SORRY FOR BEING SO LAX IN POSTING...WINTER BLAHS HAVE HIT ME

So I'll just post a few pictures really quick. We've gotten a lot accomplished, but it sure doesn't look like much, because it's all things that make a BIG difference, but not really that noticeable...like the wiring is all in upstairs, we're beginning to run the water lines, but I don't think it will look like a lot has been accomplished until the drywall goes up. Which should be soon, as soon as we're done running the water lines upstairs, I guess. We also spent a day just cleaning up around the yard, making a HUGE bonfire pile out of scrap and rotten lumber (Missouri is not kind to lumber not INSIDE a building...even tarps only go so far in protecting it. Jason also spent an evening regrading the driveway and part of the road (we are on a private road, maintenance falls to the homeowners on the road), and filling in potholes with gravel. We really need a few dump truck loads of gravel brought in and spread on the road, but we're not going to do that by ourselves. Oh, how could I forget...we have the shower installed upstairs, the toilet is ready to set (still no water run though) and the tub is set downstairs. It's slowly coming along...

On another note, because we are a "farm", it's time to start thinking of seeds for the spring garden (I won't need many, but I will need a few new varieties to try out) and the 1st of January Shannon & I will be ordering our baby chicks to raise. We're thinking 50, and we'll probably keep at least 10. We need a few more reliable layers, and forget Americaunas, they may be cute, but you can't find their eggs!!!

Okay, enough jabbering, here are some pictures!

And in celebration of our house getting CLOSER to completion, we put the Christmas tree up in the house this year! I also put "candle" nightlights in the windows, it looks really cool at night!

I've also been hard at work for my flea market booth, and I'm happy to say that it's starting to pay off. I have also listed a bunch of finds on eBay, and that's done pretty well for me, too, my "income" has purchased gas, groceries, Christmas gifts, animal feed, and all kinds of other little things that weren't in our budget. :) It's a lot of work, but I'm thankful to still be able to stay home and take care of the family, the animals, the garden, etc.

Why is our farm named "Wayward Pine" many are asking...

As I'm sitting here this morning, enjoying a cup of coffee, watching the rain roll in, and listening to the dog snore (very loudly!) I thought I'd give a little bit of history to our farm's name. A few years ago, maybe five or six, a TV show was airing called The Sword of Truth series. It started out really well, and we all enjoyed it, until we realized it was based on a book series. Being nerdy people, we started reading the books and realized how lame the show really was. I guess a LOT of people felt the same way, and after realizing how badly the books had been ruined when turned into a TV show, the viewership sunk and the show bombed. We kept reading the books. Terry Goodkind is the author, and he puts out a new one every year or two. They're a lot fantasy and magic, a little romance, sword play, kings, wizards & monsters, with a very Libertarian thought process. My whole family loves them!

In the book, early on, is mentioned a type of tree, a very old, very tall pine tree, usually found along a path or trail, the outer limbs of the tree are long and wide, they hang all the way to the ground and they cover each other so well that the interior of the tree is dry and sheltered, a perfect place to shelter for the night or hide from enemies. We don't exactly have a "pine" tree like that on our property, it's a cedar tree, but it has many of the characteristics, and the first time the kids saw it, that's what they called it. The photo in the background of my blog is of OUR Wayward Pine in winter. It's also symbolic of how we view our new piece of property, a shelter in the storms of life, a place to feel secure. I hope everyone's home can be a Wayward Pine in their lives. Enjoy the day!

It's a very rainy day here on our farm

It's one of those days that I would like to just go back to bed and curl up with a book and maybe take a nap! Nope, not happening...although my tired eyes sure seem to be begging for it.

Today is the day I organize myself, get my grocery list together, get another load of laundry in the wash, and hopefully go through our food storage to get it ready to transport into our crawlspace in the new house. My hubby gave me the go-ahead to put it in there. He's pretty sure it's dried out and insulated enough now. This will free up some space on our cabin's porch for shoes...why do shoes take up so DARNED much ROOM? And everyone needs two or three pairs, it seems, plus the necessary muck boots...which were needed this morning from all the rain.

I'm also working on pricing some of my "finds" for my flea market booth and hopefully getting some of my BEST finds up on eBay. It's always fun coming home from a day of auctions and yard sales and researching my goodies. Some of them I am just VERY attracted to and will be putting in my new house and some of them I just think have style & class and figure someone else will think the same...and hopefully pay the price I've researched and found to be the "right" price. :) Happily my booth made money last month...not a whole lot, but it paid the booth rent and I got a check, too, so far, so good.

It's definitely fall here in the Ozarks now, the leaves are changing or have changed, the black walnuts are EVERYWHERE in my yard. The other day we had a big wind that must've drummed several hundred black walnuts onto our roof and ground, what a NOISE! They sound like hail. UGH! We're all allergic to them here in this house, so while they are an excellent nut, good for you, and easy to grow (we have six trees, I think...and more that would come up if we let their sprouts keep growing), they're useless to us. The rains have come, which is good, it was a dry summer and the creeks & rivers are all very low.

