A Simple Prairie Life

Randy’s Dad and Stepmom should be here in less than one hour.  They are flying in from Ohio, so hopefully the weather didn’t slow them down.

I’m so excited for them to get here.  They are so much fun!  His Stepmom is wild and so much fun to be around.  She is a fabulous SHW and takes such good care of her husband and home, has a beautiful yard and flowers, and manages their finances and meal planning great.  I could learn a lot fom her.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend!

We had a really nice weekend!  Friday I spent the day cleaning our entire house.  I dusted, I vacuumed, I did laundry, I mopped, etc, etc.  Randy came home early and finished getting the pool ready.  All that’s left now is for the water to warm up, go solar cover, go!  I harvested my chamomile and have it drying.  I just have the flowers in a cake pan with a flour sack towel over it.  If anyone knows of a better way to dry chamomile please let me know.  I have a dehydrator, but wasn’t sure if I should use it on herbs.  Thanks!

Saturday, we spent the entire day in the garden.  Randy rotortilled in between all the stuff already coming up.  The weeds had gotten out of control, so pulling them wasn’t too appealing.  We used old sudan stubble the sheep didn’t eat to mulch our nearly 30 tomato plants.  It was a mixture of fertilizer and mulch and looks like it’s going to do a great job of both.  We laid soaker hoses along the tomatoes and hope to do the same once we get our okra planted and coming up.  Saturday night we actually curled up to watch a movie which we haven’t done in so long.  It was really nice!

Sunday, we finally made it back to church.  The minute Dad broke his ankle, even our Sundays were sun-up to sun-down, nonstop work.  We are early risers and our church doesn’t start until 9:15.  So, we use the extra time to do the things we enjoy.  I read, Dh plays Playstation!  Just for the record I would like to launch ALL Playstations off the face of the globe, however, he enjoys it so I deal with it.  It happened to be my cousin’s Baptism at church, so it was nice to be a part of it.  We really enjoy our minister and his wife.  Our church is a little, bitty church in a little bitty (unincorporated) place.  Half of it is filled with my family (cousins, aunts, and uncles).  We both really like going and hope to make our Sundays a little more sacred and a time to relax and spend time with each other.  When we got home from church dh mowed the lawn and knocked down the high grass in our rams pen.  I think if our ram could have done a cartwheel to show his appreciation he would have.  He was visibly happier to not be up to his eyeballs in weeds.  He also mowed around our struggling windblock of cedar trees.  They are fighting with the weeds for water and may need more mulch to ensure their survivial.  Sunday afternoon we met my dad and brother at dad’s pond to fish.  Dad caught a nice catfish, but they both threw in the towels early.  We stayed and ended up catching three more fish to add to the collection.  When we got home dh cleaned all four of them (yuck!) while I did chores and got dinner ready. 

At the end of the weekend we could look back, see all we had accomplished, and still feel like we had a break from working. 

Our weekend (literally the whole thing) was spent at my Dad’s shearing sheep.  We started at 9:00 am Saturday and didn’t finish until 2:00 pm Sunday.  It’s done, yea!  Everyone is wormed, sheared, and in their proper place.  Dad’s fence around his new pasture is almost done, and it is now to the point where he can do most of the work to finish it up.  It may be a couple of days because now he has come down with some sinus junk and is laid up in bed sick. 

When dh heard Dad wasn’t feeling well he said, “well that could have just as easily been me if you didn’t feed me all the good food.”  Aah, he does appreciate our lifestyle change.  We have both noticed our lack of sickness much to our enjoyment.  The two of us used to always be sick with sinus infections and colds.  Taking our diet back to a more natural state seems to be working.

Sunday afternoon we did manage to get started on the pool.  We had to replace the filter and some other parts.  They sent us the wrong filter (and the store is 100+ miles away round trip) and the other part they sold us was missing all the washers/seals.  So our pool did not get opened over the weekend like we had planned. 

