Challenged Survival

Welcome Kimberly Rose

2012-02-20T11:29:00.000-06:00

The latest person to hit the follow button is Kimberly Rose. What a pretty name!

Thanks for joining my readers and I look forward to your comments.

Amazing

2012-02-19T13:14:00.001-06:00

Swedish Man Survived in snow covered car for two months.

I always wonder when I see stories such as this or one person who survives an airplane crash or the horrible wreck that left my son in the shape he is in...just what God's plan is for these people. I know God has taught me a lot of things from my sons injuries but some of these people recover completely unscathed and are able to tell others about it.

I wonder about the woman who crashed into my sons car, drunk out of her mind at 8am on a Sunday morning almost 16 years ago. She had a tiny scratch above her lip. My son was comatose for months and has almost left this world on more than one occasion. What was she saved for?.....I'd like to think she is going to go on and do great things with her life. Maybe she is going to have a child who is going to discover the cure for cancer. As time approaches March 5, the anniversary date of my sons wreck (I don't call it an accident) ...I just wonder and question and think.....

Word Verification Removed

2012-02-19T09:46:00.000-06:00

Like many bloggers, I have removed the word verification from comments. It is getting very aggravating to try to read the first of the two words blogger now requires. With these tired old eyes, I very seldom get it right the first time. It is almost getting to the point I'd rather not leave a comment. Thanks to all of you who have removed it. Blogger is supposed to have a better spam filter now. We'll see!

Fridays Funny

2012-02-17T19:47:00.000-06:00

Now that takes skill......

Welcome and Thank You!

2012-02-17T07:06:00.000-06:00

I have picked up two new readers this week and I thank you so much for hitting that follow button.

Thanks to Chad Tower and Family Best. Family Best has a blog with some real pretty pictures of their farm posted this week. Click on over there and tell them Mamma sent you!

Gifts from Nature

2012-02-12T22:12:00.001-06:00

While setting fence post, Papa Bear found this turtle shell. It had long been cleaned out by the creepy crawlies. It fell apart when he picked it up and most of the thin shell that has the color had flaked off. The sun had done a pretty good job of bleaching it out.

At first GS and I thought we'd try to make a little stuffed body and glue the shell back together and then paint it. But after fiddling with the shell I had another idea.

I painted the shell inside and out with black craft paint. When that dried, I dry brushed brown craft paint on the shell.
I then glued the small piece with thick epoxy to seal the cracks and glued the bottom for a base for my new little ......

flower pot....I sprayed polyurethane to seal it all and then when that was dry.......

I planted a small cactus in it. I think it turned out kind of cute.

Boulder Residents, County Officials Say "No" to GMOs

2012-02-12T15:34:00.000-06:00

Good for Colorado! This is a great read about GMO products and the possible harm they cause. It's long but worth the read.

For the past two years I have at times had severe allergic reactions to processed food products.., I go into anaphylactic shock and end up in the ER. I have to carry an EPI-Pen with me at all times and I take 3 different allergy meds every day.. I've had the scratch test done several times and nothing shows up. My doctor doesn't think it is food related but it always happens with-in minutes of my eating something. The reason he doesn't think it is food related is because of all the labels I have saved for him whenever I have a reaction shows nothing in common. I have wondered to myself if it is because of GMO foods and the above article just about proves what I have suspected all along. I am going to print it out and take it to my doctor my next appointment. In the past few months I have just about stopped eating anything processed and I have not had any allergic reactions to anything.

BIG Fish

2012-02-11T09:39:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday was a perfect day for fishing. Me, the Marine, Papa Bear and Mom went down to our catfish pond to use our new pazebo and see if the fish was biting. I had just baited Marine Bears hook and put it in his hand when the biggest fish that's ever been caught in the pond hit. I reeled it in for the Marine ...what a fight this one gave. Papa Bear is holding the fish up so I could get a picture.

That bad boy weighed almost 5 pounds! I hate that I didn't have the camera when I reeled it in for the Marine. He was grinning from ear to ear for catching the biggest fish in the pond!

We caught a few more that were a nice size.

We also have Blue Gill in the pond. Papa Bear had to keep this one as it's gill was damaged and would not have lived if he had thrown it back. Papa Bear caught about 20 this size and smaller and threw them back. Either these fellows grow very slow or we haven't found where the big ones are in the pond.

We skint , cleaned and had a feast that evening. Some were fried and some were grilled. I had to have the grilled and it was my first time grilling catfish. I sprayed them with Pam,sprinkled on lemon pepper and cooked them over hot charcoal. They were good but I would have loved the fried ones but they are a no-no for me now.

What a difference from last Saturday to this Saturday. Our temps while fishing were around 72.....just perfect. Today the temps will drop all day and be in the 20's tonight. Most all of plants in my flower gardens have jumped from the ground, the banana trees are sprouting and blossoms are on the pear trees. I am going to cover what I can and try to save them. Such is life in the Twilight Zone.... Have a great weekend everyone!

Welcome and Thank You!

2012-02-11T08:08:00.000-06:00

Thank you Julie @ Strawberry Adventures for hitting that follow button. Julie @ Strawberry Adventures is the author of the blog Strawberry Adventures .

When you get the chance stop by her blog and tell her that Mamma sent you!

Fridays Funny

2012-02-10T07:57:00.000-06:00

'I swear, a Big Doberman busted in and just tore the place up....'

Thanks and Welcome!

2012-02-09T13:46:00.002-06:00

I have a couple of new people who have hit my follow button and I thank you so very much for doing so. If I have overlooked someone please leave a comment so I can correct it and post a link to you.

Welcome to russell1200 who is the author of reflexiones finales
Welcome to Cathi Bray
Welcome to Sherry who is the author of russ-stickacres
Welcome to Kris who is the author of A Hog, a Log, and a Frog
Welcome to DeanO who is the author of DeanO

When you get the chance stop by their blogs to say hello and tell them Mamma sent you!

I got an award!

2012-02-08T07:52:00.001-06:00

I received the Liebster Blog award from Jacked up Glock Mom the author of the blog Tales from the Clothesline . With so many good blogs out there in cyber world, I am honored that JUGM takes the time to read mine. I read many great blogs a week so it will be hard to pick five. All of the blogs listed to the side offer a good variety of reading. I am attempting to choose five who has not to my knowledge received the award. Take a moment to check them out! They are listed at the end of this post.

Below is the rules of the award:

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
2. Link back to the blogger who gave us the award
3. Pick our five favorite blogs with less than 200 followers, and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have received the award.
4. Hope that the five blogs chosen will keep spreading the love and pass it on to five more blogs

Keepin' It Rural in the USA

Don't Worry....Bee Happy

2012-02-02T18:56:00.000-06:00

After reading for almost a year on the subject, searching Craigs list for hives for sale (never found one), I finally broke down and ordered 2 bee hives, supplies and bees today. I should have my hives in a few weeks and the bees will be shipped in April or May depending on the weather.

PioneerPreppy...it is all your fault.....LOL

PP always has the most interesting post about his girls.

When my new toys come in I will post pictures.

I had a Date

2012-01-30T12:33:00.001-06:00

With Papa Bear and Liam Neeson. The planets and stars aligned. Daughter was able to stay with the Marine so we could go out a few hours. We went to see "The Grey." Can't tell you much about it as almost everything would be a spoiler. If you go to the theater to see it make sure you have an empty bladder as there are moments that will scare the pi$$ out of you or at least it did me! I wondered why they didn't do several things different in the movie. Not really a survivalist movie as I thought but all in all a good movie.

After the movie we went to Outback for chicken and ribs grilled to perfection on the barbie. We usually get one of their great steaks when we get to go there but we grilled steaks at home a few days ago so I opted for something different. Everything was good as usual but I think anything is good when I don't have to cook it. When you stay at home and cook over 1000 meals a year, you get a little tired of your own cooking. We don't get out much but I had a great time in the few hours we did.

Hope everyone has a good week. I'm going to be planting more seed trays to be ready for gardening season.

Egg Carton Seed Starters

2012-01-28T11:22:00.002-06:00

Using scissors, cut the top of the carton from the bottom.

Trim off the edge that locks the carton.

Using the point of a pencil, poke 4 or 5 drainage holes in each compartment of the egg tray.

Set the egg compartment into the top of the carton which is now the bottom of your seed starter. When you water your new seedlings, the excess will drain into the bottom of the tray.

Mix your seed starting mix with warm water. Add water a little at a time and squeeze your mixture. You only want it damp enough to be able to squeeze a few drops of water from it. Too much water in the mix will cause your seeds to rot instead of sprouting.

Fill the egg compartments with the moistened seed starting mixture all the way to the top. Pack the soil lightly.

Using a pencil, make a little dibble in the center of each compartment for your seeds. Put 2 or 3 seeds in each little hole you made and gently press the soil to close the hole. Gently water the top to settle the soil and seeds. Don't use much water.

I use a marker and write the name of the seeds I have planted in the carton. this one happens to be some flower seeds. I have tomatoes, peppers, dill and other flower seeds planted in my trays.

Cover the top with clear plastic wrap and use a small piece of tape on each side to hold it down. I also used some 2 gallon freezer bags as shown here. This will create a little greenhouse environment and hold the moisture in. Place the seeds in a warm location. Sunlight is not necessary until the seeds sprout as long as the trays are in a warm spot.

When the seeds begin sprouting, remove the plastic and place in a sunny location.
If the soil looks or feels dry I will begin to water with a weak solution of plant food to get the seedlings off to a good start.

When the seedlings have grown 2 to 4 true leaves, I will transplant to 4 inch pots to finish growing before I transplant into the garden. I'll do a post on this process when they are ready.

It's getting closer to garden season and I can't wait. I love knowing I can provide good nutritious non GMO food for my family beginning with an egg carton that would normally go into the trash.

I love this picture!

2012-01-26T12:09:00.000-06:00

Someone needs this today

2012-01-25T12:35:00.000-06:00

The “dumbing down" of American society

2012-01-24T11:19:00.000-06:00

This street painted sign was outside a Manhattan high school in NY.

A city worker who asked not to be identified told the Post regardless of who made the mistake, a student or administrator at the school should have noticed and reported it some time ago. You can read the entire story here.

Welcome and Thank You!

2012-01-23T07:42:00.002-06:00

Oh my goodness... I have picked up several new followers the past couple of weeks. Thanks to all of you for hitting that follow button. Here they are and with a link to their blogs if they have one. Check them out when you get a chance. Tell them Mamma sent you! If I missed anyone, please comment and let me know.

Standing Outside Looking In

2012-01-22T08:08:00.000-06:00

No...Not my friend Stephen's Blog . Just a cute shot I wanted to share of my Texas grandson standing outside looking in.

Bad Wind Storm

2012-01-18T12:49:00.000-06:00

We had a terrible storm that hit at 1am and again at 3am this morning. Papa Bear and I both jumped out of bed thinking the roof was about to come off the house. We had to wait until daylight to see how bad the damage was. When we went on the porch we found the flag pole down.

