Bountiful Acres Homestead

Happy New Year!

2012-01-02T16:13:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! I don't know what the new year holds, but I do know who does. :) I put my trust in the Lord to guide me and take care of everything. I just walk one day at a time and do what I know is right and good to do.

We live in interesting times don't we? I am looking forward to seeing what God has in store for us in the coming months. The Bible tells me that all good things come from above. (James 1:17)

Today my family is starting back on the path of good nutrition. Boy did we eat a lot of junk/sugar over the holidays! We all feel so much better when we are eating foods that are as close to possible to the way God created them.

I thought I would share with you one way we use those canned vegetables we work so hard all Summer and Fall putting up.

To start with we had roasted whole chicken for dinner night before last. I saved the bones and left over meat to make soup. I put this in a pot with enough water to cover the bones and meat. Brought it to a boil, added some chopped onion and garlic. Remove the bones from the broth and put any meat back into the pot.

This is what it looks like after deboning and adding the onions and garlic.

I chose a quart of green beans, a quart of carrots, a pint of corn and a pint of tomatoes from the pantry. I opened these and added them to the pot, liquid and all.

Then I took a sweet potato I had in the fridge, a bunch of fresh parsley from the garden, and a bunch of kale from the garden. These fresh vegetables boost the nutrition level of the soup. Some nutrition is lost during the canning process, so I like to add what ever fresh ingredients I have to the soup. Kale and parsley will grow all winter here in the Pacific Northwest. Ed did have to cover the parsley with a sheet when the temperatures were down in the 20's awhile back.

I peeled and chopped the sweet potato and added it to the pot, then chopped the kale up and added it as well. The parsley I just picked the leaves off the stems and toss them right in without chopping. Next I tasted the broth, added a little sea salt, black pepper and a couple of shakes of Bragg's organic kelp seasoning (kind of like Mrs. Dash only better). I also broke a few fetuccini noodles and put in. Sometimes instead of the noodles I will put in brown rice, or barley or even soft white wheat.
Soup's on! This pot of soup will feed my family for two day's worth of lunches. Thank you Lord for the bountiful harvest this last year.

Merry Christmas everyone!

2011-12-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

I want to wish everyone a blessed Christmas. I pray the Lord blesses your family and keeps you safe in His care. May you enjoy the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior.

I am just going to share some pretty pictures with you I have collected over the years. Consider it my Christmas card to you.

I am so thankful Jesus came to earth and lived and died for me, that I might have life eternal and spend it with Him.

Isn't this just a pretty scene?

I love snowmen! And pretty birds created by God.

Audrey and Sally want to go caroling this year. We will take them around to our neighbors and let them sing for them.

Simple times. That is what we are doing this year. Simple, thankful, and joyful time celebrating Jesus' birthday. We have made our gifts and decorated with what we have. Baking and listening to our Christmas songs.

What a cute snow family!

What a lovely time! Pretty clothes, elegant furnishings and a tree that might burst into flames at any moment! LOL! Seriously it all looks so lovely doesn't it?

Can you tell I really like snowmen/families? : )

Another pretty Christmas scene.

What a festive mailbox!

Merry Christmas from the Swinson family.

Homemade Christmas gift idea

2011-12-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

Here it is December already. This year has just zipped by! The photo on the top of my blog is a shot I took looking off my front porch down the valley this morning. It was 20 degrees when we got up. A bit chilly, but the good thing is the sun shines during the day and it is beautiful and dry.

We are doing homemade gifts for Christmas this year. I made something today that is really inexpensive to make. Made from recycled items we probably all have in our homes. They are fire starters. They make some nice gifts for those who have fireplaces or wood stoves, or for camp fires or putting in your emergency kit.

The things you need are:
Cardboard egg cartons
Old candles
Dryer lint

I saved my dryer lint for about a week. Depending on how much laundry you do and how much lint comes off each load determines how long you need to save it.

Take the lint and fill each hole of the egg carton. Isn't it amazing the different colors you get from each load? LOL!

Take your old candles and chop them up a bit and put them in a double boiler over medium heat. The first ones I used were a purple color and then I added this old white pillar candle. Make sure to remove the wicks from the candles before putting in the pan to melt down.

Here you can see I have a pan inside of another pan. I put water in the lower pan to keep the wax from getting too hot. Be very careful while doing this! DO NOT WALK AWAY WHILE THE WAX IS MELTING!! It is flammable and will catch on fire easily. So use extreme caution while working with the melting wax. As soon as it has melted, turn off the heat.

Next pour the melted wax over your lint, filling each cup. I used a small measuring cup to dip the wax out of the larger pot. Be very careful not to spill it on yourself. I put the carton in the freezer for about 15 minutes to set the wax. You can just let it sit out at room temperature and it will harden in time.

After they are hardened up, take some shears and cut apart the cups. To use them put them on the bottom of your fireplace/wood stove and put your kindling on top just like you would build your fire using other fire starters or paper. I am putting these in tins for gifts. Simple, frugal and useful!

Sewing again!

2011-11-21T19:36:00.000-08:00

I finally got to spend some time in my sewing room. I made this valance for the dining room window. I am making another to match in the kitchen window hopefully before Thanksgiving. Thanks for the idea from my friend Lisa who showed me a photo of one in a different color that she likes. I got the idea from it. Thanks again Lisa for the green check fabric, it worked so well with my green toile print. : )

Close up

Cranberry Season

2011-11-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

It is cranberry season again on the Southern Oregon coast. So we went to visit our friends Marci and Dave down near Bandon. Remember last years post about the cranberry bog? We love visiting with Marci and Dave. We took some of our garden produce and apples and traded for buckets of cranberries. This is such a blessing to us to have fresh cranberries! We feel so spoiled. : )

The girls each got to dip cranberries out of the bog into a bucket with a rake. They thought that was pretty cool.

We also learned something new about cranberries. Last year we got to pick some cranberries from Marci and Dave's baby bog. That is where they grow the plants for making a new bog. This year they planted a new bog. I had envisioned them hand planting every little vine. Well Marci told me that Dave mows the dry baby bog. Then they take the clippings and scatter them on the prepared bog area and then they get tilled in. The amazing thing is those clippings take root and start new plants. How cool is that?

So we came home with three buckets of cranberries. They need to be cleaned because they have cranberry leaves and other little twigs and grass and such in them. Anyone ever picked wild huckleberries? Then you will have an idea of what I am talking about cleaning the berries.

Ed, on the way home comes up with an ingenious plan of how to clean them fast. I am so blessed to have a husband that God has gifted in figuring out ways to do things easier! Take a look at the process in the photos below.

Bucket of uncleaned cranberries. See all the leaves and grass?

Ed took half inch square wire and made a ramp.

Then we used the hose to wash the leaves and other debris off the berries.

We slowly let them roll down the wire ramp and picked out any big stuff.

Then they went into a clean tote!

We only lost about a quart of small berries that fell through the holes. They didn't go to waste as the chickens loved them!

Here are some of the cleaned berries in the jelly kettle.

Here they have been made into whole cranberry sauce. Ready for any meal.

I will post another time about making juice and fruit leather from some of the other berries.

Just popping in to say hi!

2011-07-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

I have had computer problems and so have not been able to blog. I miss it! I am going to try and update everything. Lots has been happening here. We have new kittens, the gardens are all planted again for another year, we have been eating mandarin oranges off our citrus trees, we have a new pool, we are building another pantry, we are back in the upholstery business. Yep! Lots happening around here. I promise to get some posting done and put up the dozens of photos I have been taking to share with all of you. Thanks for your patience.

Farewell to our dear Hercules

2011-06-25T12:32:00.000-07:00

Here is Hercules at age 15. He was attacked by a stray dog and wasn't strong enough to survive surgery. So we had to put him to sleep. That was a sad day for us all. He was a really good cat. Never got into trouble about anything. He was always so loving and patient. We will miss him.

Hercules was born in our home in Alaska. Our oldest son Jeremy brought home a female stray cat in the middle of winter. She was pregnant and had 4 kittens. Jared wanted to keep a kitten and Hercules was the one he chose to keep. (I had wanted to name him Pierre.) He had many adventures in Alaska and then made the trip down here to Oregon when we moved in 2004. He enjoyed another 7 years here.

After taking him to the vet to be put down, we had a funeral and buried him next to our dear Toby. The vet said he was the equivalent of 112 human years.

Good bye Herc, we will miss you.

More lambs!

2011-04-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

Bountiful Acres has two new lambs. Lilah gave birth to twin ewe lambs. One looks like her dad and one looks like her mother. So we now have two ram lambs and two ewe lambs. This is what we saw when we went out to the barn the other night. I was afraid the little brown lamb had something wrong with it. But she was just tired from being born first!

As you can see she was a big baby! And she is up and walking around the next morning, along with her little sister who is a black sheep like their mama.

And here is Ginger and her two ram lambs that are now a month and half old. It is amazing how fast they grow!

And then we have two ducks and three hens setting on eggs. One hen has crowded into the duck nest box and is sitting on her eggs in front of the duck! A bit crowded, but neither of them will give up the space. At least the chicken will be finished nesting in 21 days and she will leave with her chicks. That will give the duck the additional time she needs to hatch out her batch. Muscovy ducks take 35 days to hatch. We also have a hen in the main chicken house sitting and one of our Dark Cornish hens sitting in their barn.

Yes it is Spring time here. The trees are in bloom in the orchard. Now for some sunny weather and no more rain would be really good!

Happy blessed Easter to all! I am so thankful the Jesus came and made himself flesh and paid for our sins. That He rose from the grave and now I am forgiven and adopted into the family of God.

Introducing the Victorian Rose Soap Company!

2011-04-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

I would like to introduce my readers to a wonderful new handmade soap company. It is the Victorian Rose Soap Company. It has been started by a friend of mine and her daughter. Mrs. Karen Lossing and her daughter Emmeline. They have taken their goat milk and are making soap from it. I have had the pleasure of "testing" many of them. Let me tell you what luxury these bars of soap bring to the bath and shower. They smell divine and are so pretty and pleasing to the eye as well.

Emmeline milks the goats that they raise organically on their farm. They have a soap room where they hand craft the soaps. Each batch is lovingly made by hand.

There are molded bars, cut bars, and also body butters for sale on their website. They have really cute children soap in animal shapes and child pleasing scents available also. And of course unscented soap as well.

To see them and try them for yourself visit the link to the right with their lovely banner on it. Or just click Here .

Leave a note when you place your order to let Karen know you found her site via my blog. This helps her know where best to advertise. :)

Coming soon!

2011-04-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

Coming soon-an interview with a creative lady and her daughter. They have started a goats milk soap business. Just wait until you see what they can do!

Making bread

2011-03-28T22:44:00.000-07:00

Here is how I bake roasted garlic and rosemary bread. It is quite good, even if I do say so myself.

First we need to roast the garlic. Take several heads of garlic and slice the top of the cloves off. I put mine in a baking dish lined with foil. Leave extra foil hanging over to cover the garlic.

I oiled them with sunflower seed oil. You can use olive oil too. I then turned them over.

Seal the foil over the garlic. Oh I should have told you to preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Put the garlic in the preheated oven.

Set the timer for 35 minutes.

While we wait for the garlic to roast, pick some fresh rosemary, wash it under running water and pat dry.

Pull the leaves off the stems like in the picture.

Then chop finely. You don't want big pieces in your bread.

Next I get some hard red wheat from my 5 gallon bucket in the pantry.

Put it in the top of my Nutrimill grinder.

Turn it on and a few minutes later.............

I have freshly ground whole wheat flour!

Now let's go check on that garlic in the oven, shall we?

Ooh, doesn't that look scrumptious? The aroma is lovely!

You just gently squeeze the cloves out of their paper shells.

And they are ready to use.

I have assembled my ingredients for the bread. Sunflower oil, wheat gluten, agave, salt, flour, water and yeast. And of course we have the roasted garlic and chopped fresh rosemary.

My handy dandy Bosch mixer. This little jewel makes bread making simple and quick.

