Just in time for Christmas

Oh boy! I'm going to be in trouble if I don't write a post soon, so I figured I would sit myself down at this WAY TOO EARLY hour of 6 AM and write.

I’m just so thankful for our Thanksgiving success. I find this day a bit stressful, just because there are so many pieces of the puzzle that have to come together, perfectly, to be a success. I ended the day feeling extremely proud. Proud of where we have been in life and how that has morphed us into who we are now. Proud of the food that we served, which is getting more and more local each year. Not just local, but homegrown. Imagine a day where nearly all the meal is grown here. Yum.

We started the morning with two turkeys to cook, along with all of the other dishes that were our responsibility (we share the responsibility and ask that everyone attending bring a dish). We started one early and were amazed at how quickly and beautifully the birds cooked. We were able to get them both cooked and rested before everyone arrived. We made sweet potatoes/candied yams, using real sweet potatoes, our own honey and local maple syrup. We whipped up some deviled eggs, using eggs from our beautiful birds, even though their laying has significantly dropped off, for the winter. We saved up a dozen and shared them with our family and friends. The coleslaw was not grown here, but hopefully next year(?) – we did, however, shred the cabbage and carrots and made the sauce. The fruit salad was all canned (boo), but it was pineapple, cherries and mandarin oranges, so unless we change up the salad, I don’t think there will be any way around this one. Oh, and the stuffed dates – delicious! A childhood memory that I just love. We take dried dates and stuff them with various cream cheeses. One plain, one with nuts, and the other with maraschino cherries. SO SO good! Next came the desserts apple, pumpkin, key lime and pecan pies, cherry crisp and my cousin, Rhett, brought banana pudding (using my Nana’s recipe). I look forward to the year that we will be using our own apples for the apple pie, but this year we had to settle on growing just the pumpkin and pecans. Something that I changed up this year, instead of using Crisco for the pie crust, we used local, organic lard, from a local Mennonite farmer. WHAT A DIFFERENCE that made. Seriously! I’ve never had my pie crust roll out so beautifully. It glided across the surface. I know I sound like a crust geek, but seriously! It was awesome! I will never go back to Crisco. Plus…who doesn’t like the hint of bacon smell when you are baking pies?! The pecan pie, was probably the best pecan pie I’ve ever eaten. Those pies were delicious and I am so proud. But I couldn’t have done any of this, without my team of helpers. Mark, Cora, Drake and even Gage were so helpful that day. They helped me keep my sanity, rolled up their sleeves to wash, cut, clean out, whatever I asked. Thankful. Yet another thing to be thankful for – after a heart attack and a pacemaker installation, my dad joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. He’s healthy and looking good. It was a wonderful day of laughing and enjoying the company. It was such a successful day.

 

Beautiful, homegrown pie pumpkins.

We went ahead and cooked all the pumpkins and made puree out of all of them. We are ready to make several more pies.

That's a lot of pumpkin!

My girl, Cora. She was so helpful that day! She made the decorations on the wall, behind her shoulder and she kept me on task with making the food...and she's cute!

Mark's favorite job of peeling, coring and slicing the apples for the apple pie. After the kids had their fill, the remaining peels went out to the birds. They thought it was a Thanksgiving miracle!

Yams in the crockpot, in the back, and date stuffing in the bowls in the front!

Look at that bird! GORGEOUS!

A little salt, pepper, butter on the outside and onion and celery on the inside...that's all these birds really needed, so tender and juicy on their own. Totally worth raising them!

Seriously look at that crust! Mmm mmm MMM!

Pumpkin and pecan pies - so so good!

Family sitting around the table...Have I mentioned how much I love my dining room? I love that we can have this many people for a sit down meal and be comfortable.

The dessert table!

I'm so happy about that day. It was a good feeling to look around the table and see the food, family and friends. It was good.I look forward to hosting next year as well.
We do Christmas breakfast and dinner at our house too - but since my brother also hosts a Christmas event, we have fewer people attending. We've found it's just too hard for us to do too much running around on Christmas...and we have a very awesome Christmas Eve tradition that I look so forward to each year. More on that in a bit.
With the holidays come so many other exciting things - kids concerts, Mark's room decor, Christmas lights and more. Here is just a glimpse at some of the reasons that I haven't posted in so long...

