Canning, crafts and spinach salad that never happened

This is the time of year where I am canning almost every day.  My mom gave me some grapes from her garden.  She is a  good cook but an even better gardener.  When I was a kid she worked tirelessly in her garden and has even won awards.  I am so lucky to still have my mom who is going strong in her eighties.  This week she also is giving me cuttings from her grapes and I am so excited to have that legacy continue in my garden.  Today I canned grape juice. This is one of the easiest recipes ever. I can them in quarts.  I sterilize the jars, add a cup of grapes to each jar, add 1/2 sugar (sometimes I only use 1/3) and then add boiling water to 1/2 of the top of the jar.  Add sterilize lids and tighten on the rings. Next is just a water bath for 25minutes.  They are great and quick! 

Yesterday on our walk we saw a coyote. 

When we got home there was a hawk on our post screeching to another hawk down the fence-line. It let me walk to about a couple feet reach of him . Then Mr Buttons wanted to kiss him and he flew off but only to the next post.  We were so glad to see him because another hawk that came around daily die last week when it was hit by a car. (sorry the pictures are so bad, I only had my phone with me)

I did get some crafting done yesterday too.  I saw this idea on pintrest and thought I would give it a try. He needs a little more work.

Spinach salad that never happened. Did you ever have one of those days. You get everything prepared. 

Hard boiled the eggs and started frying the bacon. Then remembered I had the water on out front and needed to move it. Forgot what I was doing ... until I smelled the bacon. The bacon was burned and I couldn't find my hard boiled eggs. Dude thought they were new eggs I had wash and put them in the refrigerator.  There were 3 dozen in the frig and only boiled 4. We have no idea which ones they were after cracking a few.  We gave up. May try it all over tomorrow.

Today, I have a wee bit of a cold and a little under the weather.  No canning today.  Treadmill, card making and bathroom scrubbing then hit the road to work. 

Hope everyone has a great day! 

peace, health, and happiness

The 2nd day of Christmas

It is nights like these when homesteading is a bit of a struggle. It is cold outside and not just cold but bitter cold.  It is 8* but feels like -2* and someone needs to go out and feed the animals.  This morning to get to the animals we had to clear our paths.  It snowed all night  and the wind howled around the house just to make sure we knew it was going on.  Even though it is cold, once we get out to the barn we tend to stay a while with the animals and not just throw feed to them.  We let them know we are their for them, talk to them and make sure it is clean and warm in the barn.

Today it was work for me (someone wanted  off for the holiday to be with their family. I took their work day for St Stephen's Day - to help someone else. I know I would want someone to help me some day) while Dude went to family celebrations (he represents well).

The crockpot was set with Bean and Ham soup from a Taste of Home  recipe found  here  .

Being on the homestead we want to make sure we are using homegrown ingredients.

• Ham from a locally grown pig.
• Beans from a farm in northern Colorado and canned here in quart jars.
• Carrots, onions and garlic from our garden.
• Chicken broth from our hens, process and frozen.
• Spiked the whole thing from chilies we canned.

We came home to the house smelling wonderful and dinner ready to be eaten.

These cold days and nights we generally read or craft.  Our goal is to try and save money but homesteads require quite a bit of money to keep them running... buy a pig here, need more canning jars here and the big one this year will be putting up a barn and new flooring in the house. We are constantly remodeling.  

Tonight thank you notes needed to be written so I sat down and made them.  I saved pages from my day to day calendar most of the year, I also had  cutouts I did long ago, along with feathers I found or embellishments from here and there. A couple of friends were cleaning out their scrapbooking shelves this year and gave me things they may have thrown out.  Here are a few I came up with:

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.  I want to say thank you for starting this journey with us and hope you enjoy our posts.

Belated Thanksgiving

Now that the weather is a bit warmer we were able to have our Thanksgiving weekend. 

We went to a Homestead Holiday and had a look at days gone by. We made candles, did crafts, and strolled through preserved homestead buildings.  The simplicity of it all made us what this lifestyle even more.

 We headed out to southeastern Colorado today with bit of wind-blown snow on the roads that quickly melted.  Out to the family ranch to finally have some the turkey that we raised.

It was good to see family. My sister-in-law has some nice antiques that are beautiful, such as this antique gas stove and oven .

 

 

Her cattle have all gone to the sale barn but she still has all her hens and peacocks.

 

I did get home with enough time to can a small batch of my sauerkraut and make little gifts for my team for St Nicholas Day.