From My Front Porch

 

  It has been a bit since I posted by life has been a bit busy.  I did take pictures from our front porch every Friday in October.  The leaves were beautiful.  I will post the nicest ones today. 

This photo starts out early October.  The leaves were just starting to turn.

 



We had some rainy days.  I couldn't help but snap a shot on those days.

 



Some of the trees turned quicker than others. 

 



The sky was beautiful and blue this day.  It helped to show the beautiful colors.

 



The line in this picture is an electric line. I wanted to try to zoom in a bit on some of the orange and red and the line came with it!  :-)

 



 

Another beautiful sky picture!

 

 

And then the storms came.... Leaves fell quickly.  The only ones left are on the oaks....

 

 

I hope you enjoyed a little bit of October from our perspective. I enjoyed taking the pictures and tracking the leaf coloring process.  My dad always says that the leaves are the flowers of Fall. 

 

I hate to say it but next....comes the snow!  It may be a bit (hopefully) until the snow falls but when it does, I will get a picture of it from the front porch.

Wednesday Hodgepodge

1. What would you say is your strongest sense? Smell and taste are close for me.  Since I have to chose one I will go with smell. 

 2. Do you believe in the idea of a 'sixth sense'? Why or why not? I do believe in a "sixth sense".  I think that we all have one.  We get that feeling in our gut and to me that is a sixth sense.

3. When do you most feel like a slave to time? Explain. When I need to get out the door for an appointment or to have one of kids to work. I don't even fret about supper time anymore....  We can eat sandwiches! :-)

4. Have you ever worked in a restaurant? How would you rate the experience? If you could own a restaurant what kind would it be? Yes, I have worked at a restaurant.  I somewhat enjoyed that job.  I learned a lot about dealing with the public and practicing patience. That job gave me experience for my future jobs as a secretary/receptionist. If I owned a restaurant I would do a down home-styled restaurant.  For one, that's the food I know how to cook and I don't like food from packages or the kind that you microwave and eat. 

 5. Ever traced your family tree? Share something interesting you learned there. I haven't actually traced my family tree but family history is a big deal in my family.  Information has been passed through the generations but my brother has traced some of our family history online.  An interesting story he found is that one of our "a lot of great's" uncle was close to George Washington during the Revolutionary War.  Shortened version:

    ::George found our uncle to be a close friend
   ::After the war was over he asked uncle what he could give him for being
      loyal to him during the war
   ::Uncle said that there was a beautiful piece of land that he traveled through
     on his way to one of the other forts
   ::George gifted him the land for his loyalty and service
   ::My kinfolk have been here since
    
 6. What did your childhood bedroom look like?  Exactly the same as now.  My mom still lives in my childhood home and nothing has changed really.  I had a nice bedroom.  It was cold in winter though as there isn't a heat source in there.  My old room has sloped ceilings- kinda like an A but had straight walls about 3 feet to the floor. My kids love to go to my old room and hang out when we go to Mom's.  We go there frequently as mom only lives a couple miles away. 

7. Anyone who knows me knows I love_______________________? TEA!!!!!!  :-)

8. Insert your own random thought here. I have finished canning for the season.  Madilynne and I canned 15 pounds of carrots yesterday.  I will be carrying them to the shelves today and the season is done!

Honey!

   I finally finished the honey!  I ended up with 13 quarts.  :-)   I am pretty happy with the end results!  My dad is the beekeeper.  I only help with the harvest.  ****Now before I continue I will tell you that we are novice beekeepers.  We do not do everything correctly. I can not endorse the way we harvest the honey.  It works for us but I can't state that this is the safest or correct way.****   

 

This year my dad and I decided to try a different approach to harvesting. We have tried several different methods in the past couple years but we struggled with those ways- me more than my dad. Since we thought we should think outside the box my dad decided that we should try to scrape the honey combs off of each section. 

 

 

This was a great idea!  It made much easier work for us- me especially with the filtering process.

 

The only drawback to this method is I was keeping the combs away from me so the honey would only drip onto the table and not make a mess on the floor.  Some of those combs were really heavy and stretched my abdomen muscles...hence I was pretty sore for a couple days! Ack!

 

I filled two nice sized bowls with honey and the wax. 