Here I have added 6 cups of warm water, 3/4 cup oil, 1/2 cup agave (or honey if you like) 2 heaping tablespoons of salt.

Next I add half the flour (about 7 cups) 1/3 cup wheat gluten, and 4 tablespoons of SAF instant yeast.

Mix on low speed and then gradually add the remaining 7-8 cups of flour.

I add this while the machine in running. When you hear the motor slow down, turn it up to medium speed.

Set the timer once again for 10 minutes. After putting the lid on the bowl of course. But you knew that didn't you? ;) You of course can skip the mixer, and do this in a very large bowl. Mixing and kneading by hand. If you want to give it a try by hand I would definitely half the recipe.

Make sure you have spotlessly clean counter top. Then I rub coconut oil on my counter. This prevents the dough from sticking to it. I take the dough out of the mixer bowl and shape it into a large loaf.

Then I cut it into several balls.

Here is where I have added the roasted garlic and rosemary. Had I not forgotten to add it to the mixer during the last minute of time, this would not have been necessary. So I ended up working it in by hand.

One loaf on the far left, is plain without garlic and rosemary. I used my french bread pan for two of the loaves. The two little round ones are the girls'. They always have to shape a small loaf when I bake.

Next I cover them with a flour sack towel and let them rise for about 25 minutes.

While the bread is rising, I wash up my mixer bowl and clean up the counter top.

After baking them for 25 minutes in a 375 degree oven this is how they come out. Where is the other small loaf you ask? Well it is at my Mother's house. I ran out of room in my oven to bake all those loaves. I always bake a loaf for my parents and this time I took it over unbaked. Mom popped it into her oven and we both had fresh baked bread.

I rub the bread top with oil after it comes out of the oven.

I know you are wondering why in the world that one loaf resembles a whale with too many blow holes right? Well I decided to stuff a few more cloves of roasted garlic in that one at the last minute. I thought for sure it would bake up over the holes. Nope! Didn't happen. That is okay, that whale loaf didn't last long anyway. All of that bread has been eaten already. Tomorrow I need to bake another batch of bread. I will most likely make plain loaves and a couple of pizza crusts.

The next thing I will share with you is making jam. I made 5 batches of berry jams just before I made this bread last week. That is part of the reason the bread didn't last long. Too easy to eat it with homemade jam!

Thanks for tuning in and watching my bread baking day.

Coming soon, bread making

2011-03-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

I have taken photos and will be posting about how I made roasted garlic and rosemary bread. I just need to find the time, or rather make the time to upload the photos. Just wanted to let you know I have been working on something new to share with you all.

Has it been nice Spring weather in your neck of the woods? Here we are having rain, rain, and more rain! And rather cold at night too.

Have a great day!

Sharing a bouquet of daffodils

2011-03-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

This is my bouquet of daffodils Ed picked for me yesterday. Aren't they just so cheery? They have a sweet smell too. I thank God every Spring for creating daffodils. They bring so much hope and cheeriness after such a long dreary wet winter.

Sewing lessons

2011-03-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

The girls had another sewing lesson yesterday. They picked out fabric from my stash, decided on a pattern, then used the sewing machine to sew up their table runners. They made them to use on their vanity tables. They had so much fun.

Audrey sewing her strips together.

Showing her finished runner.

Showing the back.

Sally's turn at the machine.

Sally with her finished runner.

And here is the back side.

Here is my table runner. The vase of flowers are some mustard the girls picked from the field next door.

Our next sewing project will be Bible covers maybe. I have to see if I have enough zippers the correct size first.

Tsunami

2011-03-11T18:09:00.000-08:00

We have been under a tsunami warning since early this morning. Our river was at bank already and we thought we might have flooding due to it. But thank the good Lord the tide was out when the tsunami hit the Oregon coast. So we never had any flooding. I am so thankful.

We have a son, daughter in law and two grandchildren who live in Japan. We are so thankful to know they are safe! Mike if you read this know that you and Eriko and the children have been in our thoughts and prayers. We love you.

Our prayers are with all those in Japan and in other areas hit by this disaster.

We have twins!

2011-03-08T08:02:00.000-08:00

Ginger gave birth to two sweet little lambs last night! One looks just like our ram and the other took after mama. They are doing just fine, nursing and quite lively!

These aren't the best photos, but at least you can see our sweet little lambs! The first to be born on Bountiful Acres!

We will keep posting photos as they grow.

Waiting on Ginger to lamb

2011-03-03T08:53:00.000-08:00

We are waiting on our white ewe, Ginger to lamb. She is really close. This will be her second year to lamb. Last year she gave birth to twins. As big as she is that might be the case again this year! We are all anxiously waiting on the little lamb/lambs to make their appearance. I will definitely post pictures as soon as she lambs.

Anyone living in our area want two geese? We are ready for them to go live somewhere else.

The seed orders are coming in and then we are going to be starting our plants. Ed needs to put the pellet stove in the greenhouse first. We had a really hard frost and the temperature got down to 20 degrees in the greenhouse. Yep! Killed everything but the citrus trees. So now I have no more veggies growing out there at all. It will be so great to have heat in there for winter. I will keep you all posted on how that is going. I hope to be picking veggies all winter this year.

New neighbor

2011-02-24T23:11:00.000-08:00

We have a new neighbor. Just recently we have noticed this little fuzzy creature in our orchard and coming up on the deck to sneak old apples. He/she is very quick and hard to catch a photo of. We for sure won't get many hazelnuts with a squirrel in the neighborhood. The blue jays usually get their share too. But he/she sure is cute! Take a look and see what you think.

What in the world is that horrid brown looking thing to the left you may be asking yourself......ummm I am embarrassed to say, it is the left over Christmas tree! Yes, now you know my dark secret, the dead tree is still on my deck! We have had one pile of brush and boxes burned, but we forgot to get the tree off the deck to add to the fire.

But isn't the squirrel cute? :)

Have a wonderful weekend!

And the winner is???????????????

2011-02-14T18:02:00.000-08:00

Anonymous commenter #9! Comment posted at

February 11, 2011 10:48 PM

True Random Number Generator
Min: Max: Result: 9
Powered by RANDOM.ORG

Congratulations! Watch your email as I will send you your promo code for shopping.

Thanks for all who entered!

Enter the CSN Stores giveaway now

2011-02-09T16:46:00.000-08:00

Remember the drawing held on Dec. 1st from CSN Stores? We are having another one.

CSN Stores has over 200 stores to shop from. Now that Spring is coming maybe you need a wooden swing set for your children. How about a nice hammock to relax in after mowing the lawn?

We are a homeschooling family and we would love to get this set for school.

So leave me a comment between now and Monday the 14th at 6pm Pacific time telling me what you would chose should you be the next winner. Don't forget to leave your email address where I can send the winner the promotion code for the $35.

Here is the main link to CSN Stores where you can see all of the choices you will have. Click here

So comment away and maybe you will be the next winner!

Stay tuned for another give away

2011-02-05T08:38:00.000-08:00

I will be hosting another CSN stores give away soon. Just working out the details right now. Keep checking back to see when you will be able to leave me a post to enter to win!

Have a great weekend!

Our trip up the Coast

2011-01-24T18:47:00.000-08:00

This is looking south at Cape Foulweather. It is on the Central Oregon coast. It was a beautiful day, and no wind!

Cape Foulweather was named by Captain James Cook. Cape Foulweather is a basalt outcropping 500 feet (150 m) above the Pacific Ocean on the central coastline of the U.S. state Oregon in Lincoln County south of Depoe Bay. The cape is notable as the first promontory on the northwest coast of New Albion (as the area was then known) to be sighted and named by Captain James Cook, while on his third voyage around the world. His March 7, 1778 journal entry reads:

"The land appeared to be of moderate height, diversified with hill and Valley and almost everywhere covered with wood. There was nothing remarkable about it except one hill…At the northern extreme the land formed a point which I called Cape Foulweather from the very bad weather we soon after met with."

Audrey and Sally at Cape Foulweather. We also went into the gift shop here and they got to use the penny press. You know how they have that machine that presses a design and name onto a penny?

Isn't this just the most beautiful blue you have seen? The ocean and the sky, such different blues. God made such beautiful things!

We drove from our home in Coquille, north on highway 101 to Pacific City. We stopped along the way and had to view the ocean and the beautiful scenery. We had a picnic lunch at Cape Foulweather. The girls got to learn about Captain Cook and how he named the Cape.

We had such a nice time. The girls said they were enjoying seeing all "new land" on our trip. When ever we head out for a day trip they ask us if it is someplace we have been before or if it is all new land. :) Too precious!

That is the most recent interesting thing we have done. We plan on making several trips this summer and promise to share our adventures with you all.

Tea Party!

2011-01-15T18:38:00.000-08:00

These two little ladies came for tea today. They were dressed up in their finest dresses, hats, and heels.

The table is set for a fine bunny teapot tea. We have decaf Constant Comment tea, sugar and milk. We had heart, star and flower shaped little sandwiches. Some were lime curd and others were maple butter.

Miss Audrey enjoying a spot of tea and a little sandwich.

Miss Sally having her tea and little dainties.

The girls were having fun dressing up and having tea. Their little tea set was a gift from their Grandmother several Easters ago. We hadn't used it for quite some time. So long in fact they didn't remember it. So today when they came down stairs all dressed up and asked if they could use one of my teapots and teacups to have a tea party I remembered this set. I had them wait in the living room until their table was ready. They were so surprised to see the table set with this bunny tea set. A rather nice way to spend a rainy afternoon.

It is so good to see them both well. Sally was sick for several days and finally is doing better today. At least she didn't have a fever today and is wanting to eat. Thank you Lord for answered prayers!

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend.

Good bye to 2010

2010-12-30T16:50:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or has this past year just zipped by? Especially the past two months which feel they have gone by so quickly.

Now that our Christmas celebration is over for another year, my mind turns to things inside my home. I want to start redecorating and sprucing up my home.

The next few months are much slower paced and there isn't anything pressing that NEEDS to be done at a certain time. I enjoy this time of year. A new year begins full of hope and plans. Wondering what the Lord will bring our way this year. What can we do to be more servant minded to others in the Name of Jesus? What good things do I need to be teaching my daughters?

Some of my plans for this next year are to read more of my Bible, read more to my girls, make my home a place of peace and rest for my family and anyone who comes into it. To teach the girls how to sew on a sewing machine. We will be sure to share our sewing projects with you all!

One specific thing I plan on doing with my daughters are to chose one person (maybe more if time allows) each month and make something special for them to brighten their day. I think it will be good to teach the girls to be more mindful of others and learn how to be a blessing. Plus it will be good mama/daughter time doing something fun!

We have had a flood here. We live in the flood plain, so it is no surprise. Thank the Good Lord it wasn't very big or of a long duration. The water is to recede by tomorrow.

Guess what came down the river and onto our property? A couple of geese. They are now in our pasture waiting for their owners to claim them. If they aren't domestic geese gone feral or something like that.  I guess if nobody claims them they will become residents of Bountiful Acres Homestead.

It was my mother who saw them out her window. I told her keep her eyes peeled for a milk cow coming down the river, we could really use one of those!

One year Ed got some lumber that floated down the river during a flood.  We have also lost some things to the flood. Like one year the girls had a pedal car, it went down the flood and ended up in the middle of a huge field downstream. A duck pond (wading pool) got lost another time.  It is amazing the things that appear along the road after the flood. It is because the river runs down the road when it floods, besides flooding from the bank on our back property line.

I will put a up a couple of photos of the driveway and the road. Some folks who know there are two ways to get into town from here always ask, well can't you go the back way? When you see how the river is on the road you will know why going either direction isn't an option! ;)

I have a few roses that are still blooming on my bushes. I am going to pick some when the water goes down and bring them in for a special bouquet during the winter. I might pick some rosemary for the greenery part as the leaves on the rose bushes have been gone for some time.

This is looking down our driveway towards the road.

Now shall we turn left and go the back way to Myrtle Point?

Or shall we turn right and go into Coquille?

