Snow Days ...Gods When Will it End...?

Firstly.. Sorry to not have written anything in a while. Life in general has been hectic here.

Now about Snow days... the first year we were hear we had sooo much fun with them. Seemed like every other week the school would cancel days on end. Well in the last 2 months aside from the normal time off they have had an additional 2 and a half weeks off. ...and last week it got ridiculous. The last couple days they had off there was no snow on the ground and one of them was a day it rained all day. I jokingly said on Facebook that it wasn't a snow day it was a “rain day”.

It was so bad that back on Monday I joked about the fact they'll call school off on account of heat... as it was in the 50's in January. The intense cold did give us a minor problem. Our pipes froze, just one segment and it was the important one. The outside pipe leading to the house from the well. So instead of waiting for thaw we just went out and bought some PEX pipe and re ran it.

On the pigs we were going to get... Seems they died in the cold we had along with the goats these people owned. Now my only problem with this is that we own 1 goat. She lives in a shelter made of tarps, concrete board and some rolled roofing. Theirs had a post beam structure and 3 goats in total. I'd think the three goats would be able to keep each other warm. While the only help my goat had was hock deep straw and my daughter's blanket. Shrugs

We got our van which was out of commission working again. Spent over $300 on the repairs till we replaced the right thing. Funny thing is everything we replaced needed it, but wasn't the problem till we got to the final one. It was the MAP sensor something that costs $40. Well at least we now have a new...

Fuel pump

Fuel filter

Distributor cap

ECM

Spark Plugs

Spark Plug Cables

..so we know if something else happens they won't be those.

My son gets to go on his first maneuvers with the National Guard next weekend, hope he enjoys it. Right now all we are currently doing is making plans for the building we are going to do. The house is low on the list, have so many other things we need doing first. Well house, outdoor kitchen, layer house/yard, goat house/yard, pig pen (as we are planning on trying for some other pot bellied s).

Well That's it for Now.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Busy Weekend Ahead.

We spent most of the week relaxing as the kids have been visiting their grandmother.  So we had been hoping to get a ton of work done, but then it got hot, so due to no kids we'd sleep late then it would be too hot to do any work outside shrugs it happens. Yesterday we spent about half the day helping out Queensized Tink and her family with a building project.

I managed to pick some broccoli out of the garden this morning which we will be eating with our dinner tonight.  We have been getting strawberries and I've been drying a good portion of them.  I am also putting some away to make jam with once I have enough.  My Elderberry should be blooming soon and I'm hoping  that they don't do like last year and die after blooming.  Now the broccoli I picked today made me smile as last year we had one "make it" and it only got as big as my thumbnail.  This morning I got 4 big florets one the size of my fist with wise.

Our tomatoes are coming along nicely and I'm starting to get some tomatoes on the plants, my peppers will be "popping" soon.  As like my tomatoes and all my cabbages they are growing huge.  They are also covered in flowers.  The new rosemary plants we potted with my onions and hot peppers is trying to take over the pot.  Our other rosemary does not grow as happily, so that's really good.

The roses are getting ready to bloom as are the dahlia's I have planted.  Pity though that they will probably bloom this weekend  while we aren't home.  See we have to go pick up the kids Saturday night.. and will be back very late Sunday.  So knowing my luck they will both bloom Sunday morning.

I have also started gathering off of my "old fashioned" day lilies the buds so I can dry those for putting into soups and stews this winter. I have a recipe for making paste that I'll post when I have a chance that takes dried tomatoes and shows you how to make tomato paste from it.  It sounds much easier than the "cook down" method.  The person who wrote the book that it is in in stated that the point of making paste is removing enough water to make it thick so if you start from dried you only have to add enough to thicken it.

Well, I'm heading out now as we have some prep work for our trip and for our shopping trip tomorrow.  Everyone have a great weekend!

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Early Morning Bread

So I'm sitting here this morning baking bread and I figured I'd at least mention what I'm doing different to it.  I am using my sourdough dinner roll recipe, and I'm going to stuff them before baking.  Well, all but one that is.  My son the picky eater is getting a plain one.  The stuffed ones are going to be stuffed with some   fine diced lean pork, bell pepper,onion, and cheese.  I have precooked the pork to be safe at the second rising so that when I form the rolls I can do the stuffing.  Also that perhaps the meat will be slightly cool then.

Dinner Roll recipe follows...

Sponge:

1C sourdough starter

1 1/2 C white flour

1C warm water

Place your starter in a at least 2 quart bowl,  add flour and water and mix.  Cover to prevent flies or anything else from getting into it and set in a warmish place for 8hrs or overnight.  Before working the second part return 1C from this to your starter.

