A Simple Prairie Life

It is definitely cooling off here.  Not sure how cool it got last night, but they were predicting 35 for our low.  Out came the Carharts, stocking hats, and gloves.

Friday, I spent the day cooking and cleaning.  I try to get my house cleaned on Fridays so it’s presentable and comfortable for the weekend.  I also made, canned, and froze some homemade tomato soup.  My camera was on it’s last leg in some of these, but on Sunday we purchased a new one so this first one is not-so-good.

All the other photos were terrible, so this is my tomato soup, haha!

Friday evening we were invited to dinner with some friends/neighbors of ours.  They cooked the most incredible meal for us.  Dh and I couldn’t believe how wonderful they both cook.  I even had a couple of bites of steak.  I haven’t liked steak since I was a child, but I must admit he prepared it so well. 

Dh and I have a difficult time finding people (our age) who we can relate to, talk to, and share common interests with.  This couple is probably as close as we have come in a very long time.  She enjoys cooking and does a lot of “from scratch” cooking.  They both tend to their garden and livestock and hope to grow a majority of their food themselves.  They have two adorable little boys to help them along the way.  He is also a great mechanic (as is my husband) so they have traded back and forth in helping each other with projects and mechanical problems.  We will hopefully be spending more time with them and learning from each other as we all strive to take a step backwards in the rat race.

Saturday, we spent the day cleaning out the floors of our chicken coop and one of our sheep sheds.  Yuck, is the only word to describe this task.  Sunday, we ran to get a camera and few other things in a nearby (30 minutes each way) town.  When we came home it was back to shoveling the shed out.  We are estimating it was about 20 years of sheep manure compacted one foot deep.  Some of it looked like we were ripping out OSB or particle boards from the floor of the shed.  The flowerbeds will be appreciative of the new fertilizer come spring.

We HAD to have a camera this weekend because we were supposed to send in a picture for an article being ran in the Texel Times.  A newsletter for Texel sheep breeders.  My mom was in charge of the photo taking.  She does not like to take pictures nor is she very good at it :  )     Everyone has talents and her’s is just not photography.  For example, it took her so long to take each picture the camera would automatically turn itself off (powersave or batterysave mode).  Then, she wouldn’t know how to get it back on so I would have to turn it on for her and run back to my spot.  Funny!  She was great to do it for us though.

This is Randy, one of our rams, Cash, and me.  Cash has a bit of a fence climbing issue we are trying to break, but it came in handy for a photo.

I have corn in my hand, so Miss Piggy is trying to steal a kernel or two.

This is the same ewe as the picture above.  She is so tame and lovable.  We have another ewe we call Ma (like from the movie Babe), but she must have been having a bad hair day or something because she wanted nothing to do with pictures.

Monday, I was up at 4:30 to get dh off to work.  While I was waiting for it to lighten up outside I spent some time organizing our front porch area and closet and also my husband’s closet.  I have morning chore duty on the days I don’t work, so once it was light out I headed out to do those.  After chores were done I had some errands to run in town which always starts my day off bad.  I didn’t get home until 10:30, so I had to hustle to get everything done I intended to have done. 

I like to use my Mondays to prepare food for the next three days since I will be working and like to have something quick and easy (and nutritious) for dinner on those days.  I ended up making a big crockpot full of chili.  Here is how I made my chili:

Chili:

Soak 4 cups of pinto beans and 2 T of whey 12-24 hours.

Rinse and drain well.

Cook in crockpot, covered with water, salt, and garlic (optional) until tender.

Add two jars of homemade ro-tel, chili powder, and cooked hamburger (and ground venison).

Let this cook another hour on low to blend the flavors.

I usually use red beans, but pinto beans are so easy to buy in bulk I thought I would give them a try in our chili.  We both thought they were great and so much easier than buying different beans for every meal.  We ate our chili with homemade Cornbread with homemade butter and honey or maple syrup.  We also had organic carrot, and cauliflower and cherry tomatoes from the garden dipped in homemade Ranch dressing.  I was followed up with Brownies (minus the chocolate chips on top) straight out of the oven.  Yum!  It was a cold and windy day and my dh wasn’t feeling well, so this was a nice wintery dinner.  Can you tell I like Crystal Miller’s recipes a little?  hee, hee! 

Tonight will be a pan of stuffed green peppers I put togther yesterday to throw in the oven as soon as I get home tonight.

When I make stuffed green peppers I try to use up what I have in the fridge.  These have homemade ketchup, rice, hamburger, venison, pinto beans, and mozzarella cheese.  Easy and healthy!