The Martin house was down. It took out an apple tree when it fell.

It took out part of the fence surrounding the pool and GS's play yard.

A small arbor was blown down that a coral vine grows on each year,

The west side of the fence was only laid over with one of the 4 x 4 post snapped.

This gate got slammed pretty good. It is supposed to open out not in.

One of the hoop houses is partially destroyed.

The covering on the shade house was ripped down the middle.

Two of the walls blew off the turkey house

The two walls slammed into the old side of the fence and has caused it to lean.

Mom's patio table and chairs outside of her camper (beside our house)was turned over and she lost some skirting.

Either the camper shifted some or the steps. Mom was awake during the 1st storm and we slept. We woke up during the second storm at 3 when I thought the roof was blowing off!. I looked out our back patio and didn't see Mom's lights. I was going to go get her and bring her to our house but she was asleep and by then the winds had died down.

I thank God none of us were hurt and our home itself had no damage. All cats, dogs, chickens, goats and turkeys are accounted for and no injuries!

I called our insurance company at 7:30 am and they actually had an adjuster out here by 9:30 am. I am impressed. Of course since Hurricane Katrina (which didn't hit Florida) our homeowners insurance has tripled in price. We'll see how everything goes. Now comes the clean up....ugggggg

Thank you and Welcome

2012-01-13T09:14:00.001-06:00

Thank you Country Life for hitting that follow button!

If you get the chance, go check out her blog on Country Life . She writes about her family and their life on a 100 acre farm.

Alien Invasion

2012-01-11T08:33:00.001-06:00

Was cutting up peppers for stir fry last night and found this pepper growing inside a pepper. Grandson said it looked like an alien.

A Wart..............

2012-01-08T19:33:00.000-06:00

on an egg.

Do you think a frog peed on it?

Homemade Laundry Detergent

2012-01-08T18:31:00.002-06:00

I just finished my 3rd trial bucket and it has failed miserably. I am returning to the old store bought stuff until I have no other choice but to make it.

I guess our water must be too hard for it to clean properly or either all of us get our clothes dirtier than most people who rave about the stuff. I used the original recipe of 1/3 bar of Fels Naptha soap, 1/2 cup washing soda and 1/2 cup borax. The next bucket I doubled the washing soda and borax. The third bucket I doubled the washing soda, borax and used an entire bar of Zote bad mistake there. The entire bar made the batch like a very, very, thick jello instead of a gel.

If anyone has tweaked the detergent recipe and made it work for you....please let me know what you did. At least I have a lot of ingredients in storage if I can't get to the store for the powdered stuff. I did like the light scent that was left in the clothes. At least they didn't smell dirty!

Oh Lord...Here comes another pound!

2012-01-07T12:06:00.003-06:00

I was looking for an easy recipe for brunch Grandson could help with and remembered the German Pancake on Enola's blog.   I helped Grandson with the instructions and he did most of the work. Only took a few minutes to put together and 20 minutes to bake. After it finished baking we sprinkled powdered sugar and cinnamon over it and served with maple syrup. It tasted like french toast!

My cast iron skillet was about 10 inches so I added 6 eggs instead of 4. That was the only change I made. Grandson wants to do another with pictures so you may get step by step instructions from the six year old grandson at a later date.   Thanks to Enola for a quick and easy recipe that tastes like you spent hours on!

German Pancake
(8 inch skillet)    (16 inch skillet)
1/4 C butter    3/4 C butter
1 C milk 3 C milk
4 eggs           12 eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract               1.5 tsp. vanilla extract
1 C flour              3 C flour
2 T sugar    6 T sugar

Place butter in your cast iron skillet, place skillet in a 425° oven (or 350° (a hot oven) if using your wood cookstove) for 2 minutes or until butter melts and pan is very hot. Combine milk, eggs and vanilla in bowl. Beat until combines. Stir in flour and sugar. Beat with egg beater (or mixer) until smooth. Pour the batter into your hot pan. Bake for 18 - 20 minutes or until puffed and brown on top. Serve with berries or butter and syrup. Sprinkle with confectioners sugar.

Thank you and Welcome

2012-01-06T08:26:00.000-06:00

Thanks to my newest reader Nikki who hit that follow button! When you get the chance go check out her blog The Story of a Lifetime. She has a beautiful family with not one but two sets of twins!

Good for Her!

2012-01-05T13:47:00.000-06:00

Oklahoma teen mom called 'hero' for fatally shooting intruder

I always say when seconds count...the cops are minutes away

My Apologies

2012-01-05T12:01:00.000-06:00

For those of you who are linked to my blog and never saw your blog linked, I apologize. I thought as long as I was seeing your blog in my dashboard that other people did too but that wasn't the case. I hope I have now remedied that. If you do link to me and don't see your blog on mine, please let me know and I'll fix it. I appreciate the readers I have and learn much from all of the blogs I do read.

Flour Storage Part 2

2012-01-05T09:07:00.000-06:00

The oldest flour I could find packed in Mylar bags with a oxygen absorber were from March 6, 2011 so they are only 10 months old. I opened one up yesterday and there was no odor what so ever and I baked 2 beautiful loaves of bread. I will keep experimenting opening one of these bags each month or so to see how long it last before it goes rancid. Using the food saver bags were a bust. At least for flour stored 3 years in them. Now I am wondering about other food I have in them.

I love the Mylar type bags I get from the LDS. They are 7 mils thick. If you are really into saving, they can be washed, dried and reused. I wash mine in the dishwasher and then place them over a mason jar on the counter to dry. They are that strong. I cut them in half for smaller size items I need to store.

I use a iron on a high setting to seal them. You don't need a fancy machine.

One of my goals this year is to dehydrate a lot of items. I'll be putting a few things in jars but a majority will go into the Mylar bags. Dehydrating takes up way less room and are as light as a feather.

Strange...creepy crawly strange....

2012-01-03T19:41:00.000-06:00

While searching the web for long term storage of flour in Mylar bags I was led to survivalistboards.com

While there I decided to look around and found a forum discussing dreams they have been having. A lot... I mean a lot of the members seem to have very similar dreams of soldiers, bombings, being fenced in, tsunamis and more.. I had a dream of a tsunami once....even before I knew what a tsunami was. I only dreamed it once maybe 30 years ago but it was so vivid that I can remember every detail today.

All of the talk of dreams reminded me of a verse in the bible and was even brought up in the forum.

Joel 2:28
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:

Flour Storage

2012-01-03T13:58:00.000-06:00

Today was bread making day. Grandson goes back to school tomorrow so I need fresh bread for his lunches.

The other day I found flour in my food storage that was packed in the food saver bags, heat sealed and then packed into a 7 gallon bucket with a stick of spearmint gum to deter any creepy crawlies. The flour was packed December 2008. I baked 4 loaves of bread that turned out beautiful. Then we tried a slice. blehhhhh. It had a strange after taste I can only assume is from the old flour.

I know that I started packing flour in Mylar bags a year or two ago with oxygen absorbers. I am going to go through the food stores and find my oldest flour from these bags and see how they have held up. 3 years in food saver bags was a total bust.

Another lesson learned before it was too late. I guess if you were really hungry you could eat this although it it has probably lost what nutritional value it may have had. Since we are not in dire straights, I will purchase more flour and bag it up in Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers. I'll make some flour and salt clay out of some of this old stuff and make some Christmas ornaments for next year. The rest I can make into hoecakes and feed to the chickens and goats so it does not go to waste.

I do store wheat for grinding. It is stored in #10 cans and supposedly will last for 30 years and is in my long term storage.

New Years Eve

2011-12-31T07:31:00.001-06:00

It's very foggy this morning with not a breeze in sight.

Just a bit over 50 degrees

It rained a few days ago, some of the seed has sprouted in the feeder. The birds have their own lawn!

Caught this little guy coming in for a morning snack. Papa Bear really needs to go fill up all those cans that are in the background!

I hope everyone has a very safe and Happy New Years celebration, we plan on staying in with snacks and a bottle of bubbly. May 2012 bring us all a better year!

Heavenly Father...please stop this man

2011-12-28T14:08:00.000-06:00

Obama To Ask Congress To Push Debt Limit To $16,394,000,000,000.00

My children, my grandchildren, my family and my friends cannot live like this. It is going to take Your intervention. We have went to the polls, we have called, emailed and wrote our congress and senate. We have went to rallys. Please hear our cries.....Stop this man before he completely ruins us and what is left of our country.

In Jesus name....

Amen

Matthew 18:20 says, "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them."

Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T21:27:00.000-06:00

The boys played....

..and so did the girl

The Marine watched and laughed at everyone.

The story of the birth of Christ was read

Christmas kisses were shared

a gingerbread house was built....

....dismantled.....

..and ate

a tired Mom rests

family visits

another special Christmas shared by our family.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Fridays Funny

2011-12-23T13:39:00.000-06:00

Angels Among Us

2011-12-23T11:28:00.000-06:00

Christmas Carolers (Angels) came to our house and sang to our Marine! What a special treat and no easy feat. We live 25 miles from town and 4 miles back in the woods! We were absolutely thrilled. I couldn't get all the carolers (angels) in the picture. They were on both sides of our sons bed and standing outside his room.

The young lady in the red sweater at the head of the bed told us of her own Christmas Angel. My niece babysits her and her sister while her Mom works on Fridays. They were standing in line at Walmart and the young lady struck up a conversation with an elderly lady (angel) in line. After chatting a few minutes the elderly lady (angel) asked my niece if she could give the young lady some Christmas money. My niece agreed and thanked her. When the elderly lady (angel) checked out she turned and handed the young lady with my niece a one hundred dollar bill and simply walked out of the store. Needless to say the young lady asked my niece if they could shop a little longer. The young lady spent her new found wealth on Christmas presents for her family!

My friend and former employee came over a few days ago to bring us a Christmas cake and had her own Christmas Angel story. She went to the post office last Saturday to mail her granddaughters their Christmas presents and the debit machine was out of paper and it could not be used. My friend had no cash or checkbook with her. The clerk in the PO could not find paper. My friend told the clerk that was OK she would just come back Monday to mail them but the clerk told her to wait around a few minutes as he was waiting on a call from the Post Master to tell him where the paper was located. He also said if the package didn't go out that day it may not make it before Christmas. There were a couple of people in line behind her and one man (angel) asked how much was the postage and he pulled out his wallet and paid for the package, another man (angel) wanted to get in on this giving spirit and he paid the first angel half of the original postage.

May you all have a very Blessed and Merry Christmas!

Snowman Cupcake Cake

2011-12-20T08:46:00.000-06:00

GS was asked to bring cupcakes to school for his Christmas party. I found a picture of pull apart cupcakes made in the shape of a snowman. Unfortunately there were just scant directions in the comment section but daughter said she could do it.