Two little girls and their dog looking out the bay windows.

And here are our new guests that came down the river today.

That is the news for today! Have a blessed day.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-23T11:43:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and pray your New Year is blessed with happiness and love.

We are almost ready for Christmas. I have some wrapping to do and a little house sprucing up is all.

I have managed to sew lots of gifts and finished up with the last ones last night around midnight. : )

I thought I would share a few photos of our decorations.

The coffee table display.

Close up of my cute little snowman votive holder.

The stockings.

Another nativity scene. Can't have too many of these. After all Jesus is the reason for the season!

Our cute snowman family.

My cute metal sled. I just love this silly thing.

More snowmen. Do you think I like snowmen? Yes I do!

The front door. The lights didn't show up well with my flash going off on my camera.

And a few of God's creations. My two precious daughters, the old cat Hercules and one of God's most perfect creations a beautiful tree. I enjoy bringing in a tree and decorating it for Christmas. The same way I enjoy picking a bouquet of God's flowers to decorate my house in the Spring and Summer. There is something I think about when I look at my tree. I think of the life that is represented by a green tree. I think about the life Jesus chose. To come to earth and shed his blood for us. Then he was hung on a tree to pay for our sins. That is what I think about when I look at this tree.

My prayer is that your homes and families be blessed this Christmas. May the joy that comes straight from heaven inhabit your hearts.

Cookie decorating time!

2010-12-18T22:21:00.000-08:00

Saturday at Bountiful Acres Homestead is also known as Family day. We used to have Family game night. It seemed like we were always so busy and tired by the time evening was here. So we changed it to Family day on Saturdays. This way we plan on spending the entire day doing nothing but being together.

The first Saturday of December, we put up Christmas decorations in the house. We had popcorn and a movie too.

The second Saturday we bought a tree and put it up and decorated it.

This Saturday we had a cookie decorating day. We baked cookies, invited the girls' second cousins over to help out. Ed was the official cookie tester. Then after dinner we packed up our cookies and some hot cocoa and a Christmas carol CD and got in the car. We drove around town looking at Christmas lights, eating our cookies, singing along with the Christmas carol CD and drinking hot cocoa. It was a fun time.

The girls said this was the best family day ever! Want in on a little secret? They tell us that EVERY family day! :)

Here are some photos of the decorating party.

From bottom left, Josie, Sally, Lily, Jadyn, Audrey.

They each have a plate with frosting, cookies, sprinkle, gum drops. And we had squeeze tubes of red and green frosting too! The cups of water were to quench the thirst of little girls who kept licking their fingers and eating too much sweet stuff!

This is little miss Lily, who didn't really decorate her cookies. She was more interested in scooping frosting up with her little knife and totally bypassing the cookie and going straight for the mouth. She enjoyed herself today.

I caught Audrey by surprise and said "smile" She had a bite of green frosting in her mouth as you can see.

Does it look like Jadyn was having fun? What a smile!

Sally showing off her art work.

Josie pretending like she was going to eat her cookie before I could get a picture.

My sister Mechelle and I did some cookie decorating too, but we are camera shy and didn't take photos. ;)

Mechelle's granddaughters took their cookies home to eat some later, we sent a plate of cookies home with Mechelle too. It was a fun day.

Fresh tomatoes in December?

2010-12-14T14:48:00.000-08:00

Lovely tomatoes picked from our greenhouse a couple of days ago. Our greenhouse is working wonderfully for us. We had these super sweet tomatoes (which didn't last but a few minutes.) We also have some eggplant and peppers still producing out there. I need to also plant some lettuce for salads.

I just wanted to share my December treat with you. Next time I post I hope to do the pumpkin pie from garden to table post.

Winner of the CSN Stores giveaway is....................

2010-12-01T20:03:00.000-08:00

Are you ready to hear who is the winner of the $35.00 giveaway from CSN Stores?

The winner is poster #6.

That person is Ange! Congratulations! Please be looking for an email from me with your promotion code for shopping.

Thanks to everyone who entered. I loved hearing what you all had to say was your favorite post.

Ready for a giveaway? Read all about it and how to sign up.

2010-11-28T17:47:00.000-08:00

I am having a give away for a $35 gift certificate sponsored by CSN stores. There are 200 stores with just about anything you would want or need. They have everything from furniture, kitchen items, toys, baby gear, and even a leather briefcase and much more.

I personally like their toy store. They have some wonderful toys with super great prices.

Or how about some great cookware. My favorite frying pan is this cast iron one. I use it every day!

Emerilware Cast Iron 12" Skillet

So now you are wondering how you can win? It is really easy. Just leave me a comment on this post. Tell me what your favorite post on my blog has been and tell me what you would buy if you are the winner from CSN Stores. I will put all the comments in a program that randomly draws a winner. I will announce the winner after 6pm on December 1st. You will have 48 hours to repsond, if I don't hear from you in that time I will draw a new winner. Make sure and check back!

You have until Dec. 1st at 6pm Pacific time to get your entry in. Good luck!

Hello!

2010-11-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to post a short note to say I have lots of plans coming up. I will be doing a How To post soon on making pumpkin pie from the pumpkin to the table. Also I have a give away coming up right after Thanksgiving.

Ed and the girls picked the last of the apples today. Right after we had a snow storm. We actually had snow last night and this morning. It doesn't last as the ground is too wet, but the girls had a blast playing for a bit.

The pantry shelves are pretty full and so is the freezer. I just have pie fillings to make and can and jelly and jams.

Here are a few photos of the latest harvest work.

This is my freezer slaw. I shredded some of my carrots, red cabbage and bell peppers. Then I used a recipe for making freezer slaw. I put 10 containers of this in the freezer. It is really good! That is what I did with half my cabbage harvest.

Here is what I did with the other half of my cabbage harvest. It is kraut, fermenting in quart jars. This is really simple to make.

Here are some of my beets. I use my turkey deep fryer for cooking them. I hose them off to remove any garden soil left on them. Then they go into the cooker until they are done.

This has been the best buy we ever made! We bought it from a person on Craig's list for $45. It is all stainless steel and we use it for so many things. We cook crab in it, use it for cooking big batches of things like the beets for canning, we use it for scalding the poultry on butchering day. Yep, a great buy!

After the beets are cooked part of them are put into really cold water in the sink where I slip the skins off them and cut the root and the tops off.

Then into the big silver bowl they go. The really large beets are sliced and the smaller ones are left whole.

Then they are put in with the seasoning and syrup solution. Oh what are we making? Pickled beets! Sorry, I forgot to tell you what we are doing here.

Into the boiling water bath canner they go.

And here they are cooling on the table. I believe I got 29 qts of pickled beets.

I also got the carrots finished up. We had 28 qts of carrots to put in the pantry.

We also butchered the turkeys, and a duck. Still have roosters and more ducks to do.

Our turkey we are having for dinner on Thanksgiving weighed in at 30 pounds after being dressed. Good thing we have a big turkey, we will have 18 for dinner on Thanksgiving day.

See you all tomorrow with the pie how to post!

Our visit to a local cranberry bog

2010-10-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of the bog we got our cranberries from. It belongs to Marci and Dave Murray. They have been so generous in showing us their bogs and giving us some really great cranberries! Thanks Dave and Marci!

This is Dave and Chad loading the truck with cranberries from the bog. There is a ladder they go up and during that time most of the leaves and debris fall back down. Then they are pumped out and they make compost from them. It is used to put back into the bogs to feed the plants.

Ed and the girls looking at the cranberries.

These photos don't show what a pretty sight this is. It is so much brighter and pretty in person!

Two 5 gallon buckets of cranberries they dipped out of the truck for us! They are safely in the freezer now. I made some juice from them too. Soooo good!

In this photo the truck had left to take the cranberries to the plant.

This is a bog that hadn't been harvested yet. You can't see the tons of berries in this photo. Trust me they are there!

Marci was kind enough to take this photo of us. It was a beautiful day!

Here is a photo of the machine that thrashes the plants and the berries float to the top of the water. From there they use floating booms to corral them and bring them to the edge where they run them up into the truck.

When we were leaving, we met the truck coming back from the plant going back to the bog for another load.

Close up of the berries.

And here they are all washed and pretty looking in my kitchen!

This bowl is huge. I know it doesn't look like that in the photos, but it is holding one bucket full of cranberries!

Another day we went back to the bog and Marci let us pick from her dry baby bog. It is where they grow replacement plants for another bog. They don't flood it, so they have to be picked by hand. That day we got another bucket full! I have been so happy to have fresh cranberries! Thanks again Marci and Dave!

The continuing harvest

2010-10-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

These photos were taken on September 29th. I have since processed them. Some are pickled, some are canned, some are in the freezer.

Some of our carrot harvest. I had actually forgotten I planted this mix of colored carrots. What a surprise to dig them up! Aren't they so pretty?

They were very tasty too! The strange thing about eating a white carrot was I kept expecting them to taste like parsnips, but they don't. They taste just like a sweet carrot.

Nice looking corn. We didn't grow this but our neighbor did and gave us this batch. It was tasty!

These photos were taken today in my kitchen. The jars are full of tomatoes. The one bowl is full of tomatillas that were a freebie in my garden. They had seeded themselves last year. I will be making some salsa verde with them.

These are some sweet banana peppers and the hot peppers I have no idea what they are. I planted a hot pepper mix.

Jalapeno and hot red cherry peppers. So pretty together!

Some of the banana peppers..........

Bell peppers, Anaheim, pablano and more banana peppers.

This is one five gallon bucket of beets, I have a big box of them out in the shop waiting on me. They will be pickled beets soon in a jar on my pantry shelf.

Stay tuned for a visit to a cranberry bog.

October updates

2010-10-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

Time flies when you are busy! Since the last post in September, we have been very busy. Sally turned 8 years old. I am going to share some photos of her party. We actually had it outdoors this year. Usually it is raining already on October 3rd. This year we had a dry Fall. That was so good as it allowed our garden to finish producing. We had a late start this year so we needed this extra time to let it grow. Thank you Lord for a bountiful harvest!

This is a Swinson family tradition. The birthday person gets the first bite of cake.

This is how she looked after her first bite!

The cake before the first bite.

Sally, behind her is Jadeyn and behind her is little Samantha.

This is Jadeyn, Sally, Gabriel, and Audrey.

From left to right, Gabriel, Sally, Adam, Josie, Jadeyn, and Lily. Grandma is in the background.

These are the birthday girl photos. We had the party in the Gazebo. She had a pinata along with the pretty pink cake!

Stay tuned for more photos of the harvest!

How many greenbeans?

2010-09-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten to write about just exactly how all those green beans got canned. Yes, that was 131 qts. No, I did NOT do it all by myself. If that were the case, I would probably still be canning them. : )

On the first picking, Ed and I picked, with the help of my sister Mechelle. My Mom and Dad snapped them all. Took them 4 hours that day. Then I washed them and Mechelle put them in jars and I canned them. Then Ed and I washed all the jars and put them in the pantry.

The second picking Audrey and I did the picking with Dad doing some. Then Mom and Dad snapped them all again. There were even more this time! It took me a couple of days to get them canned that time. Ed is always so helpful to unload the canner for me and to carry all those jars to the pantry.

It is a group effort and I am so thankful for all the help. Next time we pick beans these will be for Mechelle's family we will can up.

According to the weather report we will have a couple of dry days on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. That is when we will be picking more beans, and probably peppers and tomatoes and more cucumbers. I am thinking we will be ripening some of our tomatoes in the greenhouse.

I will be sure to take pictures and keep you updated with all that is going on here at Bountiful Acres Homestead. May the Lord bless your day today!

Today's accomplishments

2010-09-18T20:26:00.000-07:00

When I looked at these peppers I immediately thought Christmas! Aren't those the prettiest green and red peppers you have seen? The red peppers are Paprika peppers. the green ones are an Ancho pepper. Today was pepper day at Bountiful Acres.

I canned 23 pints of pickled banana peppers.