 

 

If you notice the plate and fork in the upper right hand corner- Ryder was making a quick snack of the honey and wax.  He said that this batch was one of the best harvests ever! :-)

 

I filter the honey through cheesecloth and a stainless steel strainer into a glass bowl.

 

This is some of the filtered honey.  All that is left is wax.  My dad took the wax back up to the bees.  We are experimenting to see if they will reuse the wax and take the leftover honey.

 

I put the filtered honey into clean Mason jars. I used a couple little jars that I recycled in case we need to give some away.  I don't worry about those jars being returned.

 

You can see the difference in colors if you look closely. The darker honey is clover and the more bright yellow honey is goldenrod.

 

Sorry about all the clutter in the pictures.  Ryder was helping me take photos and I just didn't want to take the time to make everything look all tidy!  LOL

 

 

From My Front Porch- October

   We have entered into Autumn.  The temperatures have turned much cooler and we have removed air conditioners in favor of the furnace!  For the last several days we have been getting plenty of rain.  I am happy about it because I think our spring could really use it.  It has been raining here since Thursday evening, if I am remembering correctly.  LOL  Days have been running together lately.  I have been a bit under the weather recently due to some pulled abdomen muscles.  I was working on honey and the combs are heavy when they are full and I was holding them away from my body.  I will post more on that later as I am pretty much back to normal now. 

 

   As you can see from the pictures, the sky is one big cloud!  No sunshine in sight.  If you can make the photos bigger you can see that the leaves are starting to change colors.  Fall is spectacular around here!  

 

   In this photo you can see where the grass is dry and in need of a good watering!  There is also a bit of goldenrod across the road.  The bees are visiting the goldenrod and the clover that remain in the fields.

 

   This photo isn't from the front porch but...  It is of our rain gauge that shows we have been getting a bit of rain.  Not as much as some areas but enough to fill our streams back up.  Most of the creeks and rivers around here were low.

   As I read over this before publishing, I noticed that I referred to the season as Autumn and Fall....  Hum, I am not quite sure what I refer to usually.  Do you call it Autumn or Fall? 

 

Happy Fall Y'all! 

 

or

 

Autumn's Blessings! 

  

Random Thoughts

   I have a bit of randomness going through my brain today so I decided to just do a weird blog post of those thoughts.  Random and jumbled- my specialty! 

   ::Am I the only person who can't wait for the election to be over?  I am all about going and voting and such but I get so tired of the bickering and the TV ads constantly ripping the opponent apart.  Ack! What irritates me most is that they pick a small section of wording and use a sentence fragment in an attempt to make you believe a lie.  I know it's part of politics but I dread it!  

   ::I made tomato soup again yesterday.  I ended up with 29 more jars.  Madilynne is thrilled with our supply.  Actually, I will say that we are all happy that the shelves are filling up.  I am thinking that I will attempt to make a V-8 type drink next.  I am not sure how this idea will turn out.  I need to look into a recipe for that.

   ::I need to make grape juice.  Our grapes are finally ready to harvest.  I may make some today actually....well, after I clean my messy house....keeping it real for ya!  :-)

   ::I am enjoying the cooler evenings.  We have pulled out the long sleeved shirts/flannels. Jeremiah is itching to build a nice big campfire!  We haven't had many campfires this year but only because we have been pretty busy. We need to slow down and enjoy our time together.   

   ::I have been focusing my time on being at home lately.  I still run Madi and Ryder to work.  Madi is working 3-4 days a week at a local discount store.  She is still really liking it.  She runs the register, stocks shelves and does some cleaning.  Ryder has several mowing jobs that keep him busy along with odd jobs when someone needs a helping hand.  He is gearing up for archery season because deer season is coming soon.

   ::I am so glad we homeschool. The kids are really gaining a lot of life experience and are able to keep up with their school work. They are learning how to handle money and make decisions on how to spend it wisely, save and tithe.  Our hope is to educate our children to be wise adults and not so much about being "smart kids" on paper.  Let me clarify that there is nothing wrong with smart kids but they need to know how to use those "smarts" in real life situations or it isn't going to help them when they leave home.  If you have an interest in home schooling, I would definitely encourage you to pursue it.  It has been wonderful for us. 

   ::Our chickens have been giving us many eggs!  I have been using them up quickly and even have a few people willing to buy them from us.  It isn't going to make us rich but it pays for the chicken feed!  :-)

   ::I have been eating way too many bologna and cheese sandwiches lately! I am not even sure why... yesterday I ate two, two people!  I don't even know if its real meat but it tastes-so-good!