Wednesday:  Much to my disgust, we will be having Chili Cheese Dogs along with a salad fresh from the garden.  My dh loves hotdogs and since he has been so great about my “healthy” food choices and trying some new things with our diet, I do not ask him to give up the one food he really likes.  Unfortunately, they are hotdogs :  )

Thursday:  Taco Soup (for the most part I follow this recipe, but sometimes use collard green broth if I have any leftover to cook my beans in since alot of the nutrients from the collards cook out into the broth)

For the Taco Seasoning I’m going to give the recipe a whirl.  The one I use is okay, but I’m going to experiment a little.  Here is where the understanding husband comes into play, when I “experiment” with new recipes :  )

 Hope everyone is having a great week!

I can’t even begin to describe how much I love being home for four days a week.  It is so nice to be part-time now.  I have time to do so many of the things I’ve wanted to do, but never found the time.

We FINALLY got a kitten to keep our lone cat, Cooter company on Friday.  At first the little guy was just a pest to Cooter, but now they curl up together to sleep and play together chasing each other around.  The boys have to stay in our (unfinished) pool house unless we are outside.  We’re just too afraid of something happening to one of them.  Plus, our nights are getting cold enough it’s just as well there are inside where it is warm.

Spooky was really sick when my husband got him.  So he took him straight to the vet.  Of course, he had an upper respiratory infection, ear mites, and fleas.  I’ve never had to deal with fleas on an animal before, so this kind of freaked me out.  He have treated both the cats and will be treating our dogs (even though they have no direct contact with the cats) just for good measure.  Hope they are gone soon.  He yelps and scratches like crazy when he gets bitten by them.  It’s so sad to see him so uncomfortable.

Saturday, we loaded up six of our ram lambs and 42 of Dad’s ram lambs to take to the sale.  Very sad, but I’m just trying not to think about it.  It makes me so sad to think of them in a sale barn, etc.  Moving on….

A friend of my husband’s son went deer hunting and got a deer.  His family doesn’t like venison, so he gave the deer to us.  We just had to pay to have it processed.  Our neighbor is licensed to process deer, so that is handy.  We got 42 lbs of burger and 31 steaks, so that’s pretty good I thought.

Sunday, it stormed and we lost our power for 2-3 hours.  I was in heaven, but Randy was on the verge of meltdown.  Football was coming on at noon, and he was panicking.  Thankfully (eh hem) the power came on and only a few minutes of football were missed.  Whew!

We had dinner Sunday night at mom and dad’s and grandma came over to.  It was nice and really good food.  The jokes were pretty much on me for making cooking from scratch; making cream cheese, butter, baking bread, etc.  They do it out of love, I keep telling myself.  I could have a worse hobby, so I take it all in good fun.

Monday, I got up with Randy, made coffee, packed his lunch, and made him sit down for a quick breakfast.  As he was walking out the door he said, “I wish you could stay home everyday.”  I honestly think him meant it too.  I did all the morning chores, so he didn’t have to and the evening chores were done and dinner was made by the time he walked through the door.

I made two batches of cookies, made kefir, baked bread, and put together a meatloaf for dinner tonight.  Our refrigerator has issues where it freezes things on the top shelf.  For some dumb reason I put my kefir grains up there and they froze.  Not sure they will work now, does anyone know if they will work after they have been frozen?  Anyone know?

I also spent the weekend dehydrating tomatoes.  Roma tomatoes work the best.  Just slice them, salt them with sea salt, and sprinkle them with a little basil and they are good to go.

I did the Cook Along from Katie’s blog and will post it shortly.  I didn’t love the Roman Lentil Soup, but it was fun to try. 

Also have some pictures from our California trip to post.  Hope everyone is having a good week.

Okay, I’m really going to try to get my act together here and start posting more regularly, maybe not daily but at least regularly.

Our tractor never materialized as they couldn’t get the hydraulic oil leaks stopped.  They have since sold the tractor to someone who apparently didn’t care it was gushing oil everywhere.  However, we have yet to receive a refund for the tractor.  “Checks in the mail,” or so they say.  I love business!

We also didn’t get to adopt the two kittens from the Humane Society in my hometown.  The “foster” parents decided they wanted to keep them.  I could go on all day on this one, but the low points are; the humane society was paying for a newspaper ad to advertise these little kittens and paying for their food and medical needs and the couple didn’t feel guilty at all about taking the handouts, but the minute someone showed an interest they decided to keep them for themselves.  Ugh!  We tried to adopt a different cat a few weeks before these kittens and the same thing happened, different town and people, but same scenario.