I harvested some of my red bell peppers the other day and now need to get them in the freezer. They are one of the main ingredients in my red beans and rice recipe. I also have loads of habanero peppers. They're hot little buggers and I'm not fond of them, but my middle son loves making HOT sauces and salsas. No tomatoes, though, they fizzled about a month ago. The plants are still trying to produce, but the blight is preventing them from actually making nice ones. I need to get out there and pull them up and burn them, but that involves time I just haven't had a lot of lately. I also need to bring in my dried beans. I have discovered that I'm not very good at picking green beans when they're at their best...I tend to let them get too big, so then they turn into bean pods for dried beans...more seed for next year plus cooking over the winter. I hope I haven't left THOSE too long and they've gone bad from all this rain.

We've been working on the house in bits and pieces, between work and school schedules and the rains. On nice days we're working on the siding, on crummy days, like today, we've been framing in upstairs and we'll hopefully work on the wiring this weekend. On top of all of this we've been helping my in-laws move. They're moving closer to us, they found a cute place at the edge of town that will be perfect for them. So much to do, so little time...

Here are some pics of the upstairs as it's getting framed in:

1st photo is a view of the "sitting room" as you come up the stairs. Now that it's framed in it actually looks larger than what it appeared on paper. :)
2nd photo is a view of the bathroom and bedrooms from the sitting room, note the closet on each side of the main door. When the kids move out and we no longer need it to be TWO bedrooms, the middle wall (temporary, doesn't exist in the photos yet) will come down and it will be one big master bedroom.
3rd photo is a view of the bathroom from the sitting room.
4th photo is a view of the sitting room and bathroom from the bedrooms, you can see the closet spaces a little better there.
5th photo is a view of the sitting room from the bathroom.
Last photo is a view of the staircase from the sitting room. The stairwell will be open from upstairs with a nice rail and grill to prevent falls. :) Notice the "ledge" running alongside the bathroom? Jason did this to make sure the wall lined up with the supports all the way to the crawlspace, and it will make a nice "display" ledge...however I will not be able to put anything breakable up there, because I imagine the cats will make FULL use of that nice ledge for sunbathing, exploring, and just plain being mischievous. LOL! If the rain would ever slow down we might actually get the shower stall put in there, but it's sitting outside and I'm sure it's full of water by now.

It's been a hectic week here on our mini farm

Lots going on, but doesn't seem like anything really got done. My middle son finishes up his job this week, his last day is Wednesday. Thank God! No more driving him into town at 7am! yuck! It also means he'll be home way more to be able to help on the house building. My mother-in-law and father-in-law are moving closer to us, so we've been helping them pack up their home. I've been hitting yard sales to find bargains, not only for my own home, but also for the flea market booth I set up earlier this month (which has thankfully sold enough to cover October's booth rent! Whew!). I am hoping my enterprise really pays off closer to Christmas, when we need the money the most. Here's a picture:

My oldest has been busy with college work and helping his grandparents. He has always been the hardest worker of all my kids! He's also spent the weekend helping Jason work on the house building. It seems we've spent so much time getting ready to get ready to do things on it. We had bought off craigslist some very nice solid wood doors with full windows for a very reasonable price. The only problem (the biggest problem) is that they don't fit a typical door frame. So while we had built everything for normal sized doors, we ended up having to jimmy the front door opening, and the back door opening is still up for debate on whether we'll use these same doors back there and jimmy the opening, or if we'll just resell them and buy prehung doors. While the doors are BEAUTIFUL, being NOT perfectly standard doors, and being that we're not construction workers with all the tools available at our disposal, it may not be the best idea to try to do the back ourselves. On top of the doors not being typical, they are also extremely heavy! We used the 3 hinges typical of doors this size, and have realized we're going to have to go with 5 hinges or purchase super expensive hinges to hold their weight or we'll have problems in the not-so-distant future. It does look wonderful, though.

Jason also purchased one of those storm doors that has a built in, hidden screen. The screen comes out of hiding as you push the window down. As often as we will use it, it was worth the extra money. :) Now that the front door & frame is all in the guys can work on trimming it and then get back to siding the house on that wall. We also heard from Menards that our foundation coating will be in on Monday or Tuesday this next week. Yay! We can finally finish THAT part of the house and begin working on the front and back porches. View of our new doors from the outside (I still need to wash them).

This week was also homecoming week for our local high school, so my daughter was busy with that. She has turned into an excellent photographer and was tapped to take the pictures for her FFA chapter. She did a tremendous job on the float, too. :) And my middle son took his girlfriend (who is still in high school) to the Homecoming dance last night, so that was more running around. They looked great, though.

Let's see, what else has been going on around here, I've been trying to get back in the swing of food storage. It seems I'm using a LOT of our food storage lately, first because all our extra money is going into my flea market booth right now (you have to spend money to make money) and because I don't really have the time to go to the grocery store to shop. Seems odd, I know, but with all the running around I've been doing lately, the last thing I want to do is drive an hour round trip to grocery shop. So it's been pizzas and tacos, and I think today just may be chicken on the grill. :) Oh, and eggs, we've been eating a lot of eggs lately. Our hens have slowed down their laying, but we still have far too many, so thankfully I have some faithful friends & neighbors who keep purchasing our extras. Have I mentioned lately that duck eggs make the BEST baking eggs?