Ed helped me chop them all up yesterday. That was a chore! Plus we did onions and tomatoes and all the bell peppers, Anaheim peppers and some garlic and cilantro. That turned into salsa.

Here the salsa is mixed up and waiting for jars.

A close up of the yummy salsa.

And another close up of the pretty Christmas peppers. : )

These green peppers got canned in pint jars. This made 4 pints.

Then I got 16 pints of salsa, and 23 pints of pickled peppers. So I have a total of 43 more jars on my pantry shelves today.

I think tomorrow I will have a day of rest. Even the good Lord rested after creating the universe. : )

What's Cooking?

2010-09-17T18:26:00.000-07:00

Remember the beautiful cauliflower from my garden? The purple, the cheddar colored and some white? Here is a quick recipe for all those garden veggies available to us now.

I took some yellow crookneck squash, zucchini, assorted peppers, the yellow and purple cauliflower and chopped them. I heated my big cast iron skillet and added about a tablespoon of coconut oil. Then I cooked the veggies quickly in it. Added a bit of sea salt and some pepper. Meanwhile, I boiled some whole grain seashell pasta.

When it was finished cooking, I drained the pasta, added the veggies to it and a tad bit of butter and more sea salt. Ta Da! Lunch is served at Bountiful Acres! I love cooking with fresh produce from my garden. Sort of makes all that hard work worth it.

Speaking of hard work, here is what has been going on the past several weeks.

This is how our garden looked in June.

This is the garden in September! It is so big and lush I had to take two photos to get the whole thing in view. This is the view from the left side.

This is the view on the right side of the garden.

Here is a kettle full of summer squash. I am going to blanch and freeze some of these. We love to eat the small zucchini and crooknecks sauteed in butter with a fried egg for breakfast.

Here we have a milk crate full of peppers. The two big yellow things are lemon cucumbers. The red pepper are my paprika peppers. I love to dry them and then grind them for my own paprika powder. It is just sooo good!

One big batch of my bell peppers and Anaheim peppers. These were made into salsa today with my other big batch of peppers shown below. I also used a big batch of tomatoes from the garden in this salsa.

Aren't those such pretty peppers?

This is a photo of some of my apple juice and applesauce we made last week. The apples are red, so they make a pretty pink color when cooked.

And the Lord really blessed my green bean harvest this year. I took this photo during a bean canning session. So this year thus far, I have 131 quarts of green beans canned and in the pantry from the garden. Yes! I was completely out of them.

Now you know why I haven't been online and blogging much. I have been doing so much harvesting and putting food up for winter. : )

I will share more with you as I go.

Looking for a house to buy? : )

2010-09-11T11:28:00.000-07:00

On the off chance someone is looking for a house to buy on the beautiful Oregon coast, here is a link to a house we are selling for a friend of ours. : )

It is located in North Bend, Oregon

http://www.winsorhouse.blogspot.com/

Catching up

2010-08-31T15:15:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow will be the 1st of September. It seems like Summer just rushed through here before we knew it. We had such a long wet cold Spring this year. Our garden never got planted until after the 4th of July! That put everything about a month behind schedule.

But, thank the good Lord, we still have veggies coming on in the gardens. Canning season is on! So far this month I have made pickles. I made 21 qts of bread and butter pickles, and some sweet spicy spears, and 7 qts of pickled peppers. Also we juiced some blackberries and canned 3 and a half qts of blackberry juice.

Next we will be canning green beans and making some dill pickles. The cucumbers are really producing.

We picked some cauliflower from the garden. Look at this picture of the three varieties we grew this year.

We planted purple, cheddar and white cauliflower this year. Isn't it pretty? ( I don't know why that one photo never finished downloading. I can't seem to fix it.)

We took the girls camping this year. Yep, bought a tent and went camping! The photo on the top of the blog is a picture of the stream that flows into the lake where we camped.

This is the campground sign where we camped. Welcome to the campground/pick up your dog poop! :)

Here is the new tent all set up. Not a bad tent for the price. Measures 16' x 10' and six feet tall.

The picnic area and campfire pit.

Pretty nice fire pit. I kept my tea kettle on the grate and kept the water hot for washing up or making tea.

Audrey took this photo of us sitting around the campfire the first night.

The girls and Ed getting cozy around the fire.

Ed and Duke walking on the beach. The ocean was just about half a mile away from the campground and the lake. So we took the half mile hike to the beach the next day. This was the first time Duke has been to the beach.

Ed, the girls and Duke strolling along the beach.

Strange looking things on the beach. They looked like ping pong balls. Well it was seaweed. I thought they looked fascinating.

The big long one I believe is called bull whip kelp/seaweed. When I was a kid and we went to the beach, my younger sister Mechelle would always try and smuggle some of these big long seaweed home. I can remember her sneaking one in the trunk of the car. When they get hot and start to decay they really can make a stink! : )

This is the sunset the first night.

Two sleeping girls. In their sleeping bags with their quilts I made them on top for extra warmth.

Sally snoozing away.
Audrey all snug as a bug in a rug.

This is a photo of the little pocket area where you usually put your flash light or something. You can see this is where toys took up residence including Barbie.

We had a fun time.

I promise to keep updating more often. I have lots of photos I have taken this summer, just never had the time to post much.

Good bye dear Toby

2010-08-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

My beloved cat Toby has died. He was hit by a car this past week. He was 15 years old. I got him from the Animal Shelter in Fairbanks Alaska in Sept. of 1995. He was a tiny kitten, so small he could sit in the palm of my hand. I became his new mother and he was my baby for the next 15 years. He was so precious to me and my heart is breaking because he is gone. I am thankful that Ed found him and we were able to know what had happened to him, and I got to pet his precious little body once more. We had a little funeral yesterday to bury him.

July already?

2010-07-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

I planted the last of the seeds today. We have all the greenhouse plants in the garden now. I have 57 tomato plants, 63 peppers, 30 some cucumbers, 70 some squash/melons, 75 or so cabbage/broccoli/cauliflower plants. Anyway my greenhouse is empty looking now.

We bought a ram lamb for our ewes. He is so cute. His name is Copper and he is a Katahdin sheep. I will get photos up soon. I know I have been saying that for the past month haven't I?

I pray the garden does well. I should say gardens. We planted three gardens this year.

I went and picked the strawberries today. I got a gallon sized bucket full. They are so good, and I know they haven't been sprayed with any poisons.

I will write more about our happenings soon.

My how time flies! June already?

2010-06-06T22:00:00.000-07:00

Oh I have been so negligent in posting haven't I? What can I say, life keeps me busy.

Let me see where we left off-----oh yes, we were buying a calf. That plan has changed. We didn't buy the calf, we decided to wait and get a cow in milk when Ed has has time to build the barn. Kind of like not wanting to get the cart before the horse kind of thing............

Sally's new teeth have grown in. Audrey had her 10th birthday and got her ears pierced. She is thrilled and feels so grown up!

I need to get pictures taken of the plants in the greenhouse. They look as good if not better than the ones for sale in town now! I am so thrilled with the greenhouse. The plants grow straight up! No turning them to keep them from growing towards the kitchen window.

The sheep knocked over the two beehives in the pasture. Ed had to suit up again and rescue the very unhappy bees. NO stings this time! Thank you Lord!

I must take pictures and post them of my pretty little violas and pansies. Besides roses and lilacs, I just love love love pansies. They have the cheeriest faces and make me smile each time I see them. I have gotten a little carried away with buying them this year. But they come back and reseed themselves so they are well worth the investment.

I have found my new interest to grow in the greenhouse just for fun. Miniature roses! So far I have one. : ) I promise to get photos taken of everything soon.

And I was promising a drawing soon. I will be doing that also. Can't wait to see what it will be for can you? Good!

Today is my youngest son's birthday. He turned 30! Happy Birthday Jared! I am so proud of you. Love you bunches!

I must sign off for now. I will be back with photos and more updates soon.

Hope everyone has had a good Spring so far. Looking forward to Summer.

Guess what we have now?

2010-05-03T20:07:00.000-07:00

I am so happy to tell you this exciting news! We went to an organic local dairy today and bought a Jersey heifer! She is a little over 6 months old. We are also going to buy a cow in milk from this nice man as soon as we have the barn built. I can't believe it, I will finally have a cow that is actually milking. In the mean time we are going to raise this young one up and she can help the sheep mow the pasture.

I don't have any photos of her yet. The farmer is going to bring her to us this week sometime. I will take photos of her then and share them with you.

In other news, we have 3 new baby ducks! White rose hatched out 3 eggs. I will get photos of them up too. We should be having some Dark Cornish hatch out soon. We have two hens sitting. I thought we would have a bunch of babies, but Ed tells me the one is only sitting on one egg and the other has two. Then we have in the hen house a Black Australorp sitting on 6 eggs and a Speckled Sussex that has 4 eggs.

So far the turkey hens haven't gone broody on us. We had one act like she was going to, but gave it up.

Stay tuned for more photos and a drawing coming soon.

The latest Buzz and Baa at Bountiful Acres

2010-05-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

We have had some exciting things going on with the bees. First of all Ed's new hive of free bees swarmed. This photo above is where they landed in our orchard in an apple tree. Thankfully it wasn't way up in a huge tree where he couldn't get to them.

They swarm because the hive is too small, or another queen was born and the resident queen didn't catch it and kill it. So the new queen leaves the hive and a bunch of the worker bees and drones follow her.

Here Ed is trying to use a net that I made to capture the bees. It didn't work, so he used a box instead.

The box worked great and he was able to capture this swarm.

He gave these bees to a friend of ours who lost his bees this past winter. It is just a small swarm, but we are praying the Lord blesses them and it grows into a big colony.

Then the next day around the same time in the afternoon it swarmed again!!!!! We couldn't believe it. This time they gathered in the grape vines between our property and our neighbors. He gave this swarm to one of the members of the bee keepers association who also had lost all his bees last year.

During this time of messing with the bees, he got stung 3 times! Once in the face, took several days to get over that one, then again in the neck under his chin. Then the third time was in the arm. We did get some homeopathic medicine for bee stings and to prevent them from stinging. It seems to work as the last sting wasn't as severe and went away quicker.

While he was looking at his hive, he found out that he has mites in his bees. That is not a good thing, and they can cause the hive to die. He bought natural pest control for the hive that has honey in it and the regular medication for the two hives that don't have honey.

The day the hive swarmed for the second time he also received his pkg. of bees he had purchased. So now he has three hives. His goal is to have five.

Here is a photo of the greenhouse. This is the North facing wall.

This is the south facing wall. It has more windows.

This is the front door which faces west.

This is the inside looking toward the front door.

This is an earlier photo taken front the front door area.

Can you believe I had all those plants in my kitchen? This table is 2 ft. wide and 16 ft. long! I need to take more photos as Ed built me another table that size on the other side. I will take more photos after I get the tomatoes transplanted.

These are our poor citrus trees. They didn't do well inside the hot house last winter. I hope they will revive for us. Our lime tree died completely as it had gotten too cold before we brought them inside last fall.

Guess what this is? My walking onions. Sometimes they are called Egyptian onions or topsetting onions. The flower part on top makes bublets that when they get heavy, they fall over and then when they are touching the soil, they send down roots and grow more onions. Hence, the walking onion name. That is why I have them in a tub, so they don't "walk" all over the farm!

Here is the "baaa" part of the story. What do you do when your pasture is becoming overgrown, you have too many laying hens and turkeys? Well you sell a pair of turkeys, and sell 10 laying hens. Then you go and buy a couple of sheep to mow the pasture for you. That is our reasoning anyway. works for us!

See how tall that grass is? They have a lot of work to do!

This is our black ewe.

This is our white ewe.

They are half Katahdin, half Romney. They are half hair sheep. They are the kind of sheep who loose their hair, and don't require shearing. Since they are only half, we will be shearing them. Now won't that make for an exciting post? I will be sure and record that for you all to enjoy.

That is my Dad. Can you see what he built for me? An arbor for my wild climbing rose at the end of the walkway to the gazebo. Thanks Dad, I love it! (The young man to the left is my nephew in law, Jesse. He gave Dad a hand setting it in place.)

