Homemade Mommy McMuffins...

We are getting ready to go on an extended delivery for Man's business...more info on that soon....but in preparation of leaving at the crack of dawn, I premade "Mommy McMuffins."

First of all....I got some eggs from the store last week (I had a free coupon)

Can you tell the one egg in this pan that is from our farm??

 

Put into muffin tins and then baked. 

 

Baked sausage patties.

Toasted muffins.

 

Wrapped and ready to rewarm in the oven in the morning.

Catalogs...

Oh how my life has changed.  In high school, I was a bit of a clothes horse and LOVED looking at clothing catalogs.

Then I got into scrapbooking and it was scrapbooking catalogs...

Now, I look at catalogs for Bull Semen.

Yes, there is such a catalog!!

 Bess's AI guy was out today and we are getting ready to AI her for a new calf next spring.  He says she looks much better this year.  Her coat is sleeker (more sleek?) and she has put on weight.

I think the Calf Daddy is going to be Legal.  That sounds so....well not country :)

Country Dogs...City Dogs

Danny and Kristl are going to be spending the week being city dogs at Nana & Pawpa's house.  Here they are in the back of the truck ready to go.

 

Danny Dog

 

 

 Kristl

Summer Supper Time

Homemade Pico de Gallo and Shredded Squash Salsa

 

 

Homemade Chicken Chimichangas with farm cheese and cream cheese Baja Sauce

 

YUM!

 

Healing....Wordless Wednesday.

More peaches....Peach Salsa

Today...ok, I guess technically...yesterday, I worked on peaches...I will be working on peaches again tomorrow...or I guess...today....anywho...this is what I did!


Peach Salsa
yield 8 pint jars or 16 8-oz jars
Adapted from Ball® Complete Book of Home Preservation

• 1 cup apple cider vinegar or white distilled vinegar (5% acidity)
• 12 cups chopped, pitted peeled peaches **
• 3 cups chopped red onion
• 3 pablano peppers, finely chopped
• 1 cup loosely packed finely chopped cilantro
• 1/4 cup honey
• 4 large cloves peeled garlic, finely chopped
• 2 tsp cumin

Prepare canner, jars, and lids. Prepare boiling water canner by filling with enough water to cover jars by 1-2 inches. Place over high heat and bring to a boil. Wash jars and lids with hot, soapy water, and place in a bowl of hot water (NOT boiling) until you are ready to fill them.

Prepare ingredients as directed in ingredients list above.

In a large, tall stainless steel pot, combine vinegar and peaches. (TIP: To keep peaches from browning, add them to the pan as you chop and measure.) Add onion, peppers, honey, garlic, and cumin. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Add cilantro and reduce heat and boil gently, stirring frequently, until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
Ladle hot salsa into hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding more hot salsa. Wipe rims clean with a damp, clean cloth. Center lid on jar, then screw band down until resistance is met then increase to fingertip-tight.

Lower jars into boiling water canner, making sure that jars are covered by 1-2 inches of water. Add more boiling water as necessary, and cover with lid. Once water has returning to a rolling boil, start timing and process 15 minutes for elevations up to 1,000 feet above sea level (increase 5 minutes for every additional 1,000 feet of elevation).

Once time is up, shut off heat, let sit in canner for 5 minutes, and transfer jars to a double thickness of towel placed 1-inch apart. Do not tip jars or wipe dry - water will evaporate.

Let sit undisturbed for 12-24 hours, away from drafts. Then check seals - the tops of the jars should dip in the middle, and not bounce back when you press down with your fingers. If jars are well-sealed, wipe them clean, label, and store in a cool, dark place. Consume with in 1 year. Jars that did not seal should be refrigerated and contents consumed. Eat within a week or so. 

Sadly, for my son....all "ping-ed" so no peach salsa for him tonight!

Also, sadly, for me...this is what happened to my favorite kitchen knife while cutting the onions...

And tonight's garden haul....

 

And all of this despite the fact that I fell off a 2 inch step by our cellar door, fell on my knees, smacked my ankle on said step, and sprained my ankle but good. Just call me "Grace".  (As my Daddy always does!)

Starting Peaches...

Last Friday, while waiting, not so patiently, to go pick up my injured kid from camp, I drove out to the farm market and picked up a bushel of Contender peaches.  They hold their color the best when canning.....and man are they GOOD!

