MerryHeartCrafts.comMountain Momma… Country Living

I thought I would show you all a picture of the apron I just finished today.  I think it looks so cheerful.  My friend, Vicki, found this pillowcase at a thrift store last summer.   I think it turned out really nice.  I like using old pillowcases  to make aprons.  They have a vintage look and the cost of material is greatly reduced.   My aprons have not sold as much in the fall and winter as they did in the summer.  I hope to make up quite a few this winter to have on hand for the upcoming summer.  

The girls went to the Horn’s yesterday to celebrate Bubby’s birthday.  They had a great time.  Hubby and I went to C-burg to get tires put on the car so I had to miss Bubby’s cake.  Our church collects fleece throws, lotion and socks for our local nursing home.  The pastor’s wife meet us in town so we could deliver them.  Today we have cleaned out the chicken house (YUCK!)  The temperature here is mid 30′s.  Not too bad.  I know it could be lots colder.  

Tonight’s menu is hamburgers on homemade buns, home fries and peach dumplings for dessert.  I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless.

Today, Chuck and his family came for a visit.  We had a very nice day.  We ate baked ham, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, sweet potato casserole,  homemade rolls and biscuits with peaches for dessert.    He loved his swing.  I am hoping it makes it home safely.  He left with it tied on the top of his Pathfinder.  The kids played with the kitties most of the day.   The other big entertainment was clothes pins.  Children have such imaginations. 

A picture of the food table.

Here we all are getting ready to eat.  Julie is hiding behind Chuck. 

I pray you all have a wonderful Christmas and God bless.

I thought I would give you all a break from festival pictures today.  Underneath these two trees sits my “green swing” which as you know I dearly love.

This is a picture of a late blooming hollyhock.  See how tall it is.  Our house is a two story house and if you look in the upper left corner of the picture you can see the edge of the roof on the house.  Just look at how blue the sky is today.  God is so good!

Our grapevine getting ready to rest for the winter.

Cows in the field behind our house.

Today I am trying a new recipe.  Well, not completely new, I have made it once before.  The other time I made it in the oven.  Today, I am making it in the crockpot.    The recipe is called Honey Baked Lentils and Rice.  

1 cup lentils, 1 cup brown rice, 4 1/2 cups water, 2 tbsp honey, 2 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp minced onion, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste (I used 1/4 tsp each).  Place in crockpot, cook on low for about 4 hrs or until lentils are done.  You can also cook this in the oven in a casserole dish for 1 1/2 hrs at 350 degrees.

School today as usual.  It is an absolutely beautiful day here in Floyd.  I am doing another batch of apples in the steam juicer and will be making applesauce later on today.  I also want to go up on the hill and gather some mullein leaves to dry for making tea.   This tea is very good hot or cold and it is very good for respiratory ailments.  I usually just pick it in the summer and make a cold tea from it.  I have never tried drying it before. 

Our supper tonight will be bbq made from the remainder of the roast I coooked yesterday.  Homemade buns, home fries and the honey baked lentils.   I think we will have peaches for dessert.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

This is an old barn that is at our pastor’s house.  I love old things, even old barns.  Yesterday we worked with the corn.  We got it all shucked.  We put some up in the freezer on the cob and some we are cutting off the cob. We will be finishing working it up today and then we will start on the peaches.

Our temperature this morning was 50 degrees.  Amazing!  All indications are that we will have an early fall.  Yesterday, we noticed the geese were forming groups.  Several groups flew over with about 40 geese in a group.  They were flying in the “V” formation.  So pretty!  This is another picture from our pastor’s house.  I hope I don’t bore you all too much with these but the girls took lots of pretty pictures at his house that I want to share with you all.

This is the view from his front porch.  Lovely!  Well, our little break is over so I guess I should get busy.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Yesterday, we went to our Pastor’s home.  They had some corn to give us and some peaches.  I thought you all might enjoy seeing some pictures we took.  As you can see, I think fall is coming on us pretty fast.  Some of the trees are already losing their leaves.  Our temperatures this morning was 55 degrees.  Our morning temps have been in the 50′s for about a week now.  So much nicer sleeping weather.  Anyway we got about 2 bushel of corn and almost a bushel of peaches.  We will  be busy today working all that up. Grace is my helper when it comes to shucking corn.  She loves it.  Julie will be inside doing other work  while Grace and I shuck.  Then I will let Julie help with the blanching while Grace has other chores.  

 Also, a couple who go to our church told us we could come and pick plums from their tree.  This is exciting for us.  We have never known anyone who had a plum tree.  We want to make jelly and I was thinking about trying plum juice.  I wonder how that would taste?  I guess we’ll find out.  We probably won’t get to go pick them until later in the week.  I let you all know how it turns out. 

This is a picture of some of the trees in the Pastor’s orchard.  If you look close, you can see the ladder at the tree we picked peaches from.  I will show you all a few more pictures next time.  Well, we better get busy.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Well, we have decided to give Mr. Rooster a chance.  If he is a good boy, I guess we’ll keep him.  We all think he sounds so cute when he crows.  We have decided his crow adds a little something to our day.  Wow, we really DO need to get out more.  Anyway, we’ll see how it works out. 

