a book by the flylady. I followed her guides and for about a year or so my home & house were running like a well-oiled machine. Then, I really don't know or remember why, but I got out of the routines. Many things have happened in our lives since then & I feel the need for more order around here. So...I checked the book out at the library & her we go again! I like to start things on Monday's so today is my first day back to doing the "baby steps."
Also today I've got laundry going & then after a little break in the pool I'll get back to making tomato sauce. We've got tomatoes galore! With prices being around $2 and up per pound I feel very greatful to have all of these tomatoes.

Corn & Taters

We picked all of our corn & potatoes yesterday.
Wound up with 13 gallon bags full of corn on the cob. (cut small)
We also got approximately 150lbs. new red potatoes & 60lbs. white potatoes.
I thought I got idaho or brown skinned white potatoes but they are a golden color like a butter potato.
We should have had some more corn for us but we think we left it on the stalk a little too long. --That's ok though. The chickens & pigs will enjoy it.
I boiled up some small potatoes with green beans to go with our steaks for dinner yesterday and they were declicious!
I am so thankful to the Lord for providing us with a good harvest.

Country style green beans & potatoes

fresh green beans-washed & snapped
fresh little potatoes-washed well skins on or off doesn't matter
a couple tablespoons good lard OR a couple pieces of bacon OR a ham slice
salt & pepper
a little butter

Put lard, bacon, or ham (or all 3 if you're really into the meat) lol.
Melt or cook the meat. Then add the beans & taters. Fill up to just cover the veggies with water. Add a little salt & pepper. Stir & bring to a boil. Simmer until potatoes are done. Drain off most of the water & put in a little butter. Stir and serve.

*You can also make this with some extra ham & don't drain the water. It makes a good filling soup in the winter. You can also cook this in the crockpot.

More food storage

Today I've got some sad news...a gopher has killed one of my big yellow squash plants. -Stinker-
Also most of my cucumbers!!!

Anyhow, the good news is I picked a batch of green beans yesterday. Also our ton of potato plants will be harvested over the weekend so I'm hoping for a good crop of them. The fun/neat thing about potatoes is it's like you're digging up burried treasure. You never know what you've got until you dig!

Today I will be freezing squash & making a couple of squash casseroles to freeze for busy nights. Also more bell peppers to freeze. I'm going to make some stuffed bell peppers (the same recipe I shared here) to freeze as well.

This and a quick trip to the library & my mom's should keep us busy for the day.

Tomatoes...

Well, we picked our first 4 red tomatoes yesterday. So as for my plans next week...I'll probably be up to my eyeballs in tomatoes. That's when the real fun begins..cough...lol
I was trying to decide if I wanted to buy a tomato press, or food processer for my tomatoes this year since my blender is barely moving.
We decided on a blender called the Ninja. It's a biggie with 3 blades in it. I'm hoping this will do the job. If not, an express order on a press will be going out to amazon.
Hope ya'll have a good day!

Garden pick today

Getting ready...

So I'm getting ready for canning & preserving season.
Today I picked 10 yellow squash from the garden. Tonight I'll use a couple of them in our chicken stir-fry over rice. The rest will probably be used later this week. After that I'll make up some squash dressing casseroles to freeze. --We don't care alot for frozen squash sliced up so I would prefer to do it as casseroles and also shredded up for squash fritters. yum!
My plans this year are similar to last year.
I plan on freezing the following:
soup & chili starter (made with peppers, onions, tomatoes & italian seasonings)
bell pepper (sliced & chopped)
onion (sliced & chopped)
corn on the cob
Also frozen tomato paste in ice cube portions (as suggested by one of my readers)
purple hull peas
blueberries & blackberries

Canned:
tomato products (plain sauce, pizza sauce, pasta sauce, whole, salsa, & tomato juice)
whole kernel corn
creamed corn
green beans
potatoes (for quick parsley potatoes & potato salad)

Blueberry jam
Blackberry jam
Apple butter & jelly
Peach jam

Let the preserving begin...

I had a package of pectin in the pantry from last season so I made some apple jelly!

