The New Green House

We had a great visit from A,B and C the weekend after Thanksgiving. We got together with a few other family members and had a nice dinner. Then we got to spend some time playing outside with the chickens, getting a little dirty, and checking out mom's new greenhouse. She's been showing it off to everyone and these guys just loved it!




 Annah and Bennett enjoyed "grazing" on some of our greens. We've got all kind of great ones popping up.. spinach, kale, and the yummy tops of the beets. 

 

Here's a shot from the outside.. As you can see, in this cold weather one of our very spoiled dogs was trying to work her way inside to get warm!

Organic Fruits & Veggies

Always a critical question at the market, is whether or not to spend the extra money to buy organic. Seeing as we are on a budget, and always shop with a list, it's hard not to want to go to the non organic section. But the pesticides!!! Well, that's why I felt I had to share this little piece of information:



collected from this website which talks more about pesticides on plants as well as GMO's.
This made me feel a bit better about not always buying organic, since the "clean 15" has less pesticides and nobody needs to consume more of those.

Hope this helps inform a few more people : )

A step in the right direction

Boy did we have a great summer/fall season! We decided that none of our great veggies should go to waste, and what better way to preserve than can? And, we sure did do a LOT of canning.. Over the course of a few days we processed hundreds of tomatoes making sauce, puree, and stewed whole tomatoes. Some were from our garden and some were from the local market down the road. 

Below is a picture of the simmering veggies. The right is some tomato sauce reducing and the left is miscellaneous veggies that we boiled to make a great broth. 

I had been canning for years, so it was a great thing to share with Michelle. She was eager to learn and very helpful. Her enthusiasm made it even more fun.

 This was some of the things we pulled out of our garden one day! A very bountiful season : )

We've also got some canned peaches, apple sauce and chopped apples (for apple crisp this winter) in that cabinet.

We froze lots too.. local blueberries, corn, strawberries, asparagus, and kale. From our garden we had tons of eggplant, spinach, escarole, and peppers.We dried seeds from some of our best crops to be used next year as well. Over all it was our best season of growing, preserving, and enjoying the local/our own vegetables. Can't ask for anything better! 

It's January now and we are still enjoying some of our produce from last summer.. and preparing for another, even better season.

We're still here..

We haven't been too great at posting lately, but LOTS of changes and new things are coming! We've added a little to the sheep pages and put in a picture of the beautiful eggs that are being produced here.. But, there is still more to show off : )
Until then.. here is one of our favorite winter pictures of Phantom with the two girls, enjoy : )