Mountain Mama… Country Living
Field corn, dried and ready for grinding.
Grain Master Whisper Mill. I use this for grinding corn and wheat.
Fresh ground corn meal. To make this self rising, I follow this recipe. 4 cups fresh ground corn meal (or wheat flour), 1 tsp salt, 1 tbsp baking powder. Sift together.
Finished product, ready to enjoy. What do you think we’ll be having for dinner? God Bless.
Today has been a wet, foggy day in Floyd. Temperatures only about 60 for the high. Not much can be done outside when the weather is like this. So today we settled in for a day of half school. This means we only do half our normal lessons which made the girls very happy. A day for reading, baking, and enjoying being a stay at home wife. I believe blessings come in disquise sometimes, just to see if we’ll recognize them. Thank you Lord, that I can stay at home, teach my girls and snuggle in for a foggy day. God Bless.
Our biggest accomplishment for today was getting the chimney fixed. High winds in early spring had blown down the chimney and as I have said it is starting to get cool at night here in Floyd. My brother-in-law came over to help us fix it. We were very blessed to find this aluminum pipe down at the barn and it just fit perfectly over the stainless steel pipe that fits in the brick part of the chimney. This all sounds complicated and in some ways it is. The original chimney( as you can tell) is very old and was not useable. We had to line it with a stainless steel pipe which was not tall enough. The chimney must be above the ridgeline of the house or it will not draw. Every year we have to replace the pipes that extend on above the ridgeline. Hopefully this won’t happen now as aluminum does not rust. Therefore it should last much longer. I certainly pray so. George was very glad to get this off his to-do list. Today is busy with school and getting ready for church tonight. Hope everyone has a great day. God Bless.
This is a picture of the closest neighbor that we can see from our house. The picture is zoomed in pretty close. It actually is farther away than it appears. I also wanted to show you the corn that is raised here on the farm. Lots and lots of corn. They cut it up for feed. We can’t see the road from our house because of all the corn. It will soon be corn cutting time. I hope to get pictures of that to post. Today was spent on the road running errands. Piano practice in the afternoon. The highlight of the day was a stop at Lifeway Christian Store. They have so many good books and studies there. I could spend hours looking at them. We do a Ladies Bible Study at my house and we are starting I & II Peter this week. I think it will be an interesting study. I always get excited when we start a new study or we get new school books. The girls don’t always share my excitement. George is working on another chair, so I think I’ll go help him. God Bless.
Here’s a picture of the beets I canned the other day. I pulled 1/2 bushel of beets. Pretty good for the first time I ever raised beets here at the farm. From that 1/2 bushel I canned 9 qts. This will taste really good this winter with pinto beans and cornbread. The other jars are pureed tomotoes. The tomatoes were the yellow striped variety thus explaining the color in the jars. I had forgotten how much work goes into canning beets. Quite a lot but as you know most things worth having require work. Today was homecoming day at church. We had a really good day. Lots of people showed up, good music, good preaching, good eating. The temperatures are still cool at night here with beautiful sunshine during the day. Wonderful fall weather. I think I will take my Daniel bible study and my bible and go out and enjoy some of this wonderful weather God has decided to bless us with. Enjoy and God Bless.
Happy Birthday to my little Daniel. May God bless you throughout your life. May you always enjoy the flowers. MawMaw loves you.
Remember last week I said we were working on a wood project. Well here it is. I couldn’t post about it then because we wanted it to be a surprise. Daniels birthday is coming up so we made him a much needed toy chest. The train on the front was my first time painting a design on a project. It was fun, however I was concerned I would mess it up. It turned out okay though. Daniel seemed to like it and Mom really liked it. Now she has a place for some of his toys. He loves trains and tractors. I looked for a stencil but couldn’t find one so we just made our own. George got the picture from the internet. I cut it out and traced it on the wood, then painted it in. I told him he should make some more perhaps to sell. We’ll see. Gotta go gather beets. God Bless.
I thought some of you might be wondering about the name of my blog. I have a small business that I run out of my home. I make aprons, lap quilts, crochet dishcloths, afgans, and prayer shawls. I have made enough to buy the school books for this year. I think that’s pretty good. I have about 50 dishcloths made up to sell but I only have 3 aprons left. As soon as Hubby gets to repair sewing machine I have to get busy with more aprons and lap quilts. I enjoyed my long weekend with Jess and family. We got a lot done. George and Dave laid the tile on the bathroom floor and Jess and I painted her craft room. She chose a bright yellow and she is thinking about going with bright red curtains and accessories. I think it will be gorgeous. I love yellow walls. It makes the entire room so cheerful. I also got lots of MawMaw hugs and a few kisses. He’s stingy with his kisses. Jasper (our puppy) had lots of play time with his brother, Buddy ( Daniel’s puppy). It’s getting time to cook supper so I guess I’ll have to come up with some ideas. Tomorrow I think I might try to can our beets. I’ll post pictures if I do. God Bless.
This picture was taken from the top of the hill, looking down on the back side of our house. The view from here is beautiful. As I have said before we are very blessed to live in a beautiful part of God’s creation. I’ll be getting me some MawMaw time this weekend(can’t wait). Of course he pays more attention to PawPaw than MawMaw but I don’t mind. I take whatever I can get. Temperatures will be warmer there so the girls are looking forward to that. Me, I kinda like the cooler temps. I really enjoy fall with the colors and of course the thanksgiving meal. I do however dread the below zero temperatures and the high winds that come with winter. Well I guess it can’t all be good. Have a good day and God Bless.
I thought you might enjoy the view from our dirt road. I know lots of you don’t have the luxury of dirt roads anymore. There are quite a few still around in Floyd. This one leads to our driveway, turn left at the big barn. I was coming back from the milk barn and thought how pretty this is. So I took a picture. I am getting into this picture taking. (Hubby took the ones for this morning). Notice the big maple tree, already starting to show some color. I guess thats what temperatures in the low 40’s will do. I canned 10 pints of spaghetti sauce today from some tomatoes we gathered last night. (Yes I said last night) At church they were talking about how it was supposed to be colder than the night before, so we took a flashlight out to the garden and gathered tomatoes. Hey, I’m not taking any chances. I want these fresh tomatoes to last as possible. I made homemade pizza this evening for supper using the sauce I’d made. The crust recipe was not as good as I would have liked. I guess I’ll have to do some more searching. The sauce, however was very good. Everyone seemed to like it. I’m glad. It was a lot of work. It sure did make the house smell good though. It’s getting late. God Bless.
Merry Heart Crafts 