While the cupcakes were baking she melted chocolate chips in the microwave, added black paste used to color icing and poured it on wax paper in the shape of a hat she had drawn on the opposite side of the paper. A carrot nose was free formed using melted orange chocolate. The wax paper was slipped onto a piece of cardboard and placed in the freezer for the melted chocolate to re-harden.

She next laid out the shape of the snowman with the cupcakes and put a dab of frosting on the bottom of the cupcakes to make them stick to the cake board so they would not move around.

She added powdered sugar to the ready made vanilla frosting to make it thicker.

Using a number 32 tip and pastry bag, she began in the center of the snowman going round and round.

GS sprinkle white sparkling sugar decorations over the icing to make the snowman "frosty" looking.

Oreo cookies were placed for the snowman's buttons.

After drawing an outline with black icing, green icing was then piped on for the scarf.

Mini red M&M's were placed for the scarf's polka dots.

A pink marshmallow was cut in half for the cheeks.

The orange chocolate carrot nose was placed.The left over melted chocolate from the hat was used to make the "two eyes made out of coal". The photo lying on the table above the cake is the one we copied from the web as something to kind of go by.

The hat that has hardened was sprinkled with black shiny sprinkles and placed on the snowman's head. Green icing from the scarf was used as trim for the hat. Regular size red M&M's were used for holly berries on the hat. Daughter used more of the left over red mini M&M's to form the mouth.

We were in a hurry to finish up another project so I took only one photo of the finished cake and it doesn't do it justice. Daughter and grandson did a wonderful job on the cake. I took it to school for grandson's Christmas party, Daughter later joined him. Grandson's class mates enjoyed it very much!

There were a few left over cupcakes . Grandson decorated a few, ate one and declared them good!

Homemade Gift Ideas for boys (I think some girls would like them)

2011-12-19T20:53:00.000-06:00

I saw this great idea on Phelan's Blog a week or so ago and have been chomping at the bit to make some. Pictures do not do these pieces justice and I think all the kids we made them for are going to love them.

GS and I found Indians, cowboys and soldiers at the Dollar General for $1.00 (25 pieces to the bag.) Bought a can of Aluminum spray enamel for $2.60. We cut up paper clips and some of the wire ornament hangers to stick into their little heads and it worked fine.

I used some swede leather strips to make the necklace part and I can't remember what the price was for those. I had some wooden beads from another project and added one before I knotted the leather.

two of the warriors

and a coyboy

Fridays Funny

2011-12-16T19:01:00.000-06:00

I don't know if I should laugh or cry for someone being so stupid....

Homemade Gift Ideas Personalized Notebook

2011-12-16T09:50:00.000-06:00

I made a personalized notebook for my great niece using a 1inch notebook with a plastic overlay. I purchased these at Sam's Club. I think they were either a 4 pack or 6 pack...can't remember but they end up being less than $2.00 each.

I used a free program from Kodak to make the page and printed it on photo paper from my printer. She is crazy about horses and one of the pages happened to have a horse theme. I purchased a nice 5 pen package of roller writers from Office Depot for less than $4.00.

Inside the notebook I added a writing pad, some notebook paper and some page protectors.

More Homemade Gift Ideas

2011-12-16T07:21:00.000-06:00

Last year, after Christmas, the Dollar General near my home put all of their Christmas items on sale. I checked the store every few days to see how low the prices were marked for that day. I eventually purchased these items for 10 cents each. I have the little Christmas houses and baskets to put goodies in and also the bakery bags that come 6 to a pack. I probably bought about 30 of the houses and baskets, brought them home set them down in a clean plastic bag and boxed them up. This coming week I will be putting them to good use.

I have been baking up a storm. Fresh loaves of bread, coconut pound cakes (not shown) and coconut cookies. I am using a lot of coconut as that is also an item I got on sale at the Dollar General last year and put it in the freezer. The first few bags I got for 30 cents each. A few days later I had my daughter check the stores near her. They were an unbelievable 10 cents a bag. Each bag has 4 cups of flaked coconut! Boy did I score on that one.

A dozen cookies will fit perfectly in one of the little houses and the little Christmas baskets. The neighborhood kids, bus drivers, teachers, mail lady etc will get one of these treats. I'll also put a couple into the Tote Bags I am making up for family and friends.

Homemade Gift Ideas grocery bag holders

2011-12-15T17:39:00.002-06:00

This is a quick and easy gift to make. It takes about 15 minutes to zip one out and who doesn't save all those little plastic bags from the store?

We use them to line our small waste baskets in the bathrooms and office, put them in suitcases for our dirty laundry on trips. My niece uses them for poop holders when she walks her dog. You get the idea. Hang them from a doorknob or hang on the wall with a small nail or tack.

Supplies needed for 1 holder:

Sewing Machine and thread
scissors
pencil
ruler
1 dish towel (I get mine for $1.00 at Dollar General)
approximately 16 inches of 1/4 inch elastic
approximately 28 inches of 3/8 inch ribbon or size of your choice.

Lay your towel out flat and find where you would like the bottom and top trim to be. I measure from the edge of the towel to just where the print starts.

Turn your towel over and draw a line with a pencil across the towel using the measurement you just took. Repeat for the other end of towel.

Fold your towel in half longways and cut 2 pieces of elastic just about 1/4 to 1/2 inch longer than the folded towel. Don't stretch the elastic at this point.

Measure your elastic and mark the center by drawing a line. Mark both pieces of elastic.

Find the center of the line you drew on the towel and mark . Repeat for the other end of towel.

Place your elastic even with the line leaving a small amount hanging over the edge.

Place under pressure foot of sewing machine and using a zig-zag stitch make a few stitches forward and backwards to hold the elastic secure.

Now stretch your elastic until both center lines meet while keeping elastic edge with your pencil line. Sew all the way across and end with a back stitch to secure. Repeat on other edge of towel.

Fold towel with right sides together and match edges. Pin edges if desired. I have not found a need to do so.

Using a straight stitch sew long edges together with about a 3/8 to 5/8 inch seam. Use a back stitch on both top and bottom to secure your seam.

Turn your tube inside out. It should now look like this.

Cut a length of ribbon 8 inches long. Determine which end you want to be the top (with dish towels one half is going to be upside down) My preference is to put the right side towards the bottom.

Make the ribbon into a loop and place it on the inside on top of your seam and about 3/8's from the edge and sew it a couple of times back and forth to hold the ribbon.

Your loop should look like this on the inside of the towel.

Measure another piece of ribbon about 20 inches and mark the center.

On the front side of your towel just below the elastic and opposite the loop sew the ribbon. Make sure the backside of the towel and loop are out of the way.

Tie the ribbon into a pretty bow and trim the ends if needed. You could make the bow and then sew it on with a needle and thread but this method is just as easy for me.

Before you give it as a gift you may want to stuff a few plastic bags into it. Some gift recipients may not know what that strange looking tube is for!

Another finished project!

Thank you and Welcome

2011-12-15T07:04:00.000-06:00

I just noticed a new reader on my blog. Thanks Sassy for hitting that follow button. If you get the chance go check Sassy's Blog out. Looks like she has some good recipes over at Keepin' It Rural in the USA

Feed Bag Tote Bag

2011-12-13T07:26:00.000-06:00

I am giving homemade goodies to family and friends this Christmas. Last year I wrapped 3 sides of a box with Christmas wrapping paper and put the goodies in these. This year I wanted to do something different. In my search for crafts from feed sacks I came upon the neatest thing. A tote bag made from feed bags (not the paper ones) but those that look like a tightly woven plastic. I am making these now to hold the Christmas goodies. I made this one last night in about 30 minutes.

I am thinking of all kind of uses for them. I plan on making a couple for me to keep in my truck for my Sam's Club visits to hold the small items I purchase. They could be used as book bags or even to throw a few small tools in when you have a project to do and don't want to carry a large tool box around.

Here are the instructions for the Feed Bag Tote Bag. I like hers much better than mine due to the coloring of her bags but I have a Bazillion of the FRM bags so this is what I will use.

I found more ideas on this web site, Tink's Crafts she makes them and sells them but they are much fancier than the ones I am doing but you could get some good ideas from her photo's.

Give a Special video message to your child or grandchild from Santa

2011-12-12T22:35:00.000-06:00

This is really cute and best of all it is free! I just made one for grandson. I can't wait to show it to him. He is all into Santa Claus!

Santa Portable North Pole

Where's the line to see Jesus?

2011-12-12T13:03:00.000-06:00

A friend sent this in an email. Very Pretty.

Better Late than Never

2011-12-12T08:39:00.000-06:00

I tried to post this a week after Thanksgiving but blogger wouldn't cooperate so here are the pictures I wanted to share a couple of weeks ago.

It is all quiet here on the farm since the family left to return to Texas but what great fun we had while they were here. The children really enjoyed the animals and helping grandma in the kitchen. GD-1 celebrated her 11th birthday birthday with us. She is turning into a beautiful young lady.

Several trips a day was made to the kidding pen to play with the babies.

Feeding the chickens

giving the turkeys a corn treat

There was fishing everyday at our pond

GD-2 says look...I caught one!

Always time for playing in the backyard. GS is having fun fun fun

Look at that face!

Grandpa had to babysit baby

so GD-2 could swing high

Waiting for a ride

Bedtime was fun...Sleeping on a blow up bed in the family room by the Christmas tree.

Then it was cookie time! The kids decided to make gingerbread cookies. Is there anything better than licking the spoon and bowl?

You got to really get into the bowl to get it all!

Yep...It's pretty good

It's serious work decorating those cookies!

The most fun is deciding which one to eat first.

They are all back home safe and sound. I miss them. Hopefully we'll all get together this coming summer. Have a great week everyone.

Friday's Funny

2011-12-02T08:08:00.000-06:00

Blogger is being stupid today

2011-11-30T12:47:00.000-06:00

I wanted to post with a bunch of pictures of our Thanksgiving holidays but blogger is not letting me upload my pictures so I will just say "howdy" everyone and hope you are having a peaceful week.

I see I have two new readers. Thank you Maggie Haren
and Rob's Bunker for hitting the follow button. Run over to their sites and tell them hello from Mamma Bear!

I'll give everyone an update from the homestead as soon as blogger lets me do the picture thing!

Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T14:35:00.001-06:00

May you all have a blessed and safe Thanksgiving . God is so good to us and we have so much in which to be thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving

from

Mamma Bear & Family

Free Music to Download

2011-11-22T13:03:00.000-06:00

You can download an entire Christmas album for free! Just scroll down and hit download. I don't have itunes so I downloaded as a zip file. I'll burn it to a CD later.

Amazon has a few free Christmas songs as well. Scroll down and find the ones with the price 0.00 Can't beat free and the music is pretty decent!

Friday's Funny

2011-11-18T14:20:00.000-06:00

Don't Rain on My Parade

2011-11-16T14:36:00.001-06:00

Macy's Parade is a tradition at our home on Thanksgiving day. I am usually busy in the kitchen but run back and forth from the kitchen to the livingroom to catch the highlights.