Yesterday, we worked with blackberries.  We made some blackberry juice.  Then took the berries we had cooked down to make the juice and put them in the Roma sauce maker.  The sauce maker takes out all the seeds.  We then make blackberry freezer jam.  We had some blackberry puree left over and I wondered what I would do with it.  Then I thought HOMEMADE BLACKBERRY ICE CREAM!  It was so good.  I tried to take a picture to share with you all but I couldn’t get it to turn out right.    I got the recipe online at Cooks.com but altered it some to better suit us.  Anyway, here is the recipe I used:

2 cups blackberry puree, 2 cups sugar, 3 eggs beaten, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 6 cups milk, 1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk.  I mixed all the ingredients together and put it into the ice cream maker.  I plan on making peach ice cream this weekend when Dave, Jess and the boys come up. 

I went to work with Hubby this morning and helped him until lunchtime.  Then came home and the girls and I started working on the peaches.  We made some peach freezer jam and then canned some of the peaches.  We saved the peelings again and got 2 more qts of peach juice.  We also had a peach cobbler for supper.  I love peaches. 

I am looking forward to tomorrow as Sam and Daniel will be coming up to spend the day with us.  Enjoy your evening and God bless.

I thought I would share a few pictures with you all of the picnic and baptism we had Sunday.  This is the pond where we do our baptizing.   Beautiful!  This pond is located on Route 8 here in Floyd close to the Bread Basket. 

This is a young man from our church.  He and his dad were baptized Sunday.  We somehow missed getting the dad’s picture.  I have been busy all last week and yesterday helping Hubby with a job.  He has been remodeling a bathroom.  Today, I picked blackberries, some more green beans and tomatoes while the girls worked on inside house chores.  We will be busy working on those today.  We also have some peaches to can but they may have to wait until tomorrow.

Here are a few random pictures I took this morning.  The blackberries are looking pretty good this year.

A tomato ripening on the vine. 

A view of the back side of the house.  Temperature here has cooled down a little.  Not as humid as last week.   Or maybe it just feels that way because I’m not underneath that house running pipe for plumbing. (lol)  Well, I better get busy.  I hear blackberries calling our names.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

We have been working on peaches for a few days.  I think I mentioned that we saved the peelings and put them into the steam juicer.  Well, the above picture shows the 2 qts of juice we got from the peelings.  We had 2 gal. of peelings and got 2 1/2 qts of juice.  This will yield over a gal of peach juice.  YUM!  I definitely will do that again with our next batch of peaches. 

I picked about 1 gal. of blackberries this morning.  Pretty good for the first picking.  I am trying something new for us.  I am making blackberry syrup to use with pancakes, french toast, etc.  Have any of you ever made this?  It sounds good and sometimes I just want something different.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.  I have the blackberries on in the steam juicer now.  Julie and I went up to the cellar this morning and organized it.  I think “little green men” come along over the winter and just scatter all my canned goods.  Anyway, all is in order now and ready for the new cans to fill it up.  Grace worked inside doing household chores while Julie and I worked on the cellar.  Hubby worked on mowing the yard.  It has been a long time since he mowed.  It is just so hot and dry.  He thought it was starting to look a little wild. 

Well, time to check on the blackberries.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

My Grace was stung Tuesday with a bee.  This is what it looks like today.  It actually is getting better.  The swelling has gone down.  It must be our time for stings.  Hubby came home yesterday and he had gotten stung with a hornet.  It looked pretty rough this morning.  We have been putting alcohol on both his and Grace’s.   Does anyone know anything else to put on bee stings?

Not a long post right now.  We are still working with peaches.  We took a lunch break and I thought I would show you all Grace’s sting.  Enjoy your day and God bless.

Very exciting news here today.  We got our first egg!  I guess maybe we need to get out more, if just getting an egg gets us this excited.  But we think it is beautiful.

Well, we finally got the pink apples worked up today.  This is what they looked like when we cut them up.

They are so pretty.  Remember last year, we purchased the steam juicer and the Roma sauce maker.  They have been so helpful already this year.  We just quartered the apples, no peeling necessary.  Put them in the steam juicer and let them cook.

This is what the juice looks like.  Such a beautiful color.  We got 5 pts of juice.  The juice is concentrated.  For every pint you get a quart of juice. 

Then after the apples cooked in the steam juicer we ran them through the sauce maker.  We got 6 pts of applesauce.  Thanks so much, Donna, for sharing these with us.    We are working on peaches now.  They are canning as I type.  We saved the peelings from the peaches.  We are going to put them in the steam juicer and make juice from them.  I like the fact that there is hardly any waste. 

Remember how I said last weekend was unusually cool here.  Well, I can hardly remember that now.  It has been HOT all week.  I know not as hot as many of you but still hot.    Temperatures have been in the 90′s outside and about that hot inside our house.    I am so thankful to a blogger friend who gave me the idea of using a propane unit to do our canning on.  We put it on the front porch and it makes such a difference keeping the house a little cooler.  Most of the heat is out there not in the kitchen.  

Well, we better get busy doing some cleanup.  Enjoy your day and God bless.