Yippiee, I was excited enough about getting to meet him and get a signing , as I loved him in Buffy and Angel, but now I get to see him in concert that just “Rocks!” This man can sing, I am always so surprised the most folks don’t realize that he has an amazing music background and a number of sold out european shows tours under his belt..
Its that time of the year where the zucchini can be overflowing, and I thought I would bump my favorite way to use up extra’s..
So as anyone that has been reading the blog knows, I have been canning pinapple, which is a real treat, because when has Pinapple ever been so cheap that you can just can a whole years worth at a time.
Which brings me to a little story, a few canning recipes and nod to my Grandma D and my dear momma for sharing, teaching and passing those lessions on down.
I remember Grandma helping can when she came to the farm I was on as a little one, and and I believe this is Grandma Recipe, but if there is one thing I have learned is that with as many aunties as I have, there seems to be almost as many tweeks to these recipes as there are relatives.. so if you have a different version, let me know and I will add it.
So back in the day, pinapple…
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Well, its been a much better week, first off, my blood pressure is now testing back up in the optimal range, which is awesome and I am feeling much better for it. I did add in a fair amount of salt into my diet over the past two weeks, as well as more exercise.
I have been hitting the kettlebells fairly regular, enough so that when I went for my regular chiro treatment that it was noticed in my neck and shoulder area, which was interesting, I have been very aware of how I move my body, but I will have to be even more aware of not hunching my shoulders during my pulls. I have also added in a number of short but faster paced walks during the day, I hualed out my health watch and am making sure that I am getting my heart rate up into that cardio target zone x amount of times and then also making sure that its dropping down nicely..
The pounds dropped effortlessly this week with just over a four pd weight loss, despite eating three good size meals plus three small snacks per day, and all the water I can make myself drink along with my two cups of tea per day. I decided to not track calories this week, just what was eaten and how many fruits, veggies, proteins, carbs and water, and only in general amounts, its been kind of freeing to not be tracking calories this week.
On the personal care side I got my hair cut and it looks and feels wonderful, its amazing to me that doing something little like that can make you feel so much better about yourself, I even bought a curling iron this week LOL, something that I have not had or needed for a good long while, I have one of those little brushes that works with the dryer, and normally I keep my hair so short that its all that is needed but with my longer hair comes hair bands, curlers and curling irons..
I am thrilled that I have a four day weekend with hubby and we have lots planned on and off the farm, so if I can find the time, there will lots to share on the blog.. Catch you all soon 🙂
Hope you had a wonderful week of great health, good food and lots of laughs!
Wow, I had honestly forgot just how quickly food gotten at the store could turn bad in the fridge, I have thrown out more food in the past three weeks then I have in months, and while I will take a little of the blame in the sense of either buying to much of someone on a good sale and then not being sure how to use it (example’s avacodo) I should only get one till I figure out more then two dishes that use it, instead of buying a bag of five.
Having said that, alot of it is not me, so much as it is the quality of the food coming into the house from the stores and even the farmers market, I even understand why some of the things are going to fast, picked at the wrong time of the day, picked early or picked late, picked when wet to make it to market at the moment that the sales are there..
However that does not change the fact that other then preparing it, freezing it, drying it or cooking it will save certain things for later and Dang it, that defeats the purpose of buying it fresh, I have canned, dried and frozen things in the house and I am using it for a certain amount of each dish, the point of buying fresh produce is to use it as just that- Fresh produce..
Its not just that the flavour is bad, and most of the time it is.. I mean I know we are spoiled with the fresh hertage full flavour fruits, veggies and berries that we have on the farm but I had honestly forgot just how bland, perfect and tasteless a number of things are .. like pears.. seems like such a simple thing really but typically I buy pears when they are in season, eat my fine of fresh and then can and dry for there rest of the year, and I do love my canned pears, but I am getting low on them, so I bought two fresh pears, one was to go for breakfast with cottage cheese and one was to pouched and simmered as a dessert treat, well let me tell you, a more bland pear I don’t think I have ever eaten..