I suppose I should stop chit-chatting and get busy with other things, like laundry and giving the animals fresh water. Enjoy the pictures!
And here's a photo of the pony...still at our house:

Here are some better pictures of the front door. :)

When all the stars are in alignment...

or maybe more accurately...when all the kids are home and have no other plans (this seems to be a rare occasion here lately, since the kids are all over 17 now), we get a lot accomplished.

Thursday we had another load of gravel dropped off, we'll keep plugging away at the French drain area, and whatever rock is leftover (we should have a small pile at least) will go on the driveway to fill in where the rain has washed it away. We had quite a rain this past week...3 inches!

Friday my husband took the day off work and got things organized, parts lined up, and the first row of siding started. That was a little trial and error on his part, since this is the first time he's worked with Hardy Board, a fiber cement siding...should last the rest of our life-time, though. Once he had everything figured out he and the kids really got some work done. Here are some pictures of the siding going up on Saturday:

And the last photo is of the last window finally installed on the front of the house. YAY! After the siding gets finished on the current side they're working on I think they have decided to tackle installing the door frames. This is also a first for my husband, as he couldn't find the correct sized door frames for our house (honestly, WHY do stores locally not sell six inch door frames...everyone these days are framing their homes in 2 x 6 studs! ugh!) So he's making his own. He's going to start with the small door on the front first, as that will be his practice run. The french doors on the back will be tough, as we want BOTH doors to be able to open, and open OUT onto the back porch, so we can fit BIG stuff through without killing ourselves trying to get it through a small opening. The back porch will be screened, so no worries about having to put a screen door on a six foot doorway.

In other news around our little farmstead, our chickens are molting and the ducks are backing off on laying for the winter, so the egg production has gone from about 14 a day down to six. My daughter and I spent the early morning yesterday cleaning the fence row out, seems some vines decided to climb our electric fence and ground it out. Thankfully our horses won't go through it, even when it's not on. It's been off for about two months. Yep, two months and the horses have stayed right where they're supposed to be.

Then we got busy cleaning up the north side of the house, construction mess is unsightly. After about six hours we had it pretty cleaned up, all that's left is a big pile of tarp pieces. The south side is going to take longer than that...that's where we have our tub & shower stall sitting for now, and they're on top of a big mess. I don't even want to talk about the mess behind our tool shed. Yuck!

Speaking of horses, we had a stray show up a few days ago. First it got through into our neighbor's calf pasture. When they couldn't chase it back through to its own side they chased it out of the pasture and it headed up here. I can't stand to see an animal just running loose, so it went in with our horses, after a day of introductions (ever heard horses get to know each other? It's NOISY!) they all seem to be settling down. Turns out it's a miniature horse...and it's a stud at that. Sigh...at least it's too small to breed with our mares. I'm not up to dealing with pregnant horses...not that our old girl even needs that added burden, being 29 in people years. Poor old girl, she may not make it another winter.

Anyway, we know where the little horse belongs, but it's not overly friendly to people and the owners just pasture a bunch of animals and don't even live around here. And of course no one around here knows their name...just say hi to them when they see them in the neighborhood. I guess we'll be leaving a note on their gate that their horse is up at our place. We wanted a cow or a goat, not another horse out in our pasture.

Well, that's about it around here. Hopefully I'll have pictures to post later of more progress on the house.

Sometimes we spend more time getting ready to get something done...

than we actually GET anything done. This weekend was one of those weekends. We are waiting for the stucco coating (tinted tan) to come in at Menards. We could go with gray from Lowes, but that wouldn't match our house, so we're waiting...and waiting...and waiting. Meanwhile we have the french drain needing another layer of rock, but can't get that in until the stucco goes up. We have a back deck that we could be working on, but we need to bring the level of the ground up back there, and yet we can't get it going until the stucco goes up. UGH!

Meanwhile we picked up the lumber needed for the covered back deck, removed the ramp (oh, this is SO not fun getting in and out of the house now!) and did a lot of clean up around the yard...lots of scrap lumber was burned this weekend. I think we had those two burn barrels blazing red hot for at least 10 hours! Thankfully the weather cooperated and it wasn't blazing hot out, as well.

We moved the ramp over and made it a deck in front of the tool shed...Jason's plans in the future are to put a little roof over it and dress it up like a boat house or an old cabin in the woods. Either way it's going to look CUTE! At least we were able to repurpose the materials. So really, it doesn't look like we got much done this weekend, and that last window still needs to go in, but when you consider that we are READY to get the foundation stucco on whenever it finally gets here, the flooring for the interior is ordered and on it's way here, and we have everything READY to begin the back deck, and the yard is looking a LOT better...I guess we were pretty productive. Oh, and I made lasagne yesterday for dinner...a family favorite and a special treat. Yep, it was a good weekend.

Upstairs windows are going in!