Okay I have spent enough time on the computer. I must get out to the greenhouse to transplant those tomatoes. They won't hop in the new pots on their own. : )

May your day be blessed!

How was your Easter?

2010-04-05T12:14:00.000-07:00

How was your Easter Sunday? I am so thankful that God sent His only Son to pay for our sins and raised him up from the dead.

We had a nice dinner with our family. We had ham, potato salad, rolls, beets, asparagus and green salad and cranberry sauce. For dessert we had blackberry shortcake. Dinner was good, and the company was great.

We had a total of 15 at the table. I should say tables, as we had a small table for the 4 older girls.

My baby sister and my nephew are here for a visit. They drove down from Bellingham Washington on Saturday. I haven't had a chance to visit much with them yet. We have so many here at once it is rather noisy and several conversations going on at once.......that is just the way it is when so many of us are gathered in one place. : ) Kristy and Patrick will be here for several more days, so I am sure we will get a chance to visit in that time.

On Saturday I was doing some prep cooking for Easter dinner. Those of you who read this blog know that we get a lot of eggs each day from our poultry. Most of the time it is right at 3.5 dozen a day. Gathered in a nice bucket, set in the fridge until I have time to clean them and put them in the cartons. Well this is what happened on Saturday.......(see photo below.)

Yep! I was rearranging the fridge and pushed the entire bucket of eggs out on the floor. It hit with such force that raw egg splashed up the side of my leg and I had to change pants as I was dripping with egg! The only eggs out of the entire bucket that didn't break were a couple of duck eggs. Do you know how much fun that was to clean up? LOL! I used the dust pan to scoop up the most of it. Then had to use rags to clean the rest.

Ed brought that same bucket in last night full of eggs and said to me, "there ya go, another bucket of eggs!" I managed to get them into the fridge without breaking any.

More big news is Sally has lost two teeth now. Here is a couple of photos of her proudly displaying the empty spots.

We can already see the new teeth coming in.

These are cookies we made from a recipe in my old cookbook. The name of the book is Farm Journal's Homemade Pies, Cookies and Breads.

They called them dishpan cookies, as it makes such a large batch they used their dishpans to mix them up. They are actually made with molasses and rolled oats. I baked 4 dozen and still had this much in the bowl. (I have very large stainless steel bowls, so I didn't need to use a dishpan.) : )

I ended up forming the left over dough into two logs, wrapping them in foil and putting in the fridge. A few days later I sliced them and baked a batch. I did this on two different days. I am thinking of mixing up a bunch of this dough and putting the logs in the freezer for baking a batch of cookies when the mood strikes without making the mess of mixing all the dough. Besides then we aren't tempted to eat too many at once.

Here is the recipe if you would like to give it a try. I have made changes to the recipe to adapt to our way of eating. I put those in ( ).

OATMEAL/MOLASSES COOKIES

8 1/2 cups sifted flour (I used fresh ground soft white wheat flour)

1 TBSP salt

2 TBSP baking soda

8 cups quick oats (I used old fashioned oats)

2 1/2 cup sugar (I used 1 cup honey)

1 TBSP ground ginger

2 cups melted shortening (I used melted coconut oil)

2 cups light molasses (I used old fashioned molasses)

4 eggs beaten

1/4 cup hot water (I omitted the water to make up for the liquid of the honey)

3 cups raisins (I didn't have any so I used chopped dates)

2 cups ground black or English walnuts (I used almonds as I didn't have any walnuts cracked)

sugar for tops (I omitted this)

Reserve 1/2 cup flour. Sift together 8 c. flour, salt and baking soda. In a very large bowl or dishpan, mix rolled oats, sugar and ginger. (If using honey instead mix the honey with the beaten eggs.) Stir in shortening, molasses, eggs, hot water (remember to omit water if using honey), sifted dry ingredients, raisin and nuts. Work dough with hands until well mixed. (Too messy for me, I used a wooden spoon.) Add the reserved 1/2 c. flour is needed to make dough workable. (I found I needed to use it because of the honey.)

Roll dough to 1/4" thick and cut with 3 1/2" cutter. (I just scooped about a tablespoon into my hands and shaped into a disc. Kind of like making a hamburger patty.) Place 2" apart on a greesed cookie sheet. Brush with water and sprinkle with sugar. (I omitted this step)

Bake in a moderate oven (375degrees) 8-10 minutes. Remove cookies to a rack to cool. Makes 6 dozen. (They must have made huge cookies to only get 6 dozen. I made more like 8 dozen from this recipe.)

I am thinking of making up another recipe kind of like this using maybe some applesauce instead of molasses. Maybe another batch with cocoa powder and peanut butter for part of the shortening. The possibilities are endless.............. I don't like making cookies, as I am too impatient to bake them. I want to make something put it in the oven and be done with it. Not keep fooling around putting them in and out of the oven every ten minutes. : ) So if I had this all mixed up and in the logs/rolls I wouldn't mind baking a batch or two at a time. My family would be so pleased with this idea. : )

Check back for updates and new photos of our vegetable starts and green house news.

Huge turkey egg

2010-03-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

Just the other day Mrs. Mike and I were talking about the size of turkey eggs. How we both thought they would be bigger than they are. Well one of my turkeys must have heard us talking! Look at this whopper! It was easily twice the size of the other turkey eggs.

And this is the reason it was sooo huge! "Double yolker" as my girls like to say.

This is what else I did today. Baked a batch of bread. Well this is the left overs. I actually did another small loaf for my Mom and Dad and also baked a pan of rolls. But the small loaf is at Mom's and we ate the rolls for lunch!

More March news

2010-03-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

This is another photo of the greenhouse in the making. Both ends are done and the rafters are laid on top.

Another angle.

And yet another view.

You can see the bees coming home from a hard days work if you look closely.

These are some Blue Andalusian hens we are putting up for sale. Aren't they so pretty?

Some exciting news we have on the farm today is we have two different turkey hens wanting to sit! We are so happy we might have baby turkeys this Spring. This will be the first time we have had turkeys that hatched out their own offspring.

The Lord is good!

Happy first day of Spring!

2010-03-19T23:01:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of Winter. Thank the good Lord! Tomorrow is the first day of Spring. It is very welcomed here. The daffodils have already about bloomed themselves out. Now our orchard is coming alive with some pretty blossoms. The white blossoms above are of our green gage plum tree.

Today was a very pretty day. It was actually hot! So I took some photos of the place.

The above photo is of Ed's new beehive. I painted it for him yesterday. He mixed up some left over paints and this is the color it turned out. Sky blue, isn't it pretty? He will be getting another pkg of bees next month. So he has to have their new home all ready for them. He was given a free hive of bees last month. Those need to be moved into a new hive, but we aren't sure how to accomplish that. As they have made comb in a hive box without foundations. Anyway, after getting the next pkg. of bees that will make 3 hives we have. Hopefully we will be putting up a "local honey for sale" sign next to the eggs for sale sign. : )

This is a photo of my seed starting in my kitchen. There will be lots of peppers, tomatoes and onions, leeks, eggplant and squash, cucumbers, and cole crops in our garden this year. I can't wait until that green house is finished! Speaking of which, here are some photos of the progress being made on it.

This is how the greenhouse looked early this afternoon. Then I went back in the house to vacuum and dust. When I came back outside .......

This is what I found! My dear husband is making great progress in getting this built. It is going to be quite large. The measurements will be 12' X 32'. I think I should have plenty of room for growing veggies year round and for starting them for the garden each year. He would have made it another 4 ft. wider, but we are right up against the orchard on the left and the berry rows on the right.

Below are a few more shots of it.

I was standing on the turkey porch and took this shot. You can see beehive number 1 in the lower right hand corner of this photo.

This is Ed (in the hat) and Dad at the end of the day.

This is the hardworking man himself. It is amazing what he can accomplish! I am sorry ladies, but I do believe I have the very best husband in the world. : )

These windows will become the walls of the greenhouse. Ed has been collecting them for some time to have enough. Can you not wait until it is finished? I sure can't !

This is a shot of our little peach tree in bloom.

The two Tom turkeys strutting thier stuff.

A close up of one of them. They are pretty big now.

The rooster here is one of our Dark Cornish/Speckled Sussex crosses. He has the broadbreast of his mother the Dark Cornish, and the bigger size of his Sussex father. We had 3 hatched out and all three turned out to be roosters. They will be added to the freezer as soon as Ed had time to do that chore. Along with 4 more roosters in the other yard.

I was standing on the pallet walkway in the laying hen area looking toward the turkey, dark cornish barn/pen. The rooster in this photo is our Aracana the girls have named Rainbow. Under the white tarp in the back ground is the building materials to make the cow barn out of. That is next on Ed's list of things to do this year.

And here are the girls taking their first swim of the season. It was hot outside, but that water was very cold and they didn't last but about 20 minutes "swimming" LOL!

There you have another fine day on the farm at Bountiful Acres. Make sure to check back and watch the progress of the greenhouse. You never know what else we might be doing here.

May the Lord bless you!

New news at Bountiful Acres

2010-03-11T23:02:00.000-08:00

Remember when I showed you photos of our citrus orchard? The trees have been living in my window box in our living room this winter. Guess what? We have been eating our first mandarin oranges! They are so good and we are just thrilled with having successfully grown our own citrus fruit. : )

Here is a photo of three of them. I know I forgot to take photos of picking them off the tree. Actually we were so excited to be eating them, that I barely remembered to take a photo of them before we scarfed them down!

Here is a photo of Audrey and Sally about to eat their mandarin orange. Notice Sally's haircut?

Next photo is of our egg production today. We got a total of 38 eggs. Two of them were turkey and one duck, with the remaining being chicken eggs.

This is the photo of the first ducklings of the year. Only 3 survived and went to live at their new home, along with thier mama duck and a daddy duck.

This is our sweet little grandson Avery. We got this photo when they came up for a visit last month.

This is a photo of Audrey and Sally with Mesah our granddaughter. She is Avery's big sister. Yes, it is strange we have daughters younger than our granddaughter!

Here is the entire family. Jared, my youngest son, his wife Christa and you have already met the grandkids. : ) The only one missing from the photo is Bryce, the big brother. He lives in Alaska and comes for visits during Christmas, Summer and Spring break.

What in the world is this you may ask? Well it is called my winter salad. I canned jars and jars of beets this past year along with green beans. So I dreamed up this salad for our dinner today. I opened a qt. of beets and green beans, boiled them for the recommended 15 minutes. Then cooled them, added some chopped red onion, a couple of handfuls of frozen thawed peas, and some shredded carrots. I made up a dressing and added some salt and pepper. This went along with the pork steaks I cooked and cottage cheese for dinner.

When it stops raining and Ed is working on the greenhouse again, I will be posting photos of the progress on that. Stay tuned, I promise to do better on updating more frequently from now on. God bless!

February and March updates

2010-03-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

Ed put up a tire swing for the girls. They have lots of fun on that.

This is a pillow I made for Sally one evening. She found this piece of fabric and had to have something made from it.

Here is Audrey modeling her new apron I sewed up for her the same evening that I made Sally a pillow. Audrey chose the fabric from my stash.

Here are Toby (on the right) and Hercules (on the left) taking a cat nap. The blanket is Duke's bed, it i near the woodstove. They just thought that was a good place to snuggle up and take a nap.

And the big news for the week is...................we got our first turkey egg yesterday! Isn't it lovely? Turkey eggs are just like a chicken egg, only they have a much bigger yolk. mmmmm!

Now that we have turkey hens laying eggs we know they are mature enough to be breeding. We have two toms who are not doing their job. They are more worried about strutting their stuff and trying to prove who is top turkey. So one of the will be dinner soon. We have several roosters that need to go in the freezer also. Good thing, because we don't have any poultry in the freezer, just beef and pork.

I have photos of my grandchildren to post too. Just have to get them off the camera and onto the computer. More to follow this post. Just need to get to bed for now.

We are still here!