Thank goodness things in the gardens are picking up, I have cucumbers coming this week, along with lots of other goodies, I find it amazing that things I pick in the wild or in the garden can last days in my fridges and still taste amazing when I prepare them but things I bought a day or two days later from the stores are going bad. I am not finding that much difference between the keeping quality of the store and the farmers market, with things gotten on the saturday, however there is a small garden market and if I ask, she will tell what was fresh picked and they at least have keeping power, also there is a lady down a few roads from me, that has fresh she puts out each morning and you stop, pick up what you are looking for and just put the money in the money box, her very limited selection is good, but typically its only one or two things per day available.
I was on the hunt for green grapes and I was amazed that they were selling what was clearly turning fruit, the off color, the off smell and even some turned grapes in each bag, I walked away from it and glad I did but clearly some folks are buying it, otherwise why keep them out there.. that means that folks are eating turned food..
No wonder so many folks get sick on food that ends up recalled, they are not learning and trusting their eyes, noses and taste buds, and no wonder I read stories all the time about how folks taste farm fresh goods, garden fresh good and can’t believe its the same food that they thought was ok? If I was not already all about growing my own food and a huge fan of buying local, this would have made me even more so.
I am so looking forward to the fall garden that was planted this month..
I would love to say that this has not been a ongoing battle but my poor old girl lily has battled allergies for most of the 12 years she has been on this earth, none of her siblings or parents or grandparents have allergies, it just seems to be a “her” thing. Summer and water are always worse times for her then winter but her biggest triggers are food related.
She is on a homemade diet for this very reason as well as on a allergy med.. but a number of weeks back, she was able to “break in and sneak a large amount cat food” and boy did we get the mother of all hot spots.. * compared to how bad it can be, it is not that bad but it was a good solid 3 inch by 3 inch effected spot and that is big enough as far as I am considered.
So the first thing I am going to say is, if this is the first time this happened or if it gets worse, please, please consider taking your pup to the vet and get it checked out, and follow their recommendation.
Given that my girl is on a normally strict diet and meds to keep her allergies under control and because this is not her first nor likely her last hot spot for me to deal with, I have a good idea of what will and will not work with her.
Here is the tell-tale signs that under her coat, bad things are happening..
If you have a fairly short coat, its alot easier to see this look then it is on a long coated dog, just one more reason to try and make sure you give them a good groom and good check over. Now the first thing I want to do is get air to this wound, and that’s the best way in my mind to consider a hot spot, its a wound, it needs to be kept clean, dry and ideally allowed to be open to the air but also treated and watched over carefully.
So here is the big old ugly mess now that the hair has been shaved off, remember to clean your clippers or trimming item afterwards, its red and inflamed and weepy.. ah.. poor dear.. so I like to give it a gentle wash with soap and water, I have a very gentle oatmeal bar that was made for dogs, and so that is the first thing I will do, then I will let it air dry, then I am going to help it dry, I use a homemade rince made from apple cider vinager, stinging nettle and plaintain juice, this is dabbed on and allowed to soak the area, I have found that the nettle and vinagar seems to take alot of the “weep” out and the plaintain juice helps reduce the swelling and seems to reduce the pain as well.
At that point I have a homopathic spay that is used twice a day on it.. its a slow and long process to clean up a hot spot from start to finish..
I am aware that this does not look great but trust me this is what it will look like on the mend, the hair around has grown back in, the wound itself is no long red, infected and the hair is starting to grow back in, it still looks bad, and I cringe a little each time I see it but I know that the worst is behind and now its a matter of time and regrowth, but don’t stop your daily checks.
In another six to eight weeks, it will be back to looking like this..
Now , If you look close at this photo, the very middle you will see extra course and wavy hair, that is a fully healed hot spot area, the hair never quite grows back the same way afterwards, but it will come back with care.
So remember its not just about treating the hot spot itself, you need to look at diet, what triggered it, consider that you might need mediation and help from your vet to deal with it and that the wound itself will require daily care for weeks, while they may appear quickly, there is no quick fix on them.. slow and steady will win the race on these.
They can get good size on the farm, typically them come in the cooler temps and in the fall rains back behind the big barn. I will point out that you should only use these lovely mushrooms if they are in good condition, they should be a pure white inside, don’t use them if they have any hint of yellow or greenish hues, they are to far gone. I love to fry mine up till they are golden on outside.
But they are still nice and white on the inside..