Stephen over at Standing Outside Looking In
posted a video on some potty mouth with OWS talking about interrupting the parade by tossing Molotov cocktails and also about burning Wall Street down on the 17th.......Check it out.

Guess we need to look for a whole heap of trouble in the coming week. Stay safe everyone. We are hunkered down today. Under tornado watches until 8 PM. I want the rain but no tornado!

Welcome New Readers

2011-11-13T06:56:00.000-06:00

Thank you Trish Deneen and DaddyBear for hitting that follow button. I hope to give you something entertaining or informative from time to time.

Have a great week!

Veterans Day

2011-11-11T06:22:00.001-06:00

I am not a fan of war but I am proud of the men and women who choose to serve this country in uniform. Especially my two sons.

God bless you all......

.

Friday's Funny

2011-11-04T19:20:00.000-05:00

Have a great week-end one and all!

Utilizing space for food storage in tight areas

2011-11-03T20:04:00.000-05:00

As I have stated in several post; grandson lives with us during the week while daughter attends nursing school in the next county over. My only spare room to make him a bedroom was my storage room which at one time used to be a bedroom when we first built the house. Some people have closets bigger than this room which is 11 x 10. I had boxes and buckets stacked haphazardly all over this room so I had my work cut out for me.

I started by pushing everything to one side of the room so I could put up shelves. To begin with I purchased 3 shelving units from Walmart. Once I started loading them I knew I was going to need more shelves. I went on line to order shelves for the units and with shipping, just a few more shelves were going to cost me more that what an entire unit from Walmart did so I ended up buying 2 more units just to get the shelves. I think each unit was around $30.00 but it put up almost 10 feet of wall to wall shelves. I didn't want grandson to feel like he was in a pantry so I went to Lowes and bought 3 sets of accordion like doors that you are supposed to mount in a doorway but I used anchor bolts and put them in the ceiling.

Now you see the food....

Now you don't!

Since I mounted these from the ceiling instead of a doorway they do not reach the floor. I have been trying to come up with something to extend these panels to the floor but no ideas yet. If you have an idea I would love to hear from you.

Yep...the carpet is a mauve color and is worn out. I hope to put wooden floors in here next summer when the grandson is out of school.

I used 10 gallon storage boxes for rice, dehydrated vegetables and fruits. They are stacked by grandson's bed which is one of the old hospital beds that belong to our son. Since the hospital bed will rise higher than regular beds I use the space underneath to store part of my son's 6 month supply of Jevity which is for his tube feedings.

the 10 gallon containers are bright greens to go along with the camouflage curtains I found on a sale table for $4.00. I am going to add Velcro to the fronts of the storage containers for grandson to attach his collection of mask, Spider man, Iron-man, Hulk,etc

I bought a solid wood chest of drawers off of Craigs List for $60.00, A TV from the Flea Market for $10.00 and an Xbox with 10 games from Ebay for $30.00 There is 5 cases of wheat stacked beside each side of the chest that equals 330 pounds of wheat. The next time I am at the Dollar Tree I am going to get some type of kids wrapping paper and cover these boxes. I have also thought about maybe the shiny white paper and see if dry erase markers could be used on it. Grandson would then have an art area for drawing and writing.

I bought this plastic roll around tool box for grandson to keep some of his favorite toys in. I think it was around $20.00. He can roll it into the family room or even out on the porch to play.

A basket sits in the corner to hold a few more treasures and a little camp stool I picked up for $2.00 at Dollar General completes the room. Grandson has not complained at all for the space he has to share with our food storage.

We do have a closet in this room which I am not going to show you inside yet...on one side it has buckets from floor to ceiling which hold more powdered milk, rice, sugar, flour and beans. There are shelves along the backside and top I stick items on that I have not inventoried into the storage.

This bedroom/storage room is ever changing as I am constantly trying to improve the food storage situation.

Share the joy!

2011-11-03T09:29:00.000-05:00

With so much bad news going on I have some good news....My baby boy is coming home from Afghanistan and will be in the states in 3 more days! He, my lovely DIL and my 3 beautiful grandchildren will be here at the end of November. What a belated Thanksgiving we will have!

President Obama and the Children of the Corn

2011-11-01T16:55:00.000-05:00

Papa Bear just sent me this link President Obama and the Children of the Corn and boy will it pi$$ you off. Monsanto has to be one of the most evil organizations in history. I can't help but wonder if the people who work for Monsanto eat or feed the products to their family knowing what could possibly happen. Make sure you read page 2 and follow the link to sign the petition if you are lead to do so.

It's getting almost impossible to avoid the genetic modified foods. Save your heirloom seed and grow as much of your own food as you can.

Amish White Bread

2011-11-01T16:11:00.000-05:00

Amish White Bread is an easy bread recipe to mix in your bread machine and finish by forming the loaves and baking in the oven. It is the best bread for sandwiches and toast.

My yeast has expired but I keep it in my freezer so it will be good for a long time but just in case I "proof" it first before I mix all the ingredients. I start by putting 2 cups of warm water (110 degrees) in the bread machine pan, add 2/3 cups of sugar and stir until sugar is just about dissolved. I then sprinkle 1 1/2 tablespoons of my active dry yeast on top of the mixture. After 5 or so minutes the yeast will begin bubbling and will be creamy looking if it is alive. I am good to go.

I then added 1/4 cup of oil and 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 2 cups of flour and started my machines dough cycle to begin mixing.

I then added 4 more cups of flour one at a time. If you like you can give your machine a little assist with a rubber spatula to scrape the flour from the sides but it is not necessary The moving dough ball will eventually grab it all.

.
When the dough begins to pull away from the sides sometimes I will begin timing (according to how long the recipe says to knead) sometimes I just wait for the machine to stop.

Today I let the machine knead the dough for about 7 minutes. It looks smooth and round at this point.

Turn out the dough on a floured surface. This dough is a little softer than some recipes so make sure you have a good dusting of flour. I didn't have enough here and had to peel the dough off the table to add more.

Shape your dough back into a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl, turning your dough ball so it gets a light coating of the oil all over.

Cover with a damp cloth and place in a draft free area. Sometimes I use saran wrap or wax paper sprayed with a cooking spray but today I used a warm damp dish towel.

Let the dough rise until double in bulk. My kitchen is a little cool today so it took about an hour.

Punch the dough down. This is the fun part!

Turn out on a floured surface and knead for a few minutes and shape into a ball. I have no assistant today to so I had to use one of my hands to take this picture.

Cut the dough in half. I don't have a fancy dough cutter so I just use whatever knife I grab from the kitchen drawer.

Since one side of the dough looks much bigger than the other I got out my kitchen scale to weigh them to get them as even as possible. One side was about 5 ounces more than the other so I fixed that by pinching off dough from the larger and kneading it into the smaller.

Shape both pieces back into a ball and let them rest for 5 minutes or so. This allows the dough to relax a bit to make them easier to shape. If my kitchen were real warm I would cover them with a damp towel.

While the dough is resting, I greased 2 loaf pans. I believe they are 5 x 9 inches.

After the dough has rested; I shaped the loaves by pressing the dough out with my hands using a pan for a guide. You want it about the length of the pan and a little bit wider.

Beginning with the long side roll the dough up tightly. Use both hands. I had to use one hand to take a picture. Where's grandson when you need him?

Pinch the dough to form a seam and tuck the ends under.

Place seam side down in pan.

Repeat shaping for remaining dough, place both pans in a draft free area and cover with a clean damp cloth. Again you can use wax paper or plastic saran wrap sprayed with a cooking spray.

Let the dough in the pans rise until they are about one inch over the edge of the pans. Normally this takes about 30 to 40 minutes for this second rising but again I'm dealing with a cold kitchen so it took a little over an hour.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or until tops are golden brown. You can check for doneness by removing a loaf from the pan and thumping the bottom. If it sounds hollow it is done. If it doesn't sound hollow, place the loaf back in the pan and bake for another 5 minutes. When done remove from pans and place on cooling racks.

If you want a soft top bread for sandwiches; brush the top with melted butter

and cover with a clean dry cloth. Let cool completely before slicing.

You can use a bread knife with a serrated edge for slicing. I happen to have a bread slicing guide that I like to use with my electric knife.

From a 5 x 9 loaf I get 17 perfect slices for sandwiches or toast.

To store in the freezer. Make sure bread has completely cooled and wrap tightly in plastic wrap.

and again with aluminum foil.

Frozen bread should be used within 4 months.

Making Cookies with the Grandson

2011-10-30T22:13:00.000-05:00

This afternoon grandson and I made the Spooky Witches Fingers Cookies. We had a really good time! Here grandson is attaching the "fingernail" (almond) with the "blood" (red decorating gel)

We laid the severed fingers out on wax paper for the "warts" (chocolate chip) and the "blood" (red decorating gel) to harden. These witches fingers came in assorted sizes as you can see.

We put all of the severed fingers in a cauldron lined with bloody red tissue paper.

Have we scared you?......

All wrapped up and ready for the class party. I am sure they will be a hit with grandsons classmates!

Store what you eat....

2011-10-29T08:43:00.000-05:00

eat what you store!

Do you know what this is? If you answered chili then you are correct but it's not just any chili.

I am still working on the food storage making it better organized and taking an inventory as I go. My food storage room is also grandson's bedroom during the week. For some reason I have missed rotating some chili. I found this jar of chili dated November 2008. It's almost 3 years old! This is my oldest meal-in-a-jar so I have plans for Friday night supper and it will be a fun meal for grandson before daughter picks him up for the week-end.

Friday morning after I got Grandson off to school and helped Papa Bear with the chores, I came inside to make homemade hot dog buns. Why did I make the buns? For one thing I was out and didn't want the 8 mile round trip to the store to find they may be out of buns and simply because I could. I have made these buns before and they are really good. They hold everything you can put on a hot dog and you can pick them up without them falling apart while you are eating them. You can either shape them into hamburger buns or hot dog buns. I use all the ingredients in the recipe but I use my bread machine on the dough cycle to mix and knead everything. As soon as the machine stops, I remove the dough and follow the recipe from there.

Friday afternoon after re-hydrating some onions I started frying them in a small amount of vegetable oil. I opened two pints of sliced canned potatoes, drained and rinsed them and added to my onions in the pan and cooked until everything browned.
Home Fries!

I already had grilled wieners in the freezer so they only took a minute or so of thawing in the microwave and then we piled on the 3 year old chili and a sprinkling of grated cheese on top. Except for the extra buns I put in the freezer....there were no left overs!

I Was Hacked!

2011-10-28T14:46:00.000-05:00

My yahoo email account was hacked around 6:15am this morning. I did not know it until I started getting emails from family and friends and then I started getting phone calls. I could not even quickly email my contacts as my entire address book was gone.

