Thursday

Wow, look at me! Two posts in one week! Maybe I am getting back on track. I am learning how to use Hubby’s computer. Now to relearn how to put pictures on using his computer. Well, maybe next post will have a picture!!

Tuesday, the girls and I canned a bushel of green beans. We had 24 qts. Yesterday, we had friends over for supper. We had beef roast, green beans fresh from the garden, and a stir fry of garden veggies. It was a good evening. We enjoyed good food and good fellowship. Today, we are eating lunch with the Horn’s. We are looking forward to some time with them. From there, we are going to help Mrs. Retia with some of her beans.

Last Saturday was our church’s annual horseshoe picnic. We usually have it at a little picnic area down at the river but we have had so much rain that the road was washed out and we couldn’t get there. So we had it at the same place we have our Sportsman Banquet-the Coon Hunters Club. What can I say-we are a church full of hunters and shooters. Any way, we had a great time, good food and good music.

Well, I guess that’s about it. Enjoy your day and God bless.

July 25, 2013 7

Wednesday

Hi everyone! Just a short post on how our day is (hopefully) going to progress. We are first working on tomatoes. We picked about 3/4 of a bushel yesterday evening. After the tomatoes are done, we plan on working with grapes. I have a plan of working up about 1/2 bushel everyday. We made 14 pts of grape jelly yesterday so today all the grapes will go to making juice. We had some fresh grape juice this morning with breakfast. Also some of the grape jelly. Both were delicious. They taste like eating fresh grapes. I used the Pamona Pectin to make the jelly. I really like it. With SureJell, to make a batch of jelly you need 5 cups of juice and 7 cups of sugar. With the Pamona, 4 cups of juice and only 2 cups of sugar. That is a really big difference.

I hope you all have a great day and God bless.

August 29, 2012 4

Grapes

The girls and I are starting on our grapes today. We picked 1/2 bushel this morning. We plan on making mostly jelly from these. Tomorrow we will start making juice. Yesterday I went to our friend Mrs. Faye. I helped her with her grapes. She wanted to make jelly and juice. Last year, they purchased a steam canner and a steam juicer like ours but they were not too confident with using them. So I went over to help them a little. It was a fun day. We had green beans, corn, cucumbers, cole slaw and cornbread for lunch. YUM!

Not much else going on here. Just mostly canning. We plan on picking more tomatoes this evening. We have been blessed with lots of beautiful tomatoes. Our temperatures have been cooler at night here. You can feel fall in the air. The dogwood trees are starting to turn colors. Apples will soon be ready. I love fall. As I am sitting here typing this post, the sweet smell of grapes fills my home. God is so good to us.

I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless.

August 28, 2012 2

Plums

Here is a picture of the plums we picked yesterday.

We picked a half bushel of them.

This is the view behind the plum tree. Beautiful! Temperature here this morning is in the mid 50’s. Enjoy your bday and God bless.

August 20, 2011 4

Sunflowers

I just love sunflowers. I think they are so cheerful and fun. These come up underneath the feeder and I think they add so much to the area. The cats have played there so much though that a lot of them are drooping down to the ground. They still look pretty though.

I have been kinda busy for the past few days. As you all know, we went down to Jessica’s on Friday. We had a great visit and enjoyed play time with the boys. Then we went to pick the apples. She didn’t have very many but we got what was on the tree. I haven’t worked them up yet so no picture of pink applesauce. On Saturday, we went to pick apples at Faye’s sisters house. We ended up with about 4 bushel. When we got home I started working on them. I have told Faye all about our steam juicer and sauce maker. She has been wanting to buy them for herself. Sunday evening at church Gene (her husband) said he was going to buy them for her. We met them yesterday morning in town at the Farmers Supply. He bought the steam juicer, the sauce maker and a steam canner for her. She was so excited. We then went home with them and showed them how to operater their new equipment. She had a 5 gal. bucket of apples to work up. From that she got 2 qts of juice and 5 qts of applesauce. It was a really fun day. I really want one of those steam canners. It takes my water bath canner about 1 hr. to start to boil. The steam canner is ready in about 10-15 min. Amazing. We definitely would be saving on the amount of gas we use. Hopefully, we will be able to get one soon. Much faster and more economical.

I worked up some more of our apples yesterday evening after we came back from Faye’s house. We will be working on them more today. So far, we have 8 qts of applesauce and 4 qts of apple juice. Grace has been taking some more pictures. This is a picture of the sunset God gave us yesterday.

I forgot to tell you ladies about the nice weekend we had. Remember Thursday evening I said temperatures were cooling off. Well, Friday and Saturday morning the temperature when we got up was 58 degrees. Can you believe that? Then Sunday and Monday morning it was 61 degrees. The highs for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were only in the mid 70’s. Wonderful!! Thank you Lord!! Yesterday, it started warming back up and today I think it will be back to normal but it certainly was wonderful to enjoy a few fall-like days in summer. Enjoy your day and God bless.

July 19, 2011 6

A Lesson Learned

We learned a valuable lesson yesterday. First I’ll start on Friday evening. As you all know we met at the pastor’s house to begin peeling apples for our apple butter. We peeled 6 bushel. We decided to put them in salt water overnight so they would not turn brown.

On Saturday morning about 8:00, we built the fire and loaded some of the apples into the kettle. As the apples cooked down, we would add more to the kettle.

All day we took turns stirring the apples in the kettle. Fun but hard work. We had a wonderful day of fellowship with a great meal. However, we did not get any applebutter. Before we added the sugar, (Thank you, Lord) we decided to taste the applesauce. YUCK!!!!!It tasted terrible. We reviewed all we had done and came to the conclusion our mistake was soaking the apples in the salt water overnight. The salt reacted with the cooper kettle and the apples were very bitter and metallic tasting. We ended up throwing them away. No applebutter, however, we did all have a GREAT time. It was a lot of fun. I would do it all again even with the same results. We are talking about trying again maybe in Oct. We’ll see.

Today is a rainy day here in Floyd. No complaints though. We really need the rain. Kinda chilly. Mid 50’s. We are not having bible study tonight so I think today is a snuggle in and relax evening. I hope your Sunday will be just as enjoyable. God bless.

September 26, 2010 2

Applesauce

The girls and I finished the apples yesterday. You can check out our logs at the right to see our total. I really like cooking the apples in the microwave. So much easier. It makes the applesauce thicker too. When I cook them on the stove, I have to add a little water to keep them from sticking, so it makes the applesauce a little thinner. Today we will be canning a bushel of green beans. Also working on cleaning the house as tomorrow is bible study day.

Beautiful weather here in Floyd this week. When we got up this morning about 6:00, the temperature was 59 degrees. This makes it so much more comfortable for sleeping. I would guess yesterdays high was in the low 80’s. Very nice. Days like we have been having remind me why I like living in Floyd and especially here on the farm. God was very good to bring us to this place. Thank you Lord.

The birds are singing such beautiful praises this morning. I think I’ll join them in their worship. Breakfast outside sounds wonderful. Enjoy your day and God bless.

July 15, 2010 1

Beets

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.

September 13, 2009 1