As of today we have three installed of the four. The last one is going to be a doozey because it's going above our staircase, so we have to make a scaffolding inside to get that one in. I thought we'd be tackling it this weekend, but so far the guys have been working on the foundation. They have all of the flashing installed, which Jason made by hand. Everything he looked at in the stores (and even the few he purchased) just didn't hold up. They were flimsy and dented easily. Thankfully he works where he was able to use all of the tools to do the metal bending himself.

Here are pictures of the windows. The ones without mullions are going to be facing the barn, they were on clearance at Menards and an excellent price. The ones with mullions will be facing the driveway, so they match the rest of the house's windows and don't look weird to those driving up the driveway. The 3rd window was finished just as it got dark out. Boy it makes me nervous seeing my guys so high up ladders! Sorry for the poor quality of the last photo, it was really dark out.

The places where you see tarps still on the back of the house are where we plan on putting in french doors and a big covered back deck, so it's still a tad ugly to look at, but once we begin to tackle those tasks the tarps will come down and it will look pretty. For now we are using a generic exterior door (which will probably go on the chicken coop when we're done with it) so as not to damage our pretty and expensive doors. Although they didn't cost near what we might've paid for them new...they were left over from someone else's building project and never used and we paid about 1/4 of what they could've cost new! I love Craigslist!

The spray foam company will need to come back out and hit some low spots on the 2nd floor. They sprayed the insulation on one of the hottest days of summer and once the foam had cured we noticed spots that need to be deeper in foam. We told them to come out when the weather cools (and it has been doing that here this week).

Last night we started burning off the scraps of wood that have accumulated from building recently. We have a HUGE pile of wood and downed branches tarped over, just waiting for more rain to soak the ground so we can burn them, however what we've been burning is what has recently been added to our mess, and Jason decided burn barrels were the way to go last night. While the night air was quite chilly last night, we were pretty toasty warm about 10 feet from the burn barrels until they died down to a few inches of embers. We'll work on burning them off again today, too. We have quite the accumulation and our back yard is looking trashy. I'm not a total neat-nick, but I really don't like my yard to be trashy. We have so much to deal with! We also have an ash tree that didn't make it through last winter that will need to come down. It was really big, and we will miss its shade. I think the plan is to plant an autumn blaze maple in its place...eventually.

I'm not sure what the next step is going to be on the house. Maybe running electric upstairs? We did get our flooring ordered and we got it for an EXCELLENT price! The flooring is 2nds, so we ordered plenty of extra, just in case we have to cut a bunch off. The worst looking stuff will go upstairs. Flooring is really still a ways away, but it's always good to get what you can when you have the money and you find a great deal! (Literally saving thousands by purchasing this lot!). I guess I should get in gear and get some more laundry out on the line and get my dishes done. I'm making a lasagne for dinner tonight. I guess we'll see what the guys get accomplished today. :)

We've installed a French Drain around the crawlspace

After the crawlspace was all insulated we found we had a little leakage into it from rain. It wasn't bad, but over time that could cause mold and other problems, so the best option was a French Drain. This also solves our roof's rainwater runoff, as the gutters can be piped directly into the French drain and it can all be directed away from the house's foundation. We started by renting a track hoe, and it was a pretty cool little tool...although expensive to rent. About $200 for 24 hours. We got a LOT done with it though.

While we had it to dig out the French drain we decided it would be a good idea to dig up a small section of our septic that we thought MIGHT not be working right (when you have a nice green patch of grass and all the rest is dead around it from a summer with no rain...you might have a leak!). Yep, the septic line had been installed directly on top of a BIG rock, and over time that rock had broken the septic line in that spot...and I should also mention that this particular spot in the system runs UP hill (UGH!). While it will need to be addressed eventually, the best we could do right now, with the limited resources at hand, was to replace the broken section and we added a clean-out, so if the up-hill problem causes a clog, at least we can clean it quickly.

The next weekend we asked a neighbor (who had offered before) if we would borrow his tractor with a front-end loader to haul the gravel around and back-fill the French drain. We had it the whole weekend and got more done with it in 2 days than we could've gotten done in 2 WEEKS by hand (shovel & wheelbarrow). Here are pictures of the new drainage pipe going into the ditches dug for the French drain and the gravel fill used to help with drainage. We need one more load of gravel to go all the way around the foundation, but we'll have that delivered and spread AFTER we get the foundation covered with the stucco-like product we're using to seal it.

QUICK CHICKEN SALAD RECIPE

If you have food-storage, like we do, you probably have some canned chicken breast. This recipe is just something I throw together, no actual measurements, just "to taste", so you'll have to make up your own "to taste" amounts, but here is the jist of it:

1 large can of chunk chicken breast, drained and flaked into a mixing bowl
a handful of red grapes, cut into fourths
1/4 of a red onion, diced fine
a couple of dashes of celery seed
mayo or miracle whip, maybe a 1/4 cup, maybe a little more, depending on your preference for "creaminess"
about 20 lemon or lime basil leaves, sliced fine
salt, pepper to taste, add some celery salt to taste if you like the flavor of celery more

WE NOW HAVE INSULATION IN OUR HOUSE!!!