2010-03-06T16:37:00.000-08:00

My my how time flies! I bet everyone thought we had fell off the planet on the last rotation right? LOL! No, just been really busy. Had lots of house guests, the children got the crud going around. Not much interesting going on here. But I do have some things and photos to share and will get to that tonight I hope. Just wanted to pop in and say hi and let you all know there is still life at Bountiful Acres. : )

Stay tuned for a great update!

Misc. musings

2010-01-25T10:11:00.000-08:00

Good morning! How are things at your house? We are doing well. We have been busy doing our regular things and working on organizing my sewing room and making room for Ed to have a space of his own. (Yes that means I am sharing part of my sewing room.) For far too long my sewing room has been the catch-all room. And I could never find anything, so I was always having to dig through my fabric and craft supplies, which makes a mess. When we are finished, I am going to have my fabric all sorted and in order. One of these days I will put them in colorways too, but for now nice and neatly folded according to fabric content is my plan. I will post some photos when it is finished. I have "before" pictures but I am too embarrassed to show everyone!

Yesterday I baked bread and made pizza. The girls each got a blob of dough to make something too. They made their own little loaf in a pie tart pan.

Here they are with their creations. Sally was saying "B R E A D" lol!

Sally's bread close-up.

Audrey's close-up. Hers looks like I big clam doesn't it?

My bread before going into the oven.

The pizza coming out of the oven.

And the following photos are what happened when the girls got ahold of the camera while Mom and Dad were upstairs working on the sewing room. No wonder my batteries are always dead when I go to use my camera!

Sally in her dress up dress dancing.

More dancing.

Audrey dancing.

Toby napping on the loveseat.

Duke

Audrey and Duke\

The remaining scar from Duke's accident.

Sally and Toby.

Audrey and Toby, (who isn't looking too happy with the photo shoot.)

Sally trying to avoid being licked by Duke.

Kitty and Tiger

Close-up of Kitty and Tiger. Audrey was given Kitty at the hospital when she was born. So Kitty is going on 10 years old. She used to be pure white with a bright pink ribbon. Tiger was given to Sally on her 1st birthday and is 6 years old. They have to sleep with these every night.

And of course here is Kitty again.

Silly Duke sleeping with his head smashed up against the chair.

Here he is again. The reason I took this photo is because he was snoring so loudly we had to turn up the TV. LOL

And that is all I have to share with you today. Hope your day is blessed and productive!

Ready for a good laugh?

2010-01-20T11:15:00.000-08:00

I don't know if everyone who reads my blog knows about my children's ages. Both my husband and I were married before and have children from those marriages. I have two sons that are 31 and 29. My husband who is 17 years my senior has two sons and a daughter who are all in their late 30's early 40's. Then God saw fit to give us our two girls after my sons had grown up and left home. So our poor girls have "old" parents. Matter of fact people in town always ask us if they are our grandkids. Which really makes our girls indignant! lol!

I said all of that to tell you the funny story. Since we are not spring chickens so to speak, we have a tendency to forget things once in awhile. Like where we put something. We take fish oil and other vitamins that are supposed to help our memory. So it is a family joke that when we forget something someone will ask if we took our fish oil that day. : )

Here are some photos of pictures our girls drew for us some time ago. They decided the best place to display them was on either side of our bed.

This is the picture that Audrey drew for me, and it is on my side of the bed on the wall.

This is the picture that Sally drew for Ed and it is on his side of the bed. (I think I will put them in frames.)

The other day I was in the kitchen working and Audrey comes in there and starts talking to me. Out of the clear blue she says this: You know the pictures we drew for you and Dad by your bed? I said yes. She says well good thing we made those for you. I waited for her to elaborate. She says, that way when your fish oils wears off you will still know which side of the bed you are supposed to sleep on . LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is what happens when you have old parents I guess. We laugh about this every night when we go to bed!

Our new Andalusian hens are laying

2010-01-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

We got our first tiny Blue Andalusain egg the other day. It went from being tiny and round to the small nicely shaped egg in a few days. Pullet eggs are so cute!

The two brown eggs are normal sized eggs. To the left you can see the tiny round first egg of one of our Blue Andalusian hen. Now we have a couple more hens laying the white egg. These are from the new Blue Andalusian hens that hatched out 4.5 months ago. We are back in production with the eggs. We are getting 12-17 eggs a day and that number will go up as the new ones get to laying regularly.

This is a picture of a flour sack towel that I embroidered a design on and then attempted to crocket a border on the bottom. Does it look like a Valentine day project? I have a friend who loves pink so much her kitchen is done in pinks. I think she would like something like this. : )

Keeping busy and productive

2010-01-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of my turkey deep fryer kettle. Guess what is in it? Mixed dry beans that have been soaking. Did you know if you soak your beans for 12-24hrs it makes them more digestable?

The family helped me sort through 5 different dry beans. We put baby lima, red kidney, pinto, black turtle, tiny white beans and black eyed peas in this mix.

I took them out of the kettle and rinsed them in the colander a little at a time.

Then I put them in the jars with a half teaspoon salt in each jar.

Loaded up both canners. Boy I love those canners! I can do 21 qts. at one time with these two. I ended up with 28 qts as I had enough to do one more small canner load.

There we have 28 qts. of dried beans all cooked and ready for some instant meals! The last 7 qts. that I canned I added some chili powder, cumin, and onion powder in addition to the salt in those. Makes them kind of a chili bean flavor. I can open a couple of jars, add some browned ground beef to it and some homemade tomato sauce and diced tomatoes and garlic and there is supper! Add a pan of corn bread and I have instant dinner. Well that is what we call "fast food" around our place anyway. : )

Next thing to do is making jams and jellies from all those berries and fruit I put in the freezer last summer.

Happy 2010!

2010-01-03T19:59:00.000-08:00

So here we are starting another new year. It seems to me as soon as Christmas is over I start getting seed catalogs in the mail and I begin thinking of my next garden. Browsing through the catalogs makes me look forward to Spring, the smell of fresh tilled soil and what I will grow in my garden. What variety of green beans, carrots, cabbage will I plant this year?

Ed said his top priority now is building the greenhouse asap. I will be able to start my plants in there instead of letting them take over the kitchen. We are aslo contemplating which veggies will grow year round for us. Lettuce, radishes, green onions, chard, kale, broccoli for sure. Ed wants to try and experiement with a cherry tomato plant too. There would be a nice salad when ever we wanted for supper. Plus some fresh greens and a little broccoli. Having salad fixings all winter would be wonderful! Of course I will have some herbs out there too. I love cooking with fresh herbs.

I keep telling myself to quit thinking about gardening and enjoy my time for sewing and other needlecrafts! I have so many things I would like to sew and embroider. I will be doing some embroidery block of the month this year. I will be sure to post pictures as I get them finished.

I made the two quilts for my girls for Christmas this year, and now that they have them on their beds, I can post a picture of them. : )

This is a picture of Audrey's quilt. The next photo is of the back of her quilt. It has been hand tied as I don't do machine quilting and didn't have time to have it quilted by someone else.

I should take a close up of the fabric. It is different dogs.

This is Sally's quilt. They both have some of the same blocks in them, but look different due to the sashing between the blocks. Also the backs are different.

The back of Sally's is penguins.

This is Duke and Hercules sharing Dukes blanket. Seems like the cat has the better part of it. The cats have adapted quite well to Duke being in the house. Toby still doesn't want much to do with him, but he doesn't have such a hissy fit when Duke tries to sniff him anymore. : )

More Christmas Sewing

2009-12-19T21:28:00.000-08:00

Today I stitched up some cute little ornaments that have a pocket in them for holding gift cards, cash or treats. They were really easy to do and fun. Tomorrow I will be working on the girl's lap quilts.

Ed took some good photos of our chickens yesterday. I will post them next time.

My sewing project for today

2009-12-13T17:13:00.000-08:00

I did the challenge project from my online quilting group today. It was fun to make. This bag is for carrying your rotary cutters (or for anything you want to use it for.) : ) The fun part was trying the different quilting methods. I am so happy with my new sewing machine! I might just do more quilting of my small projects now!

Here are the photos of the finished project. This is going to make a good Christmas gift.

This is the finished bag. You can see the two different quilting methods. The one on top is just a diagonal feather stitched at a 45 degree angle. The bottom section is a cross hatched quilting.

This shows the inside of the bag. There are two sections as you can see by the seam down the center.

And here is the back, showing my first ever attempt at what is known as stippling. You aren't supposed to cross over any stitching, but as you can see, I did.......... lol!

More projects to come........

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

2009-12-12T17:46:00.000-08:00

We have been doing some Christmas decorating at Bountiful Acres. We have our tree up and decorated, the other decorations out, our nativity scene which is our heading picture right now, and we have lights up outside.

This is our little tree. It is a noble fir. I am a terrible photographer, so I am putting up several photos of the tree. None of them capture how pretty the tree really is.

Here is another shot.

This is the stocking area since we don't have a fireplace......

Here is my display next to my reproduction 1940's radio.

A close up of the snowman family.

The Nativity Scene. I painted this when we lived in Alaska. I used to do ceramics. I enjoyed it. You can't find any ceramic shops these days..........

This is my cute snowman luminary.

Here is a cute little ornament thing that my cousin Rita gave us several years ago.

And this is a closeup of our Angel that goes on our tree top every year.

Well it is family night at our house tonight. I need to go and make some clam dip, some pizza and find our movie. We will be watching our favorite Christmas movie. A Christmas Story. You know the one where the boy gets a BB gun for Christmas and about shoots his eye out? The other little boy gets his tongue stuck to the flagpole? (My oldest son Jeremy did something similiar when we was a young boy. Only it was the pole at Safeway! lol!) Sorry Jeremy, couldn't help myself! lol!

Gee, got a bit off track with that didn't I? We have been doing game night, and movie night. The girls really look forward to these nights. We had to buy some new games last time we went shopping. We had been playing Kismet, which is like Yahtzee only using colored dice. So we bought Sorry, Uno, Skipbo and Chinese checkers. Variety is the spice of life! : )

May you all have a blessed weekend!

Jerusalem artichokes

2009-12-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

We went out and dug up some Jerusalem artichokes this afternoon. Boy that was cold! I am sharing some starts with a couple of folks on my Whizbang Chicken Plucker yahoo group. : )

Okay I can hear you thinking---what in the world? This is one strange woman! And you may be correct. he he he!

More about Whizbang Chicken pluckers later............back to the artichoke story.

We dug them up, and of course they are muddy from the damp ground. Ed washed them in the bucket outside to get 50% of the dirt off them. Then I brought them inside and washed each little tuber with a soft brush. Then spread them to dry on a towel in the kitchen. Tomorrow I will box them up and send them off.

Here are some photos of the process. Minus the digging part, I never think to take the camera outside with me!

Here they are in the sink being washed.

After being washed.

Drying on the towel.

Okay now to explain the Whizbang Chicken pluckers group. A fella named Herrick Kimball has written a book on how to make a tub style chicken plucker. He calls it the Whizbang Chicken Plucker. There is a yahoo group for folks to exchange ideas and chat about raising poultry and such.

We ordered the book and just got it last week. Ed is going to build one for making things much easier on us when we butcher the poultry.
Here is a link to more information if you like to look. http://www.whizbangbooks.blogspot.com/

And if you want to see one in action check out this YouTube video. : ) www.youtube.com/watcg?v=G-pbRxllpuw

We also went to the local hardware store and bought some of that pipe insulation for the water pipes that go to the water pump. Our water was froze this morning. We stopped at a place that sells firewood and bought a small amount to get us through until the cord we ordered gets here in a few days. Stopped at the PO to pick up the flat rate boxes for mailing out the chokes tomorrow too. I will use Clicknship online to print the postage in the morning and then just put them in the mailbox for our mailman to pick up. Handy isn't it?

There you have the story of a cold winter day at Bountiful Acres Homestead. : )

Frosty December morning

2009-12-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

This is looking off the deck over the garden and out to the barns. See how much frost is on the top of the deck rail? BRRRR!

