I'll give a little recap of the past week here from our neck of the woods.
Let's start with the weather. We had a rainy , humidity week. We had a lot of thunder storms that left us without power a couple nights. Heavy rains did not help the grain fields, and made it to wet to bring home hay that is still in the fields. We had a couple of cold mornings where we even almost had frost. We covered the kitchen garden but were lucky. We did however put a small fire on in the house burning the paper garbage and warming up the floors. Then by 2 in the afternoon we could see the temps raising from 5 degrees to 32 with the humidity. Talk about wacky weather.
Coming home after picking up my Dad one day we had to go into town as he needed to pick up a few items for Mom. We were not sure we were going to make it home ahead of the rain and thunder storms.
Mom is still holding her own. She did not have to bad of a week. She rested a lot yesterday for my Dad and was a bit weaker. It seems to be a day to day lifestyle with her. Up and then down. I wish I could do more for her. But for now I'll keep going everyday and try to help her the best I can.
I had a welcome back BBQ on Friday afternoon at Jaynes school. The weather was perfect for it and I got to talk to people I have not seen in a long time. We left there and went to pick up Jill after she got out of school. We picked up take out and headed home to meet Hubby and Justin ( as he took the bus home) had supper and loaded up the horse trailer and went to pick up our new Diary cow.
She is a purebred jersey with her papers( I did not need all this, but this was the deal we got) she just turned 3 and we are awaiting her to go into heat. We have 2 options we can bring her over to the neighbours farm as he has a couple of bulls there. Or we can have her artifically bred with jersey. This will cost us a bit but we will either way have a purebred again. Another Holstein for us to keep or a purebred bull to sell and get our money back. ( a win win story) so while we wait for her to into heat we need to make up our minds.
Our new cow is named Phoebe. I have always wanted a jersey named phoebe and now I have one. We need to get a couple more beef cattle for the winter now. Hubby works Sundays for the livestock dealer doing his mechanical. He has banked his hours since spring and then we tell him what to look for in livestock and he brings it home for us. So far a new ram after losing my old one, and now Phoebe.
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All the farm family are getting along.
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Here is Malbec the new ram.
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Saturday we all slept in. It felt great. We got up and had a pick breakfast. (Pick your own whats left over) lol after we cleaned up the house, and did the barn work, Hubby headed to the field, Justin went to help my Dad with his firewood,and the girls and I went to the fair in the next town. We go every year, we go to stock up on our winter honey supply, as I find the bee keeper there has the best honey. We always pick up some bees wax for winter, and honeycomb for those winter sick days...
The girls had ribbon fries, cotton candy and snow cones.
We came home and made pizza dough and while it was rising we made up a banana bread.
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We headed out doors and picked more out of the kitchen garden for Sundays nights supper. We all went to help Hubby put up a new fence that he got from a guy. It was called a deer fence 380 ft roll. Never been used and was given to us. It makes great goat fence. So we all worked together and got it up around the back pen. We headed in at 8 and made up a homemade pizza. We were all pretty hungry. I sat and relaxed with the family while they watched TV. I worked on my crochet,and had a lovely glass of green apple wine. It began to rain and the winds picked up again. It rained hard throughout the night.
Sunday morning it was windy but it dried up we worked outdoors all day. It was firewood day. We put in all the wood in the small wood shed. Over 3 cords cut,split,and piled in the shed. I made a wonderful pot roast for Sunday supper with all the fresh veggies from the garden in it.
We all headed off to bed around 9. and were ready for routine once again this week.
Phoebe is beautiful! How exciting to have your own milk cow. Your suppers sound delicious. You were asking about the beans. I'm not sure how big your beans are but we always let the ones we are planning on drying get bigger than you would normally use. This makes for better dried beans. I would give them a try if I were you. Enjoy your day and God bless.
ReplyDeleteYou do not need to seal the beans, just put a lid on them. We do (because Mom always did) put a tsp. of black pepper in the jar after you put the beans in it. I'm not exactly sure the purpose of that but she did so I always do it too. I don't mind the questions at all. I'm excited that you are going to try them. Let me know it goes. God bless.
ReplyDeleteJessica, I wanted to ask you which way you plan on drying your beans-dehydrator or stringing them up on a string. As I mentioned in my post this is the first time I have put them in the dehydrator. I would recommend drying them longer than it says and also I think I would heat my seals in the oven and then put them on the jars. This morning we had a BIG disappointment concerning our dried beans. We worked up in our cellar today and when we checked on the dried beans they had mold on them-SO SAD! The chickens enjoyed them though. I noticed when I put them in the jars they were still kinda green in color-mom's was always completely brown-so I think the problem was that they were not dry enough. I blanched them before dehydrating them which was something mom never did. When we did them the old way, they came straight from the garden, put on a string and hung up to dry. It took them weeks to dry. So anyway, I know this is a long comment but I wanted to let you know things that I thought I had done wrong so you won't have that problem. God bless.
ReplyDeleteJessica, I really enjoyed your update. I am glad things are going so well and your mom is doing okay. Phoebe really is a beautiful cow! As are your goats, sheep, and llama! I wanted to let you know of another option for drying the beans. My Nanny would spread her green beans out on card board and dry them in the back window of a car with the sun shining through(I hope that makes sense, lol). When the beans are dry you can put them in a freezer bag and store them in the freezer.
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