Champagne jelly and cleaning out goat pens

Happy Fathers Day to all the Dads, Uncles, Dads-to-be and those who stepped up to help as Dads!  My dad passed away in 1987 but as I have written before he is where I got most of my inspiration for living off the land. He inspired while my mom was a doer...the gardener...the one who helped my dad through his dreams.  My dad was a beekeeper and fisherman and pretty good at it. We never went without honey as long as he was keeping bees. He was a sailor, a marine (26 years of military service) and a darn good dad.  Miss ya Big Guy!

Today was a hot one...we reached 100 plus degrees !  We took the day slow.  I started out working with the hens and dude milked and fed the goats.  I brought in the milk, strained it and make a big country breakfast.  Then off to mass.

Came home to Dude out in the heat working in the garden. I lured him inside with ice tea and James Bond movies. We took it easy for the hottest part of the day and later got to work.

A lot of the time we are shoveling manure and cleaning out poop.  It is very important to us to have even our animals living areas to be clean.  Dude spent most of the day shoveling. It is great that he built the pens with easily removed fencing.

Boots are definitely necessary... I went out in sandals ...oiy.

Cleaning out pens and using even the manure, mixing it with our compost.

The cat just doesn't care.

And he mowed out by the bees.

After running to the grocery store I settled in to making champagne jelly. I make it every year. We don't really drink. Dude doesn't at all and I am toast  at half a glass. Inevitably every year someone gives us a bottle of bubbly and I later use it to make a wonderful  jelly.

Canning is fun. The important part is cleanliness.  This recipe is with a water bath and easy. Be sure to have your jars wash and ready. I put mine in the water bath, letting them bubble away while making the jelly.

It is a basic recipe with 1.5 cups of champagne, 3 cups of sugar and a package of liquid pectin. It makes exactly 4 jars of 1/2 pint size. It turns out perfect every time. Just dissolve sugar and champagne.

Bring to a boil on high heat. Add and stir in pectin.  Continue to stir and boil until you cannot stir down the boil. Stir constantly and boil for one minute. Now this is where I think of those who taught me to make jelly. They would actually count down 60 seconds out loud while stirring. Just a fun memory. Ladle into hot jars leaving 1/4inch  head space. Process them in a water bath following the instructions for your altitude. My mom used to skip the water bath and seal the jelly with paraffin wax.

Time to clean up and take it easy. (if there are any errors blame it on the bubbly...wink)

peace, health and happiness.

Celebrations and a Bit of Sewing

So much to celebrate today!  Pentecost and the Feast of St Isidore!
I made a cake for Pentecost.  Dude loves it. Also, cheese was made first thing this morning, the refrigerator was getting full of milk.

Today is the Feast of Isidore the patron saint of farmers. Our church as been saying the 9 day novena of St Isidore.  
Each year we have Father come bless our land, home and animals. Later a crop duster filled with Holy Water will come, fly over and bless our land.   Here's last year's pictures of Father Carlos blessing our land and animals:

Today was a sew day. I popped in two movies - Harry Potter and Pride and Prejudice (I had too - Dude has been watching James Bond movies every night when I get home...what?!!! is there a James Bond Channel ?!!)   I made a tea mat ...only because I messed up on the first sampler square (I am so horrible at following directions). ( I am following The Splendid Sampler online. Yes, I am way behind and only on block one.)

After the two quilt squares were done I stopped for a wee bit of yoga and frost the Pentecost cake as a Happy Birthday to the Catholic Church.

It needed a bit more. 

Next up was a dress. Hmmm not sure how it will look. I ran out of green. I like to only use up the fabric I have so I will make due. I only got part of it done when I noticed Dude still out mowing. 

If I didn't stop now and start making the lasagna that he was going to make we will not eat tonight.

I have so much to do and feel I will never catch up.  (Just think about your flowers, Just think about your flowers.  ahhhhhhhhh)

Time to relax.

peace, health and happiness

Valentine's Day - Does getting ready to kid

We woke up to a dusting of snow on the cars. It had been a windy night and I had to go pick up some of the plywood that had blown over.  Dude made his way out to the goats while I went toward the chickens.  Afterwards I checked on our does, Running Water and Pepper.  Looks like Pepper will be delivering first. She is the one with the blue collar. One of the ways you can tell she is days away is she is a bit nervous to be around, there appears to have a hollow in the flank on either side of her tail and a mucous discharge begins to show.  She has all of these signs.

