In The Month of January ~ Looking Back

 Sylvia learned to crawl.  She gets around quite well now. :)   And somehow knows if someone is in the bathroom, she heads right to the door!

With learning to crawl, she started pondering our [unfinished] stairs.  Within a few days I'd bid, won and received a baby-gate from ebay and Daniel installed it.

 

Susannah loves to paint with the easel and paints that we gave her for Christmas.  This is a special treat that she gets to do probably once a week when I can supervise and dole out the paint a tsp. or so at a time.

Sylvia loves to sit at the piano and play it.  :)

The 2nd week of January the weather was dry and Daniel was getting home from work early.  I asked him if he could till the garden, and he did.  I was really glad about that, as the next week it started a long period of raining or snowing frequently.  If we had not tilled it, we probably would not have been able to before time to plant.

Sylvia had an allergic reaction to a food one evening.  After this, I realized that she'd reacted similarly - but not as severely - twice before.  The day after this was a well-check-up, and the Dr. prescribed an epi-pen for us to have on hand.  We're not sure what she reacted to, but thankfully she hasn't had any reactions since (I have also been careful about what she eats).

I did a germination test on "old" pea and corn seeds that had been in the freezer.  100% germination! I am happy that I won't have to buy corn and pea seeds this year.

 Susannah loves to play with her play-dough and likes me to help her make food.
She is a good mama to her Baby. :)

Play-dough with Susannah keeps the house a little more "lived in" looking, but she enjoys it SO much!

One chilly day she was wearing her "ugly Christmas sweater" and a baby's head-band around her head.  She was quite the sight!

 

 The 1st snow of the year was very wet and muddy. She spent most of her time dipping mud-water from a puddle and pouring it somewhere else. :)  ALL of her outerwear went in the washing machine after this!

Enjoying her first mug of hot chocolate, after playing in the snow of course. :)

 Snow and dirt cookies after the 2nd snow.

 One warm day I took the pak'n'play outside so we could all get some fresh air.  I raked up a big pile of leaves while the girls played.

 Sylvia has dropped her morning nap for the most part, this day she fell asleep waiting for lunch.

Dressed for church.

Quick Post

I know I've been sparse here lately... I had a comment waiting for me this evening wondering where I'm at :) Not blogging very much, that's for sure! It hasn't been for lack of blogging fodder, I just haven't had time or energy.

The garden is about ka-put for the season. Except for the corn, it looks like a bunch of twigs. Oh, the peppers are still hanging on, and I need to go pick them again - maybe tomorrow. I think I'll pick the tomatoes one more time (tomorrow) and that will be it. They are pretty much toast. I haven't gotten nearly as many tomatoes canned as I wanted, but some is better than none.

The 1st planting of corn had a nice 1st picking, but the 2nd set of ears were not worth it. I'm hoping the 2nd planting will produce nicely - I only have 4 qt. in the freezer so far! I'm debating buying corn to freeze, but I have a full plate already and cannot handle corn at the moment.

Remember the post about Daniel's work having slowed down? That was for one week. Since then, until this week, he has been leaving the house between 7 and 7:30 in the mornings and not getting home until usually around or after 9, sometimes as "early" as 8 or 8:30. This week the weather is a smidge cooler and he's been home before dark both days so far! He's also on call this week, so there's no guarantee that once he's home he won't have to go back out, but so far so good :)

My days have been full of parenting and canning/freezing what produce we do get. On a typical day I spend the morning doing housework (dishes, laundry) and the afternoon working on getting tomatoes or apples ready to can, and then run the canner in the evening. Last week I did tomatoes and salsa. On Friday I went and picked up 4 bushel of apples that I had ordered from an orchard, and every day but Sunday I've loaded both crockpots and a stock pot full in the mornings, and then Daniel and I run them through the Squeezo in the evenings.

I did buy a steam canner this summer, and since I've figured out how to make it work on my glass top stove, it IS faster than waiting for the whole waterbath pot to heat up. I'm sure I'll especially like in in another week or so when I'll be getting 4 bushel of peaches to can!! I imagine I'll have the steam canner AND waterbath canner going if I can keep the jars filled and ready.

If you haven't seen it already, over on my side bar to the right I have been listing, just for fun, what I've been canning and freezing this year. All of the fruit I bought, but all the vegetables are from our garden.