One more step in the direction of finishing the house. We had our house foamed, it's a castor bean oil (environmentally friendly and WAY better R value than traditional fiberglass insulation) that's heated and then mixed with something to make it foam. You can do open cell or closed cell. I really don't know all the technicalities, all I know is that it looked like a scifi movie's science experiment gone wrong. LOL! It pretty much oozed and bubbled everywhere it landed. The company did a pretty good job of cleaning up afterwards, but their tarp kind of broke on the way out the door, so there's way more to clean up now, but we'll get to it once the foam stops outgasing and it's cooler in there. The mixture is heated to cause the foaming reaction, so it needs to cool down, they said the outgasing would stop once it had fully cooled & cured. Its pretty amazing stuff!

We had them put a good thick layer in the crawlspace, walls and ceiling (upstairs roof), and a thin layer between the two floors to deaden upstairs foot traffic noise. We also had them spray foam our shed that houses our well, to keep it from freezing. It's pretty funky looking, especially since they didn't do any trimming of the foam after it cured like they did in the house...it looks like a freaky cave. LOL!

The last photo is of our shed enclosing our well. Until the house is finished I've had my washing machine installed for the last 3 years. Once in a while during the winter the line would freeze, so hopefully the new insulation in the well shed will keep that from happening.

TRADITIONAL RED BEANS & RICE RECIPE

From Southern Cooking Magazine, with my own twists. :)

I have even made this recipe Kosher and served the Andouille on the side.

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs dried red beans, soaked overnight in plain water (up to 24hrs)
1/4 c. olive oil, divided (I use light olive oil, it has a much higher smoke point)
1 lb Andouille sausage, cut into 1/4" rounds
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
2 med. sweet onions, chopped*
3 ribs celery, chopped*
2 medium green bell peppers, chopped* (or mix & match colors for looks)
Note**If you chop the veggies a little finer, they cook more quickly

2 bay leaves
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
1/4 tsp ground red (cayenne) pepper
3/4 tsp rubbed sage
4 tbsp dried parsley
1 bunch green onions, chopped
HOT COOKED RICE (I like Basmati or Jasmine best) I use my rice cooker for the rice...makes it easy to get the rice & beans to the table at the same time.

In a large dutch oven (I like enameled cast iron) heat 2 tbsp olive oil over med-high heat. Add sausage, cook, stirring occasionally, until browned, remove & set aside. Add remaining olive oil and cook onions for a few minutes, then add garlic (to prevent burning). Then add celery & bell pepper. Cook until tender, about 10 min or so. Cook in batches if necessary.

Pour soaked beans & soaking water into dutch oven (I actually drain my beans, add them into the dutch oven, then cover with Swanson's broth with the Louisiana flavoring...it's amazing! It's a chicken broth base). DO NOT ADD SALT YET! If your beans are old, add a tsp of baking soda to help the beans cook through or your beans will be hard or you'll have to cook them for HOURS. Bring to a boil, then turn down & simmer until beans are soft, about an hour, longer if your beans are getting older.

Add reserved sausage, bay leaves, basil, salt, peppers, and sage. Cook another 15 minutes.

Remove 1 cup of beans and mash, return to pot. Add parsley & green onions, simmer an additional 15 minutes. Serve over hot rice.

Another change is that I do NOT like parsley, so I omit it. Sometimes I'll leave some of the green onion "greens" chopped up and use as a garnish. If I've added too much liquid and the cup of beans aren't thickening it up enough, then I'll add about 1/4 cup of dehydrated refried beans (they don't taste refried). Wish I had a picture of this for you, but it's usually gobbled up too quickly to get a photo! Maybe next time.

ARE YOU HUNGRY? AWESOME MINESTRONE RECIPE!

This is from the Johnsonville Brats website, however, I am adding chopped carrots to mine, too, and probably fresh basil & oregano, which when you add fresh, you add two-thirds MORE and add them in the last few minutes of cooking time (and not at a boil but a simmer) to preserve their freshness. I don't have red wine in the house, but you can sub in more beef broth, or even veggie broth instead. I also don't like hot sausage, so I'll go with their mild sausage. So after all the alterations, it's now my own recipe! :)

Hearty Minestrone
1 package (19 ounce) JOHNSONVILLE® Italian Hot Sausage Links, removed from casing* (*Cut sausage link end to end, about three-quarters of the way through. Flip sausage link over, grasp casing and pull off.)
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
4 cups beef broth
2 cups uncooked small shell pasta
1 can (15.5 ounce) Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
1 can (14.5 ounce) whole tomatoes, chopped
1 medium zucchini, chopped
1 medium potato, peeled and chopped
1 cup red wine
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper


Preparation

1 Remove sausage from casing and cut into chunks.
2 In large stockpot, sauté sausage over medium heat until browned on all sides, about 5 minutes.
3 Add the red pepper, onion and celery; sauté 5 minutes longer or until vegetables are tender.
4 Add the remaining ingredients; bring to a boil.
5 Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes or until pasta is tender.

BEEN TOO BUSY TO UPDATE, BUT IT'S BEEN TOO LONG SINCE I HAVE...