Apparently I am traveling in Europe and was robbed. Cash, airline tickets and all credit cards were taken, luckily I had left my passport at the hotel but I needed money to catch my flight today.

The crooks changed my email address by capitalizing one of the letters so unless you look very carefully you would think it is from me. Papa Bear's address was in my address book too so he got an email from (me) and I replied back to the fake address to find out where to send (me) some money. Once Papa Bear was on the way to the Western Union office he is suppose to send them an email and then when home email them the confirmation number. The crooks asked Papa Bear for $1400.00 with a promise that I could repay him as soon as I returned home.

Most everyone in my address book knows our home situation with us as caregivers for our son and we certainly would not be traveling in Europe. I just hope and pray no one fell for the scam who doesn't have our cell phone numbers to verify. We stopped using land lines several years ago.

I don't know how hacking works but I know I had to jump through hoops to try to contact Yahoo about this. I had to verify my password several times and then give them my security question and answer. Seems to me that if my location is in Florida 99% of the time wouldn't all kinds of bells and whistles have been going off at Yahoo when "I" logged in from Nigeria?

We have had internet for about 17 years and this is the first time we have had an event. Guess we've been lucky.

Yummy

2011-10-27T14:37:00.000-05:00

Look what I just found. Canning Steak & Onions. The next time I see those little steaks on sale, I guess you know what is going on the shelves!

Horse Play

2011-10-27T11:51:00.001-05:00

Smart Man

2011-10-25T21:57:00.000-05:00

Herman Cains ad has been playing on all the news networks today and he hasn't had to spend a dime of his campaign money to have it aired. I think that is very smart!

American Farmers are going out of business

2011-10-25T13:40:00.001-05:00

and I am responsible...are you?

I am so mad at myself. Usually I check labels very carefully and unless I absolutely have to have something I try not to buy anything that is not from the USA.

The other day I made a run into town to have my blood-work done and went to Sam's Club for a few needed items. Two of the items were onions and garlic.

I have onions frozen and dehydrated but as long as the prices are reasonable at the store, I still buy fresh and use those, saving my frozen and dehydrated ones for hard times. I do have frozen garlic in the freezer and garlic powder in the pantry and stored foods but I wanted some fresh to plant. My last years crop was grown, hung up to dry under the shed and accidentally was forgotten and froze before I found them. Had to give that mushy mess to the chickens. I don't buy garlic from seed stores as they charge a ridiculous price for it. Usually I buy a box of garlic from a place in California (who grows it and sells it) and then I dehydrate, freeze and plant from this garlic.

While at Sam's Club, I had quickly looked at the labels of the garlic and onions and saw Florida on the garlic and New Jersey on the onions so I purchased them.

The two pound bags of garlic would be much cheaper than ordering from California and they are nice looking garlic.

Today I picked up one of the bags of garlic and was about to open it to separate the cloves for planting when staring back at me in big bold print....

Then I looked at the onions.

I now have these items sitting by the front door so I can return them to Sam's Club tomorrow when I go to my doctor for the results of my blood-work. When the person at the service desk ask me the reason for the return I will tell them. I will only support American Farmers and their onions are from Peru and the garlic is from China. I kind of hope they give me a little trouble in the returns as I plan to have the phone numbers of the local television and newspaper with me.

Onions and garlic can be grown just about anywhere in the US. There is no reason to be importing these two vegetables from over the oceans. I planted my onion seed a few weeks ago and I have now ordered my 5 pound box of garlic from California. I hope to not run out of either one again and be vulnerable to the produce at the stores.

Canning Amish Poor Man's Steak and everything in between

2011-10-24T20:40:00.001-05:00

My blogging friend, Hoss Boss, over at Hoof 'n Barrel just thinks she had a rough canning day...LOL I had a rough canning weekend that began Friday and ended around 10:00PM Sunday night.

I have been eye-balling this Amish Poor Man's Steak recipe ever since I bought the 80 pounds of ground beef a week or so ago and since another blogger (Kris Watson) recommended it and I happened to have had 30 pounds of ground remaining I thought...Go For It!

Now this recipe has everything in it the food police says not to can. I did a lot of research on canning some things and have come to my own conclusion that this recipe is not going to kill me or my family. I'm going to write a blog on this subject soon and give you the links to back it up. Anyway...back to my canning adventure. I knew I did not own anything large enough to mix up all the ingredients so I went down to the Dollar General and bought a 35 quart Sterlite Container. After a little soap, bleach and drying I was ready.

I chopped 5 cups of celery

and 5 cups of onions

crushed 6 tubes of saltines which is 1 1/2 pounds

cracked open and whisked 2 dozen eggs

measured 5 cups of milk

All of these items were placed in my container as they were measured. Hey...that looks pretty. Now I know what a chef in a restaurant feels like adding huge amounts of ingredients.

the recipe just reads...salt and pepper. Don't you just hate it when that happens? So I added salt and pepper. I don't exactly remember how I came up with my equation but it worked out pretty well at the time. I figured the saltine crackers are salty and the condensed mushroom soup is going to be salty so I added what I thought would be right and I will tell you how much when (if) I find the piece of paper I scribbled it on..... Just in case you want to be as adventurous as me and try this recipe.

celery, onions, saltines, eggs, milk, salt and pepper mixed together. oh yeah...I'm really feeling chef like

time to add the 30 pounds of ground beef

now I warn you... Run you a sink of warm/hot water near where you are working. When you start mixing and mixing and mixing all of these cold ingredients with your washed, cleaned and naked hands you are going to want to plunge them into something very warm every few minutes. My hands were burning with cold. At this point I was feeling sorry for the chefs in restaurants who have to do this kind of stuff everyday.

I didn't get a picture of the mixing itself as my hands at this point was to numb with cold to hold the camera but this is what everything looked like when I started making the steak patties. I shoved all the ingredients to one side of the container and placed my patties on the other side using waxed paper to separate the stacks to prevent them from sticking.

I used the wide mouth rim and lid again to form the patties, just like I did when I made the meatloaf last week. Using this method will ensure the patties will fit into the wide mouth canning jars.

I only have one broiling pan and I have a lot, I mean a lot of meat to cook so I made another by using a large roasting pan with my cake racks over it. The Amish recipe reads to bake on cookie sheets but I want to drain as much fat as possible from them.

Between the broiling pan and the roasting pan, I could cook 27 patties at once.

I baked in preheated 375 degree oven for 35 minutes and alternated the pans about half way through cooking time. It took me a little over 4 hours to cook them all. I piled up 2 huge roasting pan and covered them with tinfoil and placed them in the refrigerator as they came from the oven.

When my last batch was baking (late Friday afternoon by this time) I started making the gravy. I had strained off some of the fat from the broiler and roasting pan and set aside to make the brown pan gravy. Trust me....save much more than this.

I put 1/2 cup of the strained fat into a skillet and heated over medium heat until hot.

Next I added 1/2 cup of plain flour. The secret to making a good gravy base is to stir, stir, stir and don't cook it too fast. You can control this by lifting your pan on and off the eye of the stove. You want to brown the flour slowly without burning it.

I had already put 5 cans of the mushroom soup along with 5 cans of water in a pot to begin warming. I think this was almost 2 quarts. Trust me again. The recipe doesn't say how much gravy to make but you are going to need to make a lot. When I make this again I will try to get a good measurement. I had to make gravy 3 times during canning and even ended up using two more cans of soup than the recipe called for.

I added some of the mushroom soup mixture to the browned flour. Be careful...it gets angry during this procedure. Keep adding and stirring and things will calm down.

I then added my base from the skillet to the pot of mushroom soup, stirred it in well and simmered while I reheated patties in the microwave. I totally forgot to take a picture of filling the jars but you put a patty in the jar, cover that with the gravy mixture and then another patty and more gravy until the ingredients are one inch from the top. I got 5 patties in a jar.

I only did one canner load Friday evening as it was getting late and I was tired and disgusted. I no longer want to be a chef! When I was filling the 5th jar I realized my magnet was missing from the little wand thingy that I use to get the hot lids and bands out of the water. Here I am thinking that magnet has ended up in the 4th jar and I have no idea which jar is the 4th. So now I am thinking when they cool off I can kind of shake the jar and see if I can find the magnet but you know what? Little pieces of mushrooms floating around will look like a magnet as well. I guess I will mark these jars as "Magnetic Poor Man's Steak" and we'll be extra careful to look for the magnet as we open them for a meal. They looked great coming out of the canner. I processed these for 90 minutes at 11 pounds of pressure on my dial gauge.

One jar didn't seal so we got to have a sample. It is surprisingly very good and no...the magnet wasn't in that one. Papa Bear knew I was really worried about the magnet so he pulled the stove out form the wall. There was no magnet. He then took a ruler and ran it along the side edges of the stove and out flew the magnet. Apparently when it fell, it bounced and then stuck to the stoves bottom edge. I don't have to mark the jars "Magnetic Steak" after all. After all this drama... I am through for the day...On to Saturday.

Last week when I was canning Meatloaf, Italian Meat Sauce and Taco filling I grew so tired of having to watch the pressure dial. You can't turn your back on it for one minute and you constantly have to adjust the heat up or down. When you are having to process your items for 90 minutes this can be very tiresome and you are basically chained to the kitchen. Having to watch this dial actually got me searching on line for a new pressure canner. I wanted one with a weighted regulator so all I have to do is listen for the sound and rocking noise. Well low and behold in my search I found out that I could use a weighted regulator in place of the one I had. I found one at Amazon with free shipping and with the points I had it ended up costing me a little over $8.00.

I was hoping the new gadget was at the post office. Our mailbox is 3/4 miles down the road and the post office does not deliver packages down our road so I waited until the post office opened and called to see if it was there. Nope. My last hope is that it is a small enough item to be shipped in a padded envelope and it still may be in Saturdays mail. I decided to wait and work on the "Pazebo"

I thought we would be through with the Pazebo this week but we still have a few small things to finish. I got at least one coat of paint on everything Saturday in between deer watching. It's turning out really pretty. Next spring I will plant some flowering vines to climb the lattice.

Papa Bear didn't get around to going to the mailbox until late afternoon and guess what he brought home?....My new best friend.

After helping with the evening chores and washing the paint off of me, I gave it a test run. It was too late for me to start another canning project so I filled up the canner with water only and tried out my new best friend. It works! I am actually looking forward to my canning adventures Sunday.

Sunday I finished everything, although it took me all day. I pulled the last canner load out around 10:00 PM. ...but I didn't have to stand guard at the stove. I was actually able to load the dishwasher, do laundry and piddle around some in the yard while everything cooked. I even made and baked two loaves of bread so the grandson could have his peanut butter and jelly sandwich after school snack.

This recipe made 142 patties! I canned 28 quart jars and the breakdown in cost is about $2.25 a jar. But the thing that puts a smile on my face is we have 28 (27) more meals- in- a -jar added to our preps!

