***Giveaway @ Faithfulness Farm!

Faithfulness Farm is having a giveaway. Click on the link and check out her blog! Always great recipes and inspiration.



OK, the link doesn't pop up...I'm a tech idiot. lol... I'll have to ask my 10 yr old how to do this... But Faithfulness Farm is on my side bar head on over. I also really like that she has the recipes in a printable version so you don't have to write it out or print three pages for one recipe!

Fermenting cabbage and making lavender oil

I went to the farm market and they were selling cabbage $1 a head. So I bought five heads and the farmer threw in two more small heads. I brought it home and had my little helpers peel off the outer layers. And then I shredded the cabbage,which would have been much easier if the food processor would have worked. But a good sharp knife and a cutting board and my farm girl muscles did the job. It was actually kind of therapeutic since I'm a little stressed.



I have a food grade pickle barrel that I pack my cabbage into because I cannot afford a real crock. It's on my wish list. And when I was at the Prim shop I saw stompers there and didn't buy one. I should have! I used my Pampered Chef meat tenderizer, it really is a multipurpose tool, works great on crushing nuts and crackers too!
So I layer 5lbs of cabbage with 3 Tablespoons of salt and stomp. I had a pretty good helper with that too...


and then continue to layer the cabbage and salt and stomp. When I was done, I put a layer of the washed off outer leaves on top and filled a garbage bag with water and set it inside the barrel. The weight of the water will keep the cabbage pressed down and the gasses will be able to come out without anything else getting into the cabbage. Now it will sit in my basement for eight weeks and when it is fermented I will can it in jars. Never again will I put kraut in my freezer. It makes everything in the freezer taste like sauerkraut!


And then...



I got this from The Morris Tribe blog...I'm going to figure out how to create links. But I'm making lavender oil. All I did was put dried lavender spears into a canning jar and pour olive oil over it. It is setting on my window sill in a few weeks it will be lavender oil. I also bought beeswax at the Farm market. That was $1 for a 1 ounce block of wax. I'm not sure if that is a good price or not but it's from a local family. I also buy all my honey from them.
I am going to make a lavender salve to rub on all those dry rough areas and give it away as Christmas gifts! Shh don't tell anyone!

AND THE WINNER IS...

MICHELE at Body and Soul wins the Mrs. Meyers book. Thank you so much for your support!
My goal is to start posting regularly. My dream has always been to be a writer but I've never committed to anything. I read all the time, book after book. Sometimes I read books that I think, "Wow, I could have written that!" But it takes time and effort. I have always said that about my husbands business. When family memebers or "friends" would make comments about wanting what we have, I would remind them of what we went through to "get what we got."
So thank you everyone who reads my blog. And if you read something you like please share it with others!
Thank you,


Melissa

Getting ready for Fall

My Hubby has been home for three days. We have have been super busy getting ready for fall. I'm hoping to have pictures by tomorrow because every battery in the house seems to have disappeard!
I was working in the garden pulling weeds and getting ready to plant for a fall crop. Of course I had to work between the rain showers, which seemed to arrive as soon as I hung out a load of laundry. I just figure the clothes got an extra rinse.
Hubby and the boys cleaned out the goat pens, swept out the barn/garage, and moved the turkeys to another pen. We are getting ready for our second batch of 25 broiler chickens, which come on the 24th of this month.
I'll be happy with 50 chickens in the freezer.
We had bought 9 turkeys in late June and then had another 17 delivered at the end of July. The first nine are doing well and growing nicely, by getting them a few weeks earlier they should be about 35-40lbs come butchering time in late Novemeber. The Monday before Thanksgiving. These turkeys are grown larger because we are making burger from them. Three of them are being sold to another friend because he feels "the bigger the better". He enjoyed showing off his drumsticks last year which looked like clubs!
The second batch of turkeys are also doing well but we had some trouble with them escaping their enclosure. These were a bit more fiesty than the first group! We would go out to the barn and find the little fluff balls in with the goats. We ended up losing two because they tried to cuddle with Neera and ended up under her. I also sold four of those young ones to another homesteader who didn't want to order the minimum from the hatchery. I sold her 4 poults for 5.50 each. I didn't make much money from the sale but I used it to buy a 100lbs of feed. So now I have 11 turkeys left of the younger group and these I will sell for Thanksgiving. In fact come October I will take orders. We sell our turkeys for $1.50 a pound. Again we don't make money off the sale, we just recoup most of what we spent and offer our friends and neighbors the opportunity to try a home grown fresh turkey. I already have a few sold! Last year we had 16 turkeys and I ended up with 2. Of course the 2 I kept were almost 40lbs each.
Well, now I need to get going and Milk the goats and drop my daughter off at work.

***** GIVEAWAY*** Mrs. Meyers

I am trying to grow my readership for this blog so I am doing a GIVEAWAY. I have a book --MRS. MEYERS CLEAN HOME, no nonsense advice that will inspire you to clean like the dickens
I read the book yesterday. I think the terms Wit and Wisdom are appropriate for Mrs. Meyers, the mother of nine children and 20+ grandchildren.

Here's the deal:

You must follow this blog- that's one chance
Leave a comment about your favorite product or gadget- one chance
post this give away on your blog- counts as two chances
post this to facebook or twitter - counts as two chances

Leave a comment for each chance.