We are having a cold spell here in the Coquille Valley. I am soooo thankful for it too! When it is cold and freezing and clear, it means there is no rain to cause the river to flood! Thank you Lord for answered prayers! : )

I took a few photos of the crispy crunchy views from my porches this morning. It was 26 degrees this morning. The high today is to be in the low to mid 40's.

This photo is looking at the new greenhouse floor through the apple tree off the deck.

Here is looking off the front porch. See the strange looking thing in front of my car? Looks rather like a boxcar for a train doesn't it? It is our new woodshed. Since we have the woodstove installed, we had to have a place to put our wood to keep it high and dry. Ed used scrap wood and pallets to build it. Well I do believe he had to buy 2x4's for it, but mostly it is recycled materials.

Here is the woodstove all installed. Of course a few Christmas decorations too.

This is a very frosty spider web. I don't think that spider will get much for breakfast this morning!

You can't see the chicks very well in this photo. Better luck next time. The mama hen is so protective that she keeps running them under the barn when I try and get a photo.

I finally got the batteries changed in the camera so I could put the photos of the Cornish/Sussex chicks on the computer. I took some of our two Tom turkeys strutting their stuff too.

Here is Frank and John trying to prove who is bigger and prettier.

We have been doing inside things mostly. Ed is working on the new storage area behind the knee walls in my sewing room. We are going to have that all arranged and organized soon. Ed is doing most of the hard work. Isn't he so good to me?

I will take a picture when it is done. Right now it looks as if a bomb went off up there!

Well that is about all the time I have for blogging today. Hope you enjoyed your visit!

Happy December!

2009-12-02T17:50:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or has this year just zipped by? Here we are headed for Christmas in 23 short days already.

Sally and I got the Christmas decorations out of the shop the other day. I had in my mind I had tons of extra Christmas stuff. Well I had forgotten it had been thinned down severely last year...............Well I had intentions of doing it this year anyway and sharing with others. I guess I will just check that off my list of things to do now. : )

I have recently found out about making friendship bags. They are bags made up with some helpful things for those who find themselves homeless and we see them asking for help alongside the roads/streets. I am going to get my girls to help me and we shall make up lots of them and put them in a box in the car, so we are prepared the next time we see someone in need. I believe in teaching my girls to have compassion on others and be willing to help how ever they can. After all we are to do as Jesus did. He came and gave of himself even to die for us.

I do believe we shall also bake cookies and breads for the neighbors. Oh and I must get some jams and jellies made to add to the gift baskets.

I will be doing some sewing for my family for gifts again this year. We are moving away from the commercial aspect of Christmas and are celebrating the reason we celebrate Christmas and to give to others of our handiwork, and time. That takes so much stress off at this time of year.

So what are your Christmas plans for your family?

More news! My oldest son Jeremy is home from deployment. He has been in South Africa. He is in the Navy and is on the USS San Juan submarine. I am so happy and thankful he is home safe and sound. Well he is "home" meaning in the US. He and his wife Deann live in New Hampshire. He is stationed in CT. but travels home on weekends and when he has leave. Thank you Lord for watching over my son and keeping him safe while he has been doing his duty and serving our country.

Duke is doing much better and is healing up nicely. He still has the wound on his leg that is healing. And he must be careful with not slipping and splaying his legs out and hurting his hips. But all in all he is doing great.

I am going to charge the batteries in my camera and see if we can't get some photos of our Dark Cornish/Sussex cross chicks in the morning. They are growing so fast!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-25T19:34:00.000-08:00

I wanted to wish all who visit my blog a very happy Thanksgiving. May your families, homes and lives be blessed. We have so much to be thankful for.

I have a wonderful family, husband, home and farm that is very bountiful and peaceful. I am so thankful for everything I have been blessed with.

Mostly I am thankful for the gift of Salvation. I am so thankful that Jesus took on flesh and came to this earth to live and die for my sins. That I might be washed clean and stand before the Throne of God blameless. Make me ever more like Jesus is my prayer. Help me to be kind and giving and show the love of God to everyone I come in contact with.

Have a blessed day of Thanks!

Duke is home!

2009-11-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

We brought Duke home yesterday, late. He wasn't walking when we brought him home. But after being home for a little while he got up and wanted to go outside. He went out and did his business! First time since he got hit. He also walked up and down the stairs and walked all over outside. Poor fella ran and got into his dog house! Ed had to haul him back out of there and bring him back in the house. He has been an outside dog, and he felt much safer out in his dog house I guess. We are still giving him lots of meds. He has steriods for swelling that is pinching on his nerves in his hind hip/leg, antibiotics, and pain medication and antibiotic cream for all the scrapes. Funny thing is they gave him the same pain med that they gave my Dad after surgery!

He finally drank lots of water this morning. We are just praying for a complete recovery. We are so happy to have him home at last!

God is good!

Duke needs prayer

2009-11-12T18:30:00.000-08:00

Duke got hit by a car yesterday! He was chasing a cat in the field next to us, and ran out into the road and got hit by a full sized van! He ran back home after laying in the road for a few minutes. The woman who hit him had come to tell me she did it. He was down the road several yards from our driveway.

We took him to the vet, who took x-rays and examined him. He is badly bruised, skinned and has stitches in his back right leg/foot. He can't seem to get up and walk right now. The vet seems to think it is because he has so much swelling and pain. We were all so devastated when this happened! He is still on IVs and pain medication. He isn't eating or drinking on his own yet. We don't know when he can come home. He needs to be able to eat and drink and get up on his own first. Please say a prayer for his full recovery. He really is a sweet dog and our girls and all of us are so attached to him.

The same day in the afternoon our wall heater in our kitchen shorted out and caught on fire! Thank the Good Lord I was in the kitchen when it happened. I yelled for Ed and he flipped the main breaker and I grabbed the baking soda and we got the fire out before it caught the wall on fire. Thank God for keeping us safe!

I will post more updates on Dukes recovery as we know what is happening.

A little Frugal Friday tip

2009-11-06T19:53:00.000-08:00

What are those little cups you ask? They are the Ball freezer containers. ( I just love them! Aren't they cute?) On the left are lemon juice and the two on the right are lime juice.

I buy 5 pound bags of limes and lemons from our local wholesale grocery. They are so inexpensive this way! I can usually pay less than 3 dollars a bag for them. While at the regular grocery store I might be lucky to buy them two lemons for a dollar.

And you are thinking, who in the world uses that many lemons and limes at one time? I use several each week in my cooking. Also we use the slices in plain water to fancy it up a bit. Or I make lemondaid or limeaid once in awhile. But for those times like this last shopping trip, that I can't use them all up before they start going bad.............I squeeze them and freeze the juice. I can use it later on for cooking or for lemonaid. That way I don't waste any of that goodness. : )

We picked up our beef from the butcher yesterday. Tonight I made chuck roast with potatoes and carrots, onions and garlic. I must say this is the best beef we have ever eaten! It is so fine textured, and tender! I was so sad to have the cow butchered, but now we are blessed with hundreds of pounds of beef that you can't buy at any store.

Next Wednesday the pigs are going to the butcher. We will have a completely stocked freezer and pantry now. We have been very very blessed. We are so thankful for all the Lord has given us.

Last Wednesday Ed was laid off work without any notice. They just showed up at our door, told him to clean out the truck and hand over the company cell phone, that his job had ended! That was shocking and very frightening at first. After being upset and shocked, we just prayed and thought about it and have decided that this is just another blessing. Ed was planning on retiring next Spring, and this just made it happen a bit earlier.

The girls and I are so happy to have Ed home all day with us. He has time to do all the projects that he couldn't get to when he was working a full time job. And we can wake up naturally without that annoying alarm clock going off at 5am. We still wake up then, but know we don't have to jump out of bed right away and can doze off for another hour. Yes, that is a blessing!

God is our provider and we are just to trust in Him. What peace we now enjoy.

Have a blessed weekend all!

Sewing at last!

2009-11-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

I finally got to sew again today. I hadn't sewn since last Spring! I have had a new sewing machine for a couple of months now, but hadn't used it yet. I can say I love the new machine! It is the first computerized machine I have ever owned. It sews so smoothly! What a blessing!

I am working on blocks for a swap that I am doing with my online quilting group. I am down to a few days before the deadline! I will get them done and mailed off to the hostess in time I am sure. I have two finished today and all the pieces cut out. I only have 26 more to go. : )

I will be doing more sewing posts as the Winter progresses. I have so many things to sew for my home and my family. I will be sure and share the projects with you as I work on them.

The photo at the top of the page shows my first two blocks. So what do you think?

Poultry Flock Photos

2009-10-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

This morning I took more pictures of our poultry. Actually, I never took photos of the turkeys or Dark Cornish, except for the mama hen and her new chicks. So I guess I should say I took photos of what we call Barn #1, which is the laying flock and the ducks. The turkeys and Dark Cornish chickens are in Barn #2.

Aren't those the cutest little fuzz balls you have seen? If you could have heard the mama hen, she was just a clucking away calling them to the food.

Now they are getting the idea! Standing right in the feeder.

Here we have some of the ducks before I let them out of the barn this morning. The dark brown one with the white head and neck in the front is one of our males we have for breeding stock. Then the small gray one right over his back is our newest male we are keeping. And then the big white and black one with his head down to the right of the chocolate males head is our third male. He has black legs with yellow feet. The girls have named him Yellow Socks.

The black duck with the tiny spot of white on his neck is a male that is for sale. So is the white/black one next to him. They are both males. Then the two chocolate/white ducks in the left side of the photo are females that are for sale. They were the latest hatchings of the year. They will be breeding in the Spring.

Our two males right next to each other in the left corner, plus our newest gray one in the center. The two white ducks in the background are some of our breeding stock females. Also the little one in the center. Her name is Khaki, when she was younger she was almost a solid khaki color. Now she is turning more gray on her tail and wings and her head has gotten more white.

The three brown/white hens in this photo are all for sale too. Anybody want to buy some pretty Muscovy ducks for $15 each?

This is a picture taken of the layers waiting at their little chicken door to go outside. The one Speckled Sussex hen was perched on the waterer and looking right at the camera.

The rooster on the roost is one of our Speckled Sussex roosters. He is really pretty. He and I had a go around here awhile back. He attacked me one day without any reason other than he thought he was the boss! Well I took after him with the broom and chased him clear out in the field. Then he thought he would come back for another try, I happened to be watering the cow at the time, so I put the hose on stream and gave him a few good squirts with the water hose! We had a couple more "discussions" but he finally conceded that I am the BOSS of the barnyard! Otherwise he would have ended up becoming what Sally and Audrey call "mean rooster stew!" ; )

Everyone waiting in line to get outside. Little did they know it is a terrible day out today. Pouring rain and cold. It is after 10 am and it is still only 43 degrees!

And here is a picture of our Araucana rooster. He is so pretty in the sunshine! You can see the nursery in this shot. Inside the chicken wire are the ones I took pictures of yesterday. They are several weeks old now. We have them in their with their mama hen until they are big enough to go outside. This way the other chickens get used to them and won't pick on them when they get let into the main flock. Of course I noticed several of them are roosters, so when they are grown they will go into the freezer.

And that is the last of the new photos for today! Maybe tomorrow I will take photos of the turkeys and Dark Cornish in Barn #2.

New baby chicks!

2009-10-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

Our Dark Cornish hen has hatched out three babies. She has 4 more eggs, but they were put under her a couple days later, so we shall see if they hatch. Anyway, these are our Dark Cornish/Sussex cross chickens we are going to be raising for meat. The Dark Cornish hen has proven to be a good setter. Now we will see how well she raises her chicks.

They are so cute aren't they?

I picked another wheelbarrow load of tomatoes from the garden yesterday. The things I have left to do this season are:

Make ketchup and juice from this batch of tomatoes. Make sauce and juice from my apples, make kraut, dry and grind my paprika peppers for paprika powder, can the rest of the peppers, make jams and jellies from my berries and fruit in the freezer. Then I will be finished with the harvest. It sure has stretched out for a long time this year it seems. I am so thankful for the harvest. God has blessed us again.

