Pioneer Woman at Heart

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.

No photos for this tidbit, but you might get a laugh.  It was raining and pretty dark out.  I headed out to open the barn doors and let some light in on the ladies and Sparta.  It was still raining and too early to let them out and about, so I

I filled my new dehydrator with organic dandelion greens.  I still want to put more in the freezer, but I will be utilizing the dried greens too.  They dried faster than i n the old dehydrator too. The dried greens will be used for dog food, to make tea, to add to any dish we eat, to make dandelion vinegar, and other herbal mixtures.  I won't have to buy dandelion tea any more now.  Oh, I can use the dandelion for poultices too.

It's already a very busy Monday.  I'm joining Diary of a Stay at Home Mom today. The weather . . . Cool, sunny and delightful.

Sunday I had "back up" plans in case the tree service guy (aka Hubby) had another "interruption."  My first job was to put more kale up, then tackle putting zinnia seeds in packets.

I'm up early although against my will.  Now that I am dog care taker number one, I have dog duty.  Most days he curls up with me, but today, he was up and begging to go out.  So up I am. I haven't have enough coffee yet, and already deleted a comment accidentally.  I hope that isn't a sign of how my day will be today, ha ha! Yesterday I put up the last of the dandelion greens into the freezer.  I was afraid they would go bad before my dehydrator arrived.  And like all things you try to plan, my dehydrator arrived after I froze the last of the greens.

I picked up more dandelion greens on my trip to town delivering meals to Dad.  With my dehydrator due to arrive any day now, I plan to dehydrate some for Jesse.  The one dog remaining from the original pack of ours. He has tumors, and some were removed, but are growing back.  They are "fatty" tumors, but with that in mind, I'm drying dandelion, to sprinkle over his food ( 1 tsp. per every 20 lbs. of weight) .   His dog treats are made with kale, so he's getting more vitamins and nutrients that way as well.

Remember the herbal oil I was heating in the sun for a plantain/comfrey salve? Well, it's done, and I melted beeswax with it and wa-la!  Homemade "Neosporin."  I washed a few lip balm containers, and some recycled baby food jars to store it in.

Not sure how many interesting posts you will be blessed with this month.  After cranking out 34 00 words yesterday (bringing my total word coun t to 5200) , I literally ran to the porch to get some "me time" in, but did not even get there until 5:45pm,   Dinner was spaghetti and meatballs, and I had to make a fresh batch of meatballs, so time was of the essence. 

Yesterday, Hubby and I got early morning porch/coffee time, before he headed out to fix Daughter's car.  I ended up having evening porch time with a book (yay!).  The good news, is the car is fixed, but she missed class today.  She'll get to drive back today.  That way I can still have my own car this week.

You all may have to check on me in the morning......the house is still rockin' at 10am today.  I did sneak out to the porch for my coffee and sunrise, but slowly they woke up.  They devoured the mini caramel apples I made.