Laughing Thyme Farm: Living the Dream

It’s one of those hair-pulling-out days.  The kids are fighting or whining or doing both subsequently.  Liam’s in a grouchy mood and throwing fits.  I’m in a grouchy mood and feel like throwing one too. 

The stupid dog dug up the rows of fall/winter garden that we worked so hard on last Sunday.  Plus she keeps going into the neighbor’s yard, following neighborhood kids to their houses, and chasing cars.  So I’m determined that she is going to have to be tied up.  At first I hated to do for her sake, because she’s a country dog and enjoys her freedom.  But she has been abusing that freedom.  NOW I hate tying her up because she has been barking incessantly for 3 hours straight since I tied her up.  PLUS, I’ve had to untangle her from the trees and shrubbery TWICE because she is too ignorant to go BACK the other way she came from. 

Another dog annoyance is the fact that when we got Daisy from the pound in another county they said that the voucher for the “fixing” of Daisy would be good in the county we live in.  So we get to the time where it is now necessary to “fix” Daisy and Maury County refuses to do it.  So apparently we have to drive over an hour to the county where we got her to get the job done.  If we had known that was the case, we probably wouldn’t have gotten her in the first place.  Sigh. 

Anyway, I’m hoping that today gets better.  I don’t like being stressed out.  And trust me, no one likes to be around me when I am…..

I am now 30 weeks pregnant!  Since I generally go early, I have less than 10 weeks to go!  (Which also means that Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner.)  It’s generally around this time that I realize I need to get out the packed away baby clothes and the crib.  I start doing little baby things like getting plain onesies and embroidering baby-type stuff on them.  We’re wrapping up plans for family to come so that I won’t have to go to the hospital alone.  I need to buy the cloth diapers for Sean….a new adventure for me.  We’re all excited and “ready” in the familial sense to meet Sean, but there is still quite a bit to do. 

We had a little scare last Friday, which is the reason that I haven’t been on to blog.  I just didn’t feel like it!  I woke up early Friday morning with the stomach flu.  I ended up getting sick and also dehydrated, which in turn gave me contractions.  I also had some VERY painful gastritis. 

Eric called a general practitioner who told us to call the OB who told us to call the general practioner who told us to call the OB. (That wasn’t a typo.)  Finally after calling around for over an hour, my dr. let me come in.  After getting there she sent me to the hospital to get hooked up to an IV.  They were able to stop the contractions and get me hydrated.  I still had really bad gastritis for a few days.  Occasionally I’ll still have a pain in my stomach after I eat, but I’m mostly better now.  Sean is very much healthy and better off in my tummy than here in the outside world. 

We’re all thankful to God that He took care of Sean and me.  I generally don’t go to the dr unless I’m in a lot of pain…..and I was.  And Eric usually goes to work even if I am sick, because I can usually handle things at home even if I am.  Luckily, he decided to stay home because I was in so much pain and I was in enough pain with the gastritis to go the dr.  And so Sean stayed safe!

Back in July I ordered by fall plantings of garlic, because I know that certain varieties sell out quickly.  I was supposed to receive the garlic via the mail sometime in September.  It’s now October and I still haven’t received the garlic.  So I’m going to have to e-mail the company and see what’s up. 

I was hoping to get the garlic in this weekend, but it looks like my plans will have to change.  Instead, this weekend we’ll probably work on getting the beets in and hope that the seedlings get big enough before the frost.  We had a lot of rain at the wrong time, so we had to postpone the planting.  I hope that it will work out.  I love pickled beets and I only have one jar left….  I’d also like to pressure can some for borsht.  Mmmm…..

But back to the garlic.  I ordered a decent amount because:

1.  We use a LOT of garlic.  Almost every dinner has garlic in it. 

2.  Eric wants me to try to make this hot garlic stuff he bought at the grocery store a couple of times.  I’m not sure if they are pickled or not, because although I adore garlic I couldn’t make myself eat a whole clove of garlic by itself. 

So….I’ll be writing the company to find out where my garlic is.  I’ll also be looking out for Eric’s mystery garlic recipe, but I’ll have until next summer to find that.

