~HAPPY 4th OF JULY~

  In the words of Herbert Hoover, "My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope."

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

BLESSINGS!

   I ASK FOR URGENT PRAYER FOR HOMESTEADBLOGGERS COUNTRYMOUSE (SISTER CARRIE). SHE WAS INVOLVED IN A CAR WRECK YESTERDAY WHERE HER VEHICLE WAS T-BONED. SHE WAS LIFE FLIGHTED TO A HOSPITAL, TREATED AND RELEASED TO HOME.

   HER HUSBAND CONTACTED US AND TOLD US THAT ONLY GOD IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HER LIVING THROUGH THE CRASH AND ASIDE FROM SOME INTERNAL BRUISING, CUTS AND SCRAPES SHE SUFFERED NO BROKEN BONES!! GOD'S HAND IS ALL OVER IT.

   AS I ALWAYS TELL FOLKS, GOD IS NOT SILENT AND YES HE STILL PERFORMS MIRACLES. THANK YOU JESUS!!!

   PLEASE LIFT SISTER CARRIE AND HER FAMILY IN YOUR FERVENT PRAYERS BOTH IN SUPPLICATION AND PRAISE. SHE IS GOING TO HAVE A TIME OF IT AS SHE HEALS FROM THIS. PRAY FOR HIS HEALING HAND. AND FOR THEIR COSTS TO BE COVERED AS THIS CAME AT A TIME WHEN THERE WAS A LAG IN THEIR INSURANCE.

   I KNOW YOU ARE ALL SUCH WONDERFUL PRAYER WARRIORS AND KNOW THAT GOD WILL HEAR!

GOD BE WITH THEE!

SISTER LORI

  Bring on the midnight canning!

  It got much to hot here today to finish the canning in our non-breeze kitchen, so we have put it off until it gets darker and cooler, so that is what I like to call a midnight canning. That is were you can until all hours of the night because you would rather go swimming during the day, and save what really should be getting done late at night.

  So in my spare time I thought I would share pics from yesterday.......

That is a lot of cherries!

Me pitting (I hate pitting)

Sarah cutting the cherries up.

Yum!

Making the goo.

Sugar!

Boiling the jars

Jam!

31 pints of cherries went up yesterday! That is a lotta work.

 In the words of Joseph Addison, "I value my garden for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs." 

~Mary-Ann~

   Ugh! we are only half done with cherries and already I never want to see another cherry again. It took all day! and I still have four flats left to pit and chop up! SO guess what we will be doing today?......If you were going to say soap, you would be wrong.

  When we are done all together I think I am going to paint my fingernails, just until the stain is gone from them.

  Well, got to get to my cherries.....

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

Blessings!

   Well, it's that time of year again...time for CANNING!!!

   I didn't take any pictures of our Strawberry and Strawbluey adventure (that was last week) but I DID take pictures of todays Cherry-ganza!:P

   First we have 67.8 lbs of cherries (yep you read that right:P)After washing them they are pitted. Here is Miss Mary-Ann taking care of that sticky chore:PLove my cherry pitter:)Once pitted they are put into a large bowl and sent to the cutting stationI had a little help from Miss Sarah (she did a little cutting but mostly did the cooking part)All cut and measured to send to the cooking stationThen the sugar needs to be measured out.

Miss Sarah mixes in the pectin and sugarThe jars are heated up while the fruit is cooking down

Time to fill the jars (me giving "the look":P)Not sure it will fill the last jarYay! it fits!!So pretty:)

Needless to say we are exhausted! But wow what yummy stuff this will be in the winter months when we begin yearning for spring once again:)

A bounty of provision. A blessing from the Heavenly Father. Thank you Jesus!

God be with thee!

Sister Lori

   Well......we did not make soap......again. Instead we went and picked cherries yesterday.....a lotta cherries......67.8 pounds of cherries! So, I don't know if we are going to can today or make soap today, I am kinda hoping for soap, but that does not look likely.

   I am really in the mood for making soap, since we now have enough molds to justify making shaped soap (instead of the old tray that just makes ugly square bars) and I finally talked mother dear into using soap colour dye, and oils! Unfortunately we keep putting it off.......

   In fact! This would be the perfect day to make soap, because Kristina will be here and we can finally teach her how to make it.....like she has been asking us to do (hint* hint* mom).