So I am still alive and kicking :) Once the applesauce and peaches are over, I really do hope to get back to blogging more frequently. And maybe once in a while, like tonight, I'll just sit down and peck out something while I wait for the canner to finish.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Oh my. Somehow it has been over two whole weeks since my last post! Sorry, dear readers, for giving you the short end of the stick. My excuses would be "wedding cake" and "garden".

Friends of ours were married last weekend, and needed a custom wedding cake (completely lactose free). I had made the wedding cakes for both of the groom's sisters, so even though I had "vowed and declared" I wasn't making any more wedding cakes, I didn't feel right turning this couple down (not to mention we love the groom's parents!).

I made and froze each cake (6 total) ahead of time, working here and there as I had a chunk of time. Then the weekend of I had to transport everything 2 1/2 hours away to assemble and decorate. My sister lives about 5 minutes from where the wedding was being held, and graciously allowed me to invade her kitchen and dining room for a couple days. I don't know if it was just experience or that this frosting had no butter in it, but the cake iced and decorated easily and beautifully.


The actual decorations on the cake were simple - (real) ribbon around the bottom of each tier with a bead border on the top and bottom. The white hydrangeas and roses with their green leaves finished it off. I think this is my favorite finished product yet. Simple yet so elegant. Even though I cut and put the flowers on the cake RIGHT before the wedding, they still wilted to about 1/2 their size by the time the reception started. The flowers originally FILLED the space between each tier. If I work with real hydrangeas again, I will get some of those little stem vases, I think, so they will hold their full look longer.


The weeks leading up to the wedding I had to let go of everything but the bare minimum in the garden. Weeds have grown into jungles that I still haven't gotten around to taming. The green beans were getting going good right before I left. Ugh, it was hard to need to pick and process green beans AND need to get everything packed and ready to go all in the same 24 hour period. I ended up not being able to do anything with the tomatoes, even though there were several ripe and ready. I picked them hurriedly right before I left and shoved them in the refrigerator. I did get a picture of a couple of them - they are gorgeous :)


If I remember right, these are the Big Beef variety. I grew them just because I found the seed packet marked down to $.25 and figured "why not". But I LOVE these tomatoes! They have a beautiful, round shape, they are nice in size (see that almost 4" tomato?!) and relatively meaty inside. I like a big tomato for sandwiches, but many of the "big" varieties are very juicy and end up all bulbous and weird shaped. I think this is a variety I will grow again. So far I have canned 5 pints of plain, diced tomato (peeled and seeded).

My first green bean picking after the wedding weekend yielded about 5 gallons of beans! It took me an entire morning to pick - and of course that included breaks for meeting Susannah's needs. I wasn't sure how I was going to get all of those beans done, and then my MIL offered to snap them for me Wednesday evening while we were at church! I was so very grateful for her help. Since then I've picked about 1 1/2 gal, the beans are winding down pretty quickly. If history repeats itself, though, they should produce a second round if I leave them in the ground. I would like to get more beans, so I'm hoping this will happen.

Susannah just woke up so I need to go get some breakfast for her. Hopefully I will post again before 2 weeks go past again.

From Garden to Freezer

I am really excited to be putting so much produce into our freezers for this fall, winter and next spring. In years past, yes I have gardened with the intent of canning and freezing, but this year I am really trying. I didn't realize until this year how ho-hum I have been in the past. I am hoping that this year is the beginning of our relying on the grocery store much, much less. Not only is this saving money, but the food is so much better for us since we are growing it ourselves and know exactly what is on it (which, so far has been next to nothing).

Right now the squash and zucchini are producing more than we can eat fresh. We have been eating it pretty much every night with dinner. Fried Zucchini, Zucchini Patties, Cooked Zucchini, Cooked Squash (I haven't tried fried squash?), with Roasted Vegetables... but it is still piling up in our frige.

Canning the squash and zucchini are not an option for us. Neither of us like canned squash very well, and I'm not sure you can can plain zucchini (I think it would be mushy gross-ness). We don't eat alot of relish, so zucchini relish wouldn't be a good idea unless I just wanted to fill my shelf space (which I don't). So I began thinking of the freezer options. What would I do with shredded zucchini? I'm not a huge fan of chocolate zucchini cake or zucchini breads (they are fine, just not my favorite way to consume vast amounts of calories!). Can I freeze sliced squash? I can BUY frozen sliced squash...

