Pioneer Woman at Heart

  I hammered the tomato stakes in good, but decided not to start tying the tomato plants up to the stakes until the storms pass today.  I was in fear that if the stakes go down, the plants would go down with them. Today's weather?  Possible thunderstorms, hail and possible tornadoes. First coyote sighting yesterday morning.  It headed away from our property. We discovered we still had a half of a quart canning jar full of home grown popcorn.  It was still good, popped almost all the kernels and was as delicious as ever.  I will be planting it again next year. Broke my hoe.  They never last long.  It says 15 year warranty, but I have no idea where I bought it, nor saved the receipt.  Tomatoes got weeded anyway.  We have 62 tomatoes, but two may not make it. New blooms in the flower beds.

My latest favorite infection fighting tea.  My antibiotics (blech) were not kicking the phlegm from the sinus infection, so I brewed up 1 tsp. dried homegrown thyme and added 1 tsp. dried mullein weed and honey.  I drank this 4 x day and poof!  Much better.  Cough nearly disappeared after about 3 mugs of it too.

Monday was truly a bad day for me mentally.  Dealing with young adults in today's world is not only a challenge, but one big fat headache (when it shouldn't be).  I raced through my work to keep my mind from exploding into teeny tiny bits. The wind here has been truly terrible.  However, it's been very helpful in drying all my laundry, rugs (yes rugs in March), and bedding.  I was praying it didn't land out in the pasture by afternoon. In fact the wind was so bad, raking the pine cones didn't happen.  I managed to get my rake out though. Instead, I finished up box #1 of our ears of black dakota popcorn.  It was a good day for winnowing.  It literally only took a few minutes this time. Tuesday the wind sounded like winter.  It was a brisk 29°F out, and very unexpected.  The wind was worse.  We will need to buy two new large tarps now.  Ours are torn to bits.  It was freezing in the house, and we were out of cut wood...

It's been nice to be back in the kitchen baking breads.  First on the agenda - biscuits.  I'm playing around with different size cutters, to obtain just the right size for a breakfast sandwich.  Oh we slobbered over our recent sandwich with farm fresh eggs, cheese, and organic bacon.  Yum. I use my 2 inch cutter when the biscuits are for sausage gravy or hamburger gravy.

I checked the popcorn for the second time.  I took 6 kernels and used coconut oil. The results?

I brought in another 21.11# of tomatoes on Thursday.  Our whopping tomato tally reached 304.33# (so far this season). I didn't have enough to can a 1/2 batch of tomato sauce, so I decided to use a portion of them to try that new BBQ sauce I wanted to try. The recipe is from Better Homes and Garden's and th ey have the recipe online.   The trick I have been using to check the reduction amount, is to first mea sure with the handle of a wooden spoon.  I tie on a twist tie, and wipe it clean.  Each time I mea sure I can quickly see where I am in the process.  By the way, this recipe tastes so much better than Ball's recip e I canned two years ago.  We l ove it.  Next batch will be a doubl e batch.   In between all that, I got greens in the freezer, but I'm falling behind.  The yellow straight neck squash is piling up.  The cauliflower is just now producing as well.  The swiss chard is going bananas, and I cannot sque...

Sunday was a full work day here - wood pellets restocked, wood cut, split and stacked, animal feed restocked, and  chicken coop cleaned.  Water jugs were also filled. Around here any type of storm can cut out our electricity, and we have yet to buy our generator.  That's next on the preparedness list. Tonight we are re-securing the snow fence, in anticipation of bad wind, rain and maybe snow.  We may even have a white Christmas this year. Although they are talking about "storms" they are also saying it is not the worst storm to come through.  So we are praying for good travel weather for friends and family.

We earned two free nights at the campground.  Not knowing how the weather will be in October, we decided to go.  We still came home during the daytime (some of it anyway) to get work completed. We enjoyed the campfire again, on quiet cool evenings.