We redecorated Mark's bulletin board at school. We went with the winter wonderland theme, to reflect the craziness that is outside right now. Isn't the "fireplace" cute?

Have I mentioned that I'm hot for teacher??? Look at that handsome man!

Oh! On a side note, with all of the cold weather that we've been having (single digits!), our house is SO cold. We've been trying to come up with creative ways to stay warm. We actually found this beautiful wood door, in the attic of the garage. It was made for this spot, a doorway between our living and dining rooms. What makes this nice is that it cuts down on the drafts. We close all the doors in the living room (to the parlor, to our room and both doors leading to the dining room) and it traps some of our body heat in here. It's not perfect, but certainly better than last year!

While Mark's was in the attic, he found these old shutters - how neat are these!?

This is how I go to bed most nights! Not very glamorous, but certainly warmer than without the toasty warm hat :-) What you can't see is the electric blanket, under the comforter. WARM!

Here's me and Cora at Drake's holiday concert! See, I told you she is cute.

Drake had a holiday concert - Look how grown up he is, handsome. We are so proud that he has stuck with flute for this long.

Our tree is decorated for Christmas! Here's me and Mark :-)

Last year, we went with a real tree and between that and strep throat, I was miserable with allergies. So this year, we decided to go back to our "fake" tree. It's really beautiful though. I love going through the ornaments each year and remembering why we have them, who they were for, who we received them from etc.

Told you it's a winter wonderland around here. This is the field behind the house, Each branch and blade is covered with ice. COLD!

Cold, but beautiful! I love seasons, I really do...but the single digits have to go!

Each year, we do this. It's a drive through Christmas light display. It is so nice. We turn on Christmas music and drive through, looking at the lights and scenes. If you weren't in the spirit of Christmas before driving through, you would be after!

It looks like some exciting things are on the horizon for us. I'll post more about this in the future, once I have more details. But let me just say that our future looks bright.

Home Grown Thanksgiving...Partially.

If you've been reading this blog, you know that we raised turkeys for the first time this year. This past Saturday, we got them in to be processed at a (fairly) local processor. We ended up with one bird at nearly 11 pounds and the other nearly 12, for a total of 22 pounds of bird. I liked the company that we went with. They are actually FDA approved and if we chose to, we could sell the birds to consumers - but we know that these are just for our consumption. It is a little strange to see just two turkeys outside, rather than four - but I think the remaining two seem a little calmer.
So tonight, we will be prepping them to be the centerpiece at our Thanksgiving dinner. We are hosting our family and some friends. Both birds will be the main part of the meal - but additionally we are proud to say that we grew the pumpkins for the pumpkin pie, grew the pecans for the pecan pie,  and raised the birds who laid the eggs for our deviled eggs. What a delicious, somewhat homegrown Thanksgiving meal this will be! I believe we will have somewhere between 16 and 18 people here for the meal. So much love in our dining room.
EXCITING! (...and busy...did I mention busy? Ok, enough blogging - time to get back to cleaning and cooking!)

Turkey Time

Well the decision has been made. The two turkeys that will be joining us for Thanksgiving dinner (although not in a way that they would necessarily enjoy) will be processed the Saturday prior to Thanksgiving. We have a local (ish) processing center and they had an open appointment for that Saturday - it was meant to be! I've heard of this facility through a couple different people (including a respected organic farmer) which makes me feel more comfortable. I want to make sure that we didn't raise them humanely just to have them tortured in the last few moments of life. I get that it is still death and I'm not naive to think it is this beautiful, sterile, painless process for anyone involved - but I don't want it to be a terrifying nightmare either. I've enjoyed having the birds and hope that Loner and Mama Bird (the two remaining birds) like each other enough to breed and make more for our farm. We'd consider selling some birds if that was the case. Raising them, processing (or getting them processed) and selling to neighbors/family. It might be another way for us to raise some money around here...or just another food source for our family.