 

 

As of right now, 7/23 9pm, I still have 1/4 of a bushel left to do.

I have put up:

 14 quarts of sliced peaches

4 pints of diced peaches

10 pints of peach salsa

2 half pints of peach salsa for the upcoming giveaway!

And a "can't fail" peach cobbler from my BIFF (Best Imaginary Friend Forever), that >>I<< managed to fail at!  Really!

(The peaches were supposed to sink to the bottom and the cobbler comes to the top and makes a nice cake, not the gummy thing at the bottom of my dish

--although it still tastes good.) 

 

And here is what we pulled out of the garden yesterday!

 

NOT an Epic Failure!

Yay!  The garden is producing.....zucchini!

 

So...lets look at some new ways to use Zucchini....

 

The first recipe we tried was zucchini pizza crust...sounds good.

 

I put it together and told my DH that it was looking like this was going to be an epic failure...he looked and agreed.

5 medium zucchini shredded.

3 eggs

1/3 flour

Spices

 

Spread on a greased pizza pan.

Bake at 450* for about 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and put on toppings.

Reduce heat to 350*, bake 20 more minutes.

OK...NOT an epic failure.  I didn't drain the zucchini enough so it didn't become a "crust" that was crispy enough to pick up, but was more like a really thin frittata.

I will try it again and actually drain the zucchini to see if it works...Next zucchini recipe....Roasted Zucchini Salsa!

More Barn Safari

 

 

YAY! He's back home

Today I picked our Boy back up from camp.  He had a blast....next time, however, I am wrapping him in Bubblewrap!  Apparently there was a crash during one of the games and he ended up with not just a black eye, but a "PLUM" of an eye.

 

He spent the afternoon resting and getting caught up on his sleep.  Probably the best thing for him.  The nurse at camp said she couldn't keep him down and he was running and running, so he didn't keep ice on it and there was lots of blood pumping, so now that he is resting we are hoping that it goes down quickly.  If not he may be visiting the doctor or eye doctor on Monday.

 

His "Welcome Home" surprise was a box of Twinkies.  All I heard for the week that they were shutting down Hostess was how he hadn't had a Twinkie in "his whole entire life...."  So when I saw that they came back out this week, I had to go get a box...

 

Here he's hiding his eye...that's the best way to do it...with a snack cake!

 

Welcome Home, Boy!  You were definitely missed!!

Warning:Gross Graphic Pictures....No, Really!

Weldon has been plagued with issues since birth.  Sigh.

The vet thought he was still born.  Born 3 weeks early.  Unable to stand for the first 2 days.  Pneumonia.  Then couldn't walk due to a big abscessed something on his leg.

Can't breath when it's hot...had another really bad day then the abscessed thing on his leg "popped".  It's still an open sore on his leg.

Well, about 2 weeks ago a friend was over taking pictures of Weldon's nose (it is rather cute!) and she pointed out a lump on his other side thinking it was the one I had mentioned to her.  (I was talking about his leg.) Oh my goodness, here is another one on the other side of his body actually on his body.  We've been keeping an eye on it....as it keeps getting bigger. 
It doesn't seem to bother him much.  He was running and romping around today.  After checking the internet and watching truly disgusting YouTube videos, I thought I ought to do something about it.  I did try to drain it, but only about 1/4 of it is out.  It's been Neosporin-ed and he is resting in the "sick" stall on fresh hay.  We'll see tomorrow if I need to do it again (Man, I hope not!)

Enter in what my cousin/BFF calls frontier medicine....word to the wise, I will not be Dr. Quinn, Medicine woman any time soon.  And these pictures are not pretty...so you might want to just stop now. 

 

 

 

 

 

Drainage....ug!  Smells bad...looks bad! 

YUCK!

Blog Hop and a Giveaway!

Hey everyone!

I joined up with the Homesteading Blog Hop again.  There is so much great information over there!  There is a link in the sidebar.

In 20 days, I will be having my 6 year "Blog-versary" and I will be doing a giveaway.(I'm not sure what yet....possibly some homemade jelly!)

Lots of Homesteading posts coming up.  (I will be posting again today, too) So tune in and come back August 7th.

Hey....HAY!

After a trying day yesterday, I woke up to find a wagon full of hay in the pasture with Bess.  I had talked to my hay guy yesterday and he said he was going to be baling and would call me after dinner-time.  I went to bed early.

