Christmas Shopping.. O good heavens..

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

So yesterday, I was up bright and early to head to Red Deer to pick up my dad who had his truck in for some repairs while home from camp work in northern B.C. and off to breakfast we went afterwards, I had been told we had a few place’s to get to and do a little shopping..

14! stores later, I was ready to spit fire, first off, I still can’t believe how huge red deer has gotten, I remember living there when I was back in collage, granted that was 20 years ago but its a whole different city these days and it shows.. the growth is amazing!

While my dad honestly did the shop till you drop thing, I stayed much more true to my own roots, I picked up one of the last gift for my step-dad, a leather wheel cover on sale from Canadian tire for his car, mom sent me to look for a cream long sweater for a outfit and I found a 80 dollar dress orginally that fits and looks lovely on me for 11 dollars including tax.

I had thought that I had made enough of my knotted roped necklaces/scarf things, but was I wrong, everyone loves them and suddenly I need to make at least four more.. OK, so off to micheals, with a little digging, I was thrilled to find perfect wool patterns/weights and colors on a great sale, regular 9 per ball, on sale for 3.. so will get them made over the next while yet..

Last but not least was getting Dh’s short stories made into a spiral bound book for gifts for family, it was only his stories from 2010-2011 and it was just under 250 pages in length, for a total of 17 dollars per book, to be printed, and done with cover etc.. For sure my most costly store was staples who is doing the book for me, but I am hoping that it will be a unique and treasured gift, I am try as much as possable to have a handmade or personal gifts as possable this year.

As luck would have it my mom and my step-dad current have colds, I am trying hard to make sure that I won’t get it but really the odds are not in my favor on this one..

Woke up this morning to a winter wonderland with lots of fresh snow, and I signed and said to mom, I will throw on yesterday’s cloths and go shovel and then have my shower and put on clean cloths cause I will be working up a sweat.. she looks at me funny.. ah.. snowblower? LOL I am so used to doing things by hand on the farm, I forget that my family are the Kings and Queens of modern life out here.

My best part of the day was watching two hours of Chopped with my mom, we are both long time and big time cooks, and it was a hoot an half to get to figure out what we would cook with the different ingredants given to them, and to make smart mouth and to be honest nasty little comments on some of the choices and dishes..  You can tell that mom’s been off the farm for awhile, she could not come up with a dish on how to cook the goats brains that was one of the dishes, where I knew they needed to be soaked in milk first 😛

Same with how to make a main course out of fish heads, I think its because she has cooked now for such a long time with just the store bought foods, where I have now been spending a number of years working on learning how to cook with everything from nose to tail on the farm.

My laugh of the day was that I finally gave in an striped down the bed I was given and pulled the sheets, mom had gotten new flannel sheet’s for me but they are so rough and scratchy, I pulled them and put on old cotton sheets, that’s how you know that you shop way! to much at farm sales, I have gotton all my flannel sheets from them, and they are old and washed goodness know’s how many times an they are soft and smooth.. Clearly new ones need to washed a few times at min before they get that down home feel..

It does not help that my mom is keeping the house at 19 as the night low and higher for the daytime with a electic fireplace on in the living room when we are sitting, I didn’t even turn on the heat in my house till nov and its kept cold, so I am melting in this heat.. Now to be fair between the colds and that fact that my step-dad is alot older, he is almost 80 and he gets cold very easy so I will just need to suck it up but dang, when you are used to it being cool and layering, the heat is hard to get used to..

I will get a picture of this up on the next post or two but got to see the most amazing HUGE bull moose just hanging out on the side of dad’s hill, the rack was most impressive, would have liked to have put him in the freezer and the head on the wall.. but till not the season.. so photos instead.. Everyone have a wonderful day!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 1 Comment

Long Day..

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

First off, I know that I am behind on answering comments, I love each and every time my readers comment and I promise to find time over the next while to asnswer them, but with the chirstmas season on me, I am finding time in short supply..