I decided to go ahead and freeze shredded zucchini. This morning I pulled out my food processor with it's shredding blade and went to town. I ended up with a big bowl full that I let drain through a colander for a bit before I packaged it up (since it gets so watery when frozen). So far I have 19.5 cups of shredded zucchini frozen.


Then I called one of my sisters who I thought had frozen squash before. After picking her brain and finding out that yes, you can freeze it and it's still edible, I sliced up all the squash that was waiting for something to happen to it. I got 3.5 quart Ziplocs to freeze.

Some ideas that I have for using these (but haven't tried) would be:
Create a casserole
Add to lasagna or spaghetti
Zucchini Patties

Do you have any experience with frozen zucchini or squash, or recipes that you use them in? Share in the comments section!

How I {don't} Do It All

Click on the picture to read the captions.

While I do try to keep up with the housework, continually staying on top of it and keeping everything cleaned up, washed up, folded up, put up... does not put food in our freezers, pantry or bellies. So, many times I turn my focus to the garden instead of the housework.

I do enough to squeak by, and some days I really DO housework and get an area cleaned up like it should be. But for the sake of keepin' it real, this is what my kitchen looks like today. And yesterday. And maybe the day before. Except for the banana peels - they weren't there Thursday.

I know many of you look at my garden pictures and say "I don't know how you do it all". Well, here ya go! My secret: I don't.

Now, I know some of you would never be able to stand the clutter. Sometimes I can't either. Today at lunch I was frustrated because I had to shove some stuff around to make a clear spot to put together a sandwich. That means it's time to get the kitchen cleaned up again :) And I won't work in the garden this afternoon (I hope to at least go pick squash and zucchini this evening), but nothing is super pressing out there today.

This is a season of my life. One where my time is cheaper than our money. It's easier for me to let the housework fall behind than to try and squeeze produce out of our grocery budget for another year. I would make it work if I needed to, but I don't need to. And I'm enjoying my garden :) And not minding the clutter. Too badly. Most of the time.

Just another Real Housewife Reveal :)

Quick Garden Update

I need to run out and help Daniel with something so this is a quick update:

Notice anything different?
The garden looks empty :) The peas are finished, we tore them all out 2 Saturdays ago (6/4), and in total I froze 37 quarts, we ate some and gave away 3 quarts. I'm happy to have the peas over with for this year! They were a LOT of work and extremely time consuming. I think next year I will see if there's a pea sheller around here that I could haul my peas to and use. That would save boatloads of my time.

The broccoli and cauliflower were pulled out yesterday. I got 3 pints of broccoli frozen, and the cauliflower never did anything. I didn't realize it until too late, but worms were keeping what would've been the "heads" eaten off. By the time I pulled the plants, they were riddled with worm holes. Next year I'll be proactive in keeping worms at bay. Only 1 broccoli head had very many worms, and overall they weren't too bad on the broccoli.

We do have some volunteer peach trees growing :) I hope to transplant 1 or 2, to add to our current 1-tree "orchard".

The tomatoes are still doing well, though I'm not sure what the browning of the bottom leaves is. I know the plants have aphids on them, so that might be it. I have had terrible problems with thrips in past years when I bought my plants, but this doesn't look like thrips. I plan to spray with an insecticidal soap and hopefully that will be a "cure-all". It doesn't seem like a blight.

Blossom End Rot is something I discovered recently, and yesterday I sprayed all the plants with BER spray (calcium). I hope to get some powdered calcium nitrate to side dress the plants with so that I don't have to juggle spraying for both bugs and BER. Last evening I found my first tomato horn worm. He surprised me very much and I let out an "Eeee!" I removed him with a stick and piece of cardboard - and did you know that they spit green spit and make a clicking noise? Me either. They are uuuuuugly! I let Daniel "take care" of him. *shudder*

Here is my corn! The first 2 double rows (very right) I planted before the peas were out. The rest of the rows are where the peas were. You might be able to see little black upside-down "u's" at the far end of each double row. I have 14 rows in all (7 double rows). I am hoping to be proactive in ear-worm deterrent and am waiting to hear back from our county's extension office about what "safe" options might be. I know Sevin dust works, but I'm hoping I can use insecticidal soap.