It's been a really busy couple of weeks around here.

The garden scene: I'm battling squash bugs beyond belief! I wish they'd die, but probably won't before my squash does. :( The weeds in my garden are several feet tall (the areas that didn't get weed fabric covering), and I was working way too much and too hard, so I was too tired to do anything about it. Not to mention the fact that in the past month we've only gotten about an inch of rain. UGH! I've been watering twice daily in the garden, early morning and late evening. The 5 gallon buckets work wonderful for planting in, and my peppers are going CRAZY, but the downside is that they do tend to dry out quickly. Next year I have some better ideas, including drip line irrigation, and hopefully prevent early blight that way.

The yellow squash and zucchini are pretty much done in, thanks to the squash bugs, and I've seen them trying to infest my winter squash and pumpkins. I really have no way to get rid of them easily, and I'm not real big on using pesticides in my garden...but I'm about ready to give in. These things are SOOOO nasty and destructive! I'll keep looking for more info on natural prevention. One guy at the Farmers Market mentioned that he plants radishes in with his squash and that keeps them away...but do the bugs then head for his cucumbers? Hmmm....
I do know that diatomaceous earth and insecticidal soaps don't do a thing for them.

Home Life: Our cabin has been a mess for weeks now, and I am looking forward to having some time to get it all put back to neat & tidy. The dog is shedding and his hair has found it's way into every nook & cranny...so will have to really put some muscle into getting it cleaned behind & under furniture, thankfully I don't have a LOT of furniture in here. The laundry has been piling up, the food shelves are overflowing (literally, Shannon & I hit Big Lots twice this past month, so there are TONS of snacks and nowhere to put them...but school starts next week, so I expect the overflow will quickly be replaced with emptiness. And I've had a hard time keeping up with the dishes, especially with the kids working so many hours in July, they were never home to unload the dishwasher, but sure enjoyed loading up the sink!

Thankfully Tim's overnight job is over and done with. He can now focus on college again, which starts in two weeks. Michael's overnight job is over, but he was offered a FT position during the day...getting him back & forth to work is going to kill me until he gets his own car. 7am! :( Shannon is finishing her last year of HS this year and starts back next week. Jason has taken some time off to work on the house, and then returns to his regular FT job and also his teaching job at the same college Tim is at on the 19th. And what am I doing??? I quit my job the other day. BIG disagreement with an assistant manager. Apparently I have an attitude towards management...um...only when you're WRONG or treating others like the dirt under your shoes. But since I get upset every time I think about it, I am trying to put it in the past and focus on my family & home. I am also thinking of taking herbalist classes, but will have to decide if it's in the budget or not.

On a more positive note...all that time that my husband took off from work has been put to good use, the 2nd story on our house is up! The roof is on! And now we can begin putting the walls up, the windows in, and running electric upstairs. After that I believe the insulators will be coming out. We are using spray foam insulation, which is not only a great vapor & R value product, but also aids in structural stability. We hope our home is almost tornado proof, well, at least the normal range of tornadoes that pass through here, but probably would not withstand the force of a Joplin tornado. Hopefully a storm shelter will be in our future plans.

Here are some pictures. I'm just sooooo excited & happy to see the progress. It's taken three years, almost to the date, to get this far. We couldn't have done it without the help from our kids, my husband's parents, wonderful friends, and the local bank who decided to take us on with our unconventional building practices. That's my 1st floor bathroom tub and my 2nd story bathroom shower on the trailer to the right! :)

Those were taken after the 1st day's work. We had a BIG chance of rain that night, so we tarped the deck again as best we could. Thankfully Jason was awake and able to bail water out of the stairwell in the middle of the night. Other than a few other puddles, we were okay. We got an inch of rain that night.

Summer Squash/Winter Squash recipes!

Well, the summer squash is going mad in the garden, zucchini anyone?? LOL! I know it's one of those love/hate relationships in the garden. For me, if I can keep the squash bugs at bay, I celebrate. This year has been one of my best years yet. I think the landscape fabric covering the garden and just the plant poking through has helped repel the squash bugs...although they are still out there, and I try to get to them early in the morning or late in the evening and squish them! Next year I may use my buckets for growing them, as the tomatoes will most likely go in the ground next year (just wanted to try to break the cycle of blight...but it's the rain that brings it on, so I'll go back to planting them in the ground next year and just try really hard to stay on top of the signs of blight.

Anyway, here are a couple of recipes I've discovered. The first I plan on making tonight, it's a Rachel Ray recipe. The second is more for winter squash, although I'm sure summer squash would still probably work, I found it on-line a couple of years ago and I really enjoyed it, it's more "savory", and the last is a Martha Stewart recipe that arrived in my email in-box sometime this morning. Enjoy!