Dh is taking some time off, along with his normal christmas time off from work and holding down the farm for me while I headed West and am having Christmas with my family for the first time in 11 years..

Needless to say the plane was crowded, I have never seen so many small dogs and small children on a plane before, It does not bother me that small critter can travel under the seat but I got a crying Jack one row up and about 15 little ones under the age of two, wow.. some folks and little ones were great, others not so much, one little one cried for at least a solid hour.. I have never been so glad for headphones in my life.. I watched just over five hours of cooking shows.. some good, some really bad and some just stupid but hey, its still a treat, given that I have no TV coverage at home.. thank goodness for CBC and their great coverage to listen to..

I was so glad to get out of that seat and I was a good girl and had not bought any of that overpriced stuff on the plane but they had claimed my water bottle at the airport (o and after I got swabbed down to check for explosives, fun, fun) and I was not going to pay for a new one on the other side that those crazy prices, paying for water is nuts anyway but paying airport prices is over the top!

Needless to say I came off the plane hunger enough to eat a bear, only to find my folks waiting for me, and off to lunch we went, then I went to Irivings, some of those saddles were so stunning, what a great shop in many ways, and picked up a present for Dh, who will no doubt be reading this so I will not share what they are, other then to say, on the farm use, and rated to minus 40, and I can borrow them 🙂

Then off to Dad’s farm by drum, and on the way, we stopped and picked up some bison, three pds of ground and lovely roast for me to make a dinner with, I unloaded the present box at dad’s, had a hot shower and changed cloths and a hot cuppa tea, wow does different water effect the way drinks can taste!

I was so ready for a nap, but they had held off putting up the tree for me to get there, so we put up the new tree dad had just bought, it was pre-lighted but as anyone who has done one of those tree’s for the first time knows, you get to spend a huge amount of time spreading the branches, well Dad was so funny, he helped but his would not stand up, so I ended going behind and fixing them, and mom rested, video taped and was in general laughing and smart mouth.. aw family.. gotta love them..

What I don’t love so far is my ma new truck, O its pretty to look at, but so far, sitting in the back has been aweful for me, the seat belt cuts right into my left hip, just nasty, I will need to do some of the driving and or spend some time in the front if we are really to be driving up and down to Fort Mac to see my older brother in it..

Then drove another hour an half up to my mom’s and put dinner on the table, I would love to say that I don’t have to drive today but point in fact,  I need to wrap this up and drive in to red deer to pick up my dad who has put his truck in the shop for repairs, and then we are going for breakfast.. Mom’s got a list a mile long and I am burning daylight.. (not really, its still dark out, and she is sleeping LOL)

 

Posted in Family | 8 Comments

Odds and Ends..

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

So I finally got to some butchering done, the oldest laying hens are now finished, I have my year old layers and my up and coming 12 week old layers still doing well with us..  I also got all my extra roosters done. In another 4 to 6 weeks my meat birds will be ready to get butchered out, an I have lots of ducks that will be reaching the right age inbetween.. I am truly impressed with the amount of fat, I am getting for future use in regards to cooking/frying etc.

I have been able to make a number more of my sheep tallow candles for future use, I have figured out how to get rid of the tiny bit of sputtering, I take my twice cleaned fat, let it crumble out and then freeze it, let it dry out in the freezer for a couple days and then remelt and no more sputter.. I love it.. it burns really clean and really slow, I have put up a number of small 6 oz candles in the 8 oz jars.

This week has been awesome on the making of my lucet necklace/scarf designs, so far I have figured out how to make them double stranded, double colored and or in different patterns.. so awesome.. Some of them are three stranded, some are four and some are even five.. Going to just share one of them with you.. don’t laugh to hard but Dh is modeling for me..I stuck him a black turtleneck.. I will get the ladies in the family to model their’s and post them after xmas..

