Garden Pic #2 and Family Milk Cow!

 Pic #2 of the Garden-things are coming up nicely-despite of the cold weather! Had to cover tomatoes last night-but no freeze-thank you God! Jeff had tilled part of it yesterday-the grass is trying to take over already!

 And meet Lady-or at least that's what I'm calling her at the moment. She's a 3 year old Holstein/Jersey cross due to have her first calf in about 2 months! She's gentle as can be and is bred by Ai to a jersey bull or by the angus bull who jumped the fence. Time-and a calf will tell!

Close up of the developing bag-a good sign of things to come!

Garden, Apple Trees, and Spring Break

OK, I did it again! Let weeks go by without posting, and I even had pictures and stories all ready to go, just couldn't find the time to get it all together. Anyway, here's an update and hopefully I won't leave any important stuff out!?!

 This is a picture of 1 of our 2 Apple trees blooming-is this not just awesome!! And what a beautiful early spring day it was! These are the same trees we got at Lowe's for half price last fall. The bees loved the blossoms and hopefully we'll get a few apples.

 First picture of this years garden-we are doing the most of it at Mom and Shorty's this year so a different look about it. We planted potatoes, corn, peas, green beans, squash, cukes, tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers and jacob's cattle beans. Still have 3 short rows to finish out. Still waiting on things to break the ground and the tomatoes didn't take too well to the transplant so sadly we may have to buy more instead of the ones we started from seed. Jeff and Kaytlynn also planted peas, squash and sunflowers at the house, only to find the garden full of deer tracks the next day-Oh No!!

 Jeff picked up 12 aracauna pullets at the feed store for next year's layers. They are so funny to watch at night catching the bugs attracted to their light! Extra protein for them and for free!

 We went down to Lake Jackson on Monday to visit with Randy and Casey and do a little fishing during our Spring Break. It ended up being too cold the first day and Jeff's cold came back-for the 3rd time-so we kinda just stayed in the hotel. We went and saw their new house on Tuesday-it's beautiful!-went fishing for a little while-didn't catch anything :(- and then went to Alvin to a strawberry farm. We had to wait in line to even park to get in the place! We picked 2 buckets full and had a good time. Got some really good ideas about different ways to plant things, too.

 We took Jordan and Kaytlynn to the Burt's fishing on Friday-they had a blast catching 1 little perch after another. Thanks for letting them come over!

The snow peas I picked this morning and a head of cabbage we cut earlier. I put 2 pints of them in the freezer!

The fruit trees are blooming and the bees are abuzzing here! We've had a week of daily temps getting warmer and warmer. Still had a few cool mornings, but it's in the lower 80's today. Some of the trees seem to be taking longer than usual to  bud out, but they'll be green before we know it. The wind has been blowing alot more than normal though it seems.

Mom is doing SO much better-she nearly worked me into the ground yesterday-gladly!! We worked all day long cleaning out their sewing room-the wind blew the outside door open last Sunday and it rained in and got  lots of stuff wet. I've never seen so much material in my life, though! Mom and I decided it was time to start working on quilts again and soon!

Church is going wonderfully well-we have new members joining almost weekly! And as we are entering into the passover week and onto Easter, it's always so wonderful to see new people visiting and taking part in our little Church and serving our Lord! Our Sunday School lessons have been great-this morning on the Good Samaritan and compassion.

I'm still trying to work with my essential oils, its just hard trying to split my time between 2 houses and get things done at each. There has already been times that I really wished I could have mixed some thing up-like yesterday when I had a migraine! But I'll get to it asap! 

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Thought I'd finally jump back on here and give a much needed update. Boy have things been weird for us the last 2 months! For starters, my mom took a serious turn for the worst, but thanks to God, He is in control and makes all things GOOD. We found that she had been abusing narcartic pain killers-the really bad ones, and now she is all CLEAN! Thanks to God again! All she is on for pain now is extra strength tylenol!

My aunt Linda, mom's sister, was found to have lung cancer and had to have the lower left lobe of her lung removed-thank you God, again!,the cancer was only in the lung-all lymph nodes are clear! She's home from the hospital and recovering and at this time will need no chemo or radiation! Jeff has an uncle who is in hospice and not expected to hold on much longer. Kaytlynn has been sick and a preleminary allergy test shows she's allergic to lots of stuff, including her dog. Jeff will take her and Alana to Tomball on Thursday to see the allergist for more testing. Mom and Shorty-and Jeff-all came down with some cold bug and suffered for nearly a week with Shorty ending up at the doc. We were worried he might have pnemonia-but he felt much better after a few doses of antibiotics. Jeff and I have been spending most of our time living in our camper up at their place trying to help them out as much as possible. Looks like we'll be gardening up there this spring/summer and have already moved the cows up there and hope to soon get a chicken pen built and get the rabbits and pigs moved as well. Ricky, Alana and the kids have been wonderful picking up the slack here, keeping the animals fed and things done here.