We have really worked ourselves to death here lately.  We are ready for cool/cold weather so we have an excuse to snuggle up and take it easy.  I’ve tried to persuade my husband to move our tv to a different area of the house so we can hang a quilt and cut down our heating area.  Apparently it will involve running cable for the (stupid) dish and amount to a lot of work.  So, I may not get my way.  Propane is already high and supposed to go higher, so I was brainstorming ways to cut back this winter.  Back to the drawing board I guess :  )

Oh, I have gone part-time at work.  So I now have time to cook more from scratch, experiment with a few new ideas, and take better care of our homestead.  I made butter (yum), I’m in the process of rounding up ingredients to make bar soap, and have lots of what we like to call “puppy time” at our house. 

Have a great week!

A lot has happened since I posted last.  My husband and I took a driving trip to California for my cousin’s wedding.  We bought a tractor we have yet to acquire because the John Deere in our town is less than customer oriented.  We have had a baby lamb escape our less than mediocre fencing and get hit and killed by my cousin in his giant pickup.  We have decided to possibly adopt one or two kittens from our local humane society to keep our one and only cat, Cooter, company.  We have 113 baby chicks (Cornish Rocks).  Another hen drowned in the stock tank leaving us with 11 banties.  This weekend we hope to clean our lots (with our invisable tractor), build our new lots, and release our anxious rams out with our ewes.  A few will be held back to grow a bit before being bred.

Sorry I have been away so long.  I am going part-time at work, so my time here will be limited.  I will try to pop in from time-to-time.

Have a wonderful weekend!

It rained!  Woo hoo!  1.4 inches to be exact.  Everything was dying, and I was feeling so discouraged.  Did I mention it has been over 100 degrees for the past three days?  I was in the garden picking tomatoes watching the storm heading towards us and making its usual turn north to go around us.  I wanted to cry.  I was tired and so burned out on sprinklers, and hoses, and watering cans, and buckets of water.  A little bit later I glanced at the sky again and noticed the storm was back building to the west of us.  Hmmm, maybe there was still a chance.  We went to bed and sure enough in the middle of the night it came pouring down.  Our old mama ewe who we named, Ma, (any Babe fans out there?) apparently spent the night outside in it cooling off.  Everyone was happy to have rain, even the sheep.  Our pastures will hopefully green up, our tomatoes will increase production (we were unable to fulfill an order for someone who wanted some so that was a bummer), and with any luck at all Dad will get another cutting out of his hay due to the rain.  He was very discouraged after his doctor’s appointment yesterday, so at least the rain helped.  Not often does rain brighten your day, but it did his. 

If any of you have suggestions for a natural way of treating arthritis I would love suggestions.  The doctor prescribed Celebrex for my dad and this scares me to death.  Anything he could do to avoid this dangerous drug, but not have the constant pain of arthritis would be a blessing.  Mom is going to make an attempt to change their diet.  They have a VERY poor diet and VERY poor eating habits.  I wish they would change their ways, but they tend to see me as a know-it-all or roll their eyes when I mention the dangers of soda or suggest they use olive oil regardless of cost.  Minor changes in their diet could prove to be very beneficial.  I guess children stress their parents out for the first half of their lives, then it’s the parent’s turn to stress out the child the second half.  I worry about them so much.  I would love to see them make some healthy changes in their lifestyle. 

It’s my Friday, so you know what that means.  I will visit you all again Monday.  Take care and have a wonderful weekend.  I appreciate you all on this blog more than you will ever know.

…and didn’t get a good report.  His ankle is not healing well.  Arthritis and tendonitis have set in his ankle and there is nothing they can do for it, and he is possibly having an allergic reaction to the metal used for his two pins and plate.  So, they are going to try to reduce the pain in his ankle with medication and see if the appearance of an allergic reaction goes away.  He will possibly have another sugery to replace the two pins and plate used in the first surgery if it doesn’t go away. 

Hopefully he can schedule the second surgery after lambing season.  I don’t think Randy, Mom, and I have it in us to go through all of it again.  Not to mention Dad having to go through it all again and the financial strain of losing lambs because no one is there to assist them.

Please pray it isn’t an allergic reaction and his pain subsides soon.  We will continue to pitch in and help to prepare for him to be down again in hopes we can make the second time around go a little smoother than the first.