Rolls:

1 1/2 C of the sponge (remember you put back 1C)

1 T sugar

1/2 t salt

2 T melted butter

1 egg beaten

1 3/4 C flour

First make sure your ingredients are at room temperature.  Then (I use the same bowl that the sponge grew in), make sure your sponge is in a warm bowl and add to it the salt,sugar, and melted butter and mix in; I use a tablespoon to do this.   Then add in the beaten egg and mix it in well.  Then you add in 1 cup of the flour and mix until it kinda forms into a single piece of dough.  Then turn out onto a floured (3/4 C ) board and knead until smooth and elastic.  Then place in a warm bowl (I grease it first) and cover with a towel for at most 2 hours or until it is doubled in bulk.  (fyi... easy way to tell is to take your first 2 fingers and try to make a depression and if it leave a depression it's double)  Then punch it down and let rise again for an hour and a half.  Then you put it on your board and shape it into the size rolls you wish, place on a greased baking sheet and let rise again for about 30 minutes.  Then bake in a preheated oven (400 degrees) for 20 minutes or until browned.

I have in the last few days bought a few new plants.  a watermelon, a cantaloupe, and a lavender.  I planted them and didn't water them as we were suppose to get rain.  Well the next morning I had to water them, as it did not rain.  We bought some cherries for $4 a bag at the store.. one for eating and one whole one for drying.  I love cherries and I want some for the winter. Maybe I'll make some oatmeal cherry cookies this winter.

The kids go and visit my mom for a week starting Saturday, so me and Silver will be having a nice quiet week then.  Maybe we can "recharge"  as I think the teenager is designed to make a parent's life stressful.  Well, I have to get back to my bread for breakfast.  Everyone have a great day!

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

After the Rains

We survived all the storms moving through the area.. though I am wondering if we shouldn't call Noah in with his boat... grins

Well I know I haven't posted in a while... using the Internet is just so irritating to me right now. Not in a “I don't know how to use it” way. More like.. I don't see the point to being online unless I have good reason. It's weird.. but it's me.

I am going to keep my blog going I just seem to need a bit more motivation to do it right now.

Bit of news, kids will be going on their trip next week sometime on Saturday unless my grandmother winds up ill. My mother is spending this week caring for her then she'll pick the kids up on her way back home. We're picking them up and getting her washer and dryer as well. One long week no kids though! That is going to be sooo nice.

Garden...

Well... I saved all those Tiger's Eye beans to grow as no one sells them right now. They all sprouted... then... our “tame” buck and his buddies came by and mowed 80% of therm down. Sighs I guess I'll be growing them just for seed this year again.

My grape is finally grasping onto our grip trellis, I'm going to have to work out how to prune it with how our trellis is. I'm hoping the cucumbers will get big enough to start up the trellis this week. Two of the three types of gourds have sprouted, and my sunflowers are spotty. I have all my squash plants growing, and my cabbage family plants as well as my onions are HUGE this year. The cabbages themselves have not started heading yet, but they are twice the size they were last year at this time. The onion stems are about ½ an inch... those are growing in the buckets from last years tomatoes. Speaking of tomatoes... My three little tomato plants are turning into trees out there. They also have tons of flowers on them.

We have been harvesting kale and lettuce every other day, while the kids are gone I should be able to daily. The herbs are doing very well this year as well.. also the one eggplant we have seems to be growing. Our strawberries are looking good, we have not picked any yet as Silver keeps saying they aren't ripe yet. Shrugs I am use to store bought ones which are sold under ripe. The elderberry.. TREES are taking over, they should flower this year and if so there will be tons of them.

I got to try an interesting jelly at the farmer's market yesterday it's white zinfindel. Yes you heard me.. as in the wine. It is soo yummy! Goes really well with banana bread too!

That's it for now.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Sunday Musings

Well, it's been a wet couple of days here. ..wet and cold, we've had rain,snow, sleet all in the last few days. Fun times! (my sarcasm over bounds) I am hoping the weather will be good Monday as our strawberry plants arrived and I need to get them into the ground soon. I am hoping to get pictures of them.

I've been downloading some info on various wildcrafting methods in the hopes of broadening my skills a tad more. Some are about making primitive tools, which I do find fascinating. So we will have those things to work on as well.

Soapbox time...

I had received on one of my posts the other day a message from “Heather” to email her as she wanted to talk to me about something. Now what happened after has me slightly annoyed.

#1 her name is Heather Von St. James

Good, so I have a name yes? Well there is more...

#2 She sent me a “canned” email asking me to post her story on my blog.

Which outwardly I have no issues with, however I did a bit more digging and sent another email asking a few questions about her as person. As I will not post about someone's story without knowing what kind of person they are. Just telling me you survived mesothelioma won't get me to post your story. Even telling me your daughter has it won't get me to either.