The drawing will be held Saturday Aug.13th

If you don't have a blog check back Sunday 14th to see if you have won!

Good luck and I hope to hear from you!

Mopping the floor or a cool new game?

We found the smell... It was not under the floor as I suspected but actually a bag of egg cartons. I thought it was just a store bag with empty cartons never paid much mind to it. People bring us bags and bags of egg cartons. I have two huge boxes of cartons and really nowhere to put them all. I guess I was becoming a hoarder of egg cartons. ANYWAY, (see the distraction) I do believe I caused the bad egg smell. The other week I was getting eggs and noticed someone had turned up the fridge temp which froze several dozen eggs. When eggs freeze they expand and the shell breaks. I started unloading the cartons of frozen eggs, and placed them in store bags for easy removal. Apparently, I left a bag sit behind the door to the summer kitchen. The eggs thawed and spoiled causing the stench. I even pushed that bag aside looking for the smell, ripped my laundry room apart and never found it. This morning Hubby went looking. Now, I love the man dearly but he left the bag sit there and left me a note in the kitchen. He was not moving the stinking mass, I made the mess I guess I was the one cleaning it up. Daughter grabbed the mess and carried the DRIPPING bag out of the summer kitchen through the kitchen and out the door. Now I thank her for reading Dad's note and "helping" but now the rotten death smell was throughout the entire house. We did and emergency mop job. Which turned into a cool game because as Newtons Law goes what ever can go wrong does, and my mop fell apart. So we donned cleaning rags on our feet and mopped the entire kitchen floor sliding and gliding back and forth. So my house is Lestoil fresh and bright and clean. It didn't take near as long because there were three of us mopping. I just had to follow one of them to make up for what they missed. It didn't even feel like work. Bethany thought it was a pretty good exercise!

I picked up a new book today that I'm going to give away. Mrs. Meyers clean home; No nonsense advice that will inspire you to clean like the dickens. More on that tomorrow.

Really? I love my life.

I got most of my stuff done yesterday. I even had time to read. But when I went back to do laundry, I thought I smelled something. I figured. I have four kids, they stink. I pushed it off as dirty laundry. Well the laundry was all done and the smell didn't go away. The longer I stood in the laundry room the more I could smell it. It smelled like some thing died in there. Some people might be suprised by this but I've smelled death before. Like when Hubby's deep freezer went bad and everything inside thawed and we didn't know it. At the time he had a deer cape and some fish waiting to go to the taxidermist. Not a pretty scent and it takes ALOT of candles to get the smell out! And there was the time the cat killed a mouse and was using it's head as a soccer ball and tossed it under the shelving, again not a nice smell. So today will be spent pulling out the washer and dryer, unloading the shelves and pulling the shelving unit out looking for the dead thing I'm sure is in there somewhere.

Here and there

Well, I didn't get everything done I had planned but I did get other things done. That's the problem when one is easily distracted...
I started out well. Dropped everyone off at work and school, came home and loaded the dishwasher and cleaned the back sink. Then I started to flounder. Charlie was distracting me and talking and talking and talking so I took him to the library. I was excited that I won the "BIG" prize for the adult reading program. I got a tote filled with a plush blanket, 2 boxes of teas. 2 cubes of sticky notes, a pen, a keychain flashlight, three books and a $25 Borders gift card. I have to use the gift card soon because they are going out of business. Yeah Me! So Charlie and I played at the library until it was time to pick up his sister at the farm. She was mad that I was there so early, she didn't have time to chat with her friends. She told me I was to wait until she called me before I came to get her. Um, I will be there waiting everyday now. I get a bit frustrated when they think I am at their beck and call.
I had promised Charlie I would take him to McDonald's for lunch. I really need to think things through before agreeing to them! McD's was crazy, playland was packed and the moms there scared me. I don't really think McDonalds playland was designed so that moms could drop their kids off then go outside to smoke.
We came home and I made up my bed, I forgot to earlier. I got distracted again looking at the books I won. Then it was time to pick up the boys. When I had dropped them off I noticed Isaiah's shoes weren't fitting properly and when I dropped off Robert he asked me if I had duct tape in my car. For What? To tape up his shoe. So after I picked up the boys we all headed out to the shoe store and everyone got their school shoes. We got home shortly after Hubby did and while they got all the chores done, I whipped up dinner. Pancakes and sausage.
After dinner, Hubby wanted to sit and watch a movie together. So we had a family movie moment. Then it was baths and bed for everyone but me. I packed lunches and cleaned up after dinner. Then I went to bed and read for a bit. That was my day.
I hope today to get the summer kitchen cleaned up and laundry taken care of and dishes done. I have 5000 things to do but if I get those few done, I will be happy.

Busy doing NOTHING?

I feeling like I'm constantly busy, running around,working, cooking, cleaning... But when I stop and look back I see nothing. No tangible evidence of what I spent all my time on doing.
My goal this week is to keep a written record of all I do so I can read it and say Ohhhhh that's what I did! Todays goals are to clean up the kitchen and summer kitchen and re stake the steer out in the field, take Charlie to the library and pick up some groceries. I'm going to try and keep things simple and focused.