The bare area is newly tilled yard that we're going to sew buckwheat in to start amending the soil for next year. (Buckwheat will also be sewn where the broccoli/cauliflower was.) The garden is still a bit snug and if I can keep a good garden like this one going in the future, more room will be nice.

My beans :) I weeded the left row yesterday - it took me most of the day since it hadn't been weeded yet this year. It was a lot of grassy stuff (1st year garden space) and was a LOT of weeds! There are some bugs on the beans doing some damage, but not too badly yet. From past years I know it will get much worse, so I plan to spray them with soap spray, too (and the squash, zucchini, peppers and eggplants). Since it's a safe spray, I don't mind using it.

Here are my surprise yellow pepper plants! I have more than I have space for so I'm giving some of them away.

And my surprise Eggplants :) I've never grown them before so we'll see how they do.

The pea vines, broccoli and cauliflower plants. Hopefully this will break down into some nice compost.

The lettuce is finished - I got 2 nice dishpans full and it is keeping well in the frige. We're getting zucchini and squash now :) It is so nice to be enjoying vegetables from the garden!

I know this is a hurried update, but it's been 2 weeks and I wanted to post :) Gotta run!

This post is linked to the Frugal Gardening 101 series hosted by Phoebe, Connie and Amy. Check it out!

The Little Peas That Could

Good morning!

Remember when I posted about my garden, and showed you my 6 beautiful rows of peas? These little guys?

Then I posted another update, and they had grown. See those pea fence panels (actually stock panels)? They are shoulder height for me, and I'm 5'3" with my shoes on.

These are my peas today (well, yesterday).
God is blowing me away through His handiwork with these peas. Yes, I prayed that He would make them grow tall and strong and bear well. He is answering with a resounding "YES!" I don't know that I've ever prayed over my garden as earnestly or seriously as I have this year. They have only done this well (or somewhere close) once before and that has been several years. Yes, there were many things I did on my part to give them the best opportunity to grow big and strong. I can water and fertilize the dirt all I want, but I can't make the plant grow. Only God can do that.

Picking peas this enormous is an adventure. The first two pickings I did most of it on my knees. The vines are entwined and I do not want to just ram my way through - that would damage the vines and they would most likely die. Picking peas this enormous is also like giving your 2 year old the toilet brush and hair dryer and asking them to fix your hair. You come out looking like a wild woman. I don't have a 2 year old, so I might be wrong. Just guessing ;)


Yesterday was my third picking, and so far I have frozen about 15 quarts. There are still LOTS of pods on the vines that need to mature, but the weather this week is supposed to be in the 90's each day. Peas do NOT like hot so I don't know how many more I will get before the vines die. I know one thing, though: God is good. So, so good. I am so thankful for each pea that He gives us from these vines.

On to the rest of my garden, it's looking pretty good! I am happy with my garden this year :)

Saturday I weeded the cauliflower and broccoli. Earlier last week I planted the Amish Paste Tomatoes and finished caging all my plants. Once the peas come out I will have stakes to stake the rest of the cages.

Susannah was happily playing in the shade yesterday while I picked. It was VERY warm and humid yesterday, so we both looked a little stroogly. At least she was cute stroogly and not scary stroogly like her mama ;)

I found a baby broccoli growing!! Yay!! I haven't found any baby cauliflower yet, but hopefully soon?

My Summer Heat Tolerant head lettuce. It needs weeded :) Saturday I also planted more beets and a little heat tolerant spinach. I don't know if they'll grow since they didn't last time, but I wanted to try again.

Saturday was a garden day for me. Daniel got the tiller to run like it's supposed to, and tilled up for my first corn planting. This is 2 double rows. There's about 2 1/2+ feet between each big row, and about 12" between the "doubles". I'm hoping to get more corn in more space doing it this way. I'll still have room to walk and pick from each side. As soon as the peas come out and we get that part tilled, I'll plant the rest of the corn.

Hard to see, but my Tenderette Beans came up! This is 1st year garden space, so the grass is growing abundantly and needs removed. The bean plants are a little sparse in some areas (3 double rows), but I'm leaving them as is and will plant a later planting if I need to.