This weekend was a canning festival.  Well, festival was probably a poor choice for wording, because it was HOURS of work.  That topped with church, a party, family visits and many other small, but time-consuming events made for a jam-packed weekend.  SO I guess the appropriate wording for the first sentence would be: This weekend was a canning marathon. 

Aggie and I were butting heads for a couple of hours on Friday concerning her math just because she didn’t WANT to do it.  I, on the other hand, insisted that she must do it.  (Guess who won? Thaaaaat’s right.  Mommy.)  She is perfectly capable of doing it.  In fact, she is a whiz at it.  I guess that she was just wanting to do something else.  So, I wasn’t able to get my water-bath canning done on Friday as planned.  This made my weekend schedule THAT much more tedious.  

Saturday, I canned some more crushed tomato and pickled hot peppers. I can’t remember at the moment how many pints of crushed tomato I made, but I got 1 qt. and 1 pint of the peppers.  I made 4 qts. of cinnamon applesauce. Mmmmm.   I also cut up many, many pumpkins.  So many pumpkins that my hands were orange and ached afterwards. I couldn’t get to pressure canning them until…

Sunday.  I canned 13 qts. of pumpkin, 2 qts. of butternut squash, and 2 qts. of sweet potatoes.  I have the one of the biggest non-commercial pressure canners, but it only fits 7 qts. at a time.  So I had to process each batch 90 minutes, wait for the pressure canner to “chill” for an hour and then start another batch.  I was up until probably 2 a.m. last night getting this done.  My parents were good enough to stay up the entire time with me.  Eric stayed up for a good portion of it, but he had to work today. 

I am writing now at 4:30-ish.  I’m getting rather groggy, but my day is far from over.  I will say that my body longs for some sleep.  However, it is relieving to my mind to know that I have a majority of the canning done for the winter. 

Overall count for my pantry for the winter, (after giving some away and using a few thing already,):

21 qt. pumpkin

2 qt. butternut squash

2 qt. sweet potato

2 qt. and 1 pt. canned peaches

2 qt. and 1 pt. pickled pepper stuff

3 qt. pickled watermelon rind

1 qt. and 1 half pt. peach-ginger jam

2 pt. strawberry jam

2 half pint blueberry jam

1 half pint pickled onion

8 qt. applesauce

14 pt. and 1 half pint crushed tomatoes

In freezer:

lots of chopped onion….don’t know how much

chopped onion/bell pepper mixture….don’t know how much

In storage:

14 small spaghetti squash

The pumpkin, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, half of the tomatoes, one qt. of peppers, and all the onion came from our garden.  I’m hoping that next year we’ll be able to double the harvest.  I’ve learned what to repeat for next year and what to do different. 

I’ll probably buy some more apples at the farmer’s market.  I still have tomatoes producing, so there will be more tomatoes to can.  I love pickled green tomatoes so when the frost comes I’ll get those done too.  We have three walnut trees to harvest a little later on too.  I have some zucchini and summer squash to grate and freeze in the fridge right now.  But not today….

Today I made some bread, as we were out.  I’m going to finish with the kids’ homeschool and then venture onto MORE canning.  Today I’m going to do my waterbath-canning….crushed tomatoes and pickled peppers.  Then tomorrow I’ll have to do my pressure-canning:  pumpkins, butternut squash and sweet potatoes.  On one of these days I also need to freeze some zucchini and summer squash that I got in abundance at the farmer’s market.  I’m not overly fond of summer squash and even less of zucchini, but I try to be a good example to my kids and eat ALL my veggies….even ones I don’t like very much. 

I’ve got a lot to do, so a short post today!

We’ve had many interesting and strange conversations at the supper table trying to figure out what we should call our farm.  There have been a lot of hilarious and out-landish suggestions resulting in a lot of laughter. 

