I have been planning our weekend.  Tomorrow we will enjoy a quiet day at home.. just family ( all 12 of us!).  We always enjoy a special meal on America's B-day.. so this year I will be making grilled steaks ( a rare treat) , baked potatoes, homemade baked beans, watermelon & homemade apple pie! It's not the fourth w/ out homemade apple pie! 

      Sunday our Church is holding an evening meeting and then a potluck meal. I'll be brining watermelon, lemon meringue pies and spinach salad. The girls are making cookies & cupcakes.  We are also going to bring a pinata & water balloons!  It should be a fun evening!

      Fourth of July is one of our favorite holidays!  We sure enjoy celebrating and taking time to remember how blessed we are in this land of the brave and home of the free!  I am also thankful for the freedom and perfect law of liberty thru Christ our Lord ! Jesus died so ALL men could be set free!  How grateful  I am for that!  We are no longer under the bondage of the law -- but are free thru the grace and liberty in Christ! Thank you Jesus for your precious blood shed on calvary so all men can be free!

  Hope you all enjoy a blessed Holiday!

Gloria

I'm quite proud of how it's turned out.  The lilacy-lavendar colors with the bits of bright coral-pink, the chairrail crackled white over dark green, the trim in brown sugar over white glaze over dark green with the putty stencils painted in sagey greens & country blues... - okay, that wasn't actually in the plan, but it just wasn't looking right, so I kept trying and now it's just perrrrfect...  The pannelling was so much fun, I fingerpainted the darker purple & greyish tan over the yellowytanish color giving it an old fence look.  We've made transparencies of Beatrix Potter critters to paint on the pannelling in stratigic places.  #2dd has started cutting 1x4s from the broken building leftovers that we'll paint the greyishtan color for baseboards...  We put all on hold for a week to work on dresses for the concert, now I'm pooped from all the activity and our trip (it was a 4 hr drive...) and taking this week off to rest and catch up on basics around the house.  I've got ladies coming for a Home Extension meeting next Thursday, so I've got a lot of cleaning up, organizing and putting together of the rest of the house to do before then....  Whenever there is a big project in one room, the rest of the house suffers!  Do you like the shelf?  I wish I had gotten pictures of that process.  They are plywood because I wanted them deep enough to hold school books and baskets.  There are two of them, so one shelf for each child #2-6 and a shelf for misc math manipulatives & dictionary...  #1 has her own little office area now, she grew out of a shelf.  I have science stuff in one of the top baskets (microscope & such) and index cards & such in a matching one on the top of the other shelf...  I'm really hoping to be much more organized this year for school....  I feel much more refreshed with this much done and I'm looking forward to spending time with our family and making lots of memories in this room! 

~  Abundant Blessings to all of You!  ~

Canning season is picking up and we are beginning to refill the pantry.  We did some cherries last night to bring our total to 24 jars.  We have bought some and my DH has gleaned some.  He will try to pick some more today and I found someone online who is trying to get rid of some for a good price before the weekend.  Yeah!  I love good deals and when I don't have to spend a lot for produce to can. 

My total goal is 83 jars for the year, but I am also trying to add to our reserves so I would need 120 jars total.  I had 21 jars left over from last year, so I had to can approximately 100 jars.  This means I need about 125 pounds of cherries.

I do these calculations for all of our produce and meat needs for our family of nine.  I track them all on a spreadsheet.  I can even tell you how many onions, heads of garlic, and pounds of potatoes I need to feed our family for a year.  Some things I am able to get all of our needs met from the garden and some I have to do without or buy from the store. 

Our canned and frozen packages needs for fruits and vegetables is 1200 per year and I want to get to have two years worth on hand or 2400 packages/jars.  My goal this year will be to get to 50% reserves where last year we were at 30% reserves.  My problem now is where to put all the jars. 

I have a great canning room with built in shelves that was here when we moved in, but I am quickly out-growing it.  This year we will be shuffling things around to move some other food storage to another room where we keep freezers so that we can free more room up for jars.

Apparently I will need some strawberries also in order to meet our year's goals.  We froze many of our own, but it is not quite enough.  Today we will also look to U-pick some strawberries before they are all gone for the year.

Avocado Salsa
Yield: 4 Servings
Sort of a combination of salsa and guacamole, this dip is sure to please lovers of both. If you like your salsa hotter, add another jalapeno or a few drops of Tabasco sauce.

