Pioneer Woman at Heart

The chimney and wood stove has finally been cleaned.  This year the cost was $199.00. Last year it was $179.00 and the year before $159.00.  I see a $20 hike pattern here, but there are very few companies that do this in my area (and who are reliable).  Self sufficiency comes with it's own price, and there are no short cuts when it comes to responsibility.

Some days I don't look up an herbal/medicinal tea recipe.  I simply open my encyclopedia on herbs and pick a few I harvest, and brew the tea.   I think I picked this one up at a book sale years ago.  Not sure.  It contains a good amount of information on all herbs, but I noticed if I looked up "Stinging Nettle" it only mentions the medicinal use for asthma and regrowth of hair. No mention of allergies, poor circulation or other ailments. Yesterday's tea was nettle/peppermint.  Nettle grows here wild and the peppermint I grow from organic seeds.

The outside Christmas lights have been put up.  Zuri caught a glimpse of Hubby climbing up the ladder and let out a "stranger danger" bark.    Oldest daughter has been over two times with her new puppy Mia (hope I am spelling that right).  She is also 4 months old.  So, here in the photo, is Mia, Zuri and King.  All relaxing after a fun day of puppy play.  Jesse actually showed the first signs of playing with them, by playing with Mia.   It was refreshing to see Jesse join the fun for once.

Before we got started, I had to empty a canning jar of homemade vanilla.  It smells so good!  New cookie this season - whiskey caramel cookies.

The puppies sleep all night, but get up between 5:30am and 6:30am.  Not a big deal really.  Today they slept until almost 7am.  It helps me get up and going and back to intentional exercise (again).  They don't like going in their crates while I work out, so I've been testing their behavior by blocking them into the kitchen where I can mostly see them.  So far so good.  I have noticed they have exceptional hearing , whic h i s always important when you want "guard" dogs.

I have only posted one herbal bath tea, and it was difficult to find again.  Blogger is having a few issues I guess. Herbal Bath Tea ~ Cold and Flu I pu rcha sed chemic al and tag free "press n' brew" bags for tea making, but will mostly use them for traveling , and for bath teas.  We used muslin before, but ended up with tea leaves in the bath water each time.  By the way,

Oh dear, I have had practically nothing to share lately.  No new recipes, no new concoctions of herbs, or even anything remotely exciting. Unless you count the night that King proudly brought in a dead, flattened mouse.  Two girls went ballistic and screamed for me (or their Dad who conveniently ignored them) to come rescue them.    I found one daughter holding one puppy, and one holding the other and both screaming and pointing to the dead mouse.  I removed it of course, even while they were screaming at me while doing it.  I had gloves on, but they still couldn't watch.  I told them when they grow up and have kids, they'll be able to do almost anything without gagging.  P uppy nap time - Zuri with her head on top of King.  They both are growing so fast already.  King still thinks he's a lap dog, so this will be interesting.  Kin g has learned "speak" already.  He's been easy to train in th at department.  He's v...

I apologize in advance for the fuzzy photo, but these pulleys are way at the top and I was on the ground photographing them.  They are the original wood pulleys, still intact.  I took a quick picture for our album.  There is one more at the very top peek of the barn too. Once again, we have someone interested in the barn .  What's left of it, minus what we'll take from it .  Not sure if it will happ en, but we'll see .  This w ill be the umpteen th person to look it over.  It is a lot of work , but I would like to see it r eused as much as possible.  

 I have fallen onto the ban d wagon of the 20+ questions.  Enjoy! You'll need a cup of something to read th rough this.  I hope it entertains you today.   1.  Do you like bleu cheese?  Yes, but only mixed with whiskey and butter to slab onto a grilled steak.

(Puppy na p time)   The other day I was up before 5:00am, and not because of dogs.  I just couldn't sleep for some reason, and then the phone rang - fog delay.  I was able to get a few good hours of writing in while the pups slept.  The pups pretty much sleep like this when the are worn out from play time. I had to laugh at King one day.  He had a squeaky dog bone toy in is mouth and was barking at the same time, trying to get Jesse to play.  Jesse wanted none of it, but the sound King was making was hilarious.  Like he was saying "pretty please?" to Jesse.

I've been borrowing books from the library, over and over, contemplating which is the best medicinal herb book to purchase and have on hand (along with handicraft pattern books).  The above stack came in all at once, and my loving Hubby picked them up for me.  He was struggling to get in the house with them, ha ha!  I had to explain, how it saves us money.  I do like the recipes in this book - Medicinal Herbs, A Beginner's Guide, by Rosemary Gladstar.  I think I've shared this book before also.  I have one of her books with herbal tea recipes and make the teas.  This book remains on my wish list, unless another one interests me. These other three have many recipes that may be useful for us too.  There is a headache tea I'd like to try, and a few others, but need a few more herbs planted next year.  For now, I'll borrow these again. In the process of borrowing books on growing mustards, and making mustards, I located more ...

Mail delivered this absolutely adorable hand knitted miniature sweater Christmas tree ornament!  It came with it's own hanger too.  And a lovely card to go with it.  It totally made my day!  Thank you Mama Pea !

Warning:  It's a "grab a cup of ...." kind of blog post today.   I was taking bets as to how many people would notice, including our kids th at were not home, the work we did on S unday . They noticed.  Whew.  Looks so nice when I look out my window now.  It's that ki nd of reli e f when you see a messy room all cleaned up. Our 19 year-old surprised us with a visit last Sunday night.  First thing she said, was "I noticed you don't have any outside lights up." Guilty. We had zero time with all the outside work.  She insisted we at least put some up around the front porch. We did not.  We ended up taking a road trip.