#3 She has through whatever method this is she contacts people she has at least 100 private blogs posting her story.

Ok, so again we fall to a question I sent her.. why my blog? I have a small amount of followers on my blog, so why would someone who needs to get info out about mesothelioma use me to do so? Doesn't make much sense to me.

#4 She has a facebook page and a Twitter feed.

This tells me she can reach millions of people is she truly wished to. Again why my blog? So I sent her a facebook message to her asking the same message I emailed her with.

#5 Upon digging deeper I have found out she herself has through lawsuits gained $5mil due to lost wages and medical bills.

Well in my opinion, if she has gained that much money she does not need my help gaining any more money. If she wants money for mesothelioma research then she should send me a message saying that. Not sending me a message saying she is trying to gain money for her daughter. Why not put aside some of her money just for medical expenses for both her and her daughter? Makes more sense to me.

#6 If you wish to make someone pay for what they did for you, do more than hit them in a pocket book.

Besides, the people who made the materials that did this nasty thing to them are probably not being bothered by it. Also, the biggest issues with it is if things are tested more/longer then maybe they will learn that the “thing” is bad and not use it.

Now go back to #2, I sent the email early this week. I still am waiting a reply. Same for the Facebook message, and I know she has her facebook page very active. So my guess is she doesn't truly care if I post her story or not. Now digging I found out that people call Heather the voice of mesothelioma good, they need a voice. However, a good voice would be very concerned if their message got out to all the people they contact. Not send one canned message and then ignore them.

Just wanted to put all this info out to everyone out there, just so that if you get the “hey email me I want to ask you something about your blog” message you you have info to look back at and make a informed decision based on more than just a canned email.

Now it's time for me to step off my soap box and finish breakfast.

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Family Problems

Fun times, fun times indeed...   My grandmother last year was initially diagnosed with throat cancer.   Now this came on as a surprise to her supposedly.  However since the tumor at the times was very large I don't think it came on suddenly.  I believe she just ignored it.  Half of her throat was gone when the disease was "discovered"  it had spread badly enough that it had gotten into her mouth.  She was on a feeding tube and medicines for months.  

Then out of the blue my one aunt told my mother that my grandmother was cured of it.  Not remission, which as far as I knew is all that can happen with cancer; except in very rare cases.  Also my grandmother is worse than a chain smoker and drinks her breakfast, so... eeehhhh... I don't think it was "cured".

My proof...?

I got a call last night from my mom saying she is going to be in the area next week as my grandmother is now dieing of her throat cancer that my aunt told the family she was cured of.  Seems when my grandmother left the hospital, got her feeding tube removed she went right back to smoking.

I guess the one "upside" of this is at least it's as smoking cancer.. and not some other kind; and I don't smoke. Yes I realize that cancer of any kind is not good, but this is my effort of finding an upside to anything.

That's it for now... sighs

BE Well. Be Safe,  and Blessed Be...

Snow Day version 2

As in yesterday the kids had a snow day.  We had a reasonable amount of snow finally for this winter, and due to the rain that fell before the snow...
  As you can now see the pond is now full!  YEAH!  Now if it just stays full we'll be doing very well.  The fun part we had yesterday was that the top was all slush. so just to see we were tossing snow balls onto the top of the pond and it would hit the slush leaving a dent in the slush which under it would fill with liquid water.
Do you see all that wonderful snow??    It was a fun storm that is for sure as it had started us off with rain Monday afternoon.  Then in the evening, and I was watching it happen.  We got large fluffy snow flakes that as I watched were "sticking" to the ground.
 ...and as for my comment about watching it.  I was standing at the door making sure the dogs didn't run off while they went out to go do their business; which took less than five minutes.  So I saw the snow starting to fall and "stick" in that time frame.
 At 4 am yesterday morning we got the message that the kids would be off of school for the day.  Which after I opened the door yesterday morning I understood why buses here wouldn't be able to pick up the kids.  As I know the buses here do not use chains they would not have done the dirt roads here yesterday.
 So this morning looking at all the school closings lists the kids were semi disappointed that they were going to school today.  I guess the school determined that the roads were used enough so their would be grooves in the snow on the dirt roads.  I am not sure how much the school bus the kids are on traverse the dirt roads around here.
 This morning the weather person told us due to what the storm is doing we may have snow for the next few days, on and off.  Well I know this will help our "rainfall totals" so that's good.  Though we may wind up with a bit of flooding when it all melts.  Good thing we live on a hill.
 We lost our internet for a portion of yesterday as after the snow storm the dish was coated with snow.  So Silver had to go out and clean it off carefully, and that did it.  Though  for some reason at some point last night it went out again.  Maybe one of these days I'll get to pintrist and put in all the pics I have to put in there.
 Well I have to run the kids around to get them moving a bit more this morning.  Have a great day.

 Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Happy After Christmas!

Hey folks! Hope those who celebrate Christmas had a good one. ..and those who don't had a nice day off.

It was a very long day for me as two of my three children have elected to be Christian I make sure the holiday that is big is theirs. That said my brother-in-law was suppose to have my nephew call my kids to talk to them on Christmas day. The young man misses them as he hasn't seen them since my youngest was 8(?) I think. Well... it didn't happen and my kids wound up very disappointed as they really wanted to talk to him. It bother's me when people who are family and make a promise to some kids don't keep it.

Anywho... Silver thought the turkey that I made should have been on the cover of a magazine, though I guess I should have taken a picture of it. Thing is he told me after dinner, so I had no idea till it was to late to get a picture of it.

Last week I started up a linkdin(sp?) account, I have not done much with it as yet though. Those of you who know me on facebook can find a link to it there. I am considering setting up an extra page on the blogger blog as a kids page for the kids to write on while they have a break at school. AS I know my son has commented that he gets at least some time once a week on the computers there as free time. So we'll see if I get a chance to set it up in the next couple of weeks.

I have found already the seeds that I want to order from Baker Creek, and once I send some orders out I'll list them here for everyone to see. Oh, something interesting; my tea trees are still in full leaf I wonder if that is because they are from Russia by the Black Sea? We'll see how they are come spring.

That's it for now folks!

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

I'm a mean parent part 2

I guess I'm still a mean parent, and if you don't know what I mean by that take a look here:

http://rivenfae-wolfwoods.blogspot.com/2011/02/im-mean-parent.html

I wrote once about how my kids think I'm this horribly mean parent because I make them work. Well, they still think I'm mean; and now I am because I'm not listening to them when they get hurt. Well... I don't constitute a little cut on your big toe, and it is little no bigger than the head of a pin; as warranting needing to rest. Nor do I think.. but mom my back itches as medically necessary of rest, or sneezing a lot for that matter.

With that said, I seem to have a nice cold going on. I have been having very congested mornings where I'm sneezing every ten minutes, my throat feels like one of the cats crawled down it and shredded it's way back up. I also am not sleeping well because I have been winding up so congested by the middle of the night.

Guess what...?

I went out and watered the garden, harvested Lambs Quarters for breakfast, fed the dogs and cats, made 2 different breakfasts, dug in the pond, washed laundry, and then washed dishes, oh.. and before this post I wrote 2 posts per blog I keep. But dang, ...I must not understand that when I'm mildly ill I'm suppose to complain gripe and moan about how hard it is to work. Thereby making the work take twice as long.

What I have noticed is that most kids who spent any of their time growing up in the city especially in the public school system where kids are taught to feel entitled to almost everything. They seem to have trouble with the concept of doing some hard work. They don't seem to care about the “what if's” that might lie down the line as they are too focused on the here and now.

...and it's my job to be a mean parent to teach them otherwise...

Movie Review: " What's on Your Plate?"

I watched a really cool and wonderful movie with my kids last night, it was called “What's on Your Plate?” It is directed my an activist named Catherine Grund and has her daughter Sadie Hope-Grund and her daughters best friend Safiyah Kai Riddle as the hosts/stars of it.

In this movie the girls after experiencing the taste of a “farm fresh” tomato and how different it tasted decided to figure out all they could about where their food comes from. Including the food in their school.

My girls at least were very interested in what was going on in this movie and about how these 2 girls where showing how much the children of NY city had access too. ...provided you look for the “good food”.

These girls visited 2 major farms in NY state that had dealings with the NY city school system. One was an apple farm seems it took quite a bit to get NY apples into the NY city school system. The other farm was a carrot farm (I'm sure they had more than carrots), the carrot farm was trying to get their carrots into the school system. By the end of the movie you find out that the carrots did make it into the school system.

They also learned about CSA's and about families in the city who farm. Also a friend of one of the girls lives in Harlem and drives out of that area to buy good food. Then the girls found for them a farmers market in their area, just down the street from them. It had been there for 12 years and the father of the family didn't even know it was there.

I think this was truly a wonderful family film that everyone should watch with their kids, especially if their kids “don't get” what mom and dad are telling them about food and how important it is to eat good foods. I know my kids (the girls anyway) asked quite a few questions during and after the movie about food and where it comes from.

It's funny, though as we have been telling my kids all about good food verses “bad” food and they didn't quite listen to it. Well, at least they are paying attention now.

So go check this movie out again it's called :”What's on Your Plate?”