Never a camera when you have a great shot

2011-10-22T20:11:00.000-05:00

Papa Bear and I were working on the Pazebo by the pond this afternoon when he asked "Do you see her?" I was on the ladder painting the rafters and had to peek out from under the roof.

"See Who"? I asked.

"The little doe right over there", he pointed.

I swear. A deer can be one foot away from me and I'll never see it first. It took a good minute where he was telling me to look before I finally saw her. She was beautiful and probably only 30 feet or so away and blended in perfect with her surroundings.. She would look at us every once in awhile and then go about her grazing. I watched her for about ten minutes while my paint dried on the brush, wishing I had brought the camera down to the pond. It is always a treat for me to get a picture of the deer who roam our property. It's a good feeling to know we'll have these deer to feed the family should the need arise.

Spooky Witches Fingers

2011-10-19T17:47:00.000-05:00

Photo by Laura M

Grandson has to take cookies to school for his Fall Party. We found these Witches Finger Cookies on the All Recipes site and are going to make them. They sound really easy. One of the ratings left suggested the green food coloring and a chocolate chip for a wart.

I found "Eyeball Cookies" on another blog. Maybe we'll make both for a "Spooky" party tray.

Granny's Coconut Pound Cake

2011-10-18T14:56:00.000-05:00

I love this book. I bought it at Sam's Club several years ago. It is called "Recipe Keepsakes." It is spiral bound and has dividers and indexes with pockets and many pages for you to write your recipes. The only thing I wish it had that it doesn't is a section for canning recipes.

When I find a recipe to try, I put it into the appropriate indexed pocket and if it is a recipe the family enjoys, I then write it in the book. Sometimes I am in a big hurry and only cut out the recipe and tape it to a page, later when I get the time I will hand write it in. I hope someday my daughter or one of my granddaughter's will enjoy making the recipes and will love having them handwritten in my own handwriting. The recipes my own Mom has given me and the couple of handwritten recipes from my Granny are taped permanently in my book. These I treasure.

Today it is raining, Thank you again Lord and since Grandson is almost out of snacks to take to school

I pulled out my Recipe Keepsake's book to make Granny's Coconut Pound Cake.

Granny's Coconut Pound Cake

1 1/2 cups Crisco (I use the cheaper store brand unless Crisco is on sale)
2 3/4 cup sugar
6 eggs
3 cups plain flour (measure before sifting)
pinch of salt
1 level tsp baking powder
1 cup sweet milk
3 tsp lemon or vanilla extract (or a mixture of both if desired)
1 cup finely grated coconut (I use the coconut in a bag)

Beat Crisco and sugar together for 10 minutes. I don't know why it is for 10 minutes but Granny said to do it, so I do it. I don't have a fancy stand mixer and neither did Granny so my arm gets a good workout with the hand mixer.

Add whole eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition.

You will have a lovely pale lemon colored batter beginning at this point.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt together in a separate bowl.

while running your mixer; slowly add the cup of milk to your Crisco, sugar, egg mixture. I use regular whole milk. Granny had a cow when she wrote sweet milk on her recipes. I don't have a cow and I am out of fresh goat milk.

Now add your sifted flour, baking powder and salt mixture a little at a time and mix well.

Add flavoring and mix well... Today I experimented and used pineapple extract. PS... It was yummy!

Add coconut.

Stir the coconut into batter.

Grease and flour your pan. I normally bake this cake in a bundt pan if I want a fancy looking cake or a 10 inch tube pan. Today I greased and floured two loaf pans so I can slice it in uniform slices for Grandson's school snacks.

I divided, well...kind of divided my batter between the two pans.

Bake the cake in a 300 degree, preheated oven for 1 1/2 hours or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.

After removing from oven. Let cake(s) sit for 10 minutes before removing pan(s).

Let cake(s) cool before slicing

I slice mine into serving size pieces

place them in Ziploc snack bags and freeze them on a cookie sheet.

When they are frozen I remove them from the cookie sheet and stack them in the freezer. I can remove a slice from the freezer and put in Grandson's backpack each day. It will be thawed by his snack time. Another plus to this is that the cake is not sitting out on the counter where we would for sure over indulge! These two loaves made enough slices for grandson an entire month of school snacks plus a couple of pieces left over for Papa Bear and I to have a slice each with a cup of coffee.

It is worth every minute of making a cake from scratch when a six year old comes home from school and says "Grandma, that cake you gave me for snack was awesome!"

From China with Love?

2011-10-17T09:52:00.000-05:00

What is this? Don't tell me we no longer have any artist in the USA that could have been commissioned for this memorial. I think it would have been fitting to even have found a black artist? How pathetic that even the sculptures displayed at our National Mall now comes from China. Wake up America!

From China with Love?

Don't try this at home....

2011-10-17T07:30:00.000-05:00

or anywhere else for that matter.

I have been experimenting with canning recipes as you see in my last post. The canned meatloaf is great and while it was cooking I took another 10 pounds of the ground beef , seasoned it with a little soy sauce, garlic and onion powder. I formed 36 patties using the wide mouth rim and lid... I had a plan.

Papa Bear started the charcoal grill and I proceeded to grill these 36 burgers while he went to work on the Pazebo. Thank goodness I put over half of these burgers in ziploc bags and put them in the freezer cause my plan turned out just yucky.

I put the grilled burgers in canning jars (I only did 3) , I then covered the burgers with a diluted barbecue sauce and processed them for 90 minutes in the pressure canner. I had visions of a lovely barbecued cheese burger in my future. That evening we opened a jar to see how they turned out before I canned any more of them. Well....they were just terrible. I mean if you were starving you would eat them but they are something I would keep pushing to the back of the shelf until I had to eat them. I may just label them as dog food and store them for the guardian dogs.

Canning Meatloaf for Meals in a Jar

2011-10-16T08:18:00.001-05:00

I love having meals in a jar on my storage shelves. It is so nice to spend a few minutes warming up a good hearty meal instead of spending hours preparing one.

I have been searching for a recipe for canning meatloaf. I found several on the web but I was not comfortable with making the mix, putting it raw in a pint jar and then processing it in a pressure canner.

If you are like me when you make a meatloaf in a loaf pan for dinner, it is usually swimming in fat when you take it from the oven. I did not want to look at jars of fat accumulation and I believe a high fat content will make processed food go rancid faster than not so I decided to come up with my own recipe. Here's what I did. I made my mixture (recipe follows) Since I found a great deal on ground beef this week I decided to use 10 pounds of meat and see how many meatloaf meals in a jar I could make but in case any of you would like to do smaller portions here is the recipe broke down for every 2 pounds of meat. You'll have to guess at the tomato juice if you don't make a bunch like I did.

For this recipe you will need:
ground beef (mine was the cheap ground beef)
For every 2 pounds of ground beef you will need to add:
1 egg
1/2 cup of onion chopped
1/4 cup of bell pepper chopped
1 1/4 tespoon of salt
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
1/2 cup of oatmeal (uncooked)
In addition to the above items, you will need tomato juice to cover your meat in the jars. I used 10 pounds of ground beef so I ended up needing 3 cans that were 1 quart 14 ounces each. I used the Great Value brand from Walmart not only because it was cheaper but because it was 100% juice and I could pronounce all the ingredients; tomatoes, salt and ascorbic acid.

I began by cracking my eggs in a very large mixing bowl and lightly whisking them with the garlic powder, salt, and black pepper. I then added the onions, bell peppers and oatmeal and stirred this mixture. I then began working the 10 pounds of meat into this mixture using my hands. I actually ending up using two large mixing bowls until I got everything mixed together and looking uniform. I then made meatloaf patties. Yes...patties like you would making hamburgers for the grill. Speaking of grill... just wait until I tell you later what else I did with my cheap ground beef.

Since you will be canning in wide mouth canning jars. Take a wide mouth lid and a band and stuff your meat mixture into it. Don't over-stuff it like I did in this picture or you will only get four large patties in your canning jar instead of the more uniform five. Just make it even with the band.

Then all you have to do is push the lid back through the band

and remove the lid from the meat

and presto... you have an exact size portion of meat that after cooking and shrinking just a bit will fit perfect in your wide-mouth jar.

After forming my meatloaf patties I put them on my broiling pan to bake. This way most of the fat drains as it cooks. My pan held 12 patties at a time.

I baked these in a 375 degree, preheated oven for 30 minutes.

I sacrificed one to see if it was done enough. The onions were just a little crunchy but the processing would take care of that.

As each pan was done, I put the patties on a platter, covered them with tin foil and placed them in the refrigerator until I had enough to do a canner load. My canner will do 7 quarts.

I had already washed my jars in the dishwasher so they were still hot. I had my lids and bands simmering.

I had my tomato juice just at a simmer on medium heat making sure I stirred it often to prevent scorching.

I had my pressure canner ready with simmering water. Since it took me a couple of hours to bake all of the meatloaf patties some now were just barely luke warm. Five patties will fit into a quart jar just under the 1 inch mark

so to warm them back up, I placed jar and meat into the microwave and microwaved on high for a minute or so.

I then ladled my hot tomato juice over the meat patties. Covering the patties.

I used a wooden skewer to run down the edges of the jar to release any air bubbles.

If you are canning anything with meat or oil; use a paper towel soaked in white vinegar to wipe your rims. This cleans any oil you may have missed just using a water dampened towel which may prevent a good seal on your jar.

I removed the lids and bands from the simmering water and tightened hand tight before adding the jars to the canner.

After loading the canner and getting my pressure up to 11 (I have a dial gauge), I processed my quarts for 90 minutes. If you try this recipe and use pint jars you will need to process only 75 minutes.

Although I was at the inch mark on my jars I still had some spill over from my jars as my water in the canner had a light shading of red from the tomato juice and my tomato juice had went down in the jars.. However this did not prevent my jars from sealing so they are OK. After processing I still see a bit of fat that collected at the top but not so much that I can't live with it. I have 3 more jars to process and I think I will cut back on the tomato juice and see if the processing needed more room to create juices in the jar.

I used my own onions and bell peppers grown this year in the garden and already had the spices and oatmeal on hand so I don't know the exact cost of these meals but the meat and tomato juice this week cost around $20.00 and I will get 10 quart jars so for me this breaks down to around $2.00 a meal. Can't beat that. Each jar would feed a family of 3 to 4 easily unless you have really big eaters. I think this would be good served with mashed potatoes or it would probably be great over some rice. Some people like a sweet glaze over their meatloaf and for those that do, after opening a jar for warming, you could add a little brown sugar to the tomato juice and serve over the patties.

PS..I processed the remaining jars the next day using a little less tomato juice. I still had liquid that run over during processing. I am thinking that maybe there is a lot of trapped air when I put all the patties in at once and then poured the tomato juice over everything. My next batch I will add a patty one at a time and pour the juice over each patty individually. There has got to be some reason this is not working as planned. In spite of juice and some the fat content spilling over, all of the jars have a good seal.

note: I know the food police does not recommend canning anything with eggs or oatmeal but the Amish have been doing this for years and sometimes not even with a pressure canner. I never hear reports of them dropping dead with food poison on a daily basis. Just remember to do what you are comfortable with.