In July of 2014, we came home to this.  Free wood.  Delivered for free.  Pieces were bigger and taller than myself, and wide.  Very wide. Guess what?

Like most of you, my hands, face, and lips are feeling dried up and awful already (cold and wind).  My younger two girls love the homemade lip balm, and we are almost out of homemade hand lotion.   That is now on my to-do list now al so. The last time I made the lip bal m I used small plas tic , round cont ain ers.   This time I u sed lip b alm tubes.  I used 10 of them.

Now, first of all, I have no business in starting any o f these new fun projects , but I did.  I still have a baby blanket t hat is not finished .  Re member the granny square one?  I put it away a nd p lum forgot again.  I have to use different white yarn so we'll see if it even turns out right when I do fin ish it.   So ....  Cup of coffee anyone?  This one was a bit of a challenge for me, and my coffee is sitting up a bit too high in the cup, but I'm glad I'm venturing into toys for kids.  This would even make a nice pin cushion for someone who sews and loves coffee.  Heck, it could be hot chocolate.  I could crochet mini marshmallows on to p.   I mean it's a play toy, so we can play all sorts of make believe.

Guess what I am making next?  Hint:  It will need to infuse for 3-4 weeks and will be ready in the nick of time for Christmas day.

Rainy days are good for bread baking.  I made my first Jalapeno Cheddar Artisan bread the other day.  Yum!  If you 'd like to try th e recipe it 's from Candy at Lazy J Bar C Blogspot   Delicious !  I baked it to go along with ham bone soup for dinner.  The w eather continu es to be we t an d cold here.  I made a trip to the library and brought ho me these:

Hubby and I had another prosperous morning in the chicken/goat barn.  We used odd pieces of barn siding (recycled from the big barn) to repair and fix up the barn doors.  You can see in the photo there are a few holes yet to cover, but the bottoms of the doors are looking much better (sharing photos soon I hope).  . . . time and patience.

Late Thursday, all day Friday and all day Saturday, the rain fell here.  We had one more moment of porch time.  Saturday, although col d, I st ole a few moments o ut there too.

You'd think there would be a scien tific term, for a syndrome defini ng ch ronic recipe colle ctors .  Specifically for those who collect new recipes to try, while att empting to try all the stashed recipes they already have.  It's an obsession I tell ya . Sigh.... New recipes find me w hether I want them or not lately.   Cranberry butter was a new, delicious butter for me to make. You can simply use it, freeze it or gift it. I'm sharing the recipe

In the past several years, I knew that my dehydrator had a temperature for rising bread dough.  It was not large enough, height-wise.   My new one however, is perfect for rising bread.  I placed a small tray of water in the bottom, removed all my racks but the bottom one, and covered the dough with a damp cloth.  My dehydrator has a clear door on it, so I can see the results without opening it.

 45 different scarp yarn colors, and 90 ends sewn in later......

Today's weather is not as cold as yesterday.  I'm going to put a few fol ding la wn chairs back on t he front porch.  I hear Than ksgiving day will be warm enough to sit there and relax a bit. Hubby plans on working all day Thanksgiving day.  Not at his full- time job, but here.  We have a lot of bru sh to take care of yet.  Mos t likely I'll be working in the kit chen in outdoor work clothes, joining him when I can as well.   I'm typing like a mad woman, to get caught back up with National Novel Writing Month.

Where did the weekend go? I'll admit it went fast, but it was very, very peaceful here this weekend.  The first time in the last two years.  What a relief for our family and our anim als.

It seemed a s soon as we stocke d some firewood by the house, the weather turned dreary , cold and then rain a rrived.  W e woke up to this.   The sun is shini ng and the there is no wind.  It's actually a b ea utiful Sun day.  Warning.... feeling talkative this m orning.  Grab a cu p of your favorite bevera ge. Our grocery store is now selling an organic whole wheat (label ed non-gmo ) bread.  I was lucky to get a loaf at a good price, which I made homemade croutons with.  N ext batch I will try using homemade bread of some sort.

Porch time was a bit cooler yesterday, but I had it no less. I honestly wanted one last moment out there before we put furniture away for winter (which is today).   I had most of my chores done, but decided to sneak it in early.  Just in case. I wasn't sure what dinner time would bring, and I did not want to miss out on "5 minutes for me." It was another good day to

It might take us much longer than most, but somehow we get most (or all) of our winter prep done.  Although, I'll a dmit, panic is cre eping in, as time passes by.   We have to remove the brush from the tree, and cut the remaini ng of it down, before we can s et up our snow fence.  This wee kend Hubby i s hauling our second oldest daughte r's car home for an all day Sa turday repair.  That leaves our work undone.  I' m af rai d the brush will be frozen to the ground come Sunday morning.

. . . harvested more kale and froze some.

Hubby surprised me and whisked me away over the weekend.  Even though he was feeling under the weather prior to the weekend, he took us away for that much needed (balance) time we need alone by ourselves. I gave up my comp uter over th e week end, and wr ote with pe n and p aper.  Which was a cha llenge , co nsidering I wrote in the care wi th Hubby driving .  I hope I can read my hand writing today.  It will be a  challenge in itsel f to g et caught back up . Upon returning, we plunged directly into reality world.  No time to sip wine on the porch, or lounge around and read books either.  We dove right back in whether we wanted to or not.

Not much going on in the way of gettin' things done for winter here.  Although wood stoves are getting looked at.  We now have a bag of cherry pits to try in our pellet stove, and see how those heat this winter. It's been raining and mostly drizzle in our parts.  The wind arrived in full force, which I am happy to see, as it will dry out the ground and the porch furniture I need to put away yet.