Another post where I talk about food and gardening. Someday there will be more to life. :-)

  We woke up this morning to see a very thick frost outside. We were expecting it but it is still always a little bittersweet. Outside our bedroom window there were icicles hanging from the oak leaves because the sprinkler system was running during the cold of the early morning. I forgot my poor geranium out on the deck. I tried to cover my tomatoes and peppers and Aaron's watermelon and that worked for some of them but some parts of the tarps blew off and so we had some poor frost bitten tomatoes.

 I am attempting making vinegar. The instructions seem pretty simple. I am wondering if it will really work. Obviously I am not making very much this first time. I would like to know how to make it as then that would be one more thing we wouldn't need to buy. Have any of you ever made it?

 Today I made some yummy "Cracker Jack" popcorn. Just mix together 1/2 cup melted butter and 1/2 cup honey and pour over 3 to 4 quarts of popcorn. Brown in a 350 degree oven.

We have been enjoying the lovely sunflowers in our garden. We brought some in before the frost but these actually survived fairly well. We will see how they do after tonight's frost.

 We do actually have more to life than food and gardening but once and a while lately it doesn't seem like it. Are you busy with harvest too?

So much to harvest!

 It is the harvest season for sure! Here is some of the harvesting we have been doing this past week:

FISH
A friend of my parents has a trout pond which they drain for the winter. She let my parents have the fish. So they invited us over to help with the cleaning of them. So last Thursday morning we cleaned a whole bunch of fish!

 Jonathan was the official person to get them out of the tub of water and cut their heads off. He did a very good and efficient job of it. Mom and I were doing the gutting of the fish and we couldn't keep up with him. Dad was in charge of filleting them and he couldn't begin to keep up.

 I tried to help with filleting one but I butchered it so badly and took forever so I gave up on helping in that department. Dad didn't fillet all of them as they also enjoy eating them baked so for that he leaves the skin on and doesn't cut them up.

 It is such a blessing to have many meals (for both households) of fish in the freezer for this fall and winter.

GARDEN PRODUCE
Our garden has still been producing well- especially cucumbers! We have been enjoying eating a lot fresh as well as canning and freezing quite a lot. I also was able to barter some cucumbers for some apples which I was quite happy about. We are also trying to make sure that we have plenty of our herbs dried so we can have tea and seasonings all winter long.

HONEY

God really did bless us with an abundant harvest this first year of our keeping bees. Harvesting has been quite a bit of work so we have just been doing a few boxes at a time. So far we have harvested over 200 lbs and still have more to harvest.

I am taking all the honey from the bees and then we will be killing the bees off. I really would have liked to try overwintering the bees but that isn't something that is very easy to do in our cold climate. The man that is mentoring me does not advise trying it at all. I still do want to try it sometime but Ken and I decided that this first year at least it probably made since to follow his directions. When I am more experienced with beekeeping in general then maybe I can try overwintering them.

Last week I did get a little scare when I went out to harvest. I opened up our biggest hive and it smelled funny. I had read that American Foulbrood has a weird odor and so I got scared that they might have it. But I checked online and they said that when bees are harvesting goldenrod and asters that the hive can also smell weird then. Les, my mentor, told me some ways to check for sure whether they had foulbrood or not and they didn't. Praise God! We had done some praying about the situation and I am thankful that it worked out the way it did.

The kids running the extractor.

   Well we need to hurry and harvest a bunch more today as it is supposed to frost tonight. I had better go get busy!

Remembering that no matter what, God is there.

Do you remember where you were 10 years ago today?

 We had just moved up to Minnesota from Wichita, KS and we were temporarily staying at my parents. Jonathan was a teeny tiny baby and Mara not quite two. That morning Ken had gone off to his new job at an insurance office and we were doing things at home.

I remembering us hearing the news on the radio and just being shocked and thinking what is going on- what is really happening.

I remember Ken calling from work to make sure we had heard and said that they were all down in the break room watching the TV. I remember the shock in his voice.

I remember for months hearing more of the stories and being shocked by the horror of it and amazed by God's work in the midst of that horror.

God has allowed us on earth the have free will and people often make horrible choices. That however does not change who God is or what He is like. When thinking of things like the horrific events of 9/11/01 here are some verses that I think are very comforting.

"Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Matthew 10:28



"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38 and 39




"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Hebrews 13:8





I hope you find those scriptures comforting as well.

It has been a full week!

This week has been very full but a very good week too.

 It was our first week of formal school for the year. Megan was very excited because she is in "Kindergarten" now. We are still staying pretty relaxed with her schooling but she is eager to learn and so I am helping her. She loves writing her letters and numbers and doing math pages.  Aaron is doing well with his work and was even doing math pages at nap time just for fun (and so he would be able to get done really early this year). Jonathan is seeming to enjoy his math this year, so far he finds it easy. I hope it stays that way. He is also eager to take his first spelling test. Mara is finding that as you get older work does tend to get a bit harder but she is doing fine. I am enjoying the routine of school work but at the same time I am having to work to get adjusted to it. Right now I am having to do a couple of math lessons each day too because of some messing up on my part and so I don't have correcting manuals for Mara or Jonathan yet. I hope to change that soon!

 We spent much of Thursday over at my parents helping with some homesteading activities. We did get our math done before we left. On Monday I will tell more about the fun that we had.