1 avocado, peeled and diced
1/2 c Tomato, Chopped
1/2 c Red Onion, Chopped
1/4 c Green Bell Peppers, Chopped
1 Jalapeño, Finely Chopped
1/2 t Garlic, Minced
2 T red wine vinegar
1 T olive oil

Combine the vegetables in a medium bowl. Mash the garlic with salt in a cup or small bowl. Add the vinegar and oil to the garlic. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss to combine the ingredients. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Good morning!  I hope anyone stopping by is doing well.

The strawberry farm is just opening this week. I've heard the berries are on the small side and not very sweet yet so I'm going to wait to pick until late next week. I've got 4-5 flats to pick - 2-3 for me and 2 for my mother. I'm told they are going for $1.30/lb this year which is still cheaper than getting a quart for $1.50 at the store. Anyway, I've still a bit of jam left but will make 1 batch to restock then dehydrate the rest. Gosh but I LOVE the dehydrated ones in my oatmeal or cream of wheat! Yummy! They are good in muffins too. I usually keep a gallon jar of dehydrated Strawberries which lasts close to 5 months if I'm careful. I'm considering on upping it to two gallons of them this year. Something is telling me to up my storage items this year.

Blueberries are begining to look better - It was so dry here I feared they wouldn't amount to anything. I've a couple bags in the freezer yet so am begining to feel the need for those too. It's too soon for the blackberries but hopefully will have a good crop of them too. They are good for jam and syrup - mmmmm.  For a special treat I enjoy taking a bit of syrup and mixing a bit of soda water. Very refreshing.

Now the strawberries are about the only one of the above mentioned I have to pay for. The wild ones aren't plentiful here unless you have a ton of acrage to roam around on.  The rest I have spots along back roads that I can go pick to my hearts content. One gentleman lets me pick blackberries down his mile long driveway in return for a couple jars of jelly.  His berries are always huge and very sweet and he doesn't do a thing to them.  Sometimes a friend of mine has a bunch of extra plums that I cook down into jam or sauce. mmmmmmm to that too.  The best ones are the ones that get a tad bigger than my thumb (trust me, I have chunky fingers so that's pretty good size lol). Nice and sweet. The bummer is the pits but can't have everything.

Well, I'd better go do some chores here at work. There's some cabinets that really need to be cleaned unless we get a patient then it'll have to wait.

Have a great day all!

Michele

I haven't posted lately. It's the story of my life; I have been waiting for Liv to download pics & life got really busy all of a sudden. It went of cold very rainy Spring to Summer, right now! Animals, garden out of control, flowers being too wet now drying up, laundry, my oldest daughter's wedding in Colorado, kids summer camp, local parade & family day in the park where we took our goat milk soap & sold it, and on & on ...... I don't like CRAZY BUSY! I heard someone say once that B.U.S.Y. was an acronym for:

B-being

U-under

S-Satan's

Y-yoke

while that sounds a little strong to me at times, sometimes life just "get's busy"with 13 kids & a farm but, I do try to remind my self & evaluate the things I'm doing. Do they bring honor to God? Are they REALLY blessing my family? Alot of times I have to say No. So as I type I am evaluating some things and revamping my schedule. I want to be sure my farm living doesn't take all the carefreeness of summer out of my life the  life of my kids. I want to enjoy my flowers & grass not just worry about the watering & up keep, if you know what I mean. It is late & we have company coming for a visit thru the 4th of July so better go for now. I will post hopefully soon with news of our farm & family happens as well as PICTURES! lol

Justified by His Grace

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

Titus 3:4-7 KJV

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For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

2 Corinthians 5:21

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Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses.

Acts 13:38,39 NIV

I don't think I have ever taken a photo of the old homestead from this angle..... I was on my mower today and I had my camera in my apron.... this is being taken looking west from our garden area...... I wish I had a photo of what this looked like " before".. oh my! It was so delapitated!  The building next to the house is our "schoolhouse" or aka: "smoke house".... it was built as a smoke house and was in such bad shape when we moved here. Many told us to tear it down. My husband decided to make something of the old structure and completely remodeled it from floor to roof... and made our schoolhouse! We spend a great deal of time here... this is where we do all our schooling. As you can tell it's close enough to the house, that I can run in and check on things.   This November it will be 3 yrs since we moved to Missouri. This place has seen many changes - it's really not the same place we drove up to!  Wow.  Still have things to renovate still, but most of the stuff is done! Praise God for that!