Red Belly Snake,
or we have just never spotted one before, as we don’t use chemicals and we practice low till and in some cases no till methods on the farm as well as green crops and a few area’s that we rotate cutting but otherwise leave natural, we have lots and lots of helpers in our gardens and farm, we have tons of toads, tend to have a garden snake or two, and at the right time of the year, the praying Mante’s appear in numbers with itty bitty babies arriving by the dozens.
But this little guy is new to us, as in we had not seen one before, it was sleeping under the tarp out by the feeder and when our newest hay bales arrived, we scared it when we picked up the tarp to cover the tops of the bale, that’s why its little red belly is showing, while it looks like we got really close to it, it was zoom, given its top color, I think it would be very hard to spot otherwise.
http://www.ontarionature.org/protect/species/reptiles_and_amphibians/red-bellied_snake.php
Red-bellied snakes are generally found in forest edge habitat, fields and meadows with abundant ground cover, such as logs, rocks, scrap piles and building foundations. These snakes rarely occur in regions with little forest cover. Like most other snakes in Ontario, these snakes overwinter underground below the frost line. They have small home ranges, and over the entire summer an individual may move no more than 500 metres from its hibernation site.
Red-bellied snakes breed in the spring or sometimes in the fall. Females incubate the fertilized eggs internally and give birth to four to 14 live young in late summer. The newborn snakes are seven to 10 centimetres in length and mature in two years.
Red-bellied snakes are nocturnal. They eat invertebrates such as slugs, earthworms, snails, grubs and insects, which eat plants and vegetables in gardens. These snakes help to control populations of these garden pests. Red-bellied snakes rarely bite and have very tiny, ineffective teeth. However, this species will threaten potential predators by exposing its bright red belly or flattening itself and curling the edges of its mouth outward.”
The fact that it lives in such a small area, gives me hope that maybe I will have a couple of these and maybe I will get lucky and end up with a breeding pair, they sound like they would be great little garden snakes to have around doing their thing.
While I know that the die hard organic person will not be happy that I use PCV pipe in my pits, take heart in the fact that’s because a huge pile of all different sizes came with the farm and I am still eight years later finding ways to use them all.
So while I read a mention here or there in a few different books, it was the The complete Compost Gardening Guide, published by storey and available though thomas Allen and Son’s here in canada that went into wonderful detail on this, Chapter six..
I took the idea of a what they call the honey pot and pretty pits of plenty and made a big old underground compost pits, now what goes in these make a big diffence on where they are going, as an example, I am more then willing to use my own farm raised critter leftover butcher bits as a way to add higher protein, blood, and bones (which would be like buying, blood meal, bone meal and or dog or cat food per the recommendation from the book) but not in my main garden area.
Instead I make those pits to line up within root range of fruit bearing bushes/trees, these are created to be long term pits, dug deep, layered well and covered and re-seeded over top, no air, water pipes in these, they are made to feed the plants for a number of years to come.
But the ones I want to talk about are the garden friendly honey pots that are dug deep and three-fourth filled, then covered in dirt with a air/water pipe, that are done as a one year combo feeder/compost pit, with a circle of plants planted out around it, in this hot dry summer, these pits have worked very well, if you water the pit itself, you lose little to none of the water to the effects of evaporation, but the plants take it all up by their roots, the extra feeding helps the plants that are struggling and best of all, but the end of the year, you can just turn it over, and forget about it, no stirring, no haulijng from here to there, no working it in and spreading it etc, just leave it and go.. you can just plant over it in the next season, but be aware that as it composts down, you might need to add a bit on top as it will sink down. Good idea to make your map for the garden, so that you can keep track of them from year to year so you know where to put them.
If you are on the edge of maybe doing one of these, give a tomato circle a try, make your pit, makes sure you have lots of crushed egg shell in the mix, and water deeply once a week, and plant four plants around it, I think the results will knock your socks off!
I did a trench pit along side a potato growing area this year and the crop has been outstanding, equal to any other year and I am sure that this had something to do with it, as we did no extra watering in this dry hot weather, but we did also heavily mulch on top as well, my main critter manure was rabbit, with lots of bedding mix from Girl, not that much manure but lots of straw bedding/urine, mixed out with yard greens, with lots of nettles added in.
Loaded Meatloaf
Just another Day on the Farm 