   Well, I think that I will wrap this up.  I have much to do today. And maybe I need to make a sandwich....

   Be Blessed! 

  

Beautiful and Full Days in the Pines

   I woke up while it was still dark this morning.  That really makes me feel like fall is coming quicker than I want.  I still have so much to finish while we have the warmer weather.  I will be the first to admit that the heat of summer isn't my favorite at all but I need a bit more time before the frost and snow comes!  The sun was starting to rise and I couldn't help but take these two photos so I could send them to Jeremiah.  I wish photos could show the real beauty of the sky but hey, I tried!  I opened the front door and snapped them from the porch. 

 

   I carried more jars of tomato soup to the basement this morning.  I have close to 50 jars on the shelves. Now, before you think that is a large amount let me say that several of those jars are the smaller jelly jar type so that Madilynne can take them to work.  She enjoys the soup and some mac and cheese for her lunch.  It's always a decision for her on whether she wants green beans or tomato soup now.   I ended up with more than 70 pints of salsa this year.  I couldn't remember how many we ate already and I gave some away also.

 

   I am so thankful to God for blessing us with a very bountiful garden this year. We are filling up the canning shelves.  Over the weekend Jeremiah and Ryder took a metal cabinet I had in the playroom, for storage, to the basement.  Madi and I filled that cabinet up quickly and made room for the new canned goods. 

 

   Our chickens are filling the egg cartons quite quickly.  We have been eating a lot of eggs. I am finding the challenge of using the eggs up fun. The Breakfast Burritos have been a big hit and they use a lot of eggs.

 

   School has been getting done. The basics are being completed.  I have put the literature curriculum and several other extra curricula on the back burner until the garden and canning is done.

 

   Ryder has been shooting his bow in.  He is patiently waiting for archery season to start.  I kept some extra space on the shelf for some canned deer meat.

 

   We have a nice sized grape arbor.  I am hoping to make some grape juice this year. I have 6 jars left.  I didn't make any last year and I gave most of the grapes away. If they wanted to come and pick 'em they could have 'em.  :-)

 

   I must get busy again so I need to finish this post.  I hope you are having a great end to summer! 

 

~Blessings~



We Have Eggs!

   It was an exciting day when Madilynne went to feed the chickens and found an egg!  We were pretty close to doing a happy dance- ok, well one us might have!  LOL  We've waited so long for them to get mature enough to start laying that it was exciting!  We got the chicks in April and Madi found the first egg about two weeks ago. They have slowly started to lay.  At the moment we are getting about 7 small eggs a day.  It takes about two eggs to equal one large egg until they get a little bit older. 

 

I prefer to wash our eggs quickly in lukewarm water.  There is much debate over the proper way to clean them but for my own sanity and just plain cleanliness I prefer a gentle wash, dry, then into the fridge.  Jeremiah and Madi keep fresh straw in the nesting boxes so they really aren't dirty to begin with.  The eggs have a clear seal on them called bloom from the chicken and it keeps the shells sealed from germs and bacteria.

 

I tried to take several different pictures so I could show you the different shades of brown our eggs are.  I am thinking that the darker brown eggs may actually get a bit darker as they mature. 

 

Ryder told me that I was spending way to much time taking pictures of eggs.  :-)

 

He may have been a little bit correct but I thought that you may want to see a couple different pictures.

 

I took two pictures holding different eggs.  The smaller eggs are from the newest layers and the larger egg is from the early layers.

 

I thought that this photo may also show you the color differences.  The first egg is probably the lightest shell and the smaller on is on the darkest side. 

 

I didn't really think about it until now, but all the eggs are brown or tan.  We don't have any white egg layers.  It doesn't really matter to me but I do like the variations in color.  A couple different people told me that the brown eggs are more flavorful. I personally am not sure about that claim because I think they are all equally good. Oh well, maybe next time we will get some white layers!  Next time! What am I thinking?  I thought it was crazy to get 10 chicks to begin with!  HaHa! I do enjoy watching the hens.

 

Now to start finding some more good egg recipes.  Madi likes eggs so she has been eating a lot of them lately. Jeremiah enjoyed the Freezer Breakfast Burritos too!