Different suggestions:

Darn Deer Farm- because of the “darn deer” that kept eating our bean and destroyed our fruit trees)

Rocky Hill Farm- because the hill is rocky

Wild Oats Farm- (Aggie’s idea)

Daffodil Hill Farm- ruled out because the daffodils are only here for a short period of time

Grassy Hill Farm- because our hill is grassy

Rocky Spring Farm- Eric came up with this one.  We have a spring and we have rocks, but not in the same place 

Nothing seemed right.  However, the family was having a conversation about love the other day.  Somehow Aggie got on the track of holidays too.  Then she started talking about the holiday where people give the people that are their friends love stuff….”Laughing Times Day”.  We all thought this was hilarious.  Aggie was half-way embarassed and half-way tickled about the reaction. 

So while talking casually to Eric on the couch one evening, I said I wanted it to be something that was a part of our family….who we are and such.  We had tried to come up with ideas related to the environment here, but to no avail.  I jokingly said “Laughing Time Farm.”  As I said it though, it had a nice ring to it.  Then Eric suggested that maybe we could spell it “thyme” instead of “time”, as we intend to have quite a large herb garden here.  (I’m wanting to get into herbal medicine, rather than the chemical junk.)  Then it seemed like an even-more plausible name. 

At first when we suggested it to Aggie she was embarassed, but once again she had that sort-of pleased look on her face.  Now she doesn’t seem to mind so much.  I also wanted to ruminate on the name awhile and see if it didn’t wear off on me.  But I still like it because of it’s connection with family….we have a lot of good times with our large family.  We laughed a lot trying to come up with a name.  Laughing Thyme Farm seems to suit fairly well.

I’m currently in the process of making some homemade cream cheese and whey.  While I’m gathering that MOST people would do this in order to get the cream cheese, I’m odd and am doing this process to get the whey.  No, I don’t want to be Miss Muffet.  I just want to be healthy. 

I’ve been somewhat of a cultured dairy product fan since last winter when we made it illness-free.  I REALLY believe that this is due to the kefir that I had the kids drink at least once a week or more if they “looked funny”.  Last winter I went on a venture of trying out piima culture for health reasons.  I only got to the starter culture process.  I can’t remember what prevented me from venturing further into it than I did.  It may have been my teeny-tiny kitchen at the apt. we were in.  Maybe it was my miscarriage?  I really can’t remember. 

But here are the processes that one can go through in order to get some cultured milk products:

1. Make piima starter culture.  Very easy.  Buy a packet of piima culture on the internet and stick it in some good quality cream that hasn’t been ultra-pasteurized.  It sits out on your countertop for a day or so until it gets thicker. 

2.  Take the said piima starter culture and make:

- piima milk

-piima cream

3.  From piima milk make:

-whey

-cream cheese

or from piima cream make:

-butter

-buttermilk

Of course you can always make a super-healthy smoothie too. 

Benefits of above cultured milk products:

- provides your body with the beneficial GOOD bacteria that kick bad bacteria’s butt. 

- vitamin B and C content are higher than in “regular” store-bought milk

-beneficial lactic acid is increased

-better bone structure found in cultures who have used fermented milk products

-whey helps with digestion

-whey is good for elastic ligaments and moveable joints

-whey is beneficial for stomach ailments

-whey is used in an ancient method of preserving food

That’s enough for now!  But what I have done this time around is make the piima culture and then the piima milk.  Then today I started the process to make the cream cheese and whey.  I put a strainer and CLEAN dishtowel over a bowl and then poured the piima milk on top.  The piima milk had been sitting out for a day.  It was a lot like yogurt in texture.  Today it’s been dripping away.  I have quite a bit of whey, which I’m happy about. 

I’m going to use the whey to make some lacto-fermented vegetables.  My first two trials in this will be Ginger Carrots and Pickled Daikon Radish.  The carrots are because it sounds good.  The radish is because I accidentally picked up the wrong vegetable at the store.  Long story…

But anyway, by the end of today I should have some cream cheese and whey.  I wish that I could post pictures, but once again no camera.  We hope to buy one in a month or so, depending on a couple of things. 

This is all stuff that I learned from the book, Nourishing Traditions.

d onions. I pickled three half pint jars of my too small to cut up onions today.  On Sunday I had cut our onion crop to freeze for later use.  Boy.  That was fun…..