Food.

UPDATE:: HOLY MOLY!!! How could I forget the honey! Oh my goodness...we have the MOST delicious honey here on the farm!

I thought I would do a food roll-call today...we've been working hard to establish long-term food growing on the property and we are so close to having this complete.
We have:
2 - Pear Trees
2 - Apricot Trees
4 - Peach Trees
3 - McIntosh Apple Trees
3 - Granny Smith Trees (one here, two on the way in November)
1 - Empire Apple Tree
2 - Plum Trees (one here, one on the way in November)
2 - PawPaw Trees
1 - Montmorency Cherry Tree (tart - on the way in November)
1 - Sweet Cherry Tree
5 - Blueberry Bushes (I believe)
A Strawberry Patch
A HUGE Hedge of Black Caps (wild black raspberries)
A few Mulberry Trees
A patch of Rhubarb
A Black Walnut Tree
A Pecan Tree
A Lemon Tree
Purple and White Grapes

Some "short-term" food
We've planted herbs, garlic, artichokes (may be long term, depending on how they make it through the winter) and potatoes.
We've got tomatoes, beans and zucchini growing in the garden (and other things are still popping up).

We've raised 10 chickens for food (we gave two birds away two some family/friends that helped with the processing)...we'll soon be placing an order for more birds.
We have 4 turkeys growing and filling out - we'll likely keep two for breeding and slaughter two for eating.
Whew!
This is just huge for us - We'll still need to invest in replacement trees, should we have some fall out...but for now, everything on our wish list is checked off.

Randomness

So this post is going to be a bit random...because, frankly, my life is pretty random right now. I first want to talk about friends and family. I used to believe that simply because someone was "family", meaning a blood relative, that I was required to have that person in my life, thus giving them permission to affect my life. Several years ago, in 2006, my husband, youngest children and I decided to pack up and move from Ohio to Florida. During that time, we learned to rely on each other a bit stronger and realized that, from that point forward, we'd only allow people to affect our lives if their affects were more positive than negative. We understand that life isn't going to always be wine and roses - people argue, feelings get hurt, people misspeak etc. but then life balances out. However, if your scale is constantly tipped to the anxiety, sadness, frustration, getting spanked in the self esteem side of the scale...I've figured out that it is ok to let that person out of your life. I say it that way...letting the person out...because obviously if they are constantly in a state of WANTING to hurt you, make you feel bad, make you feel less than or not good enough...then they can't be happy in your relationship either. I'm talking about any relationship...this isn't just about a spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend...this is about siblings, parents, aunts/uncles whomever is always making your life so challenging. So for those of you reading this, wondering if I'm talking about Mark...I am not. Mark and I do have our challenges - like all other couples; however, I hope that we will continue to grow old together and will be playing SkipBo and scrabble on the front porch, while our grandkids chase baby goats around the pasture :-)
That all being said - since I realized that it's ok to let those negative people out of my life, I also learned that just because someone isn't a blood relative, doesn't mean that they aren't family. There are a few women in my life that we have made the choice to be in eachother's lives for a long time. Some I've been friends with since high school or shortly thereafter and others I may lose touch with for a time and then we come back together and it was like we just saw each other yesterday. I love my friends. There are a couple people in this world that I can say just about anything to and they place no judgement on me. The love me for who I am, they love my children, they support my decisions (even when they don't understand them or wouldn't choose them for their selves)...I am so thankful for this group of women, friends who have become my family. The other day, was a little rough for me...I was having a bad self-esteem day. (for those of you that know me, may or not, know that I have some pretty bad self esteem issues - there are days that I just don't really like myself, don't worry, it'll be ok, it happens). But one of these wonderful women sent me an amazing gift...flowers...delivered to my home. Remember, we live out in the boondocks...this took a lot of planning to locate a florist near me that would actually deliver out this far and do such an amazing job. The flowers are still gorgeous and still put a smile on my face when I look at them...like just now, I looked over while typing and smiled. I'm thankful that I there are these awesome women out there that love me as much as I love them.