My dh and I decided after a full weekend of shearing and not getting anything done at our house we would take Monday off.  We got so much accomplished in just one day.  Our new fence is up for our ram so he got to go out to pasture, we replaced some fencing in our lots, got a bunch of tin and t-posts picked up out of the pasture, mowed, and ran  the weed eater.  I made ice cream, cottage cheese, and bread.  I made kefir, but something went wrong and it was pretty much repulsive.  I’m going to Dollar General today to buy an old cake pan so the chickens can feast on all my failed attempts.  They will appreciate them.  My kefir grains should be in the mail coming my way today, so hopefully they will be better than the powder I have been using.

A friend of our neighbor’s called last night to see if Randy wanted to start carpooling to work.  At $3.20-something a gallon how can you say no, right?  I know it’s an inconvenience for him, but hopefully it will save us enough to get ahead and won’t have to be a permanent thing.

This will be a short work week for me, so hopefully I can hang in there.  It was so nice being home yesterday.

Have a great Tuesday!

Just found out our credit card number has been used twice and it wasn’t by us.  My dh has managed to contact pretty much everyone necessary (credit card company, both companies where the charges were made, etc.).  I just finished getting my credit report and will attempt to retrieve his.  What an absolute mess!  The damages so far have only been around $100 which the credit card company immediately refunded so we are thankful it wasn’t more.  We are now strongly questioning the use of credit cards.  It is soooo convenient for gas purchases because we both commute and have to fill up once or twice a week.  However, I’m wondering if we couldn’t try for three months to not use our credit cards and see how it goes.  For one, it would make any fraudulent activity that much more noticeable since we should have any activity on the cards.  Don’t know that it will go over with my dh, but it’s something to consider.

We are a day behind on our menu because my mom cooked us dinner Tuesday evening.  So, last night we had scrambled eggs, msg-free sausage, hash browns, and toast.  The hash browns were an experiment which turned out nicely.  I ran two HUGE potatoes through my food processor, skins and all.  Fried them in a pan with olive oil and seasoned them with Lawry’s, onion, and pepper.  They were really good!

Tonight and tomorrow we are supposed to go work on my Dad’s fencing.  Hopefully we will have it up by Friday evening so we can dedicate Saturday to our homestead.  Sunday we are shearing and worming sheep at Dad’s (weather permitting).  Just another weekend I’m not looking forward to, but it will be so nice once it’s all done.

I told my husband last night I was homesick from not being home enough.  He didn’t really say anything, but it’s true.  I want to be home getting everything put back together after months of neglect.  We have dedicated the past few months to helping my parents since dad broke his ankle, and our little homestead is starting to really suffer.  I think our dogs are even feeling the strain.  We have company coming at the end of the month (FIL and Step-MIL), so I may have to take a day off to get it presentable.  Wish me luck!

Have a great weekend!

We brought our sheep in for the first time since they went out to pasture this year.  We nearly scared them to death walking up on them.  First they ran to the opposite side of the pasture.  Once we got them going in the right direction they ran all the way to the lot.  Poor things were about to die when they got there.  The night before Hank (the llama) led them in.  Hope he can make a habit of that : )

Mom cooked dinner for everyone last night, steaks (she even made me a special cornish hen because she knows I’m not a steak eater).  Grandma came down for dinner also.  It was really nice!  Got to play with our little lamb, CN, for a little bit before we left.  She is so sweet!  You can’t talk very loud when you are outside or she will climb through the gate and come charging at you.

Dh and I had a nice time visiting last night when we got home.  All the chores were done, no dinner to clean up after, no tv, just him and I and our two dogs, Ash and Koal, hanging out.  They loved it too!

Tonight is bath night for the mutts.  Pretty much a side show at the circus.  Ash pants so hard you think her eyes are going to pop out of her skull and Koal sounds like a caged monkey.  If anyone has ever heard a Chow “bark” that’s what the little guy sounds like.  He also unloads 90% of his fur at bath time because it makes him such a nervous wreck.  Can’t wait!

Have a great Wednesday!