  Oh! we could can cherries now and make soap this evening! Or not........

  Well, I geuss I will go and find some breakfast, I need to feed this broken hearted child who's mother refuses to make soap with. Sigh*

  In the words of Sir Walter Scott, "He that climbs the tree has won right to the fruit."

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~ 

   I thought it was time to start writing on my blog again, so here is the first post in a hopefully long series. So, um, what can I say? Let's see.......

   Well, we finally got the garden in (I need to get pictures so that I can post them). Now we are working on the front flower beds, weeding and getting new plants in. The veggies are doing great in the big garden, but the corn got torn up by Sarah's baby goats (Ugh!), so that needs to be re-planted along with a row of peas (also lost to the baby goats).

   We are making soap this week, LOTS of soap. We planned on doing this on monday, but time just slipped away from us. SO hopefully we will be doing that today or tomorrow (I will be sure to take pictures of that too).

   Sarah and I will also try a hand at candle making with bees wax this week. We have made candles in the past, but never dip candles and never with bees wax, so this should be interesting and hopefully successful.

   What else can I say?.......

   My book is going rather well, but I am having trouble with a few parts, as it is hard to explain something that you have never done or tried.......like eating a squirrel.lol (don't ask).

  Um.....

  We put up several jars of jam last week, strawberry and strawberry/blueberry mix (neither of which I can eat). 21 pints of strawberry and 20 pints of the mix. Thats a lotta jam for us, and we still have cherry, blueberry, blackberry and raseberry jam to put up through out the summer.

  Okay, I have offically run out of things to say. I will try to post again very soon. Oh, I lied, I forgot to mention we got a pool and got to swim in it for the first time yesterday (that is,  first swimming in it where it was actually full and clean)

   In the words of Celia Thaxter, "There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart."

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

Dear reader, today we spent all of our morning, and part of the afternoon, canning strawberry and strawberry-blueberry jam. It was quite a fiasco trying to get it all done in a timely fashion, but somehow we managed. Ending our canning spree with 40 jars of jam.

To kinda fill you in on what has happened in the past month, in which I've been to lazy to post.

Ginger had her kids. The post before last told you she went into labor, well, she pulled the carpet out from under us with a false labor, and decided it would be best to have her babies nearly a month later! So, Mary-Ann comes busting into my room at around 9:30 in the morning saying Ginger has kidded. That little brat! So, as it would turn out, she graced us with two baby boys. Not good for a farm, but great looking kids! If only they had been girls. Sigh. Tipper was quite active in her k-nine aunty-ness, although a totally different species, Tipper took to the new kids like they were puppies, and at one point was helping Ginger clean the little ones off. What a good puppy!

All on the same day Tipper turned a year old, Patch had her second mother's day, Kristina had her first, and mom had her 30th. That's a lot of mothers!

Other than that, we've been kinda boring people, going through thunder storms, and trying to plant the garden. That's pretty much it on this end of things.

God bless and God be with,

-Sarah

Dear reader, as I dont want to go into great detail of much tonight, I will speak on one subject, possibly two.

I'm learning how to play guitar, after months of keeping my dad's old accustic in my room I'm finally playing. I'm mastering Hey Lolly, Lolly Lo, but its tough. The first song I was supposed to learn was "He's got the whole world", but it just seemed a little to boring for me, so I chose a song that was a bit quicker and stuck with it.

I've been playing for three days now, and my fingers have been so sore! I've lost most of the general feeling in the tips of them, but somehow the pain from the chords manages to seep through.  Playing on a scarred finger has been tough, I dont know how I'm going to fare with that, but I still keep at it, hoping one day I'll be good at it:)

Its a lot harder than I had immagined. No one told me how hard it really was, I guess they wanted me to figure it out for myself, to see if I'll stick with it. The earliest warning I got was about two minutes before mom handed me the guitar, after developing blisters on her own fingers from playing for almost an hour. I'm secretly pointing and laughing devilishly in her direction. lol.

Really it isnt too bad, just long, and it seems the better I get, the more I realize the guitar is out of tune, so back to the keyboard to try to get the strings tightened back up, then it sounds so weird! I'm convinced there is no happy medium.

That was my subject of discussion for the evening.

If you have any stories you would like to share about your first days with a guitar, just put them down as a comment, I'll be glad to read them:)

God bless and God be with,

-Sarah Daisy