I went to make sure I had the delivery basket ready to go when I found this. Lou figured it was his new bed.  Oh Lou.

 We rarely buy anything new but we knew we needed  another frig if we were going to be milking goats.  We were planning on buying a second hand one to put outside. Then we found out someone was selling their oldish refrigerator which was newer than ours so we got that.  It was a great buy at $300. Our old one will now be the milk frig.

I heard a loud noise while making dinner and went outside to see massive amounts of geese flying by. I love watching geese.

It is snowing in the mountains but thank goodness we just have dark clouds out here on the plains.

Faith - The gospel today was of the Temptation of Jesus in the Desert.  Man does not live by bread alone... It is the notion that God will always provide and we must have faith.  Today we look at all the power hungry people and the craziness that surrounds us. Selfishness, always striving to have more when the point is God is the Way.  We need to be free to give of ourselves, with out judgement of others, to pray and fast and have faith...not always an easy thing to do. 

When listening in mass, it reminded me of when my mom and I would help with the daily lunch for the homeless.  Mom would meet me there and I would run over on my lunch to help. We usually made a big batch of Whatever Soup. We opened large cans and mixed whatever we had into a big soup pot.  One week we had hardly anything on the shelves and began to panic. When we told the Sisters, they told us not to worry that God always provided.  As the clock got closer to the time the door were to open I looked at mom and she smiled and just shrugged.  Right then there was a knock at the back door. Just as the Sisters predicted the restaurant Wolfgang Puck showed up with a bunch of gourmet sandwiches, more than we needed. I learned to have faith and believe that God will be there for us in the end.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Faith, crafting and dinner

A recent visit to the doctors ...three days in a row, caused me to look at my authentic self. I say I live a natural life , out here on the farm but when I took a deeper  look I found I was fooling myself. Yes, I do lead a dual life working in the city with an hour commute one way but I thought I was living the clean life out on the plains but I wasn't.  Every day on the way to work I was stopping at McDonalds.  I get to work and have a Pepsi. Exercise was the few minutes I could squeeze in on the treadmill and I left most of the farm work to Dude. When I started this blog I said I would incorporate my spiritual life...from the looks of this blog, it is nonexistent.  So, I decided today I was starting over. We are given a brand new day every 24hours to make the most out of our lives.

Over on Blessed is She Blog  I read , Easier to trip constantly on the torn hem of my soul than stop to stitch it back up. Easier to let my skin prickle with the cold that enters through the rips and tears of my heart than to patch them up with new mercies.  Wow. That is so me. God is challenging me every day. People are place right in front of me to help me through my goals yet I resist and trip.

This morning instead of "letting" Dude do all the work outside. I shoveled all the paths. I love shoveling. Plus, being menopausal, the cold morning was nothing for me. *wink*. The pay off? Dude finished with morning chores with the animals early and HE made breakfast. The pay-off tumbled even more and I was able to write a blog and get ready for mass.

Mass ~ The gospel and the sermon resounded to strive eagerly for the greatest of the spiritual gifts. Theological gifts.  Incline ourselves to Faith, Hope, and Love.

So faith, hope, love remain, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.

See things with Faith. Wonder and pray for what God is asking of us. Nothing happens by chance. Nothing.
Hope ~ often people think nothing will change and everything is just passing us by. Take time to see how God is working through us. Be open to change and go outside our selfishness, give of our time, convert to a better and higher way of life...and through this is....
Love~ continually strive for the love of God in our lives. He gives us faith and hope so our lives will make sense.

Live in the light.     Do the plan of God.  Encourage the love of God. 

The rest of the day~ I went Old School on dinner.  I wanted to have leftovers for a few other meals.  It turned out perfect. Pork Roast with veggies.

I melted lard in a cast iron Dutch oven. Took a package of Lipton Onion Soup mix and rubbed it on both sides of the Pork Roast . Browned the roast on all sides. Then add the veggies - onions, potatoes and carrots from the garden. Add 2 cups of water and bring to a boil.  Then place on the bottom rack of a 350* oven and bake for one hour or until it reaches 170*.

 Made a oatmeal cookie bar with chocolate chips and salted caramel chips.  Basically is oatmeal chocolate chip cookies made into a bar.

Had to get some birthday cards made for this week and started Valentines Day cards. I got out scraps, anything I could find and set to work.

It was nice to shut off all the noise of the day.  Time to eat, reading  and evening prayers.