A start on the pickles

We love cucumbers around our house, the girls like to just eat them plain, sliced into little coins, my husband and I like them in salads, and also in a vinegar mixture with onions and tomatoes. But you can only eat so many fresh... so of course we have to have pickles!

I did two different kinds, one that are just whole, and the other that I call hamburger dill ( because most people use them on sandwiches and such). Somehow those didn't make it into the picture, but here they are all sliced up and ready to go.

So we ended up with some yummy canned goods. We love to take pickles with us when we go camping.

So there are 8 jars in the picture, then I did 3 more jars of the little dill slices, bringing me to 11 jars of pickles so far! I forsee more in the future though.

Things I just like...

My birthday is coming up and my husband has been asking me if I would like a gift. We typically don't do gifts for birthdays for each other, but it has gotten me thinking about some of my favorite things I have around the house that helps me on my "Homesteading Quest".

Ice Cream Maker:
- I would love an old fashioned hand cranked Amish one, but for now I do enjoy my little electric one. We enjoy homeade ice cream basically all year round, not just the summer.

My Ball Canner:
-I love my canners, I have an old pressure canner from my aunt that I use a lot, as well as just my good ole' water bath canner. I started out with a stash of jars of assorted sizes from my mom, and have picked up many more through out the years from yard sales. Many people will say "just take 'em", while many others I have found for a dime or a quarter.


Compost pail:
-This is totally not necessary, you don't need a compost pail, but I got one last year from Lehman's that I love. It is a very nice bamboo one with a plastic pail inside with a handle, that has a nice top with a charcoal filter. It looks very attractive on my counter and most people never would even know what it is.

Wheel barrow:
I'm not sure of the brand or anything but I love my wheelbarrow. We have one large one, then one kid sized one that the girls use. We use these all the time.

Magazine subscriptions:
- I really love my mags... I subscribe to several and I enjoy getting them in the mail and reading them, most of the time cover to cover. Some of my favorites are
- Mother Earth News
- GRIT
- Organic Gardening
- Vegetarian Times
- Hobby Farm
- Hobby Home Farm

There are many more things, but this is a good list. What about your one " must-have"??

Into the freezer we go....

At the first of the year you may recall that I set a rather lofty goal of putting up 600 "somethings" this year. It could be pints, quarts, baggies, etc. It hasn't been going to well. There has been tornadoes, storms, flooding, and drought, and things aren't doing as well i would like for them to. Add in there me being due in September and not having energy after running after two other little ones, and that's where we are. Anyways, the point of this post was to show my corn. My beautiful corn. Our family loves it. This year, no one around here really made much corn due to the afore mentioned weather related issues, and what was selling last year at the farmers market at 8 ears for $1 is ( prepare to be in shock) is now selling for 3 ears for $1. People around here just didn't have their corn make. Including us. What we did have though we have been eating for supper, but today I froze some.

After I shucked it, I put it in the sink and washed it some more. We don't like any silk at all on our corn! Then I simply put it into freezer baggies, in multipes of 4-5 which is what it takes for our family for one meal. I got 6 bags out of it. It's a start for sure, and hopefully I'll run across some more corn to put up, as 6 bags of corn won't last very long around here. Some people did do a late planting, so hopefully those will be more abundant and I'll get some more corn!

Happy 4th of July

The Fourth of July is such a great holiday around our place. It really is a celebration of all the things that we are free to do here in our country, especially freedom of religion. We have several family members serving in the Armed Forces and we appreciate their sacrifices and all the others that are away from their homes and families working so hard to keep us free. We have so much to be thankful for here in America.

We started our Holiday Festivities last night at church when we had a special service for the evening revolving around our Independance, then we had a good ole' fashioned ice cream supper! YUMMY.

This morning we woke up to find a pesky oppossum in our live trap we had set out in our chicken coop after something had gotten 4 of my daughter's Silkies the night before. After feeding all the animals, we had a nice breakfast of pancakes with strawberries and blueberries. Then the girls wanted to go fishing. We have several ponds on our properties and although they do have some larger fish like catfish and bass, those aren't near as easy or fun to catch, so we settled on trying to catch little perch. The girls ended up catching a pretty good sized Red Ear a peice. My father had caught a nice mess of crappie last night, so we just added our 2 fish to that. It's so cute to hear them say " This will be yummy for dinner!".