Peppers :) The yellow peppers I replanted don't look like they're doing anything. I think I'm stuck with all green peppers this year :)

Zucchini and squash plants. I can't wait to eat some!!! I did plant Nasturtiums between the hills of Zucchini and Squash, it is supposed to deter the squash bug (or vine bore beetle? can't remember). I hope it works :)

I had replanted eggplant seeds a couple weeks ago after I killed the starter plants the plants died, and I think I saw a few of them growing yesterday! I will have to check again in a couple days to see if it's really eggplants or just weeds :P I also planted a hill of cucumber plants on Saturday, they are looking ok.

This year has been a big learning experience for me, but this post is long enough already I'll save all that for later :) Thanks for stopping by my garden! Please check out Phoebe's, Amy's and Connie's gardens - they're the real hosts!!!

Real Housewife Reveal

After I wrote this post, and then read what Amy wrote on her blog, I thought it would be fun to once in a while post a "real" post.

Yesterday I:
Started a load of laundry.
Made a batch of bread.
Ground up already cooked roast beef, chicken and corn for baby food and froze it.
Made a strawberry roll (the cake part).
Made a batch of Monster Cookies (Arrrg!!!)
Picked peas.
Shelled peas with Susannah climbing all over me and "helping".
Picked up shelled peas that she dumped on the floor.
Read a couple books (to Susannah).
Fed Susannah meals x3.
Helped her get a drink countless times throughout the day.
Changed 6-ish diapers.
Did online stuff (mail, blog, blog reading, facebook).
Asked Daniel to bring home a free pizza for supper.
Gave Susannah a bath.
Watched the NCIS and NCIS L.A. Finales.
Asked Daniel to put the wet laundry in the dryer right before we went to bed.
Folded and put away the 1 load of clean laundry that was piled on the bed.

Yesterday I didn't:
Take a shower.
Wash any dishes.
Pick up or sweep any floors.
Do any cleaning, period (except for cleaning out a couple diapers).
Do any baking or cooking that was actually for a meal yesterday (breakfast was leftover pancakes, lunch was leftovers from Monday).
I did brush my hair yesterday morning, but after picking peas I looked like this:... and didn't brush my hair again until evening time shortly before Daniel got home.
I didn't exercise.
I didn't take a nap.

Today the kitchen is piled high with dirty dishes (mostly baking utensils, bowls and dirty sippy cups). The floors are in bad need of a picking up and vacuuming. The trash cans are overflowing and the slop is starting to smell. Laundry needs folded. Laundry needs washed - and then folded. And put away. I need a shower. I hope to get a little more on top of the inside housework, but there's much of the day left yet, we'll see what happens... there's always the chance that something will come up that changes the course!

Peas!!

Yay!! Yesterday when I was out in the garden I noticed that the peas looked mighty close to being ready to start picking. So I checked a pea - and ate the contents! - and they were ready.

The weather has been nice with random thunderstorms throughout the day and night the past couple days, and today was no exception. This morning it was raining with occasional lightening, so I didn't want to go into my garden which is full of metal! Mid-morning the rain stopped and I went out and picked. It is a major, major jungle out there! Most of the pea vines are probably 6' tall, and the rows intertwined with each other. But they are doing well and I praise the Lord!

It took me about 1.75 hrs. to pick, but I did come in several times because I had bread rising and baking.


Susannah was fascinated with the peas! After lunch I planned to shell them right away, and after thinking about it a moment I knew it would be more stressful for both of us if I tried to do it anywhere but on the floor. So I sat on the floor and shelled peas, tossing the empty pods into a pile - on the floor *gasp* - and Susannah had fun playing with the full and empty pods. Once I had one bucket emptied the empty pods went into a bucket.

Susannah was very happy watching and occasionally would shell a pod or two. I would open the pod and pull the 2 halves apart, and she would pick off each pea and drop it into my bowl one at a time. It took me about 1 1/4 hrs. to shell them all, and when we were done we picked all the
empty pods up off the floor.

Picking peas is not for beauty pageant contestants.
I did brush my hair this morning!

In the end we had about 1 1/2 quarts. Enough for a meal and I'll either share some or freeze them.
Yum :)