Mountain Mama… Country Living
There is a slight hill at the back of our house. This picture was taken from the top of the hill looking down.
Not much happening here today.(I hope) Hubby did not need me today so the girls and I are working on some housecleaning. We have a few tomatoes to can so we will probably work on those. Maybe just a little reading time thrown in for fun. As of now, clothes are calling. Enjoy your day and God bless.
The girls picking tomatoes.
You all hear me talk about sitting on the green swing. Well, this is the view from it. As you can tell, there is lots of shade there, which is one of the reasons I love it.
This is a little bit closer view of the pond. See all the geese. Our pond has had lots of activity all summer.
A picture of the house as you turn down the driveway. To the left of the yard is the pond. Well, the yogurt turned out great. I think it is the best homemade yogurt I have ever made. I definitely will be making more. Also, the plum juice was very good. We enjoyed a cold glass of it this morning with our breakfast. I went to help Hubby today and the girls spent the day with the Horn’s. They had a great time. Temperatures here are still nice-upper 70’s today with a good wind. I hope you all enjoy your evening and God bless.
I wonder what they are doing?
Someone is feeding them. I see a hand behind the tree.
Of course, it is my sweet Julie, who can’t resist feeding cows no matter where she is. We went with Hubby today to help him hang ceilings. The girls went in search of something to do. What do farm girls do when they are bored? Feed cows, of course. We had a nice day, enjoyed a picnic lunch with Hubby, then came home and went to piano lessons. Temperatures here have been nice. Upper 70’s with a nice breeze. Feeling more like fall every day. Enjoy your day and God bless.
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.
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.
Meet one of our new ladies. We have been blessed to receive 5 new hens and 1 rooster for free. A family that lives across the Parkway from us purchased these chickens on Easter weekend. That makes them about 1 month younger than ours. They decided chickens were not for them. They gave them to us with the coup. We brought them to their new home today. Julie will have to work on petting them up but I don’t think it will take her long. We are going to increase the size of our fenced in area and then put them all together. We think our older ladies like having a rooster around. We received 6 eggs today and one of them was a double yoke. We do not really want the rooster though. We are thinking of giving him away.
It is HOT here. Temperature is 95 degrees. I’m not sure what the heat index is but it is definitely hot. Enjoy your day, stay cool and God bless.
So I finally got around to making the blackberry syrup this morning. I used about 3/4 gal. of blackberries and got three pts of syrup. Pretty good. I’m not sure how it will turn out but it tasted really good when I sampled it. I put the blackberries in the steam juicer. This is what it looks like.
This is a very handy piece of equipment. We bought ours at our local Farmers Supply. I’m not sure if they sell them at Wal-Mart or not but I know you can order them online. You might even find them on Ebay. The name brand of ours is “Back to Basics”.
This is the bottom of the juicer. You put 3 qts of water in this.
This fits directly on the water container. This catches the juice as it comes out of the fruit.
You put the fruit or veggies in this basket. It fits directly on top of the other container. Then put the lid on. You see in the first picture the tubing. This is how you drain your juice into jars. Put it on your stove and when it starts to steam, you start timing. Different things need to steam for different times. Blackberries steam for 60 min. You can then use the juice for whatever you want to make. The pulp that remains in the basket from your fruit or veggies is still usable too. I will show you all another time what I do with the leftover pulp.
Here is the recipe I used for making the blackberry syrup. I got it from the internet and it is very simple. I hope it will be good.
4 cups blackberry juice, 4 cups sugar, 1 tsp. lemon peel. Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil. Boil for 2 min. Fill jars. (I used a strainer here as I did not want the lemon peel in the syrup) Process 10 min. in water bath canner.
Enjoy your day and God bless.
I thought I would show you all a few pictures of around our house. This picture is one of the old walnut trees that is in the yard. The faithful horse you see has survived Julie and Grace and is now being enjoyed by grandchildren.
This picture is looking out my dining room window.
As you come down our driveway, this is one of the first things you see. Hubby built the bench a few years ago. The swing was one purchased from Wal-Mart. When the cloth seats gave out, Hubby made a wood swing to hang on the frame. Can you tell we love to sit outside here?
This picture looks up into the field from the side yard. You can see our grapevine and garden. Well, I have a few more pictures but they will have to wait for another day. Time for us to leave for church. Tonight’s menu is meatloaf, mac & cheese, corn, rolls, cole slaw, cooked apples and watermelon. Enjoy your day and God bless.
Merry Heart Crafts 