  We have harvested honey 3 days this week. I am feeling so blessed by the harvest we have had. It is a lot of work to harvest but the kids help and this evening my inventive children came up with a way to make extracting easier, faster and more fun.

A piece of clothes line around the handle will act rather like a yoyo string and you can make the extractor turn by pulling it. This made them much more eager to help.

 I have been having fun trying out the bartering site. I have done several deals now and am enjoying getting some "Junk" out of our house in trade for things we like or need.

 We have been canning pickles and salsa and doing other garden harvesting. God is so good to us!

  We have been attempting to do some thorough cleaning around here but sometimes it just feels like it's getting worse. Especially when someone forgets to connect the grain grinder to the bin when grinding and flour sprays all over the kitchen.  Putting up food in general is rather messy and for that reason I will be glad when harvest time is over. I am loving the harvest now however!

Over all, life is good and I am grateful for the week that God gave to us!

Who would like to win a giveaway of some yummy Tropical Traditions Coconut Flakes?

You would?
Well you came to the right place.  I have been enjoying getting to try out this yummy coconut thanks to Tropical Traditions and they are going to let one of you try a bucket of it too!

We do like coconut around here. We enjoy No bake cookies, coconut granola, Butterscotch coconut cookies, just eating it plain and much more!

 With this coconut I had a lot of fun trying out making coconut milk. It turned out really well and it wasn't hard to make. Tropical Traditions has a recipe that you can follow and you can even watch a video to show you how. What I really liked about the making of coconut milk is that you don't have to through out the coconut bits after you make the milk you can still use them somewhere else. I threw some in our oatmeal and it was delicious and then the rest went into cookies.

I also enjoyed putting some of the coconut flakes in some blueberry granola bars that I made. They turned out yummy.

  I am very much enjoying our gallon bucket of Tropical Traditions' coconut flakes- Who else wants to try some?

If you want to buy some you can get a 2 lb bucket for $11.69. While you are shopping you should check out all the other different coconut products they have. You may want to sign up for their e-mail newsletter so that you can hear about when they offer free shipping and sales. It just comes once a week.

 If you want to try to win a bucket of Coconut Flakes then simply leave a comment below. Please tell me about something that you like to bake for you family or tell me about one of your favorite ways to eat coconut. Be sure to leave an e-mail address so that I can contact you if I draw your name.

For an additional entry you can sign up for Tropical Traditions e-mail newsletter and then just leave another comment letting me know that you did that.

THE WINNER IS: Sarah Blanshan! Congratulations Sarah!

This giveaway will end on Sept 23rd. It is open to those in the US and Canada.

Disclaimer: Tropical Traditions provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose.  Nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review or sponsor a product giveaway in return for the free product.

A bike trip for the holiday

This past weekend we had the fun of going on a little biking trip on the Paul Bunyan Trail. A had wedding flowers to do on Saturday and we were having trouble finding campgrounds so we didn't leave until after church on Sunday. My sister Keren took us down South of Walker and dropped us off. At the drop off place their was a pond that the kids had fun exploring around.

I did find a campsite for Sunday night (For $50 a night!!!) so we were all packed up to go hiking. Jonathan is using a bigger bike this year so I had to make him new pannier bags (The brown ones in the photo below) and Aaron got his old ones. This is the first year that he has had a rack and pannier bags.

 We were running late getting started and so we didn't actually get on the trail until around 3:30 pm. We also hadn't researched the trail or the options of starting places very well so we ended up having 21 miles to go to reach the campground. 8 of those miles consisted of big hills as well. It was a very pretty, winding and hilly trail in that area. We enjoyed it but it did wear us out.

Jonathan was needing to rest after some big hills.

 There were a lot of flowers in that area too.

Aaron and Mara on a flatter stretch.

 That evening we didn't get to the campground until it was almost dark. Then it took the camp owner a while to show us our place. We were still needing to make our supper and set up tents and such and so we were pretty tired and hungry! Once we got food in us we felt much better and then we headed to bed. It was pretty cold that night (the forecast had been 36 degrees) but we brought warm stuff and we slept pretty well.

 The next morning I went to check out the bay we were camping on. It was on Leech lake but from their campground it just looks pretty weedy. It was pretty anyway.

Our campsite. We were in the area of a bunch of people that bring their RVs and stay all summer long. I think they found us rather interesting. They were very friendly and offered to loan roasting sticks and give us fire started and water and ice.

Getting packed up on Monday morning.

One of the things I had fun noticing were all the wild edibles along the way. It is always good to know what we could eat if we were needing to survive along the trail. :-)  Here is some of what we found:

Sumac. We collected some of this and are looking forward to making something similar to lemonade with this.

We we surprised to find a bunch of wild grapes. Mara picked quite a few and we plan on making jelly.

Wild plums. These aren't ripe yet but I am hoping maybe we can ride back to get some when they are.

Echinnacia. I collected some leaves to use for tea.

We also saw quite a bit of Wild Asparagus which off course is not in season right now but we are hoping to go find it next spring. We also saw other herbs and greens, wild chokecherries that could be picked right now, a few hazelnuts, and strawberry and raspberry plants. I am sure there was a lot we missed as well.

Here is Megan out of the trailer to stretch her legs on Monday. We rode 37 miles on Monday.

Once we got back to our town we had fun eating supper at a yummy Mexican restaurant. We had packed all our other food and we could have made it home to eat but we enjoyed filling up on food with out doing any more work that night.

 It was another fun bike trip and now we are thinking about our next one.