This and That

2011-10-12T22:22:00.000-05:00

When the great nephew came for a visit. He climbed the big cedar in the front yard.

....and then he taught the grandson how to climb the big cedar in the front yard. Grandson now wants to build a tree-house and is busy collecting Grandpa's scrap wood.

The grandson had the turkeys chasing him like a bunch of puppy dogs.

I don't know who was enjoying the chase more. The grandson or the turkeys?

A pretty wildflower we saw on the way to the pond.

The Pazebo (a cross between a pavilion and gazebo) should be completed this week. I am loving how it is turning out.

Someone peeking through.

and the new kid on the block peeking.

In between all this fun, I've been canning. I've canned Bacon & Bean soup, Burrito Beans, Taco filler and canned some of my dried beans that I never got around to putting in mylar bags. Will post some recipes soon.

Hope everyone is having a good week!

RAIN!

2011-10-10T09:26:00.002-05:00

Thank You God! It has been raining since I got up around 5am. A slow steady rain that gives the earth time to soak it up.

We have a low pressure system located over north central Florida that is beginning to get to us here in the Florida Panhandle. We had some of the gale force winds yesterday but no rain. Our rain is supposed to last through today and into the night.

My little baby seedlings will be happy. My onions, brussel sprouts, collards, rutabagas and broccoli have all popped up out of the ground.

Since the rain had settled the dust some, I put on a hoodie and ran the tiller a few swipes in the chicken pen. The chickens are now happily scratching through the new overturned dirt in the rain. I think they were enjoying the light rain as much as I was. It won't be long before I will need to move them to a new area of the garden to start to work on it.

Homemade Chili Powder

2011-10-07T13:50:00.002-05:00

This past summer I grew chili peppers for the first time. I ordered and planted seed from a mild variety. They grew beautiful plants and peppers. No insects on plants or peppers. The peppers ranged in size from plump 6 to 9 inches and ripened to the most amazing red color. I made ristras and hung them in my kitchen to dry. Today I piled them upon the table top to begin to make my homemade chili powder.

Some of the peppers I picked before they were ripened on the plant did not ripen properly in the house. I'll not make that mistake again but they did not go to waste. The chickens liked them.

I began preparing my peppers by breaking the stems from the peppers.

Using a small pair of scissors, I then slit them open to remove the dried seeds and ribs. Although these were mild peppers you will still want to use gloves while handling peppers. Ask me how I know?

I don't think I will need to order seeds again!

I filled my blender with the cleaned peppers and turned the blender on using the next to the highest setting. I had to rock the blender gently to get all of the peppers to the blades to be ground.

After grinding all of the peppers I had a little more than 2 cups of ground pepper.

To each cup I added 1/2 cup of oregano Mexican is best but all I had was the regular. 1/2 cup of granulated garlic you can use powder and 1/2 cup of cumin. You can add ground cayenne pepper as well but since my mild peppers had a little heat I did not as grandson shares a lot of meals with us.

I placed all of the ingredients back into the blender to get it all good and mixed and then spooned it into my clean, dry jars. I ended up with about 4 cups of finished product.

The next round of cool fall weather, I will make a big pot of chili and use my fresh homemade chili powder.

Around the Homestead

2011-10-04T14:18:00.001-05:00

We had our first light frost yesterday morning, well...it was lightly on the windshield when I took grandson to the bus stop. I had to dig deep in the closet to find a pair of jeans and an old sweatshirt so I could do chores. I am a cold weather wimp.

Mom was peeking out or her door to see how cold it was. She lives on the homestead in a park model camper trailer. We finally convinced her to move out here a couple of years ago. Her neighborhood in town had gotten really bad. We are relieved that she is here.

Papa Bear let a couple of the kids out of their pens to frolic around. Waddles wanted a bite of Papa Bears hat but I missed that picture. Waddles is the first kid born here with "waddles" so that name has stuck.

Twinke, Waddles sister, checked out the turkeys while finding leaves to eat. I didn't think this little doe was going to live when she was born. Mama doe kidded 4 and Twinkie didn't even weigh 2 pounds and was limp as a dish rag. Her brother and sisters were 5 and 6 pounds. I bottle fed her and one of her sisters. She may be the smallest but she has the biggest mouth.

Then she wanted to see what the thing was we kept holding to our eye and clicking.

Rattler one of our mixed breed rescues guards all of the bucks in the back pen.

This is Rusty one of our mixed breed bucks. He will be butchered soon. He's a big boy probably around 200 pounds. The fence he is standing next to is 4 feet.

This is Lady our guardian dog for the does. She is a mixture of Australian Shepherd and Great Pyrenees. We've recently had to put her on a chain as she discovered she can jump the fence. The chain is long enough for her to have free range of most of the doe's pen and the shed. When we get the new pasture fenced in it will be hot wired so she can be turned loose again.

Our Confederate Rose Shrubs are beginning to bloom. They will be real pretty in a few days when all those buds open.

Our Catfish pond is about 3 foot lower than normal. We have not had enough rainfall this year.

Papa Bear is building a pavilion near the ponds edge so we can be shaded from the sun when we fish and picnic. We have purchased 2 of the tent type gazebo's in the past few years and although we had them anchored in the ground, windstorms have picked them up and tossed them into the pond or collapsed them into a mangled up mess. I wanted a fancy wooden gazebo but a pavilion was the less expensive route to go.

I am going to add lattice to the four corners and paint all the wood white and pretend that it is a fancy gazebo. I am sure I will love it regardless.. I'll post another picture later when it is finished.

A small gas station was being torn down in a nearby town. Our neighbors son was given a 200 gallon diesel tank to sell to the scrap metal place. Papa Bear offered to buy it so he is now the proud owner. Makes us feel better to know we can now store a fair amount of diesel for the garden tractor. Now to get it into a good location and start filling it up!

This little stray showed up at our house last week. I imagine someone dropped her off out here in the country. She has been hiding in an old storage area on the property.

The cat we now have is 16 plus years and has used up more than her "nine lives" and is too old to chase mice in the barn so we need a good mouser. If no one claims her this week, I'll meet our vet at the post office and she'll take her back to her farm and spay her for me. New kitty hangs out on the front porch and loves for grandson to play with her. I'll give her a rabies shot this evening as there is rabies in our area. Mom named her Nippy as she has a split in one of her ears. As it is healed it must have happened some time ago. Doesn't she have pretty eyes?

I wanted to move the chicken tractor alongside the lattice fence to see if a few chickens could destroy the torpedo grass in that area. When I built it last year I never put wheels on it. It was light so Papa Bear and I just carried it when I wanted to use it. I didn't want to interrupt papa Bear working on the Pavilion so I took the training wheels off of Jacobs old bicycle that he has outgrown and nailed a couple of fence staples into them to hold them in place. Don't laugh....it worked. I hooked it up to my little John Deere lawn tractor and it rolled right along. I'm sure when Papa Bear gets time he will properly drill some holes and bolt them on for me.

I put one of the "nekid butted" girls in the tractor. I'll get a couple more of the worse girls and put them in with her until their feathers grow back.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Canning Pickled Eggs Safely

2011-10-03T07:23:00.002-05:00

Until July of this year I have never had a pickled egg. Papa Bear made a statement that he loved pickled eggs. I now love them too or at least the ones I made.

In July I found myself with an over abundance of eggs so I went in search of a recipe. All of the recipes I found said to refrigerate immediately after canning. I wanted one that would allow me to store them in the pantry. I kept looking and finally found this recipe. She has two recipes, the first one does require refrigeration but the second one can be stored in a cool dark space. She suggests a basement. Since I don't have a basement, mine are stored in a cool dark pantry.

I followed her directions to a "T" as I know all the nasty problems a bad egg can cause. The eggs came out wonderful. I told another blogger that they are almost like a spicy deviled egg without the mayo. I am going to try some in some tuna or chicken salad soon.

If you use this recipe, please follow all directions. I don't know if I will ever have a batch that I can say lasted a year on the shelf but mine have been good since July.

Pickled Eggs ( 7 Quart Canning method )
Allows unrefrigerated storage in a cool, dark basement.

Canning Method:

If you are making many quarts of pickled eggs and would like to CAN them, such that they do not require refrigeration until opened, then follow these instructions:

- Use 1 Quart Canning Jars, Rings and Self-Sealing Lids (Like Mason Jars)
- Follow the manufacturers instructions for Lid Preparation (some require boiling the lids)
- Sterilize Jars, Rings and Lids

Preparation:

Boil and peel 8 Dozen Eggs (even though you are canning 7 dozen, sometimes you can fit 13 eggs in a jar or some eggs will be damaged during boiling or peeling process)

Never use an egg that is damaged. The surface of the egg should be flawless to prevent Clostridium botulinum from entering the egg.

If you use the ice trick to peel the eggs, you will want to re-heat the peeled eggs before packing them in jars. Place the peeled eggs back into a pot of water and raise the temperature of the water to 200 degrees to kill any bacterium on the surface of the eggs.

Canning Pickled Eggs Safely

Place your canning pot on the stove with 3 to 4 inches of water in the bottom, place your jars in the canning pot and preheat them.

In another pot, bring about a gallon of water to 200 degrees F (this will be used to cover the jars later)

Create the Brine:

In a Large Pot, Combine and boil the following:

15 Cups vinegar (5% acidity)
3/4 cup canning salt (non-iodized)
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons ground mustard
3 1/2 teaspoons dill seed or 7 sprigs of dill weed
5 to 7 Cloves garlic sliced thin
5 to 7 Jalapenos sliced thin

Stir and bring to 200 degrees F.

(note: you may add or change the spices to suit your taste, but do not change the vinegar, salt or sugar)

Packing and Canning the eggs:

Strain the Dill, Garlic and Jalapeno out of the brine solution and distribute evenly inside your 7 jars.

Bring the canning bath water to 200F.

Remove each jar from the bath and pack each jar with 12 to 13, peeled, blemish free, piping HOT eggs.

Stir the brine and fill the jar carefully with the vinegar solution at 200F. There needs to be enough solution to cover the eggs completely. Leave as little air space at the top as you can. (about 1/2 inch) Yeast and mold can grow in the air space under some conditions.

Apply a lid to the jar and snug a ring down, but do not over-tighten the ring. Air needs to escape during the canning bath & pasteurization process

Return the jar to the canning bath and repeat this process for all 7 jars.

After all 7 jars are packed and in the canning bath, make sure there is at least 1 to 2 inches of water above the tops of the jars. If there is not, add hot water to cover the jars.

Keep the jars in the canning bath until the temperature of the liquid in each jar gets above 180F. This is usually accomplished by bringing the canning bath water to a strong rolling boil, and then keeping the jars in the boiling water for an additional 15 minutes.