I think I have talked about the fact that locally this year, there is no straw available, now I have heard that you can get large straw bales brought in from outside our local area if you are willing to pay 85 a bale for it.. yikes.. most of the folks are using old hay as bedding, if they can track it down, Now I got a little leg up as my regular Farmer R had been saving me two large 900 pd straw bales in his storage for me since spring, he offered me the chance to buy what he had left from 2010, and I was so excited to find out that he in fact has four of them available for me, and at a much more reasonable 50 a bale.  Normally our ducks have a straw bedding in their sleeping quarters, but lately they have had to make do with wood chips.. well today they got their straw back and Apple Duck was singing and dancing with happiness it was way to cute..

So how is your weekend going? How is your winter crafting going?

 

 

Posted in farm | 3 Comments

Food Storage Friday

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Well, I opened my flyers this week with a screwed eye on them, typically this is the week you are going to see your best prices and I see that butter is very much on sale as is cheese, at my local No Frill’s they have ten pds of ontario, carrots, onions and potatos on for 1.75 and for the first time in the 3 months that I have been watching there is finally a sale on Caration evaporated milk for 1.25, which is not great as typically it had been going on sale for 1 a can, and I like to have a case or two of the canned milk in my pantry for use thoughout the year as while Sheep milk is good for a number of things, some things the cow’s canned or powdered milk works better..

The rest of the week has been good, typical on the eating out of the pantry, I made a big batch of homemade yogurt, as I like adding yogurt to my blended drinks for added protein. I have been using canned or frozen fruit in them and it really improved the green drinks in flavour.

I have added in cinnamon daily into my drinks and I am finding it causes me a upset tummy so far but its reported health benefits are great, and I want my system to get used to it,  I was thinking about spices this week a fair amount, I have been trying to grow more and more of my own spices an seasonings over the past years, I was quite inspired by Andrea on her making of hot pepper sauce and dried/ground hot peppers, this is a area that I have not explored nearly as much as I should, I grow lots of peppers but because Dh is not keen on really hot foods, I have not tpically been growing a large amount for future use, instead growing and loving my horseradish for heat..

So I did a bit of reading and I do think it is a area that I can fairly easily grow, harvest and prepare to add to the pantry, I am also going to start learning even more in regards to what can be wild harvested in terms of items that can be uses to replace X in different recipes, I use some fairly regular, spruce tips for rosemary, stinging nettle seeds for celery seeds, diced dried dandlion flowers for saffon etc.

How was your week, did you find any amazing deal’s to add to the pantry? Did you grow herbs this year, and if so did you try and different ones? Did you find something that worked really well to replace something that comes from far away?

Posted in Food Storage | 5 Comments

Lucet gifts

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

The fluffy pretty little ones are going for stocking stuffers for my nieces to play with on their dress up, the pretty little grey and white cord is for a mesh bag for storage (thanks to lynn for that idea, I like it) and the bigger cord has had a clip added to the end and I have done a loop on the other end, and its become a new hound leash for a gift for a friend.

This one is my first heavy corded out new sheep rope for makinga instant halter, I like it, its strong, soft and flexable all in one.., I can see a number of these being made and at the ready for use, I have a very heavy red cord in waiting for a big one for girl and a dark blue one for marty.. Talk about frugal, these cord came in my big huge wool buying at a farm sale, given that I got over a thousand dollars worth of new wool/cord for eight dollars, I don’t think that the halter cords cost me even a penny to make in materal, vs 9 dollars plus tax for a braided rope halter to buy.. now that is a fair saving for a bit of my time.

I have figured out how to do a nice loose soft cord for necklaces or hair bands, and how to do a very tight hard cord for critter use or for as a hard working cord for different house uses..

Posted in knitting | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Weigh in 15/12/11

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Well this weekly posting of weight and goals is going to do a little expanding, as I am going to be doing a fair amount of things in regards to weight/workouts/eating in regards to working towards the goal of not only feeling healthier for myself but also in regards to working towards becoming and staying expecting, I will be adding in a bit more detail on that front on my weekly updates.