Then we had a small lunch outside under the big tree. The girls swam in their little pool, and we had sandwiches and chips, and homeade ice cream. My Aunt and nephew is up from Texas and everyone else came outside to hang out for a while.

Then it was nap time. Then we ran down the road to the fireworks stand and each girl got $3 to spend on stuff. They each got a few sparklers, and a few small fireworks.  Now we are just waiting on dusk so we can do some fireworks.

It's a nice day to spend with the family. We are blessed.

Seasonal eating and something weird going on with my blog

First of all I just want to say I'm having problems responding to my comments. It keeps directing me to the page to log in, which I do, then to the page to comment, then back to the log in. So I haven't been able to respond to my comments as of lately, but please keep them coming, as I love to hear from you all.

Seasonal eating is something I think pretty foreign to most people, but those of you that follow my blog probably get the jest of it pretty well. Living in the South does have a fairly long growing season and that makes it easier. I think that seasonality is something important to really learn for ourselves as well as to teach our children. My 5 year old can already tell you that if you are eating a fresh strawberry in December it is not from our state!
Eating in season is important for many reasons:
1) Quality of food
When you are eating something in season, it has grown to it's desired ripeness, under the conditions it was mean to grow under. Buying a local fresh peach in June provides , picked at it's ripeness provides better quality nutrients as well as taste. Most nutrients aren't even fully activated until the food is ripe. Thus when you pick a tomato 3 weeks before it is ripe, transport it 1500 miles to the supermarket, the consumer really isn't getting all the "promised" nutrients. Even vine ripened tomatoes from your garden start to lose some of it's nutrient value the moment that it is picked. That's why it makes my heart happy to see my girls picking tomatoes right from the vine and popping them in their mouth right their in the garden.
2)Environmental concerns
Going back to the tomato that was picked in Mexico, ( unless you live in a border town which we do not) it has to be transported. In a truck. Using lots of gas. Emitting lots of fumes.
There is something that strikes me very unnatural about our current food system and most of it stems from the transporting step. Even if a farm 1500 miles away can grow, pick and sell in bulk they still have lots of extra steps that you are in fact paying for. Someone has to pick that fruit or veggie for you. ( I won't go into labor concerns in this post, but that is a whole other consideration). They have to pack it, even if it's just in cardboard boxes, then they have to load it on a truck, then they have to drive it. Then someone has to load it into a warehouse, then load it back onto a truck to be distributed to the grocery store, ( again being driven) then it has to be unloaded at the store,

Bread anyone?

We love our carbs around here. This morning we went to the garden and picked some fresh herbs ( rosemary, basil, dill, thyme) and also some peppers. There is not too much better than fresh bread with fresh herbs in it. I made this 2 lb loaf in my bread maker with plenty of herbs and a couple of diced pepper. So yummy! This will be great for sandwhiches, or just to eat with our meal. Sometimes I make one that has a ton of garlic, chives and grated parmasan also. It is very good and hearty, especially with soups.

I know that most people think of breads in the winter time, and we eat a ton of bread then, but I think bread is also great in the summer time also. I love using my oven all winter long, but with the heat of summer, the breadmaker is a nice fill in.

And it begins

Our summer garden always is our largest. It's a tad bit more difficult on me this year being 7 months pregnant and having heat in the 100s daily, but we are getting in all kinds of goodies.

We are getting squash, several varieties of peppers, a couple kinds of cucumbers and tons of herbs daily now. Also about every 3 days I have a nice mess of green beans to cook. My daughter couldn't resist the fresh corn , so we picked a few years for supper. They were great, but will be just perfect in about one more week.

We are still getting a few blueberries, but I'm afraid those will be finished in about another week. Last year we went to a local blueberry farm and picked several gallons and I hope to do that again this year. They plant successionally so they should still have blueberries for several more weeks. Best thing about blueberries? BLUEBERRY COBBLER!

Happy Homesteading everyone!