I had to wait for pickup day to come and go and to make sure it got home safely and got cold! All appears to be working and well, we really needed to add another deep freezer to the farm, its a upright that fits in my kitchen.
And here it is filled to the brime with lovely frozen pork and beef..
While I am not pro vaccines, I am not rabid anti either, I firmly fall in the middle, last year in my local area a very bad case of eee killed a large number of a local herd, and I was glad that my own horses had vaccine protection from this deadly issue.
I believe in core vaccines for my hounds and purrpots, I had a puppy die of distemper as a teen and battled to help save parvo pups in the artic, I could do that because my own dogs had their vaccines and I know just how hard it can be to do so and that not all can be saved.
plus I have this itty bitty issue of finding nails to step on, its been a life long issues, if there is one to be found, I will find it, and it will always be rusty and hidden etc
I mean even in the time on the blog, in four years, I have posted three times about stepping on the blasted things, and that does not include scratches on rusty dirty metal things in a host of other ways..
So given this, I do keep up my tetanus shot, got it this week and it nocked me down for 24 hours, mild fever, sore arm etc but it worth it given my lifestyle.
Do you as a homesteader, as a farmer keep your tetanus up to date or not..
Half a Head of Cabbage -DicedPut a tablespoon of olive oil in the large steel soup pot, and add the onion/garlic, cook till clear, then add the chopped cabbage, and cook till you are getting brown bits on the cabbage, then add broth, barley and spices, cook for about 40 min or until Barley is done.
This recipe made me 3 one liter jars of soup. The is a very frugal meal, About 50 cents worth of cabbage, I got the ham on sale and it worked out to about 33 cents worth, the onion 10 cents, the garlic 10 cents, about 20 cents worth of barley and the broth was homemade, most of the spices were homegrown.. salt/pepper another 10 cents.. for a total of 1.33 for the pot of soup, it made six servings of two cups per serving, so .22 cents per meal.. its does not get much better then that.. and its very healthy to boot..
Look what came in the mail.. a wonderful leather cover for journels..  It was handmade by a very old and dear friend from my collage days.. I do not get to see you guys near enough, but I love having little keepsakes in the house and heart.
Introducing Mimi, our newest purrpot, a very sweet seal lynx bicolor pointed kitty, her coloring will continue to darken and fill in with age, but her bright blue eyes will stay.. very hard to get her to hold still enough to get a couple good photos
hmmm, nothing wrong with the rustic look 🙂 Easy to make and functional..
A little more structure, steel and wire..
Some of our other creative ways over the years, this was a free grown plant that had self-seeded and it was growing like crazy, but needed to get off the ground, it was a old fenced door and hubby just nailed onlegs, so it was a four foot lift and grower.
But 2015 is going to be a build them year.. Right now I am gathering info.. these are the main three I am looking at adding.
one – cattle Panel grow over.. but I would plant shade loving plants under instead of the pathway.
two-Â these are the same thing but one is rustic and local sources and the other is store bought and made.. both are great ideas, very sturdy, I most likely will be going rustic
Still researching in regards to my planned big wire cages for tomato or peppers or xx..
I am so tired of investing in cages that can not hold up to the weight and the tomato getting wasted because they droop to much.
Doing up the odds and ends in the freezer these days.. now I surely would have caught these lovelies much earlier on a normal year but 3 bag held enough fruit to do a single jam or jelly recipe.. two however where just leftover bits.
The new and interesting combo was the jam that ended up 2-3rd Ground Cherry and 1-3rd Rasberry
Turns out this is a awesome blend of flavours.. its so good it will be repeated, I followed the basic Rasberry Jam recipe leaving in the seeds from the Certo Package
, so 
We are getting going on processing out a goodly amount (several hundred pounds over the next while) of beef, pork and rabbit into jars, not to happy to have to do it hot pack method but just do not have room or time to thaw the meat to cold pack it.. So we are cooking it off and hot packing it.. I am willing to do that with burger and beef as there is a number of dishes that it will work with but will not be doing that with the rabbit or the stew meats. Raw pack gives a different outcome over hot pack and I prefer it.
Here is one pressure canner full from yesterday all washed and boxed up ready to head down to the cellar.. Which when its fully loaded looks a lot like this..
but right now.. its about half empty.. to be fair it is the middle of winter and hubby froze a lot of stuff I normally can but to be honest, its looking a little bare down there..
We need to focus on our gardens this year and get things put away!
What are you doing this fine sunday in the hard cold part of winter!
We have seen them in the different pizza places but lets face it, Calzones can be as easy or as tricky as you want..
If you want, you can oil them up and herb the outside, you can make the inside pretty fancy, I have done a lovely steak, pepper, mushroom with a cream garlic sauce that is a hit for everyone that had had it..
or you can sometimes just make them because its a perfect way to put together a fast but tasty meal..
I made a huge batch of buns for a birthday party that I will be going to, along with a big! batch of my chili and I had enough leftover bread for two big buns, I made it into flattened dough, slapped it into a cast iron pan on med-higher head, strained out some meat, mushrooms and onions from the chili pot, grated some cheese and as fast as you can say yum.. If I was going to do it again, I might have added in some fresh crispy bites of a pepper if I had one to add to it.
We were sitting down to fresh Cast iron Calzones.. so good..
Just another Day on the Farm 