Baked Eggplant and Zucchini
Ingredients
• 2 cups tomato sauce
• 1 small eggplant, cut into long slabs
• 2 small zucchini, cut into long slabs
• 1 cup each shredded fontina and parmesan
• 1/3 cup torn basil
Directions
Spread 1/2 cup sauce in 9-by-13-inch baking dish; top with eggplant, zucchini, 3/4 cup sauce and half of each cheese and basil; repeat. Bake for 25 minutes at 400 degrees .
Rachel Ray


Baked Squash Casserole Recipe
6 cups squash, cut in small pieces
1/4 cup onion, chopped fine
1 (8oz.) package herb stuffing mix
1 cup sour cream
1 cup carrots, shredded
1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
1(10 3/4 oz.) can cream of chicken soup
Cook salt and onion in salted water for five minutes. Drain. Combine soup and sour cream. Stir in carrots, squash and onion. Mix together stuffing mix and butter. Spread half of this mixture on bottom of casserole. Spoon vegetable mixture over it.
Spread remaining stuffing mixture over top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.
*You may sub cream of celery or cream of onion soup for the cream of chicken.

Spicy Zucchini Frittata
Ingredients

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 jalapeno, thinly sliced
1 zucchini, thinly sliced
1 cup fresh corn kernels
Coarse salt
8 large eggs

Directions
Heat broiler. In a medium ovenproof (preferably cast-iron) skillet, heat oil over medium heat and cook onion and jalapeno, stirring, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add zucchini and corn and cook until tender, about 7 minutes more. Season with salt.

In a bowl, whisk eggs with 1/2 teaspoon salt and pour into skillet with vegetables. Cook until sides are just beginning to set, 2 to 3 minutes.

Transfer skillet to oven and broil until just set in the middle and lightly golden and puffed on top, 2 to 3 minutes.
Martha Stewart

BLUEBERRIES ARE IN SEASON!!!!

My favorite time of year at Farmers Market...BLUEBERRY SEASON! If I had the time I'd go to one of those "you pick" places...then again, if I had the time, maybe my berry bushes wouldn't be looking so lousy and I'd be getting lovely blueberries in my own back yard?

Fresh blueberries & blackberries bring me back to my childhood when my sister would pick my mom and I up and we'd go pick berries for the morning. As a kid, the morning seemed like it was FOREVER and the weather was always HOT, but EATING all those berries was so WONDERFUL! My favorite ways to have blueberries, now that I'm all grown up, is a blueberry pie. Second would have to be in yogurt with granola. Then there are blueberry muffins, blueberry buckle (like a coffee cake), and the list goes on and on. While blackberries still hold a place in my heart (right up there with blackberry jelly!), blueberries are the best (in my humble opinion).

Here's a picture of the gallon of blueberries I picked up at Farmers Market last night, the quick run through, just to say hi to some of my vendor friends and see what might be cooking. We had other plans for the 4th of July, as we do every year...MAGic 4th picnic and fireworks! Our local church (the one we attended for 10 years) always hosts a wonderful picnic and fireworks display, and for at least 10 years my husband and family have been the ones in charge of fireworks. He's a licensed pyrotechnic, along with all the other wonderful things he does. :) This is our last year shooting fireworks for the MAGic 4th, so the night was bitter-sweet.

So back to blueberries:

and a lovely recipe to go with it:

Blueberry Buckle

For the buckle:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 Tablespoons butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

For the Crumble:
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 Tablespoons butter

To make buckle:
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into bowl; set aside. In another mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the egg to butter mixture and whip until light and fluffy. Add flour mixture, milk, and juice to the creamed mixture. Use your hands to gently fold in blueberries. Place in greased 9x9 pan.

To make crumble:
In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, and cinnamon together. Cut in butter with hands until crumbly. Sprinkle over batter. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minute.

All the hard work...finally paying off...

Here are pictures of some lovely produce from our garden, and some recipes to enjoy. :)

Basil Eggplant Recipe
4 Servings, Prep Time: 10 Minutes, Total Time: 15 Minutes

2 chili peppers
2 eggplants
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tablespoon sugar
1 bunch leaves picked from the stem Thai basil
1 tablespoon cooking oil

Slice the eggplants into irregular shapes for easy turning in the pan.
Chop garlic and slice chili peppers. Pick the leaves from the stem of the Thai basil.
Heat a pan or wok over high or medium high. Add oil, chili peppers and garlic. Stir until the garlic turns golden brown. Add eggplant and stir. Add a cup of water and cover the pan or wok with a lid. Keep the lid closed until the eggplant is cooked. It should take about 5-7 minutes before the eggplant is done. The eggplant turns from white to translucent when it is done. Almost all of the water should have been evaporated at this point. If the eggplant is still not cooked, add a little bit more water and keep lid closed until the eggplant is ready.
Add fish sauce and sugar and stir. Add Thai basil and quickly stir to heat the basil, so that it retains its color. Turn off heat immediately.
Serve hot with rice.

* I didn't have fish sauce in the house when I was making this, but I had oyster sauce, and subbed it, it tasted just fine. :)

Baked Squash Casserole Recipe

6 cups squash, cut in small pieces
1/4 cup onion, chopped fine
1 (8oz.) package herb stuffing mix
1 cup sour cream
1 cup carrots, shredded
1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
1(10 3/4 oz.) can cream of chicken soup

Cook squash and onion in salted water for five minutes. Drain. Combine soup and sour cream. Stir in carrots, squash and onion. Mix together stuffing mix and butter. Spread half of this mixture on bottom of casserole. Spoon vegetable mixture over it.
Spread remaining stuffing mixture over top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

Easy Salsa
Serves 2-3

Ingredients:
3-4 tomatoes
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 jalapeno, sliced
or a pinch chili powder or chili flakes (not nearly as good...use a fresh pepper if you have it)
1/2 bunch of cilantro
1/4 cup fresh lime or lemon juice
Sea salt to taste
1/2 white onion, peeled.