He came by and just dropped the wagon.  (He is a great Hay guy!)  Then my agenda for the day changed...just a bit.  I gave him a call and he needed the wagon back so they were here by 9:20 am to help me unload all the hay.

88* and 45 minutes later...75 bales of great looking hay are stored in the barn for the winter.

 

Look closely below:  Do you see the Bessy nose? 

Look below that..do you see the Weldon nose??

What's that we smell??? YUM, Fresh Hay!
 

Shattered.....

We have...had...a glass patio table that we have had for over 15 years.  It moved over 2000 miles across the country with us without getting broken.  It moved from town to the country without breaking.  We used it at our July 4th picnic a year ago...and it sat in the pasture for the last year...through the rain, snow, sun....

We brought it back up to the house for this year's Independence Day picnic...it sat up here for just a week.  Yesterday, with no trauma, it just shattered.  It was in one piece at 9am when I left for my parents' house, at 9:45, my Man called to tell me it was in a ba-zillion pieces.

It was quite symbolic for my day....there was an accident and I sat in traffic for over 2 hours on my way down to town.  Then there was an accident on the way home and I sat for another hour the other way.  I took a detour only to find out that road was closed due to a gas line leak, then when I started taking the back roads to FINALLY get home, our road had a bridge out and there was another detour.  Really?

Then once I was home, I couldn't find Weldon, he had decided to go on a walkabout.  Then I proceeded to have a nervous breakdown.  Farming is tough.  Much tougher than me!  (It being 94* didn't help matters.)

Long story short....Weldon was back under his mama at dinner time.  We had Chinese food for dinner and I went to bed early.  And I still haven't picked up all the glass....

...meanwhile at camp....

Off to Camp...I love these guys!!

Today was the day...the day my baby goes off to camp every summer.  Each year I take a picture of him and his dad in the yard as we get ready to leave...

 2010

 

 2011

2012

 2013

I LOVE THESE GUYS!!!!

Really??? Humanity can be SO disappointing.

We live near a multimillion dollar operation that owns most of our county.  Our farm is surrounded by their farming operations.  They run a huge shooting range with multiple tournaments each summer.

We've not had the animosity that most of the "locals" seem to have.  That all changed today.  We have a very small home business that we are "eaking" out a living with.  We are not rich.  God is providing what we need and not very much more.  But we're alright with that because we have loved where we are and what we are doing.

There was a big archery tourney this weekend. The range was bringing big tractors with people mover trailers to the woods across the road from us. So we put up our signs along our front yard by the road.  One of the tractors very dilbertly ran over every single one of the signs....if it was an accident, he should not have been driving a people mover!! 

We noticed it after church, and when we asked the one driver he got all obscene about it.  Not a calm, "I didn't do it."  A belligerent venom, obscenity laced reply instead (Yeah, that's not suspect at all.)

So I set all the signs back up, along with another that said "Smile, you're on film" and sat there in the hot afternoon sun taking pictures of each of the drivers to "discourage" it from happening again.

 

 

Friends have suggested I go to the management and complain, but I really don't want retribution, nor do I want to move.  I'm still praying as to what to do about this.  It's so maddening that this corporation that is run by one family and it does own 95% of our county and I think even more of our little village, is threatened by our itty bitty business so much so that it needs to resort to bully tactics.  Now I realize you may think I am being a bit dramatic...that it's just one driver...however, it's trickle down.  If the owner respected his neighbors and the little businesses, he would insist that his employees do as well.  If he has a disrespectful attitude, that trickles down as well.

 

Dear Lord, I'm ready to go!

Smiling Puppies!

After the startling smiling Watermelon yesterday (Still What?) today we noticed that Danny-dog has started to smile too!

That dog loves his boy, and that boy loves that dog!

Wha...wha....WHAT?!?

OK, after our crazy, long day yesterday there was not much energy for much of anything today!  Naps followed by rest...followed by a visit from my Reyn BFF bringing clothes for my quickly growing boy on her way up to the lake to celebrate her mom and dad's 44th wedding anniversary (HAPPY ANNIVERSARY! CONGRATS!!)

 

Anyhoo, I found this picture on my facebook feed this morning and just had to share!

 

 

 

Fun Day!

We had a fun out-of-the-ordinary day on Thursday!  It counts towards the 101 too!

I took Boy and his friend to the greatest roller coaster park in the country-Cedar Point.

 

It was a L O N G  day, but a very, very fun one!