I guess the coolest thing going on is I've gotten into working with essential oils. I made up some Lavendar ointment and it really seemed to help mom keep calm when she came home from the hospital. When they all got sick, I made up a couple of batches of a vabor rub type ointment that seemed to keep some of the congestion at bay and Jeff said after using it, his throat wasn't sore anymore! I'm really getting into using these natural ways of healing. There is SO much to learn about them! Another thing I've been checking into is some more natural/frugal ways of doing things. The following is the first thing we've done:

Homemade Laundry Detergent

I tried this at the first of the year and really wondered if it would work. It was way TOO easy and cheap to make for it to actually work! I was wrong! I was worried that it might cause some skin irritations-wrong again! I got the recipe from the internet and after more research, found that most ones were very similiar. Be adventurous and give it a try!

 It starts with just 3 ingredients-Washing soda (not BAKING soda!); Borax; and a bar of either Zote soap or Fels-Naptha soap. Most recipes said you could use a bar of Ivory if you can't find either of them. I found all of them at Wal-Mart. The first batch I made with Zote-the one I made yesterday I used the Fels-Naptha cause they were out of Zote.

Anyway, you start by grating the whole bar of soap into a pot and then cover it with hot water.I use an old saucepan that I don't use for cooking anymore-just a little worried about not being able to get all the soap out of it! Bring the water to a boil and stir until all the soap is melted.

Then add 1/2 cup of each of the washing soda and borax. Stir until completely dissolved. Put it in a 5 gallon bucket (you'll need one with a lid-I bought a 6 gallon one to use for this) and fill it about 3/4 of the way full with hot water. Stir it up good and let it sit over night undisturbed.

The next morning it will be all thick and congealed-kinda like a thick gel. Stir it up-it will be in clumps-we used the hand mixer on ours this morning to make it smooth. 

We poured out enough to fill up an empty plastic ice cream bucket and keep it on the washer to use. It takes about 1/2 to 3/4 cup per load. Now it doesn't suds up like most detergents but it does clean and leaves a nice smell to the laundry. The batch we just made-I added some Lavander to it to see how it will smell. I read somewhere that it will wash about 157 loads of clothes. All I know is we've used it, Alana has used it, and Jeff's mom borrowed enough to do a few loads-so-it will last til nearly the middle of this month with the first batch-3 and a half months! The start up cost is less than $10 and we only have to buy a new bar of soap for each new batch-which is 97 cents in our area. Try some-you might just like it as well! I'll write on some of the other things we're doing as well in a few days-hopefully it won't take 2 months!! Have a great week!

Kaytlynn's Day of Cooking!

 We spent a good part of the day today-COOKING! She had a blast and so did I! We started out with a new bread recipe and moved on to a new pot pie one.

 Kaytlynn learning to knead bread dough

 The bread rising in the loaf pan

 Ready to go into the oven!

 Loaf is done!

 Next-cooking the filling for the pot pie-rabbit-carrots-onions, celery, etc.-She really was enjoying the stirring-despite the look of what seems disgust on her face.

The finished pie-we were so anxious to eat it-I forgot to take a picture of it before we dug in! And boy-was it good-so was the bread! The only thing that would have made it better would have been if we'd have had fresh, homemade butter to go on it instead of store bought.

We still are having cold weather and a little damp-I'm having a hard time getting outside to get anything done. Kaytlynn and I went out for a few minutes this morning-while the  bread was rising-and filled up 2 of the bird feeders and got so cold-we had to come back inside. Jordan worked for a little while taking some of the outside Christmas lights down for me-he came back in after a bit as well. Now if they have a plan of outside play-they'll stay out until noses are red and fingers are hurting. The weather still isn't warming up much-some warm sunshine would sure be nice!

The hens are really putting out the eggs of late-yea! We got 6 yesterday and 7 today-they are so beautiful! We have 2 litters of bunnies due next week-looking forward to new babies.

New Year's Eve

We spent last night at our friends-Alfred & Sheila-cabin on the Trinity River. They offered it to us for the night-and we took them up on the offer! It was so peaceful and such a wonderful evening and it rained most of the night-yeah we need the rain.

