Some snapshots from our yard and garden....

It all begins here; we don on our hats, bug spray and gloves

Front yard view from the end of our driveway

Choke cherries, ripe and ready to be picked

From the front orchard looking back toward the house

Some photos of the hail damage

Herbs

Parcel and Common Sage

Lemon Basil (background) and sweet peppers

Bee Balm

Seed collection

Remember in previous photos what is missing? We've collected the parsnip seed( approx 5lbs) 

and removed the plants, feed the leftovers to our poultry, they loved it!

Radish going to seed, waiting for pods to dry for collection

Asparagus berries( seed)

The Hoop house crops

The tomatoes have gone wild!

Sweet Peppers

Green Zebra Tomato

Watermelon Beefsteak

Some items harvested today, garlic, dried and ready for storage, zucchini( some damaged from the hail), yellow sweet peppers and a green pepper, plus  some Sour Cherry Jam made from straggler cherries, ready to eat!

This is at the end of our driveway, an eclectic assortment of flowers; hollyhock, iris, day lilies, a yellow daisy and I'm not sure what the pink flower is, our neighbor( across the road, in the picture, shared some roots last Spring),wormwood, mallow and sunflowers.

Hope you enjoyed the tour  :o)

Thankful Thursday..... Photo heavy

Many, O Lord my God are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. Psalm 40:5

This was in my morning study and it really touched my heart. Even though I am well aware of the many blessings from the Lord, do I truly have a thankful spirit?

Here are just a few examples of His wonderful works. 

Remember to click on the pictures for a larger view :o)
Blessings for your day

We're still here and wanted to quickly share....

I haven't a lot of time these days, trying to keep up with pasture irrigation, the garden( weeding, watering and harvesting), regular chores( animals, house, cooking, errands, etc....)  but we are getting a large supply of zucchini now( made a mistake and planted zucchin seed instead of Little Dumpling squash, now we have eight zucchin plants, YIKES!, LOL) and wanted to share some ways to enjoy it and preserve it for future use.

Zucchini casserole
This is a recipe my Mom always made and is a favorite, either as a side dish or an meal in itself.

3-4 medium zucchini
1 large onion
2-3 cloves minced garlic( we like garlic, this can be omitted or decreased)
2 large tomatoes( sliced into 1/4" slices) or 15 or so cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
2-3 c.shredded cheddar and monterey jack cheese, or even a pepper jack is very good!
1lb bacon or a good flavored loose sausage( cooked) works well too

Cut the bacon into bite sized pieces and begin cooking on low heat, you want it cooked but not crispy. Add onions and garlic and continue to cook on low until onions are tender.
While bacon, onions and garlic are cooking slice the zucchini into 1/4" thick or maybe a bit thicker slices, do your tomatoes at this time as well.
Lightly grease a lasagna sized dish and place a layer of zucchini slices, overlapping a bit, now take half the amount of the bacon mixture and sprinkle over these, now add a layer of tomato slices and top with half the amount of cheese, repeat the layering, ending with cheese.  Now bake this in a slow oven, covered with foil( 275 to 300F) for approx 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

We also grate zucchini and freeze it in 2c. amounts for making zucchini bread or cake. You can also slice it a bit thicker than 1/4" and dehydrate for later use in soups and casseroles. We also like the dehydrated zucchini, soaked in salt water first( for an hour) and sprinkled, (before dehydrating) with a french fry season mix we buy and eat them as a substitute for potato chips.

BTW, I've been following a blog for some time now, a fellow homesteader. They refer to themselves as Modern Day Rednecks, but are nothing like some of the Redneck jokes I've seen or heard. This family is hard working and building up a nice homestead on a very frugal budget. Their blog has a wonderful picture story of the farm's growth( especially building their mini barn) and just recently were blessed with goats, miniature horses, a dog and..... well, you go take a look for yourself I know you'll enjoy your tour on Modern Day Redneck.

Be careful what your ask for.......

We've been asking for moisture for our pastures and last night it came, to the tune of 1-1/2 inches in approx. 10-15 minutes and also included was hail most of it was pea and marble size but there also were many that were ping pong ball sized and hard as rocks. If you click on the photos you'll see larger images. We did sustain crop damage, mostly shredded leaves and some broken vines on the squash, and cucumbers. The hoop house received damage as well, although only two or three through and through rips, the rest are just dents in the plastic. For the rips we're ordering plastic repair tape. Of course it goes without saying that it certainly could have been much worse, so we are thankful and the crops will pull out of the damage and still produce for us. All of our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and cantaloupe were spared any damage. The moisture was a definite answer to our prayers and has given us a much needed break from irrigating the pastures. There is just something about rain that makes everything green up and grow so much quicker. 

The larger hail is the ping pong ball size and rock hard. Thankfully we didn't seem to sustain any damage to our vehicles, windows or roof.