Remove the jars from the canning bath and place on the counter to cool

After the Jars have cooled, inspect each jar to ensure a proper seal. If the lids did not seal, remove the lid and check for any debris and clean if necessary. Either re-can them using the instructions above, or immediately place in the refrigerator to be consumed within the next few weeks.

Following this method should allow you to store the canned jars of eggs in a cool, dark basement for up to 6 months. We have routinely stored our canned pickled eggs for up to a year with no problems. We do however strongly urge you to proceed with caution. Do not end up like the fellow described here: Botulism in Pickled Eggs

Fat Tax...Coming soon to the USA?

2011-10-02T19:34:00.000-05:00

I just read this article. Denmark levies world's first fat tax. I am just about sure Michelle Obama will be singing their praises as soon as she gets wind of it. She seems to want to dictate what we should and should not be eating. How much do you want to bet the fat tax will be another accomplishment of the Obama administration in the near future. Just another reason to become as self sufficient as possible.

The only thing missing from my home garden is wheat. I can't find any info on growing it in NW Florida. I sure would like to grow some or at least know I could grow it here should the need arise. Until then I have stored a little over 300 pounds in #10 cans just to be on the safe side.

Pi$$ed Off Chickens

2011-10-02T15:14:00.000-05:00

It has been 9 days since we finished the hoop coop, fenced in a small portion of the garden area and moved 60 plus head of chickens. The hens are still acting pi$$y and barely laying a dozen eggs a day.

I've moved their nesting boxes to the new hoop coop. I did not put it much off the ground because in their old coop some would lay under the boxes and it is just too nasty to get down on your hands and knees to collect the eggs. So here it sets only 4 inches off the ground. In two days there has only been 2 eggs in the boxes. The rest were on the floor just anywhere or out in the chicken yard.

I moved the automatic waterier into the hoop coop.

I did forget their pan of crushed oyster shells but they have those now.

A few are beginning to perch on the one roost I lowered during the day..... One would think they would remember to go inside during the night instead of sleeping on the damp ground but noooo not my chickens.

I told them again today that the only thing saving them from the pressure cooker and canning jars is that this area of the garden has gone from this......

...to this in only 9 days.

I think the old homestead way of clearing the garden while fertilizing is going to work quite nicely, don't you?

I did get enough eggs this past week to make 7 quarts of pickled eggs so I guess I can't complain too much. A clean garden and food one way or the other..... So Chickens........Keep Scratching!

GAP

2011-09-28T10:53:00.001-05:00

My sweet daughter-in-law sent me this early this morning. She is in Texas with 3 of our grandchildren. Her husband, our son is in Afghanistan.

Heavenly Father; I come to you as humble as I know how. I confess my sins, those known & unknown. Lord, you know that I am not perfect & I fall short every day of my life.

I just want to take time out to say Thank You. Thank You for your Mercy.
I have more bills than money but thank you for my home, car, food, life and everything I do have.

I realize that life is full of trials & tribulations but thank you for not putting more on me that I can bear.

The New Chicken Pen

2011-09-27T11:01:00.003-05:00

A year or two ago I read on line or in a magazine that farmers used to make their garden on either side of the chicken house. They would fence off one side of the chicken house and let the chickens do the work of cleaning the garden and fertilizing it as they did so. The next year they would block off that section and move the chickens to the other side of the chicken house to start the work all over again. The old side would then be planted.

If you have ever had chickens in a pen then you already know they will peck and scratch an area completely bare like our old chicken yard. The few remaining chickens were still the ones I had to catch to move to the new pen. The front area here is where I plan to now plant a winter garden. The back area is useless as it has massive roots from a live oak tree. I have been dumping all of the goat manure in this front area and the chickens did a great job of scratching it into the ground. Just a light tilling and I should be ready to plant.

In the new area I had a small hoop house I used for plant propagation when we had our nursery business. I decided to turn it into the new chicken coop. The rooting house is made from pvc pipe and thick plastic. Grandson and I made a small 16 x 16 doorway in the side and cut the plastic out of the new opening.

We then covered the entire hoop house with a tarp as it would be too hot with the clear plastic. We even have an emergency stash of water by the new coop if needed.

The chickens have their work cut out for them. I hope in a months time they have eaten every weed, weed seeds, insects and their eggs out of this area and then I'll move them to another side of the coop.

We put up two long roost in the coop but the chickens have refused to sleep in the new coop.

I thought maybe that maybe the roost are too high but one flew up on top of the 6 foot fence to roost.

A few flew up on a cross brace.

The rest of them settled down alongside of the lattice back fence.

The only time they are in the coop is to eat the layer pellets.

I put some nursery pot containers with hay in them for some temporary laying boxes. Only a few have gotten the hint. The rest of the eggs are being laid right out in the enclosed yard full of weeds. I go on an Easter egg hunt everyday.

I will try lowering the roost and see if that will help to make them start using the coop at night. I also plan to build their new nesting boxes this week. I don't know what else to do. I accidentally clicked on a PETA site the other day with an article on why you shouldn't eat chickens and how intelligent they were. They haven't met my chickens! I think I will order this shirt and wear it to the coop every morning and see if any of them can read.

The turkeys are in their new home!

2011-09-26T01:13:00.001-05:00

I am so happy! We have almost completed two projects this past week. First the turkey pen.

We sectioned off a 50 x 50 foot of pasture area for the turkeys and fenced it in with 6 foot poultry netting.

This Camper Shell was about to be hauled off to a land fill so we rescued it. We thought it would make a fine roof for the turkey house. Grandson and I are going to side it in with cypress scraps a friend got us from her friends small sawmill.

The turkeys seem to like getting out of their small enclosure and into their large new pen.. They are almost 12 weeks old and have just started fanning their feathers. Four of them are doing this so I guess we have 4 toms and 2 hens.

Although the eggs I ordered were supposed to hatch out to be Narragansetts. We had one white with black markings. I think it may be a Royal Palm. He fans his feathers out too so I guess it's another tom. I wonder if I should try to get a few more Royal Palm eggs so he can have a girlfriend of his own kind or maybe I should just name him Thanksgiving or Christmas?

Out of the mouth of babes

2011-09-21T20:44:00.000-05:00

I was listening to the TV in the background from my son's room and caught a funny statement that I haven't heard before. A woman stated that her grandma always said that if the shoes don't fit, they ain't your shoes. Papa Bear and I had a laugh and then it was time to put my 6 year old grandson to bed. . We say our prayers that always start with the "Now I lay me down to sleep and then Grandson adds what's on his mind. After talking to God about his friends and family he added....and God if the shoes don't fit they ain't your shoes.

Homesteading..It's all rainbows and butterflies.....

2011-09-21T14:05:00.001-05:00

.....NOT!

I was reading Phelans Blog this morning and realized that a lot of so called homesteading blogs I read really does "sugar coat" the real life of a homestead. The fact of the matter is that a lot of the time it "ain't" pretty. Phelan woke up to a problem and dealt with it like any sensible person would do. She just took the time to tell the blog world about it and to post pictures. Why would anyone do that you ask? So we can learn from their mistake. I know now that when I see a tear in my wire I don't need to put off repairing it. I have enough problems with my flock of chickens. Phelan apparently got a lot of nasty emails for her post but I for one appreciate the real life blogs. I then know I am not the only one with problems.

A few months ago we noticed that more than a few hens were losing their feathers on their rear end. This is how cannibalism starts in a flock. The culprit (usually a hen) will pluck the feathers out of another and then start on the flesh, pecking at them until death, at this time others will join in on the "feast" so they too learn cannibalism. Usually it is one rogue hen causing the problems but I have yet to find the one doing it. I just find the dead body pecked to death and covered with ants and swollen and smelling in the heat....no it is not pretty. I have lost an egg producer and future meat for the table. I have lost 5 like this in the past two months. Although we have a fairly good size chicken yard, the flock has pecked every blade of grass and weed in the area so boredom may have been the cause. I recently sectioned off a small section in the yard and have been moving all of the hay and goat poop into that area for them to scratch in. The chickens make great little garden tractors by scratching in all of the hay and poop. I'll have a nice little garden area here when I move the flock. I'll show you in another post what I am doing as I find the time to complete my project.

Another homesteading family also deals sensibly with problems as they arise. Patrice at Rural Revolution posted this on her blog about a cow they had to put down due to an injury but they like Phelan was able to turn a bad situation into something good by providing meat for the family.

On this 10th Anniversary

2011-09-11T06:43:00.000-05:00

9/11.....We Remember

Turkeys

2011-09-10T13:08:00.000-05:00

I wanted some Narragansett turkeys to raise. I looked for months on Craigs List for turkeys or eggs to hatch but couldn't find any. I turned to the internet and finally ordered 2 dozen eggs form a hatchery as they were sold out of poults for the year.

I incubate chicken eggs all the time with a pretty good hatch success but I was so disappointed with the turkey eggs. Out of the two dozen I ordered only 6 hatched and one is white with some black markings so it is obviously not a Narragansett.   I did email the company and they informed me they were sorry I was disappointed and they had no idea what the white turkey is. Will not be ordering from them again.

I wanted more than 6 turkeys so I looked on ebay and low and behold they had turkey eggs. I bid on and won a dozen. The post office called me to come and pick up my package....it was "leaking". When I opened the package 4 eggs were broken. I guess some postal workers along the way used the packaged marked "Fragile Hatching Eggs" for football practice.   Needless to say none of the remaining eggs hatched.

So far with the cost of the eggs, the shipping, food, 6 foot poultry netting, post, staples and a small house our Thanksgiving turkey will equal out to about $100.00 a pound. We will think we are as special as the elite in Washington who dine on $100.00 a pound steaks!

We did get another 50 foot of netting up this morning before it got too hot to work. Hopefully a few more days will see the turkeys in their new home. I had no idea they grow as fast as they do. Keep your fingers crossed that I have at least one hen and tom so we can produce more next year.

I've missed blogging!

2011-09-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Although I went days, weeks and sometimes months between posting, I still enjoyed my blog.

When I stopped blogging I was writing the story of my son's car wreck and the months that followed. Just as I was getting into DJ's story, Representative Gifford was shot in the head and suffered a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). Without going into a lot of emotional detail let's just say I was more than a little upset that because of her position she received the best medical care and therapy while our young men and women in the military have to fight and beg for any care that they receive. Don't get me wrong.... I am thankful for Mrs. Gifford's recovery, I'm just saying that the military deserves just as good treatments and therapy as Mrs. Gifford receives. In the future I may once again share DJ's story with you but I am just not up to it at this time.

As time permits I will be adding our "farm stories" to get you caught up on happenings around here. I have been sick for over a week but getting better. We have got to get the turkey pen (yes we now have turkeys) finished and get them out of the small enclosure they are in before they begin to walk humpbacked!