 Jeff and Alfred looking out over the river this morning-we still are getting a few rain showers now and then and it is a little cool and windy-note the fire they are keeping warm (an old joke!)

 And did I mention-this cabin has no electricity or running water-another plus for spending some quiet time here! Hence the "necessity" house-yes they have an outhouse.

 And this is our mode of transportation for the day-you can't drive your truck down here-so we have to use our cub cadet. And due to the rain-Jeff had to tie a tarp to it to keep our stuff from getting wet on the way down.

Last but not least-the heater that stands in the middle of the cabin. We cooked deer burgers and sausage on it last night for supper-then eggs and reheated the sausage for breakfast. Needless to say-coffee is always cooking when we are around!

We've had quite a bit of quiet time this morning and time to talk without being interrupted. We don't make new years resolutions-but we are determined to work very hard this year to get ourselves out of debt. This has become a very high priority to us and we feel God is wanting us to do this. There are a few things we want to do this month-getting our concealed handgun licenses is one of them-that we know are going to cost us more money than we currently feel comfortable spending-but we feel that it may be to our best advantage to do so. We'll just have to see where the money comes from to take the class and get an approved pistol. We got out and shot the ones we have yesterday for practice-but they aren't a high enough caliber to take the class with. Just another one of the things we get to do when we are at the cabin on the river.

I also found a website a few days ago with LOTS of recipes and ideas. I printed out lots of ideas from her-recipes for homemade laundry detergent-homemade deoderant-canning homemade chicken broth-and a few other things. I can't wait to get started on these as well-but I only have a few days left of my Christmas break and haven't got much of what I planned to do done. It's just been too cold and miserable outside to get much done out there-and I do have 2 sheds that need MAJOR clean outs-yes I do mean outs-there is too much stuff in them-mostly that doesn't even belong to Jeff & I and we can't use them for what we need to-so some of this stuff has to go! Ok maybe I'll get to it when it warms up a bit.

Have a Happy New Year!

Busy Times!

We have been pretty busy around here the last few weeks-but are hoping to slow down a little this afternoon-then by late tomorrow as well. We've had 2 deaths in our little community this week-one to be expected when God calls an elderly man home-but the other quite a shock when He calls home a man not much older than yourselves when he's just had stints added to his heart and should have been getting better. Funerals are today and tomorrow. Sad times here at Christmas!
We've had a good bit of cold weather/frost here as well over the last few weeks. Even after covering things in the garden-frost got the last of nearly everything-even the broccoli. We've never had the frost bother it before. Had to harvest it up fast! I'm sitting in the dark as I type-we are without power this morning-which is really strange considering that we had high winds this last week and it never even blinked off once!
 I posted the last 6 of the bunnies for sale as Christmas bunnies and sold them all in less than 24 hours-Whew! Off the fed bill! The little pigs we bought are doing well-had a little concern over them for a week or so. They kinda got sick with coughs-then scours. But we finally got them all cleared up-they never stopped eating though!
Jeff finally got a deer-thank you Lord! And a friend trapped 2 hogs on his place and gave them to us as well. Ed only wants a couple of links of sausage-which will most likely be delivered to him today!
School's out for the Christmas break-I go back on 1/7/13-so I have some time off. I hope to get some work done on my quilt and a little work on arranging some things in the house as well as getting started on the income taxes-yuck! But I have a whole drawer of receipts that have to be organized-and I do this every year-Heah-maybe that's a good job for the grandkids one day-I can put them to sorting and putting in order! I think I just solved that one!
Have a wonderful weekend!

Baby Calf-Finally!!!

 Sugar finally had her calf today-a little heifer!! So cute-looks almost exactly like her older sister-Oreo-but this one has a little more black on her face. CayCay gets to name this one-I believe she has chosen Sally-we'll see if it suits her or not. Jeff texted me a picture of her when he found her-I had to show my boss. I laughed and told her when you have 30 cows it's no big deal-but when you've only got 1 cow-it's front page family news!!

Kylie got to meet a rabbit tonight as well-she loved it! I couldn't get a pic fast enough-she was giving it kisses. Alana even put her in the hutch with them-she had a ball-her own little petting zoo!

Well, December is almost upon us and our calendars are beginning to fill up. It always is a busy time of the year-but much to be thankful for and happy about-I love it. I've tried to commit to not getting caught up in too much of the commercialism this year-to slow down and just enjoy the season this year. We've got most of our shopping done-only a few more gifts to buy-yeah-then we're finished and gonna sit back and enjoy it!