My lovely flowers

The weather FINALLY broke around here...just like my previous post mentioned - we finally started to get some warmer, sunnier and generally more beautiful weather than we've experienced through this very long, nightmarish winter. Our children have fixed up their bikes and watching them regularly cycle up and down our very long driveway (another thing I love about this house is that driveway - the kids can bike, scooter, do chalk art all around and never have to get close to the road. I love it. Below is Gage basking in the sun. He pulled the legs of his PJ pants all the way up and made shorty shorts out of them...God, I love my kids. They are all so funny.

As I mentioned last post, we had our Backyard Chicken class this past weekend at Meyer Hatchery (the place that is shipping our chicks) - we decided to make the weekend of it. The kids and I picked up Mark at work (he worked Spring Break at a place he worked for several years ago - a two-way radio sales and service shop...to make a little extra money), and then we drove a couple more hours to NE Ohio. We stopped to eat at one of Mark's favorite restaurants (a place that we don't have where we live, but it was right down the street from our apt. in Florida), Cheddars - YUM! By the time we go to the hotel, everyone was too tired to swim - we opted to get a good night of sleep and then swim after breakfast. Everyone grabbed a quick shower and off to chicken keeping class we went. I HIGHLY suggest this class. The teacher, Carrie (I don't know if she's a Kerry or Kari...we'll just call her Carrie), was relaxing and funny and extremely informative. She took us for a short tour of the hatchery and everything (BTW - VERY clean building, VERY wonderful and helpful staff, excellent customer service). After the class/tour - we decided to drive just a little bit farther to let the kids experience Amish country. We've been there in the past, but always find it so fascinating. We visited Lehmans and had lunch/dinner at Mrs. Yoders (DELICIOUS). We talked with a young Amish couple and then taught us a bit about Amish travel (horse drawn carriage) - it takes them about an hour and a half to visit her parents, that live just 15 miles away. Definitely a slower pace to life. Here are just a few pictures from our weekend...

Gage and Drake - hotel comfy!

A horse drawn carriage - you can see the horses feet from under the carriage. One thing I have learned is that you should never take a picture of an Amish person's face, it is against their beliefs. There is something so beautiful about the seeing the carriages - sometimes with a beautiful face peeking out at us. Gosh, I just love it.

This gentleman was pushing four horses - I believe he had some sort of farm equipment - the horses were ginormous.

Amish parking lot - near the restaurant that we ate at, they had a special area that the horses could be hitched to, while they ate dinner.

While we we driving through, we came upon a house that was a deer farm - how neat to see about 15 deer wandering through someone's front yard.

We stopped to turn around in a parking lot and this "little" guy peeked over the fence at us. Looking not amused lol.

Oh, did I fail to mention the turkeys. Hmmm...Well - while we were at the hatchery, they had turkeys for sale. Turkeys were not on the list for this year...they were a possibility for next year or the following - but since we were there and they had no minimum purchase, since we weren't shipping them, we decided to pick up four of them. Two blue slate and two red bourbon - they are cute and sweet and will hopefully make a delicious meal. We've decided that if, between the four of them, there is a mating pair, that is nice and we like, that we will keep them and slaughter the other two - then we'll breed the two for more turkeys. I guess holiday dinner is on us?

The Spring flowers are beginning to bloom.

 I thought I'd share a couple pictures of the pasture crew...

Jester and Steve (mostly) and Ethel is climbing up the balance beam.

Jester and Steve chowing down on hay.

Sweet little Fauna, hiding from all the craziness (don't let her fool you, she's a crazy maniac too...she was just needing a little break).

Sweet Pea - hard to believe that this little goofball had such a rough start.

Ahem, Steve REALLY enjoys his hay. LOL

Turkeys!

Turkey, turkey, turkey.

They are so cute now - don't get attached! They are dinner!

Happy Spring Everyone!!