Tweetsie Trip

Hello everyone! I am sorry that it has been a while since I made a post. Seems like we have been super busy here. Last Tuesday, the girls and I went to Sam’s Club. Wednesday, we went to the Pastor’s. They gave us 2 bushels of grapes and I have no idea how much corn-enough to make 31 qts in the freezer. So, I guess you know what we did Thursday. Friday we finished up the grapes and corn, cleaned the church and started revival. Saturday, we decided it was time to play. We met Dave, Jess and kids at Tweetsie for a fun day. We left about 9:00 A.M. and got back home about 9:00 P.M. It was a long day but SO much fun. Sunday finished up our revival. Today we are making peach and grape jelly.

They have these horses all around Tweetsie. The boys climbed up on them as soon as we got there. They really enjoyed seeing MawMaw climb on one. My mother was such a fun person. She loved doing things out of the box. She always wore a hat. One of her favorites was a bright silver one. As soon as I climbed up on the horse, Jess said all I needed was a silver hat. I think that is how I want my children and grandchildren to remember me. I want to be a person who is fun to be with.

Some of you mentioned that you were interested in knowing how to cook the dried beans. I’m sure there are lots of ways to cook them but the way we always do is just put them in a kettle, cover with water, add some bacon grease, salt and pepper. Mom always added a some navy beans to cook with them. It takes a while for them to cook and you will have to add water as needed. In my opinion, these are best with corn bread, but then most things are.

Well, I better get busy. I have so many blogs to get caught up on reading. Enjoy your day and God bless.

September 9, 2013 4

Thursday

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing great today. We are kinda warm here in Floyd-86 degrees but we do have a very pleasant wind so it doesn’t seem so bad. At least, not if you are in the shade!

We worked in the garden this morning. We started early but it still got pretty hot before we were done. This is a picture of the first raised bed. We have been enjoying the salad greens and green onions for a while now.

We had a great visit yesterday with my Uncle John and Aunt Elaine. They live in Mighigan and had never been to the farm before. Jess and her kids came up. Everyone went for a ride in the bumpy truck. It was so good to get to see them.

Our grapevine seems to be doing okay now. I was a little worried about it as it got frostbite by the last frost we had. We won’t have as many grapes as last year but it looks like there will be a few.

The roses are blooming and look very beautiful in the tree. We spent most of the evening sitting here yesterday enjoying the view and time spent with family. I wanted to tell you all about something beautiful I saw last night. I almost ALWAYS have to get up during the night to go to the bathroom. Well, last night when I got up I looked out our bedroom window and the sight I saw was totally amazing. The stars were shining so bright in the sky and underneath them the lightning bugs were everywhere! So many it looked like blinking Christmas lights. I stood there watching it all thinking how good our God is to allow me to see something like that!

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

June 13, 2013 5

Apples

Monday, the girls and I went to the pastor’s home to pick apples.

He has about 10 trees (I think) and they all look like this one. We picked three 100 lb. feed sacks full. I am estimating each sack holds 1 and 1/2 bushel of apples. So that means we got close to 5 bushels of apples. At our local store, apples are selling for $20.00 a bushel. That means I have about $100.00 of apples sitting in my kitchen that were just gave to me. God is good!! They also gave us the last of their grapes-about 1 bushel. Yesterday, the girls and I juiced the grapes they gave us and did one batch of juice from our grapes. We also did a batch of apples in the juicer and tried a new recipe crockpot maple apple jam. It is very good. It reminds me of apple butter but has a distinctive maple taste.

We picked the last of our grapes today-about 1/2 bushel. We put them in the fridge for today. Maybe we will just eat on them for a while instead of juicing them. I hope to do more apples this evening but I’m not sure. We might have to wait until tomorrow to start on them. I am wanting to try a new recipe I saw for apple pie using honey instead of sugar. It looked really good.

Well, I guess that’s all that has been going on around here-just grapes and apples. I hope you all have a great day and God bless.

September 5, 2012 8

Raines Elementary

Hello everyone! I thought I would share this picture with you all. I found this on facebook the other day. This is where I went to school from 1st to 6th grade. In my 7th grade, they decided to tear down the school and build a new one. They then moved all us students to another building. I have many fond memories (and some not so fond) of this place. You see, I went to school during the time when teachers could still paddle. Not only that, but if I got in trouble at school, I knew I was in trouble at home. How did we ever get to where we are now. If a kid gets in trouble at school now, it is always the teachers fault never the kids. Oh well, sorry, I think I got on a rabbit trail there. Any way back to the picture. The small building you see in the right hand corner is the girls toilet. That’s right, toilet-not bathroom. You can not see it but there is one just like it on the left for the boys. No swings or any type of play equipment. Sometimes, someone would bring a board bat and a ball and we would play ball. Most times, we just played tag and hide and go seek, jump rope, hop scotch, things like that. In the upper left is the coal house and the pump house. Starting at the right of the building, the first room was the 3rd and 4th grade, next was 1st and 2nd, then 5th and 6th and the last room was for the 7th grade. I guess they thought if you made it to 7th grade, you deserved a room all to yourselves. As you probably guessed, we were a small school and everyone knew everyone, no matter what grade you were in. The older grades watched out for the younger grades. Everyone’s parents knew everyone’s parents. Of course, this meant you couldn’t get into too much meanness because someone was bound to tell on you. But I liked that, we knew where our boundaries were.