It looked like a river ran through it on our back patio and sidewalk! The rain was coming off the roof so fast it seemed to miss the gutter and what did go in the gutter was run to quickly to collect much in our rain barrels.

If you look you can see our sunken rows are totally flooded as are the walk paths. It drained away quickly because of our sandy soil.

This was our rainbow( actually there are two, you can see them both better in the picture below) after the storm passed over

                                  Does anyone else know what the promise was in rainbows? 

We're beginning to see progress :o)

See how stunted our corn is, typically by now it's at least 5 ft tall. Although shorter it has tassels and ears.

Pole beans with bush beans in the background

Closest to the hoop house are cape gooseberries, to the left millet, late carrots and peppers( odds and ends) and to the very far left carrots in one of our raised beds.

Rosemary, these we had to purchase, although I did get two to germinate, but they are still tiny and planted in the greenhouse to give them a better chance.

Finally it is coming along!

The sunflowers self seeded themselves as did poppys into our herb beds, so we left them and it's all quite beautiful. :o)

Potatoes, beginning to die back and we have nice looking spuds, I peeked, *wink*

Our fryers, looking for some garden goodies. They get some of the extra greens and weeds pulled and thinning from the garden, so they watch us carefully when we're out in the garden, LOL!

Cabbage is looking good, need to sprinkle the heads with DE to ward off damage from cabbage worms. We did loose 4 plants to what I think was a cutworm, but we'll still have plenty for making kraut :o)

The inside tomatoes, peppers( on the right behind the potted maters) and to the left are eggplants, sweet peppers and late tomatoes. It won't be long and we'll have pink egg tomatoes to eat and the other tomato plants are setting on nice sized fruit too.

Eggplant only one growing so far but several blooms on each plant, so I'm hopeful.

Banana pepper

Green peppers are coming along nicely and seem to enjoy the warmth of the hoop house.

                                         Pink egg tomatoes, beginning to change their color, maybe by weeks end we'll have them to add to our salads, Ummmm, Ummmm. Cucumbers have set on fruit, as have the zucchini, so salads will have a bigger variety to choose from*wink*   The bush beans are going to have beans to harvest late this week and the corn has set on tiny ears. :o)

                                        Still busy catching up, irrigating, collecting the last of our firewood and getting it split and stacked, plus all the regular chores and endless projects we hope to complete before bad weather hits. So..... we will post as we find the time, until them blessings for your summer!

Our blog will be vacant for awhile......

I'm sorry to say, as much as I enjoy the social contacts, I have to take an extended break from our blog. This is a combination of lack of time, personal/ health  issues and trying to get my life back in order.  Those of you who'd like to stay in contact via email leave a comment with your email and I'll send your ours( I won't publish them) and I'll try to keep up or even better we'd love to get a snail mail letter too!  I hope everyone understands and I'm praying it's only for the short term.  We will try to keep up on all of your blogs, but that too has even become a challenge. 

What is happening to our food/ video?????

This is long, but well worth viewing......

19 yrs ago today.... our daughter blessed our lives! Happy Birthday Cortney!!!!

This is the oldest photo I have on our computer. Sorry we were slow to getting into digital. This photo was of a piano recital she and Jon( her big brother) had before we moved to our homestead.

Here she is plucking chickens, look at that smile... if memory serves me right she wasn't to happy to have to do this, LOL!!!

Our first calf, Brownie.

Hauling water to her chickens

A heifer calf given to Cortney. We intended to raise her up for a dairy cow(Gelbvieh's?) but she ended up with a problem and had to be butchered.

Here she is at Christmas(2007,I believe) in a dress we found at a secondhand shop. The dress was simply gorgeous and looked as if it was made just for her. Of course she's beautiful too!

Cortney and my Mom's Cairn Terrier puppy, Rumble

Getting Mo, our Fjord, back into shape after a lazy winter. I believe she was working him in figure 8's trying to get him to pay attention.

While at Grandma Nita's last summer

Her favorite graduation picture

Another good graduation picture

At her Graduation party last Sept.

March of this year, holding her new niece, Jayla, who BTW is over 3+ months old now.

This Spring, raising bottle lambs for our friend

                                                       Another bottle baby for a different friend.

BPA free, reusable canning lids These have been around since the early 70's but as usual I'm just finding out about them, via my Backwoods Home Magazine.  I read the testimonials and while they seem wonderful I'm going to order a 3 dozen box of each regular and widemouth and give them a try myself. If they prove good I'll look into ordering 500+( a mix of each reg. and widemouth) Just thought there may be others who haven't heard of Tattler reusable canning lids.

Turn up your volume.... this should surely become a gold single

Listen to the words and feel free to forward this link  to your Senator(s) and House of Representative(s)
Blessings for your Independence Day weekend :o)