Put everything into the food processor and pulse until the desired consistency is reached.

I like to heat everything over the stove for a few minutes, just to blend the flavors really well, plus the salsa lasts in the fridge several days longer when you do so. I add the cilantro and citrus juice AFTER the cooking process if I'm going to do that.

Had a lot of rain night before last...3 whole inches!

and I'm trying not to complain too loudly, because we really need the rain, but I have discovered that my tomatoes HATE rain...hoping next year we'll have a greenhouse we can grow them in, because this is ridiculous! The tomatoes have early blight...a fungus that attacks when there is too much rain. We had too much rain right after I set them out, ten days worth, in fact, and they were just snapping out of it, now more rain. There are only a few options for blight...early blight that is...late blight all you can do is pull them up and burn them far, far away from your garden. :(

The first option is the same as late blight, pull them up and burn them. With them so loaded with tomatoes that are ripening, I am opting for keeping them and trying to stymie the fungus with homemade remedies. The first is removing any blighted stems...they usually start appearing at the bottom of your plant as black spotted leaves, which then turn yellow, then the stem turns yellow, then they start drooping really bad and turning black. YUCK! So cut them all off, and cut off any that are too close to the ground, being careful not to touch healthy limbs & leaves. Throw these far, far away, or burn them...do not compost!

Then mix up a solution of 1 heaping tbsp baking soda, 2 1/2 tbsp veg or olive oil, mixed into a 1 gallon sprayer of water...and just before the water is up to the full level in your sprayer, a squirt of dish soap...I use Ivory. Put the sprayer top on, give the contents a good swish and then spray, spray, spray! Spray every inch, top to bottom, and the stems & soil, too. With as many tomatoes as I've got, I have to refill 4 times! UGH! Just treated them the day before yesterday, too, and then it rained again. It's a battle, but all those lovely tomatoes NEED to ripen!

Do NOT water with an overhead sprinkler for your tomatoes, they prefer soaker hoses, and this reduces the "splash" from rain hitting the soil and bouncing back to your tomatoes...spreading the fungus, which lives in the soil.

I read one person's comments about combating early blight...have healthy soil. Well, isn't that just kind of OBVIOUS? How do you get healthy soil? years and years and years of composting, amending, and turning of the soil. I'm only on year 3, and my first year was a drought. Kinda hard to get healthy soil in less than 3 years. Sorry for the rant, but when we're looking for NOW solutions, don't give us something that is years in the future. Sigh.......it's just being snooty.

Another suggestion is to add Epson salts to the soil around your tomatoes, which has magnesium in it, another mineral that tomatoes need which your soil may be lacking in...I have a big tub of it in my bathroom from Sam's Club. It didn't cost a whole lot, so I'm going to give it a try, too. If I weren't being so lazy right now, I'd go get it and tell you the directions, they're printed right on the container...but I am being lazy, so I'll leave that for another day, and see if they actually helped the blight problem or not.

Have a great day!

Sorry it's been so long!!! J.O.B. has been getting in the way...

Trying to keep up with family, church, animals, garden, farmers market, and various other obligations while keeping up on a blog has been...well...difficult. I have been offered permanent status with my job, which is good news, in a way, because I will be able to keep earning a paycheck, which we need right now. On the other hand, it was very hard to accept, because building the house is SO important, as well as taking care of my family, my animals, and my garden. Getting to Farmers Market has been difficult, but I have been able to make it quite often. Sadly my revenue has not been very high. I need more basil! LOL! Seriously, that's what I sold out of first. Sigh... finding time to grow more has been difficult.

Here is a great picture of one of our first Farmers Market set ups. My daughter does the flowers, I do the plants and herbs:

I had great success with my lettuces & kale this year until the rains came and the lettuces drowned (even though they're in raised beds) and the cabbage moths (which my daughter is a bug nut and says they are butterflies) gobbled my kale & broccoli! UGH! Using a home-made deterrent on them, and it's helping, but my broccoli is done for, and the kale will take quite a while to recover.

Here are some pictures of my garden in progress. I bought a few more raised beds from Walmart, and then 2 sets of raised beds from Sam's Club. The ones from Sam's are each only half the size of the singles from Walmart, but the price was right...4 squares for $40...vs each square for $27 at Walmart. I have spent a fortune on soil this year to fill them and all the buckets, too. It's well worth it, though, because the tomatoes & peppers aren't getting over watered and the root veggies are growing nicely, unlike in the clay & rock soil which the garden is mostly composed of. I have mostly onions & shallots in the small raised beds, radishes, turnips, beets, rutabaga and my lettuces & kales in the larger ones.