It has been my least favorite harvesting job so far.  I think that I peeled and cut onions for two hours straight.  My crop wasn’t even that large either.  The house smelled of onions.  The kids eyes were watering and they kept on sniffling too.  My only problem was my growing impatience.  Usually I kind of like tedious things like that, but by the end of cutting the onions I was practically huffing in annoyance.  But on the positive side….

There is now one big freezer container of onions and the equivalent size of red pepper/onion mix in my freezer.  Frozen onions are always handy to have around when I accidentally run out or if I don’t feel like making my hands reek of allium. 

And some good news after a very, VERY dry summer here on No-Name Farm, (we probably should find a name for it besides that,) the tropical storm that hit Florida last week has given us two days in a row of rain.  I think that it’s supposed to rain tomorrow too.  We needed rain badly.  Our grass was brown.  We haven’t mowed our lawn for at least a month- maybe longer…. early July?  The only rain that we have gotten was maybe 5 min. here and there. 

The first day it rained I went outside for a few minutes and got wet.  My excuse was to go see if our spring level was up.  (It was.)  The rain felt good.  I’m sure that ground is loving it too.

Last night we had a lovely family night together.  I had a gig at the Frisky Berry in Franklin.  (http://www.myspace.com/friskyberrycoffeeco)  It’s such a cozy atmosphere that I didn’t feel weird bringing my hubby and four children to my gig.  Something that is hard is when I bring the whole FAM-club thinking that it will be a nice place for all of them to come, then find out after travelling with them there that it isn’t at all.  I’ve had a few of those…..  Yeah.  That makes it hard to sing/play. 

BUT!!!!  Last night was one of those times that we “packed” up the whole family and brought them with us with that slim hope of the venue being children-friendly.  And we weren’t disappointed.  In fact, we weren’t the only family there.  The owner had HIS family there too.  I like that.  In fact, I like that a lot.  I wanted to stay longer after my singing debute there, but I could tell the kids were getting restless.  It was about 7:45 p.m.- 8:00 p.m. and none of us had eaten any dinner yet.  And I had a craving for…..

Ravioli.  I’ve had this strange craving for ravioli for a couple of weeks now.  So we went to one of our favorite restaurants, Buca di Beppo.  (http://www.bucadibeppo.com/locations/default.aspx?location=4302)  We also like this place because it is a family-style restaurant.  Our children can be loud and it doesn’t matter because there are other tables that are somehow louder than our large-lunged children.   Okay….and me too.   I’m loud too.  :) 

Anyway, the food here is YUMMY.  It’s “family-style” so the portions are large.  They say their “small” feeds 2 people and their “large” feeds 4.  This is untrue.  And in a good way.  We got a “small” Caesar salad that fed all of us an appetizer.  Arden didn’t like it, but let me tell you– I’m picky with my Caesar salad.  Usually I find it too salty or too bland or too just-plain-nasty or they didn’t put any anchovy in it.  The Caesar salad here was perfect.  There was even enough left over for Eric and I to have seconds.  They also give you bread for a starter. Tip: Use the balsamic vinegar on it.  Always the vinegar. Mmmm.

For our main course we ordered a “large” ravioli with meat sauce and a “small” Chicken Saltimbocca.  The chicken came with three decent-sized chicken breasts.  The kids shared one.  I ate 1/2 of one and Eric ate a whole one.  (Eric- who was full before the main course came to the table.)  The ravioli was the GOOD kind of ravioli, not the nasty-groddily-disgustingly soggy garbage that comes from a can.  I shudder now thinking of THAT kind.  Gross.  This is the kind in which each piece of ravioli is about 4×4″ and filled with fresh ricotta cheese and then slathered with a meaty marinara sauce.  Yes, my ravioli craving was satiated….sort of.  Now I want some more. 

Luckily I can have some more BECAUSE the “large” was so large that it fed all of us, plus we have some leftovers sitting in my fridge.  Guess who’s having chicken saltimbocca and ravioli for lunch today?  That’d be me.  THEN because we can’t go to Buca di Beppo without buying dessert, we stuffed ourselves miserably on some darn-good tiramisu.  Every time I go to Buca di Beppo I think that I’m going to try one of their other desserts, but I always ultimately go for the tiramisu.  It’s THAT good.  And yes, one order fed us all, PLUS some. 