Here is our alien tomato! Isn't that funny how it grew those two appendages?

Sally had to model the tomato too. And of course Audrey also pictured below.

Yesterday for fun the girls went out in the field where we have a huge maple tree on the outside of the fence. They took the rakes and raked up leaves into a big pile and took turns hiding in it. What fun to be a kid again huh?

This is a photo of the previous hatching. This is the Blue Andalusians and the Rhode Island red/ Blue Andalusian cross. They are growing so fast!

Their mama is the Buff Orpington. She is a really good mama hen.

That is about all the news on the farm today. Have a blessed week everyone!

Salsa Anyone?

2009-10-22T18:12:00.000-07:00

We have been making salsa for days it seems. What else do you do with a wheelbarrow load of peppers and tomatoes? I think we ended up with 46 pounds of diced tomatoes, and about 30lbs. of peppers. We have been canning and freezing salsa for what seems like forever!

I think we will have a good supply laid in for winter when we are finished. The above photo is a close up of the salsa in the pan.

The above picture is of some of the jars after being canned. Looks more like Picante sauce than sala to me, but it will be good no matter what you call it.

I have a batch of lacto fermented salsa in the fridge. It is a gallon sized jar full. Then we have 8 qt zipper baggies of it in the freezer. I have 13 pints canned and probably 25 more pints to can. I don't know how much we have eaten fresh the past few days on top of the canning and freezing! We are surely getting our vitamin C with all those peppers and tomatoes.

More news from the farm would be we bought a second freezer. We bought it from an ad on Craig's list. Come to find out it came from some old friends of Ed's. Small world!

We had to get the second freezer to accommodate our meat supply. Sadly I said goodbye to my sweet old cow Bessy. She never was going to give us milk, so we called the butcher. That was a week ago. I couldn't write about it until now, as I was too heartbroken to think about it. I never knew I was so attached to that cow. She was more like a pet dog to me, than a cow. We will be buying a new milk cow that is actually milking in the spring.

Here are the girls giving Bessy some apple treats and brushing her before the butcher truck came. It was a sad morning for sure. They got over it rather quickly. It was I who cried for two days! But of course she was my cow, so I had been so close to her. Bless her little cow heart!

So with several hundred pounds of beef being processed and in another couple of weeks having the pigs butchered, we really needed that second freezer. We will have lots of meat from the two pigs and the cow. Plus my freezer already has chicken in it and the produce from the garden and orchard.

The pantry shelves are looking really good. For the first time since Ed built the pantry shelves for me, I will have completely filled the home canned shelves.

Harvest season is winding down at last. I have more tomatoes in the garden and my herbs to freeze and dry. I also have some apples to juice, make into sauce and just can some for pies. Then there are the berries and some of the other fruits I froze for making jams and jellies.

Kraut to make too. Then it will be sewing season! I can hardly wait!

How quickly this year is passing. We have only two months left of this year. Christmas will be here before we know it.

Here is Audrey showing off her pumpkin that we grew in the garden. How do you like the hat? It is a big cabbage leaf held on with her headband.

And here is Sally with her pumpkin and her cabbage leaf hat! The things these girls do to entertain themselves on the farm huh?

Most of the cabbage are hanging upside down in the basement. We pulled them up by their roots and trimmed the excess outer leaves, then hung them from the rafters in the basement with baling twine. They should hold up quite well for some time for fresh eating. The rest of them will be made into kraut.

That is about all the news here at Bountiful Acres Homestead. Hope you enjoyed your visit!

A day on the farm

2009-10-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

Today was an easy day on the farm. I did my normal barn chores, cooked breakfast for Ed and saw him off to work. Then I cooked breakfast again for the girls when they got up. I straightened up the house a bit. Then I made more laundry soap. Fixed some lunch, put the eggs in the cartons, wondered around looking at the garden, taking note of what needs picked and processed next......can we say tomatoes???? : ) Then I took some pictures of the greenhouse being built. Picked some raspberries, yes, we have raspberries in October! Took a handful of them to Mom and picked one of the last roses to put in a vase for her too.

Yeah, I was very lazy today! I took some photos of the day to share with you all.

Laundry Soap recipe

2 cups Washing Soda
2 cups Borax
1 bar Fels-Naptha soap
1 bar scented soap

Here is what you need to make some laundry soap. In addition to water, a bucket and something to grate your soap with. I cheated and used the food processor. You can grate it on a cheese grater by hand and that works fine too.

I use the extra bar of soap for a thicker product and it smells nice too. First you grate your bars of soap. Add 2.5 qts. (12 cups) water to a pan. Then add the grated soap and heat and stir until the soap is melted.

This is what it looks like when you first add the soap to the water.

This is what it looks like when the soap has all melted and dissolved into the water. Turn the heat off.

Then add the Borax and Washing Soda and mix until dissolved.

Next, add 8 cups of hot water to your empty clean bucket. (I use a 5 gallon one I bought at the hardware store just for making soap in.) You can see I used my coffee maker to heat the water. Make sure don't use the measurements on the coffee carafe as those "cups" are 6oz. ones. I measured the 8 cups of water into the coffee maker with a regular measuring cup.

Next add the soap, Borax, Washing soda mixture from the pot into the bucket with the hot water. Give it a good stir.

Then add 2 gallons, plus 3 qts. of tap water to the mixture. Stir thoroughly again. This is where I add some essential oils for scent. I usually use a lavender or citrus oil of some sort. Stir again. Then you let this sit overnight. It will gel up nicely. I then pour it into my gallon jugs that I made labels for. Use a half cup or up to one cup per load, depending on size, and the level of soil on the clothes.

Here is how it looks when all mixed up.

You can see I have almost a full bucket of laundry soap now. This will last me several months. It costs only pennies on the dollar.

If you want to read my original post about making laundry soap you can read it here.

Then it was time to fix some lunch for my family. We have lots of fresh veggies to eat from the garden, so that is always good place to start. Earlier this morning I had washed and bagged up my spinach, crookneck squash, onions, broccoli and cauliflower. So I grabbed those out of the fridge. Chopped them up and put them in a pan with some olive oil. Looked like this.

It looks pretty good, but I think it needs something to jazz it up a bit. So out to the garden I go.

Oh yes, lets pick some flat leaf parsley and some curly leaf parsley, that is always so good!

Oh yeah, how about a couple of tomatoes for color and zing? Now we are cooking!

Now that looks much better. To this I added about 3 cups of cooked rice. It was a scrumptious lunch if I do say so myself!

The next chore of the day was to put eggs in the cartons. I had two baskets full. This is several days worth. How many dozen eggs do you think are in these two baskets? Go ahead and take a guess!

Okay, I will tell you the answer. It was 9 dozen with one egg extra! Aren't those such pretty eggs? We sell what we don't use for our family. The price for a dozen eggs is $3. So when we sell this many eggs, that will buy two bags of feed. We try and sell enough eggs to pay for the chicken feed, and the feed for the ducks and turkeys. That way we break even. One day it would be nice to sell enough to actually make some money on them. But for now this is good.

We buy 150 blank egg cartons at a time from a place online, then I write our name and phone number on each one. They are not too expensive. Sometimes folks bring their cartons back so we can reuse them. The only trouble is, most people have a habit of cracking open those eggs, dropping them in the pan, then setting the empty eggshell back in the carton. Which in turn soils the carton with raw egg dribbles. Or they leave the carton next to the stove and spatter that bacon grease over it. Sound like your house? Mine too, until I started selling eggs. : ) Now I am a fanatic about keeping my egg cartons super clean! We can't really reuse a carton that is not in pristine condition. But I do have another use for them. They are great filled with soil and used to start your seeds in. Just set them in something that is waterproof so you don't soak what ever it is you have it sitting on when you water.

Here is a photo of my greenhouse being built. My dad (on the left) and Ed are almost finished with one half the floor. The girls of course were right there being supervisors to the project.

The greenhouse will stretch another 16 feet towards the gazebo when it is finished. The dimensions will be 12' wide by 32' long! That just might be big enough to grow a few plants! Plus the citrus orchard will live there during the winters. You can see the stack of windows behind Audrey's head in the picture. That will be the main part of the walls. I am so excited to be getting a greenhouse again!

Psst.........want to hear something funny? Guess what the girls were doing out there? Clipping their finger and toenails! I thought that was pretty funny! Beats having them clip them on the carpet in the house right? : )

And that my friends is how my lazy day went on the farm today. Tomorrow will be back to the canning. Oh, and doing some laundry now that I have soap again!

May the Lord bless you where you live.

Beans, beets and birthday party!

2009-10-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

Saturday was Sally's 7th birthday. Our youngest is now seven years old. Time sure flies! We had her a party at the local pizza parlor. She had a blast, got lots of gifts and at the end of the day told us "This was the best birthday I ever had!"

The birthday girl having her pizza.

Sally and her friend Naomi.

On Sunday we canned our small harvest of shell beans. I got 9 pints of them. I was happy with them as it was my first year to grow them. I didn't know they were pole beans, so they never had anything to grow on. Next year I will be prepared and they will do much better.

We did 27 quarts of pickled beets on Sunday. Then yesterday we did 71 quarts of plain canned beets! We are stocked up on beets in the pantry. Here is a photo of some of them cooling after coming from the canner.

I am giving that new stove a workout with my canners this year!

It has proven to be a good purchase. It is wonderful for canning. I love how the grates are across the complete top. Make it easier to set the canners evenly. Plus I use my power burner for the bigger canner that takes longer to get up to pressure because of its size. The big canner holds 14 qts jars and the small one holds 7 qts. So I can do 21 qts at a time. Sure makes it go so much faster!

What is next on our list of things to can? Probably pears, apples and more tomatoes, salsa, peppers, and if I am feeling energetic enough, more pickled beets. Yes, I have another row of them in the garden waiting on me to do something. Maybe the pigs would rather have them? We shall see.

Happy October!

2009-10-01T07:44:00.000-07:00

Can you believe it is October all ready? Time sure flies when you are busy! The photo above is my first batch of tomatoes. Remember the photo of the wheelbarrow of tomatoes and peppers? That amount of tomatoes resulted in 30 pints of diced tomatoes. I am so happy to have tomatoes on my pantry shelves again! There are more ripe tomatoes in the garden waiting on my to pick them. : ) Thank you Lord for answering my prayers and giving us good tomato ripening weather!

This is what is next. A wheelbarrow load of beets. This was just one row of beets. I planted two. : ) We will have lots of pickled beets this winter to go with those grilled cheese sandwiches. Mmmmm! I will also can some plain. My family loves beets.

I have a recipe for canning spaghetti sauce and home canned salsa I am going to try. Also a lacto fermented salsa. Thanks to Crystal at The family Homestead. Here is the link to her website if you care to visit. She has lots of goodies to read about there. http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/

I have some photos to share of the garden and the orchard too.

This is a picture of Ed and the girls digging the beets. My garden is a mass of green by the end of the season. We put straw between the rows for mulch last year. Guess what happens when you do that? The next year grass grows so nicely where the seeds fell out of the hay!

Aren't these pretty apples?

This is a picture of the branches hanging down on the tree where the pretty apples are on the photo above.

Same tree, different shot.

This is another tree that is loaded with apples. Sorry the photo isn't very good. We have 5 more trees that are loaded with apples. See what I mean about having more apples to do?

Can you see the little fellow on the grape leaf? We have lots of these little green frogs on our place. Probably because we have so many bugs for them to eat!

Autumn Blessings

2009-09-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to share my pretty Autumn bouquet with you all. Aren't these such pretty colors? The yellow flowers are from my Jerusalem artichoke plants also known as sunchokes. The red flowers are from my pineapple sage plants. And the light lavender colored flowers are my comfrey plant.

The sun was actually shining for a few minutes this morning when I took this photo. This is a close up of the flowers. I am so happy God created such beauty for us to enjoy.

The header flowers are some Jerusalem artichokes. They grow like sunflowers and are just so pretty and bright! Guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. : )