Well, that’s my walk down memory lane. I hope I didn’t bore you all too much. We are working with grapes today. So I better get off here and get started. Enjoy your day and God bless.

August 31, 2012 8

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

Piebald Deer

Piebald deer, a genetic variation that occurs in less than 1 percent of the whitetail population, have white bodies with brown spots, short legs and an arching spine.

We saw one of these last night on our way home from church. It was very exciting. I have never seen one before. The one we saw had a little more brown on it in the front and it was a buck. It was down close to the road so we got a really good look at it. Amazing! I am not sure what the girls and I will be working on today. I want to check the tomatoes and see if any more are ready and see how close the grapes are to being ready. If no garden harvest is ready, I guess we’ll just do normal housework. I hope you all have a great day. God bless.

I got the picture at http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/nov/27/piebald-deer-a-rare-find-in-area-woods/

August 20, 2012 2

Grapes

This picture of our grapevine was taken on April 12. This is what it looked like last week.

It seems to be growing every day and full of baby grapes!

This makes me very happy. I hope to make some jelly this year and lots and lots of grape juice! We so enjoy having our own juice to drink.

Our weekend was a busy one. I didn’t get to tell all about it on yesterdays post. It was late and I was tired. Anyway, on Friday, our church had a mother/daughter banquet. It was lots of fun with about 25 ladies attending. Then on Saturday, we had to go to Jessica’s to start working on some things her ins. agency said needed to be done. After we got there, Hubby realized we would need the scaffold, so we came back home Saturday evening. We went back down on Sunday and finished it up. Jess, the kids, myself, Julie and Grace went to the Farmers Market on Sunday. We had a great time just walking around looking at everything. Okay, so I have to tell you, we rode Jessica’s van to the market. 7 of us. We took the double stroller and the small stroller, plus, of course, all the other stuff you need for small kids. Needless to say, her van was packed. Then when we get there, the first thing Jess sees-2 HUGE hanging baskets, that would look just perfect on her front porch. Now if you would like to have seen something funny, you should have been there in the parking lot watching us try to get all that stuff back in the van. It really was hilarious!! We finally did it though and didn’t even damage her new hanging baskets. I guess we are just talented.

Our lunch break is over and so I must get back to school. Enjoy your day and God bless.

May 8, 2012 5

Grapevine

Our grapevine is coming along nicely. Remember last year we cut it back too much and didn’t get not one single grape from it. We are hoping for lots and lots of grapes this year.

We have been busy this week with school and other miscellaneous things. Nothing too big. We went to help Hubby yesterday. The room he is working on needs lots of work on the floor. It is sagging very badly. He has to take the floor up and get under the house to jack it up. It had little linoleum squares on it that had been put on with some kind of heavy duty glue. We had to take the heat gun to each individual square and then use a shovel to get them up. It took most of the day.

We are having a little cold spell here. We call it dogwood winter as the dogwoods are in full bloom. We have been in the upper 20’s at night with frost. Yesterday’s high was low 40’s with lots of wind. Chilly but today has been nice. Sun and temperatures in the low 60’s. I like that much better.

Well, that’s about all that is happening here. I hope you all have a wonderful evening and God bless.

April 12, 2012 4

Grapes

Beautiful grapes! Last night a friend of ours called and said they had some grapes that we could have if we wanted them. They had already used all they wanted so we loaded up and went over to pick. We picked about 3 bushels. The girls and I have been busy all day, processing them. We are using the steam juicer. I think we will end up with about 20 qts, maybe more. What a blessing. God is so good!

Guess what? We have a broody hen! Well, where I come from we call them setting hens but here most folks call them broody. Anyway, she is only 4 months old. I don’t think I have ever known one to set that young. We have kept Mr. Rooster separate from the hens so her eggs would not hatch but she doesn’t seem to know that. The girls and I wanted to put her back in the coup with Mr. Rooster so we could let her set but Hubby said no. No more chickens-(this year). Anyway, we moved her out into her own little coup for a few days. The other hens were glad as she was hogging the only nest they will use. They have two other nests but for some reason they all prefer to use just this one.

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

August 27, 2011 4