It’s kind of $$$ to go to Buca di Beppo, but we always leave feeling that it was worth the money.  EVEN ERIC says that…..that’s saying a lot.  Trust me.  He said it’s like three McDonald’s eat-outs.  I’d rather fore-go McD’s forever if I can go to Buca di Beppo every few months or so.   We always leave very satisfied and full, with a doggy-bag to go.  There’s always a comfy feeling of family and good times shared together too-  a feeling of home-away-from-home.

Wow. I’m so creative with these subject titles…..

I have a harvest of a lot of onions.  Albeit they are small, but by golly they were one thing that actually GREW at all this year in my garden.  So I will be chopping these up probably tomorrow along with several red bell peppers from the farmer’s market 1/2 bushel of veggies that we buy every two weeks.  (We don’t eat a lot of bell peppers.  Not many of us like them that much.) 

On Monday I made some wickedly good strawberry jam.  The jam is a beautiful scarlet red color and it tastes amazing.  Strawberries aren’t my favorite fruit, but I love, love, LOVE homemade strawberry jam.  I couldn’t help, but whip up a batch of homemade whole wheat buttermilk biscuits to eat with the jam.  Er…..I mean, I made some biscuits that we can put jam on?  :)  

We have so much to do around the property this weekend.  We actually have a weekend at home, so it’s going to be nice to get some things done.  We look like a hillbilly family with dog hair, our hose, a kid’s swimming pool, various toys and lawnchairs out in our front yard.  I suppose that I SHOULD or COULD go out and take care of it myself, but I have been so busy taking care of things inside that the outside has suffered a bit. 

Today:

1.  homeschool.

2.  clean a bit.

3.  laundry

4. gig in Franklin

Tomorrow:

1.  chop up onions and peppers and freeze.

2.  homeschool.

3.  put my stuff on e-by already!!! (maybe I’ll do that one today)

Weekend:

1.  Re-arrange den, because we still haven’t done it yet. 

2.  Clear off front porch.  Most of the stuff is unpacked, just needs to be organized AKA getting off of the front porch. 

3.  Take some stuff to Goodwill.  LOTS of stuff. 

4.  Till some of the garden and plant some beets while crossing my fingers.

5.  Clean the back porch so it is enjoyable to sit in again. 

6.  Fix the apple trees with wire and stuff. 

7.  Fix the dining room chairs?  (Dependant upon my material arriving via mail.)

A few years ago I got into the habit of making homemade organic whole wheat bread.  It tasted good and was healthier than anything I could buy at the store….and cheaper.  Well, that lasted about one year.  About two years ago I was going through some issues that left me feeling pretty down-in-the-dumps.  As a result, I didn’t feel like making bread anymore. 

Fast-forward to a year ago-  I was feeling better and felt like cooking more, but the kitchen in the teeny-tiny apartment we were renting was also teeny-tiny.  So because of the cramped quarters, I still didn’t make any homemade bread. 

Fast-forward to the present time-  We moved to this new house with a nice and roomy, but not too big kitchen.  But I’ve been busy unpacking things and canning and gardening.  Then I went through my first trimester of pregnancy where I was dead tired.  (Just making some bacon and eggs made me exhausted.)  So still no bread.  Then suddenly my energy returned, but I still didn’t make bread.  This is because I was out of the habit of it. 

This past month I’ve decided that I’m only going to make homemade bread.  I’ve been mostly successful in achieving this goal.  I have some French rolls that I make that are good and almost always turn out.  Then about a week ago I tried this recipe that I used to use all of the time when making bread.  Um, yeah.  I forgot to grease my pan.  The bread stuck to the bottom.  I was very aggrevated!  But I’m also kind of stubborn, so I decided to try it again today.  I even was “brave” and made a double batch to save myself some time.  But this time I greased my pans with butter.  