Picked some some bell peppers & squash from the garden. Stuffed bell peppers & squash fritters for supper tonight!

Home canned tomatoes

Friday evening I discovered that I'd used my last jar of home canned spaghetti sauce. Not too bad as I purposely did not try to conserve it to see how long it would last. I still have other tomato products on the shelves though. So to make the spaghetti sauce I just used a quart of tomato sauce, some of my homemade tomato paste, & the usual seasonings. Turned out great! I've still got about 8 quarts of regular tomato sauce & 5 pints.
Our garden is looking really good so far. We planted: bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, yellow sweet corn, green beans, yellow squash, brussel sprouts, cucumbers, potatoes, & of course, lots of tomatoes!
Best wishes to any other fellow gardeners out there!

What's kickin' chicken?

Our chickens sure are. We've gotten back to eggs galore!

So the onions are getting flowers, potatoes are coming up in the garden & the brussel sprouts look good. The tomatoes, peppers, & corn have been planted. Tomorrow I'll get the squash seeds in the ground too.

What else is going on tomorrow??? Pig cookin' time. We got one of our hogs cleaned & split. Half will go on the open fire in the morning to cook all day. The skins will be fried & made into chicharrones (pork rinds) and jars of lard to use for cooking. Makes me think back to one of the Little House on the Prairie books I remember reading with the kids.

We decided with all that's going on around here that it was time to get rid of 2 of the pigs. It was just getting too much to keep feeding them all right now. So we are left with just "Gloria" the big mama sweet hog. We hope to breed her later on in the year & then sell the piglets. She will go to another farm to "visit" a boar so that will give us time to get the pen taken down & rebuilt on a better spot in the back.

So that's the plan for our weekend so far.

Hope ya'll have a great night.

Monday Around the Homestead

So today started off really early around our house. My daughter & her dog climbed into our bed as really loud thunder rumbled in the sky. I mean really loud!
The men went to work & we stayed in bed a little longer. I love to listen to the rain on the metal roof.
Later we had some breakfast of homemade granola cereal, did school work, & laundry.
The storm was gone by lunch and we enjoyed the outdoors for a little.
Hubby was home early & we got the animals all taken care of.
Supper tonight was left-overs from my mother-in-law's birthday party we held here on Saturday. For that we had a mexican fiesta...enchiladas, mexican casserole, spanish rice, pinto beans, salsa verde', red salsa, chips, cupcakes & ice cream...Wow!
I plan on sharing the rice recipe tomorrow.
After being up and busy all day I'm just plain old tired. So it's bath & bed for me.
Hope ya'll have a great night.
p.s. I would love to hear some comments if you have them.

It's been a long time coming...

We've known for a while that the time was near, but now we have exact confirmation. The company my husband works for is closing & it the building has been sold. So we will join many others in the country right now by being unemployed.
Thankfully we've saved & are debt free so I know we will be ok. I have faith that all things happen for a reason even if we don't really know the reason yet.
My daughter & I are getting ready to expand our sales on our cleaning & body products. I am going to make a website & start to sell online and continue locally. When the site is up I will share on here, facebook, & wherever else possible.
Take care & hope ya'll have a blessed day!

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart & lean not unto thine own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths. -Proverbs 3:56

Lovin' The Farmgirl

My mom gave me a cute little book called "Lovin' the Farmgirl." At the end there are some quotes/exerpts that I thought were so cute & I thought I'd share a couple of them.

You know you're a farmgirl when as soon as you see a car pulling down the lane to your house, you instantly get up and make a fresh pot of coffee!

You know you're a farmgirl when you get a wheelbarrow for your anniversary or Valentine's day and say, "It's just what I wanted!"

You know you're a farmgirl when the best part of your day is slipping on your mud boots to head outside.

You know you're a farmgirl when an entire conversation with your girlfriends revolves around hay.

You know you're a farmgirl when you're most likely to be found in the barn than in the beauty parlor.

Cute! I'll share some others later.
Hope ya'll have a good day!

Stocking the pond video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAbJfalzfYc

We've got another youtube video up!