Bountiful Harvest of Blessings

Hey All and Welcome new followers!  I hope everyone had a fun and safe 4th!  We spent the evening at a cookout our neighbor invited us to.  We had such a good time!  Folks around here are so friendly and welcoming. The food was wonderful and the fireworks were great! I’m so happy we went. We needed to branch out from our little homestead.

Herc Update ::: For the new followers, a short back story about our 11 year old dog Hercules.  Back in January we took him to the doctor for what we thought was a sprain or a pulled ligament.  We were completely blindsided when we learned he actually had cancer in his front leg.  We immediately decided that we would opt for surgery.  He lost his leg but, you couldn’t tell it by the way he has recovered and adjusted to being a tripod.  He still has one more chemo treatment left.  Last blood check his platelets were off so doc said to wait another week.  He will go back this week for more bloodwork.  Hopefully it will come back good so he can get this last treatment over and be done soon.   Athena (Teenie) has been doing great on Pepcid AC meds.  Very to little throw ups.  We can’t believe all this time it was something as simple as acid reflux.

The kittens are really now cats.  They turned 1 year old on July 1st!! They are doing wonderfully. They bring us “presents” pretty regularly.  :-/

Bun and Honey still have the nightwatch.  They work so hard at keeping us safe. They are our labs.  We sort of adopted them when we bought the property.

We have doubled the cows.  We now have ten. We leased some parcels of land to a neighbor so, they aren’t technically ours but, we have really enjoyed watching them. They are doing a great job mowing! 

Biggest news here was the moving of a doublewide up Rackum Road. Funny how that got our attention.  We were totally excited to see how in the world they would navigate something that large on these narrow country roads. But, they did!

And, best news here was having both my daughters and their significant others, my grand daughter and a friend visit last weekend.  Largest visit yet here at the farm! We had a wonderful time! It was crazy planning it all but, everything worked out perfectly.  Living 30 minutes away from the closest town makes it a bit challenging. There’s no such thing as uber or pizza delivery out here.  I have to pre plan all meals and make sure there are enough snacks and, of course, alcohol to keep everyone happy.  Even with no guests, I still have to plan our meals on a weekly basis.  I use the attached chart. Weekly-Meal-Planner It helps me to see it on paper.  I then go through each meal making sure I have what I need to make it.  If not, I grab it when I make my weekly grocery run.  So far, this system has worked really well.  One thing I love to do is cook.  I enjoy making new meals, trying different recipes in hopes of avoiding the same old meals week after week.

We finally moved the red storage shed.  Al built this shed for extra storage when we stayed in the RV on our visits here.  We stored things like chairs, grill equipment and even bird seed to save room in the RV. Now, we are converting it into a garden shed.  Since moving the garden up to the plateau (last year we had it down at the barn) we needed a place to store garden equipment.  Hauling it back and forth from the outbuilding was not working out too well.   I’m super happy to have it by the garden now.  Moving it was a bit nerve racking but, Al did it! Now, to decorate it. 🙂

This is where it was previously located. 

Now it sits right next to the garden.

The only craft I have been working on lately are a few barn quilts.  I made two for my sister for her birthday and I made a 2′ X 2′ one for the small barn.    I hope in the next coming months to reopen my shop Warm and Country and have these for sale.  Be on the lookout!

Our garden is popping with produce y’all!  It seems like overnight we had cucumbers, lettuce and green beans.  I am freezing the green beans until I am done with harvesting.  Then, I will can them.  The cucumbers will be used in a variety of ways.  I will definitely can some for pickles, but I love using them in different type salads as well.  They are so delicious.  The tomatoes are still green on the vine but, there will be a lot of them once they ripen.  I plan on making salsa, puree tomatoes and many other canned recipes with them.  The pumpkins, sweet potatoes, spaghetti squash, onions and regular potatoes are flourishing!  The lettuce and radishes have all been harvested.  I now need to research harvesting Kale.  We have three rather big bushes of them.  Just not sure when to harvest. We are learning as we go!  This was our first salad made straight from the garden!  

I completed all the Spring cleaning. Finally!  I took some things from my Spring Cleaning list and made a winter (before Christmas) cleaning list.  There are some things that need cleaning more than just once a year. Sitting one evening on the couch and staring at an empty fireplace we decided to move the furniture around for the Spring and Summer months.  Now we can enjoy the view more especially while it’s in full bloom.  What do you think?  I love changing things up every now and then.

I hope you enjoyed reading!!  If you would like to subscribe to my blog, just click on the link below.  You will receive an email confirming your subscription.  Once you’ve confirmed, you will received an email each time I add a new post!

Next up – Blackberry harvest and new porch swing!

XO,

Elisa