Pioneer Woman at Heart

  Organic lemon balm sprouting up in an indoor pot, for the first time ever.  I have not planted it indoors before, nor brought in a plant or portion of a plant.  It's being started from organic seeds. I brought in some chives and rosemary.  We'll see if I can master the ability to keep them both alive indoors this winter. Sage and Thyme from the herb garden (brought in before our first hard freeze):  dehydrated the thyme, but next year I think it would be useful to make a thyme tincture (for any medicinal reasons).  Do you make a thyme tincture?  If so, what do you keep it on hand to treat?  It totally slipped my mind this year. I dehydrated most of the sage, but used some fresh to start a tincture (this is great for sore throats when you don't want to/or can't make hot tea).  Just my experience with a sage tincture.  If you have other uses, please share.   I ground some ( a first for us ) of the sage and filled a re-purposed ...

  It's officially "fall" here now.  Woke up to 40°F and boy it is very chilly.  The leaves are turning even more, and more are falling.  The tomatoes are done for the garden season too. 5 pints of Lemony-Basil Tomato Soup was canned.  I normally get about 2-3 batches canned, but not this year.  I am thankful for what we did get.  The cold weather has started to diminish the amount of herbs we are getting from the herb garden now. There are other goals now that the tomatoes are all processed. We will need to pull everything left in the garden(s), and do other prep work to put them to "bed" for the season.  I still have apples to process, but they are in the fridge for now.  I need to get caught up with other work and I have a strainer full of garden bell peppers to dice and freeze. I totally forgot that I planted several rosemary plants inside the garden this year, so I will need to process those (have no plans to try for the umpteenth time to...

  We have had non-stop problems with the pipes leaking under the kitchen sink.  When the kids lived here, they would shove stuff under the sink and bump the pipes, hence the leaks.  No kids, and now we have a leak?  I took everything out, and took assessments.  Not to mention, clean everything off, and wipe the cupboard dry.  Not the worst kitchen catastrophe, but I use my sink several times a day. Once the pipes are all fixed, I will be replacing the cheap dollar store placemats I had in there, with this . . . It's washable too!  If we spring another leak, at least it will protect the wood.  The absorbent fabric is USA made.  I found it on Amazon.  I'm not sure if stores have this or not.  I wasn't very patient for looking for a better solution (for keeping things dry). I am late to the game so to speak.  I got one jar of Four Thieves started. I got about 3 more trays dehydrated of sage, more thyme, and rosemary. I am gatherin...

  Although fall is here, we had another odd warm day.  I took advantage of it again, and washed all the towels and put them on the clothesline.  There were lots of bugs again, but a good shake before tossing them in the basket did the job.  The weather is all over the charts, making coop building the most difficult job (more like the job not getting done). Woke up to find that a deer had trampled my chicken run fence.  Looks like it got in by jumping the fence, and could not get out, so it took down the other side.  By the size of the hoof prints left behind, it was a small one.  I finagled the fence back up, but it won't last long.  Deer season has been very bad this year.  I took advantage of one rainy day.  I caught up with shredding bills, and started unpacking more boxes from the renovations over the last year and a half.  We will probably be unpacking, sorting and purging for another year around here, ha ha! I had enough potti...

  I have never been good at keeping a rosemary plant alive during winter indoors.  It will not last outdoors in our climate, so they are dug up and brought inside. I took a cutting from my outdoor plant, and put it in water, changing the water daily.  I forgot to write the initial start date, but.... It began to get one root in June.  That root took off, and eventually it fell off, and then I checked again, and it had 4 roots.   I planted it indoors. Here's to hoping I can keep it alive all winter, and not have to buy new plants in the spring.  I figured, if I have a few extra plants, I have a better chance ha ha! Here it is in August, and it has new life showing.  So happy!  By the way, the top turned brown at the beginning of potting this, so I cut back on the water.  I also used soil specified for cactus type plants.  If I can keep it alive all winter, I can start my own plants in the spring again, and not have to buy them. Here ...

Hubby and I were up at 5am this morning.  Had coffee on the porch before he left for work and I made him a sweet potato (more like an egg hash) burrito.  Both of us were up since about 3am. I had to laugh this morning.  He asked me to open the door so he could carry his lunch, mug of coffee and half eaten burrito out to the car (truck is still down).  I looked down and he had socks and slippers on, ha ha ha ha!  I had to tell him, "um, hun? You don't have your shoes on."  We laughed and laughed. It's operation homestead clean up again today.  I was abandoned by all kiddos, so I didn't have any help, but today I will.  More spider traps are going in place again too. I don't see that it even rained last night, so we'll dig out more porch furniture.  I put a few pieces out yesterday, but golly, there is more to tidy up than I thought.

I can't tell if we are making progress indoors, but I am making progress outdoors.  I spent the entire morning watering every single thing.  No rain in the forecast, and now no rain at all for a while.  Sigh.   I picked some radishes that I enjoyed raw after that, and shared one with the now graduated, vegetarian daughter.  She doesn't like raw radishes, ha ha!  

Some thing new for the hom estead - three rooster door pulls.  Love them!  They went on the ma ster bath c a binet doors. S omething harvested at the homestead - stin ging nett le.  I filled the dehydrator, but will need to cut more for "greens" for the free zer this spring.   I took a walk out to the fruit trees.  I am happy to report that all tre es have buds, and the peach tre e has t eeny tin y pink blo ssom s about to bloom.  I'm thr illed to see most of the fungus is gone on the p lum tree, so my homemade neem spray is w orking.  My el derberry trees actually have leaves on them already.  The grape plants are budding, and I will have to buy one grape pla nt to replace the one th at died last year.     We are still playing the car shu ffle.  Daughter's car is not fixed.  W e now know the problem, but the other problem is the labor involved.  It's a bout an 8 hour job with her engine....