So in regards to health goals for the past week, I had my regular Chiropractic treatment, I had regular care as a child/teen and into my twenties, then we moved north and it became more of a when I went home, get checked.. then I didn’t find anyone I liked in my local area for awhile, but that changed last year, I found a wonderful lady who I have been going to for well over a year now, and it has made a good difference for me.

The second thing this week to report on general care is that Dh had his teeth cleaned, again in the past two years, we stepped up care on them, truth is we had been VERY lack in this area, (as in had not seen a one in years) surprisingly for me at least, I went in to get a broken tooth fixed and a cleaning and that was all I needed, poor Dh on the other hand, needed five fillings, a tooth removed and he is on a faster teeth cleaning routine of every four months for a bit till they get his mouth in better shape..  On the other hand, I’m in and out in a heart beat for my cleanings. Of course I do regular oil pulling which they think is crazy but they also comment all the time on how good my teeth are..

So are you keeping up on your regular health needs? Do you believe and get chiropractor care?

So got on the scale fully expecting a “gain” as its that time of the month that I hold alot water/swelling and the scale did not disappoint, according to the scale, I gained three pds over the week.. Bla, like heck I did.. Not.. wait for the update on next week weigh in.. so 6.3 pds out of my 50 pd goal.

Goals for this past week

  • Green Berry drink Daily-6 out of 7 yes
  • Apple Cider Vinager Daily-yes
  • Journal Daily on what I am eating-yes
  • Add in more roasted winter veggies-Make a huge pot and have it ready in the fridge as a side dish.- No, I ended up doing fresh veggies daily..
  • Make and keep a big pot of veggie/tomato/barley broth based soup available when I want something hot and filling.- Ended up doing a huge batch of lamb/veggie.
  • Have a good feed of protein, I have been cutting back on my meat protein portions and I am honestly craving meat, so I am going to allow myself a little more at least three times this week.- Still craving extra protein, not sure why but when I look at the meats, I want red meat, fish, and chicken, Wow, am I craving chicken!

This coming weeks goals

  • Journal my meals-
  • Drink my jug of water-
  • Green/Berry blended drinks-
  • Apple cider Vinager, Cinnamon, and Turmic Daily use-
  • Kettle Bell daily till puffing-
  • Auqa fitness at least once-

So how was your week? Are you feeling the stress of the holidays? Are you as excited as I am that today is the winter solstice, which means that after today, the daylight is going to start getting longer again each day!!

Posted in Goals | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Humor sort of… New crime wave in Norway… Hand over your butter!

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Ok, so I first heard this story on the CBC 6 o’clock news and I know its all over the web, but I just got share.. I have gold mine in my freezer.. we need to be one of the countries that is sending in tons of butter to norway..  The story said they had lifted all milk qouta’s on the norway dairy’s to increase in country production..

It made me really chuckle because i so often here from folks that always say, food shortages, don’t be silly, maybe we might not have something from around the world, but  we will always have bread, butter and meat…So what do you think.. could we run out of butter in canada??

“Norway ran out of butter this month. There’s none in the stores. People are selling it for inflated prices online. A guy just got caught trying to smuggle 200 pounds across the border from Sweden. People are panicking about the holiday baking season.

Explanations have been advanced. A high-fat diet craze jacked up demand in the country. A rainy summer led to poor grazing conditions for cows, which in turn led to lower milk and butter production. But at its core, this is a story about trade.

Norway is one of the richest countries in the world. Why not just import butter?

It turns out, the country has prohibitively high tariffs on imported butter — 26 kroner per kilo, or roughly $2 per pound, according to Lars Galtung, a spokesman for Tine, the country’s biggest dairy producer. (Norway isn’t a member of the EU.)

In an emergency move, the country’s agriculture ministry just temporarily cut the tariff way down. Tine is planing to import 150 tons of butter, and other companies are importing hundreds more tons, Galtung told me.

But getting hold of all that butter is likely to take a while. Galtung said the shortage is expected to run into the new year.”

Posted in Food Storage | 5 Comments

Baby Makin books..

