I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and will have a happy new year! 


 I can tell that gardening season is coming around again as the seed catalogs have been pouring in. I have several catalogs that look like a kids wish book with things that are circled that i would love to try! Problem with trying new things is finding room to plant it all! I have finally decided that i need to invest in a good tiller. What is on your wish list to plant this year?




 My other nanny goats are still holding out on me! :) One poor girl her belly is so big it looks to almost drag the ground. I hope for her sake she delivers soon. 


 For the new year i want to try my hand at fermenting. I have several kindle books to read but i am more of a hands on learner than a book learner. So i decided to just jump right in and I ordered my airlocks from amazon.com. I figured no time like the present to start some sauerkraut since it is almost new years and everyone has cabbage on sale!


Vet girl and Master chef have been busy with 4-H related activities. They are both going to compete in consumer decision making and they are also on a cooking team to compete in a food competition next month!

I sure didn't realize it had been this long since i had posted on here. Spring gardening hit me and I had produce running out my ears. I tried my hand and making my own pickled okra and it worked well. I planted 72 okra plants so of course i had plenty of okra to play with. I also sliced and froze close to 50 cups for future batched of gumbo! 

I did some water bath canning also. I was harvesting jalapenos by the 5 gallon bucket load. Last year i had tried some candied jalapenos and they were a hit so this year i tripled the jalapeno plants and WB canned 50 pints of candied jalapenos. I don't think i will need to plant that many plants this spring.

Now that it is fall we are in full swing of baby goats, bottles and milking! It is amazing how fast your fridge fills up with milk when you get over a gallon a day! Master Chef (son who is 14) has been gathering recipes so he can learn to make some goat cheese. I found some heavy cream at the grocery store on mark down and he made some homemade butter and got the buttermilk to make some homemade biscuits. 

4-H is keeping Vet girl(daughter who is 17) very busy. She is going to participate in the food show, her, master chef, and 2 other friends are going to be competing in the food challenge. While she is there she is going to compete in the food poster contest and the Texas AG ID contest. She has almost completed her fourth year of her main project which is the Veterinary Science program. 

Will close this catch up post with a picture of a baby goat!

Labor Day.

Why is it called Labor day? Why cant it be called Fun day, do nothing day, go to the movies day or even laundry day?  Labor day just sounds to much like work!!

Today we started out the morning being startled awake at 5 am by the sound of the Alert Rooster, there must be something approaching the yard, be it a snake, raccoon, hawk or that pesky fox!! So here I go out the door with my 9 mm loaded and ready. What do I see??.... absolutely nothing.  I have no idea why they were so riled up. Decided at that time I should be getting up anyway as we had a list of LABOR day chores to do.

First it started off with this.

We had to cut some branches off the fence. So we started with the Chainsaw. Isn't he good looking with that chain saw..lol.

We then went to this

along with this

After I got done pounding in 10 T-posts my arms were like jello!

We then had to repair a top wire on the fence that the branch broke when it fell.

Wow all of this LABOR before 8:30 am. We then had to go get Rabbit feed and back home for more LABOR at the house.

After that there was gardening that needed tending to, lunch that needed fixed, animal chores that needed done. Now Mr Fixit thinks he need to go pay around with the Tractor. Oh and in-between that
we also worked on his truck.

Now I understand why it is called LABOR day. This is the day to fit in as much LABOR intensive things you can find. Thank goodness LABOR day only comes around 1 time per year!! I think the day AFTER labor day should also be a holiday called national REST day!

School is back in session so that means that 4-H is not for behind. In fact we have already had our first meeting. Back in march our current club manager turned in her letter of resignation as she was moving out of state. In passing I mention this to Mr Fixit and Daughter(she is in this said 4-h club) and they both immediately said you need to take it over.

So with much prodding from them 2 I send the lady an email and told her I was interested in taking this program over.


