Hot and Humid

 

I debated just freezing the last of the peaches, but canned a smalled batch early in the morning.  We'll get more peaches later this summer.

I made a new recipe for pomegrante vinaigrette.  One recipe uses the seeds (using a blender) and the other uses juice form concentrate (the one I tried).  I used a bit more dijon in ours to thicken it just a bit more, and we love it.  We are enjoying more salads this week with the heat index so high.

I was out checking berries and taking the chickens fresh cold water, when I discoveredd this growing between the raspberries and asparagus patch.  Does anyone know what it is?  The plant itself is growing just like a red raspberry bush, but it obviously is not a raspberry bush.

I have never see this before.  In finding this, I do see some poison sumac in another area, so we need to remove it.  Always something to take care of around here.

It was so humid and hot, I was getting seriously worried about my chickens, and I was about to go look for a box fan and extension cord, when I heard thunder.  The heat index was 103°F and extremely humid.

Soon enough we had not only a few hours of pouring down rain, but thunderstorms.  I'm not sure what took out our power, as it could have been due to everyone's AC on, or the storms.

Thank goodness I keep extra watering units for this purpose, and had them filled for the chickens.  I had to take them fresh cold water almost every 2 hours, due the heat index.

We also have several battery powered lights in each room, candles, a portable phone charger (however even 5G was not working to get weather updates), and I am very thankful I purchased our power source that runs on the same battery our power tools run on.  It has one outlet, a light, and a few charge ports, so we can charge our chargeable fans (we have two) to stay cool, and charge anything else.

In light of this, and for the fact the power has gone out more often, we plan to add some new items to our list.  A generator has always been on the list, but they are expensive.  We do have a plan to keep the lights on (more than the one the power source can run).

 By the way, we took the power source off of the lamp, used some candles for light, and plugged a laptap into the power source to watch a DVD.  Save your DVD's and don't get rid of them.  Our interent was out until this morning, so no netflix or amazon.  We were thankful we kept the DVD's and the old laptop for this purpose.  Otherwise, we could run one lamp and read books or play cards.

My husband is in agreement on keeping the lights on, so I'll update you if/when we locate what we are looking for.  We have considered a well hand pump in the future as well.  When the power goes out, we cannot get water from the well otherwise.

Once our power was back on, we could only watch a DVD using a DVD player.  Our interent was out the entire night and we had trouble getting connection this morning, but it's back on.  It makes you wonder about everything digital these days, and what to do with the power/internet out.

(source:  Amazon)

Our smaller one is similar to this one.

As for the fans, I had a small chargeable fan with a clip, that we use on the treadmill.  It worked like a charm to cool us. 

(Source: Amazon)  Our foldable chargeable fan is similar to this one.

The other fan we have is adjustable in height, and folds up, and we take it camping, so we had that one too.  Both have been used a lot, and my husband was impressed how well the smaller fan worked.

Of course we purchased them many years ago, so I can't say for sure if it's still on the market, but there are some very similar to them.  I'm just glad we had them, along with everything else.

We are thankful for the rain, as the gardens got a good dose of goodness, and the temperature dropped just a bit.  It is still very humid here however.

It's been too hot to do any garden weeding or tilling/cultivating at all.  The weeds are growing, so I hope we get a break soon.  I was literally dripping with sweat just being out there for the watering of everything.

At the end of the day, it's too exhausting to crochet, read or do anything really.  We are thankful for the AC (when the power is on) or the fans.

Hot and Humid© June 2024 by Kristina at Pioneer Woman at Heart

Slippers to the Garden and other Tidbits

 The other day I came inside to do something, and realized on my way back out I still had my slippers on.  I take my muck boots off at the door.  So funny.  My brain is on overdrive I swear.

My living room is a mess and now the bathroom door is in there getting primed.  I painted one side yesterday.  Half of the bathroom floor is in, but they had 4 layers of flooring, so it's lower than the kitchen floor.  There is more work to do, and more supplies, to get the floor even with the kitchen.

I've taken care of the peaches now.  I canned 8 half-pints of reduced sugar jam, and baked a peach crumble.  I left the rest for us to snack on.  Not sure if I will get any into the freezer or not.

I started water-glassing eggs.  I figured if I fill that bucket up, I can start dehydrating, but this will reduce using canning jars right now.

We are going on more than two weeks of zero rain.  We had thunderstorms in the forecast for today, but those left just disappeared off the radar.