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

 

When I was little, I always assumed that I would have a family, my ideal dream was that I was going to marry a farmer, and have four little ones, a older girl, then two boys and then a little girl, all my aunties had little ones and I come from a big family.. it never even occured to my young self, that I might not get to have children.

 

When I meet my Dh, we were in our mid 20’s and we both said right away, we want a family and got busy! in fact a little more faster then either of us planned, and I was expecting my little girl, when she was born to early and only lived five days, my heart broke and I took a long time in grieving, I also had a number of very early miscarriage’s, then a raither late miscarriage, then I was expecting my son, who was also born to early and only lived a matter of a short time, and since then I am back to either not conceving and or having very early miscarriages..

 

Time has slipped by so rapidly is down right scary, and I just keep getting older..

 

The current books on my bedstand in regards to making little ones include ones I consider ok, good and excellent, and I thought I would share them, and also take recommendations from my readers on if they thought they knew of a good one that I should add to my current reading..

 

Fertility foods, optimize ovulationa nd conception though food choices by Jermeny Groll and Lorie Groll- this book is a very good overview for the average person, and there are parts that I will use but overall I am giving it a 3 out of 5. It loses a whole point because it wants you to use lots of foods that are high processed and not available for me on the farm to produce.

 

You having a baby by Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, its a good solid book with alot of postive info, I like it, buts its more for those that can get and stay expecting.. still I will give it a 4 out 5..

 

Getting Pregnant, what you need to know right now.. by Neils lauersen, the new updated version.. I like this book, its very good, it covers all the basic’s and then some.. it has a very good menu and includes a good section on both vit (how to get them from food) and herbs that you can grow and use to encourage your fertility, the one gets a solid 4.5 out of 5.

 

My newest book is Taking Charge of your Fertility by Toni Weschler, I also got the matching computer software (I like the software) and I devoured this book, and by taking the informtion I had been tracking over the past year and putting it into the software program, it was very interesting to see that I had patterns that I was not able to see on the calander but that the charts showed very clearly.. I am going to give this one a 5 out of 5, its without a doubt one of the most detailed I have ever read and to have the abiltiy to use the software just takes it right over the top..

 

So anyone got any other books that they think that are “must” have to that collection?

 

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged | 4 Comments

Old Fashioned Cord Making! -Lucets

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

So Pretty, my different sized lucet have arrived, the big one is to be used to make cords for my larger critters halters or ropes, the smaller are for personal household uses..

I got them from Lynn the weaver, he has excellent video’s and a wonderful selection on his site.. he was easy to work with, and everything arrived on times and of excellent quality.

Here is a great step by step process of how to use these on this site

I have a couple projects planned to finish up yet before christmas, and I will share them afterwards, some of the intended folks read my site 🙂

Posted in Just in Case | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Kicked Day 6 an 7 update

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Someone has her eye on me! So here is me owning up to the fact that while we did regular farm chores, did get to the feed store, did get the next and hopefully last thing needed for the new sump pump to be installed and fully auto.. the truth is that I took a good amount of the time off and went to a christmas party,  it was a lovely pot luck get together with my pie, wine, knit girls but instead of it being just us girls, we had our handsome fella’s with us and five little ones under the age of six..

There were homecanned pickles and beets, I made a lamb chili with most things having been grown on the farm, and the homecanned grape juice from the farm was a big hit with both older folks and little ones.. M, The red velvet cupcakes made with beets instead of nasty red die #5 with their cream cheese icing where AMAZING..

What a pleasent way to spend a afternoon/evening, and so I did no canning, no butchering, no extra’s.. I did however get and give hugs an kiss’s, I did get to visit in the kitchen while getting the food ready, I did get to see a full table filled with smiles, laughs and happy baby faces covered in chili or orange salad, I got to watch kid zoomies, and watch them put on a dino show, be a marching playing band on kitchen pots and pans.. 

It was time well spent!  I may not have filled the freezer or the pantry, but it filled my heart and spirit..

Posted in Life moves on daily | 4 Comments