WOW! I think I should have had my head examined when I wrote that email. Now I am the proud Club Manager of the Vet Science program. We are starting year 3 and I think after working ALL summer to get the years worth of speakers, field trips, volunteer positions and loads of community service lined up I have aged about 6 years.

Have I ever mentioned how I don't like to stand in front of crowds? Well I think the world over probably felt the earth tremor as my voice was cracking. Now you say how hard is it to stand in front of a room of teen agers, well my reply is VERY HARD...... I have been out of school for a long time and really had no problems then but I sure do now.

I could tell that I had been stressing over this WAY to much as my usually clear skin looked like I was 14 again....ack!

The time came to report to the meeting and it was very hard to stand in front of that room of 30 people but it will get easier. I just have to remind myself I am doing this for the kids!!

If yall don't know about the 4-H vet science program it is a wonderful program geared towards teens to learn about Vet work. Even if they don't do anything else but this program they will leave it being able to be a Vet Assistant, so if you are like me usually a wall flower step up and help out some young kids that want to learn.

I have been watching the weather and I am getting excited to see the temps are changing and the days are starting to get shorter. You know what that means, cooler weather  and the beautiful colors of fall are near!

(not my picture)

 

 With this change means work when you live on a farm. We have been busy planting the fall garden, cucumbers were in the ground 2 weeks ago. With 108 plants I sure hope to be swimming in pickles all winter! We are also going to be planting Broccoli and cauliflower. I will be changing up how I keep them protected over the winter months this year.

 

 

This is how we did it last year. It works pretty good unless you live in East Texas when during the winter you may run your Air conditioner during the day and the stove at night. Without being able to totally remove the plastic almost daily it was sad to say but they pretty much burned up in there.

 

                                                             (not my picture)

 

This year we will be trying this one instead! I already have the list of things I need to get along with a new watering system I will install on this one.

 

It is also the time of year to be thinking about fire wood! Wow how I hate that word during the summer but sure love it during the winter when we are nice and warm and don't have the huge electric bills for the furnace. We have lived in East Texas for over 10 years and we have not used a furnace since we moved here. Every house we have lived in has had a wood burning stove.

It seems that more and more people are choosing to homeschool now days.  I say it doesn't say much about the school system when you read about the percentages that are crossing over to schooling at home. I for one agree with homeschooling and teaching your kids more than just a Test. Our kids are even learning how to raise their own meat from babies to freezer. I think things like that are very important now days for people not just kids to learn.

They even had their first ever experience in canning this year, they are never to young to learn that for sure.



I want everyone to go read a friends homeschooling journey blog, she is also offering a very cool giveaway! She wrote the book:   The Homeschool Highway: How to Navigate Your Way Without Getting Carsick.

I know y'all would enjoy reading about everything they do too!



https://www.facebook.com/thehmmmschoolingmom?hc_location=timeline

When you get to her homepage, click the blue giveaway tab, have fun reading!

Sorry everyone that it has been so long since I posted anything. Life happens and we forget. Last time I posted I posted pictures of the goat kids, wow they are now over 5 months old. They LOVE to play.

 

We had a nice litter of bunnies a few months ago. They are so cute when they are little.

This is the momma of the litter of bunnies. She is a French lop.

We have also been very busy with the garden. We have been harvesting cucumbers by the laundry basket load. So this year I decided I would toss my canning worries out the window and try it again. I did 11 quarts of dill pickles and 7 quarts of bread and butter pickles. I also tried to do some bread and butter banana peppers and they turned out very well. I did 9 8 oz jars of those and 1 8 oz jar of bread and butter jalapeno peppers. I haven't opened them to try those so cant testify to how good or hot those are yet. Here in our neck of the woods we had a good rain storm come through but it also decided it wanted to take down a large branch of an oak tree. Of course it had to do it in the middle of the night. How I love 3 am wake up calls from mother nature like this one.

There was no house, car, person or animal damage in the making of this, cant say that for the fence or the peach tree it fell on.