The bread was raising beautifully.  I stuck the pans into the oven and hoped that it would turn out for the good.  Then when they came out of the oven, I waited 10 minutes before the great climax.  I was hoping for the best– my bread coming out without any problems with none of the bottom of the loaf stuck to the pan.  But in all honesty, I was really skeptical….darn slightly pessimistic person that I am.  And both loaves slid right out.  They looked mouth-wateringly perfect.  I put them on a wooden cutting board to cool and went to finish homeschooling the girls.

All of my pride was vain though, as I walked back into the kitchen and looked at the bread on the countertop.  There on the bottom of the loaves were chunks taken out of the bottom of the bread.  Apparently Liam was hungry and the bread looked good.  And I guess that one loaf wasn’t enough….he had to try pieces from both of them.  I would gather that I am destined to have loaves of bread with chunks on the bottom of them, whether from my own baking mistakes or because of hungry little boys.

Our pumpkin has ripened fairly early.  From all that I’ve “heard” they are supposed to be ready in the fall so that they can cure in the cooler weather.  Well, as my luck would have it, some are ready NOW.  So….

At this very moment I have 7 quarts of cubed pumpkin “steaming” away in my pressure canner.  It’s kind of a weird day to do it, but I’ve only used our pressure canner once and that was probably 4 years ago.  I wanted Eric around to do it with me, just for my own assurance.  And since he works tomorrow, today was the day. 

We started by washing the pumpkins.  Then splitting them in half and removing the seeds, which we are drying in the oven for future roasting. (I LOVE roasted pumpkins seeds.)  Then I sliced the pumpkin into 1 in. slices, removed more pulp and removed the outer rind.  Then I cut the pumpkin slices into 1 in. “cubes”.  I must tell you that not many of them actually looked cube-ish.  But I tried my best.

From there I put them into my giant stock pot, filled it mostly full of water and boiled the “cubes” for 2 min.  Then I packed them into my quart jars with the cooking liquid.  That part I was comfortable with, albeit a little annoyed at the tediousness of it. The part I wasn’t initially comfortable with was the actual canning them in the pressure cooker.  After Eric and I going over the directions for the  together, which I miraculously found in one minute, I felt pretty comfortable about it.  The pumpkin processes for 90 minutes after the pressure cooker gauge rattles for 10 minutes. 

I will say, however, that I can’t help feeling a little anxious about the possible steam bomb on my kitchen.  Plus the persistent noise is quite annoying to me.  Noise is not my friend.  Finally, after this batch is done, I have another 5 quarts to do.  (This is after the pressure canner cools to room temp with the first batch inside.)

So, we have a little over half of the pumpkins left in the garden.  We’ll probably get a good 21-24 quarts of pumpkins by the end of the season!  At least SOMETHING is growing well in my garden.  

Our homeschool sessions start on Monday.  All of the girls are excited about it– even ARDEN!  We received the curriculum by mail yesterday.  We only had to buy Lilly’s and Liam’s.  We already have the K and 2nd grade curriculum for Aggie and Arden.  We use Sonlight and most of the materials are re-usable.  They occasionally change the curriculum a little bit from year to year, but it has never been more than a book or two. 

I’ve always been an avid reader and believed that reading classic literature was a good thing to do.  Sonlight is definitely literary-based.  I’ve been really happy with it.  It’s pricey, but I don’t mind spending money on books that I know we’ll use at least 5 times. (5 children…)  To clue into how much I love books we have a bookshelf in our living room that is probably 7-8 feet long and reaches from floor to ceiling.  Yeah, um….full….of books.    NON-homeschooling books. 

AND we also have some cheap bookcases from Target in our den with THIS year’s school curriculum on it, as well as some crafts and drawing books.  All of the other years of curriculum are packed away in plastic tubs.  ANNNNDD….I have a HUGE amount of books in a giant plastic tub that are going to be sold on e-bay.  I have yet to sort through them.  Sometime this weekend I plan to do them. 

Yesterday, I sorted through and got ready the first 9 weeks in all of the kids schedules.  I also unpacked several boxes of “stuff”….FINALLY!  Today I just want to get the house a little cleaner before Eric gets home. 