I've been doing pretty well keeping up with weeding the garden, but not the flower beds.  I got the green beans weeded finally.

Daughter E never made it out to help clean the upstairs.  She took her car in for a new tire at Midas and they told her that her wheel bearing was so bad that her car was not safe to drive.  I got on my phone and with the help of my husband, (our go-to man is doing our bathroom) he found a friend to change it. Cost of part was $104, he asked for $70 for the labor, and she paid him $100.  Midas wanted $500.00 for the job, and it's a fairly easy job to do.

Random Tidbits

Monday, while Hubby and daughter were scrambling around getting ready at 5:45am, I was mumbling.  

"I have to work out, can jam, clean the coop, make a scramble for the week, do the dishes, do the laundry...."

Hubby said, "what'ya gonna do after 9am?"  

I laughed, and laughed.  That is true.  There is an advantage of being up early.  Sparta was giving me heck while cleaning the coop.  He kept getting out of the door, and out into the open garden area.  I had to keep chasing him back into the run.  I think he's getting old or his broken leg from years ago is giving him trouble.  He's having a bit of trouble walking and climbing the ramp now.

Speaking of scramble - this weeks breakfast for a few days.  It's made with some swiss chard, jalapeno, home grown potatoes, onions, green pepper and bacon.

Tuesday, I was up at 4:26 am precisely.  Work called Hubby in, and the thunder and pouring rain kept me from going back to sleep.

I hope we are well stocked now with Cowboy Candy, but if I can get more jalapenos, I'll can it one more time.  We love it!  I canned blackberry-red raspberry (our berries) jam and more peach jam.  I just wish I could find some hot banana peppers now. The purchase of our organic hot banana pepper plants were a fail.

The garden. . .popcorn may be a fail this year too.  The last storm we had, brought very strong winds, and my patch has been somewhat flattened.  Now with more heavy rain, thunderstorms, wind...who knows what'll happen.

Sadly, the 2# of tomatoes I had brought in, starting rotting in a few days.  

Although Hubby is against it, I'm back to considering working again.  We have to buy almost everything our garden didn't provide to stock up, and our cost to put the garden in has set us back.   Not sure what we'll do just yet.  I was so busy Monday, dinner time crept up on me quickly, so I'm struggling to figure out how to even hold a job and keep this place afloat.  There are many things we'll do without I believe too.

One dinner this week was smoked turkey bone soup.  I don't normally like soup in summer, but it was delicious.  I just added whatever I had, but the smoked carcass from my younger brother was worth keeping.  Yum.

I also made a new side dish - a cheesy jalapeno corn mix.  I used the frozen off the cob corn and it was very good!

Oh, and here is the latest new recipe I tried in my dehydrator. . .

Peanut butter cookies.  They were much easier to flatten than the oatmeal.  The only con to this, is it uses 1/2 cup organic coconut oil.  Same with the oatmeal.  I will however, keep this recipe for group meals and holidays.  I think they'd freeze okay, and if I triple the recipe I can fill my entire large dehydrator and save me time and ingredients.

Busy Kitchen

I hit it hard Monday morning with canning.  Well sort of.  I ran out of sugar so it continued into Tuesday too.  There has been no weeding, as the rain keeps coming, but just enough to keep me indoors.   Last night it poured and we are due for more today.

I brought in one 5 oz dinky serving of green beans, and two dinky hot banana peppers.  No yellow squash yet.   Our harvesting days are pretty pathetic lately.

Peach jam got canned., along with sweet pickle relish, cinnamon-blueberry jam and corn relish.  Whew!

A few zucchini's made it sliced, blanched and into the freezer, but the blackberries are still red.  Also, so far of what we've tasted, the blackberries are sour this year.  I'm not sure what I will do with them if they are all sour

More blueberries made it to the freezer.

We have run into a small sna-foo with the camper.  Once we hooked it up, only the turn signals work.  Brake lights and hazard lights are not working for some reason.  I'm sure my smart husband can figure it out before we do go camping.

I lied.  Our peach tree gave us one very nice looking peach this year.

I finally got around to making stuffed shells again, and some went into the freezer for an easy meal on a future busy day.

As you can see no more greens have made their way into the freezer. I am hoping this rain provides us some.

My back was pretty sore and my entire body pretty tired, so after washing a boat load of dishes and putting them away, I took my handiwork to the porch.