This weekend’s goals:

1.  get books in boxes and ready to sell on e-bay.

2.  list the books on e-bay. 

3.  have Eric move some boxes to storage that are in my way.

4.  move furniture around in den and make it more organized or have Eric move it… :) 

5.  groom and wash the dog.  yuk.

6.  spend quality time with Eric and the kids. 

Then on Monday we start homeschooling!

I spent a lot of my first 10 years growing up on a 20 acre farm in central IL.  We had a big garden.  At various times we had rabbits, chickens, ducks, a nanny goat, sheep, horses, dogs and the ever-present barn cats.  Then when I was 10 years old we moved from the country to a suburban dwelling in a middle-sized town.  We would occasionally have a garden, but animals were restricted to one dog which died when I was 13.  I think that we also had some short-lived goldfish….

I always longed to get back to my country roots….not the MUSIC!  I guess that I’m a little old-fashioned and “romantic” about having a place in the country.  But perhaps it’s just in my blood.  There are generations and generations of farmers in my ancestry.  I also suppose I get this from my dad and his mom, who both enjoy garden work. 

My dream since I was 13 was to live in the country.  When I got married Eric and I had opposing views on it.  He liked growing up in the city.  I liked growing up in the country.  He always said that MAYBE we would be able to move to the country someday, but he was skeptical of its good points.  This was until my parents moved to a small town, REALLY small town into a home that had a good-sized yard.  At this time, we lived in a nice house with a very small yard.  Once he got a taste of the peaceful atmosphere that even a small-town could bring, he started thinking more optimistically about a place of our own in the country.

Then I started reading about farms being self-sufficient.  I talked to Eric about what I found.  We also were starting to try to eat healthier by means of what organic food we could afford at the time.  Once we thought about the possibility of providing our own food and drink on our own property, it seemed like a good thing to do. 

So from 2004 and on we looked and looked.  Whenever something came up that we liked, it was financially impossible for us to do it.  However, by incredible and Providential means, we were able to rise up out of most of our credit card debt, (98%,) and move to TN.  We lived here for almost a year when we found a decent property for a decent price, (at least one we could afford,) and bought it.

We have been living here for almost 6 months now.  Our goal is to make the place as self-sufficient as we possibly can.  It’s been great because Eric and I have different focuses on how to make this possible.  We have started a plan to do this a little bit at a time.  Even if we didn’t have the financial resources to do it all at once, I believe that I still would embrace the “one-step-at-a-time” approach to the whole thing.  I believe that I would be over-whelmed if I tried to experiment in all realms at once.  So slow and steady wins the race in my book.

We have done the same thing with our eating.  Where we never ate organic and too much fast food, we now use all whole-grain organic products, organic veggies and fruits, etc.  One thing we still are trying to conquer is the eating-out rather than in dilemma.  We do it a lot less frequently, but we’d like to cut it out all together, except for a special occasion here and there.  Another little step….another dream growing up.

It was one of those weekends when I was initially disappointed because I didn’t think that I got a lot done.  But after thinking about the things I actually DID get done I was relieved to see that in reality much was accomplished. 

1.  Went and got the hoosier cabinet.  Eric was skeptical….he always is about purchases of antiques.  I’ve learned to ignore him, because it takes all of the fun out of it if I try to argue with him about it.  However, he did break one of the knobs on the doors because he kept on trying the same thing over and over and over again getting the same result.   I just gave him an eye roll. What happened was that one of the doors doesn’t latch all of the way.  This is especially true when the cabinet is turned on its side to be carted out on a dolly, thus giving gravity its full effect.  That being said trying to shut it over and over and over again and having the door slam on the tile floor several times DOES lend itself to breaking the knob on the cabinet door.  Plus it was really annoying….but I digress. 

2.  I unpacked a box of STUFF!   GAAASP!  (SHOCK!)  Unbelief!  :)  Yeah, only 10 more boxes to go….

3.  Made some pickled pepper/green tomato stuff to store away for the winter.  I’m sure that the kids are going to “love” that. 

4.  Made some Peach-Ginger Jam. mmmm…. It’s just a little bit runnier than I would’ve liked.  It tastes great!  The kids DO love that. 

5.  Got a dog pen for Daisy.  Well, Eric did that.  She found a way out of it last night anyway.  Tonight she won’t be so lucky.

6.  Did a gig in Lebanon.  The fan kept blowing my hair into my mouth when I was singing, but other than that it went well.  I got a new contact for someone who wants to use me for demo work.

7.  Worked out a “plan” with Eric so that we can make this dry farm self-sufficient.  I think that it actually made Eric feel a little better seeing that we are making progress, albeit slow.  In 5 years, this place will be well on it’s way to self-sufficiency.  We mapped out the next 6-8 months for purchasing goals. 

8.  Read part of two books I bought for edible landscaping.  One is about the actual landscaping.  The other is about herbs and how to make tinctures and salves and such to heal rather than the chemical crap that doctors try to shove down our throats.     

I think that’s all I did….

I made some blueberry jam yesterday morning. Some of the berries were spoiling so I had to go through the batch and pick out the bad ones. That’s always “a lot of fun”. But I got it done. I didn’t have a huge amount of blueberries, so my jam batch was 5 1/2 pints.

In the 9 times, I’ve made jelly/jam I had two huge flops, one so-so batch and the rest were delicious. This time the jam turned out AMAZING! I always hate taking the time and energy to make jam and then have it turn out too runny. But it was nice and thick and smells wonderful.

AND it tastes great too. We had some on our toast this morning. It was delicious. I might not save THAT much money or any at all making the jam, but the time with the kids is memorable. It’s a good thing for them to learn. Plus, no store-bought jam quite has that fresh quality. I wonder what the “secret” is….

I’d have posted photos, but we don’t have a digital camera and the “camera” on our digital comcorder quite honestly stinks.

Daisy the puppy is adapting well to our home in the country.  She thoroughly enjoys being outside.  I was worried that she would like her temporary backporch home so much that it would be difficult to transfer her to her outside pen when we actually got it made.  But I don’t think that it will be an issue.  Then I’ll be able to clean up my porch and get the stinky dog smell out of it. 

I don’t know if the deer smell Daisy around or if the cayenne pepper/egg shell method I used on the beans and tomatoes is actually working, BUT I have some decent-sized green tomatoes on 2/3 of my vines and my beans actually have some leaves on them.  This is opposed to looking like victims of a weed eater attack.  We have a few pumpkins growing on the vines.  I still need to get more blossoms off of them and also the squash plants, so that they don’t die out.  That will be a weekend chore with the family along with weeding. 

Because I had been so exhausted my first trimester and a few weeks into my second, pretty much NO weeding was done on the garden.  Last week the family and I worked on the bean patch.  It was in bad shape and parts still are.  We were able to get 6 1/2 rows of beans done.  There is another 1 1/2 rows of beans, all the tomatoes, the onions and the peppers to weed also.  Eric has a long weekend, so maybe we’ll get it all caught up.  I’m just glad that we actually are going to have “fruit” for our labor.

Pretty soon we’ll finish up the kitchen cabinets and woodwork.  We also have to put new bottoms on our kitchen chairs.  I’m going to put more “stuffing” in them and re-upholster the covers.  I have scarlet, cobalt, turquoise, persimmon and sunflower fiestaware dishes.  I wanted the kitchen to have a vintage look about it, so I was looking around for some fabric for the chairs that would match and also so that I could possibly make a matching tablecloth and a curtain for the window over the sink.  I looked around and found this:

http://www.tabletopcouture.com/products.htm

These are vintage-style tablecloths.  The one I’m planning on getting is the “Bouquet” pattern.  They have factory seconds which have a few flaws in the pattern.  I’m going to buy those for the chairs and the curtain and then buy a “perfect” one for the table.  I loved the “Bouquet” pattern because it has ALL of my fiestaware colors in it.  I was thrilled to find it.  This will be one of our projects in the next couple of months.  I can’t wait to see the outcome.