This year's garden

Our garden is coming along nicely this year.  I have to give all the credit for this garden to where it's due - my husband.  Each year we rotate our crops to a different location in the garden, there are more sunnier spots than others, but this year is looking very promising for everything we've put in so far.

This is what is currently growing:

Sunflowers
cucumbers
beets
parsnips
carrots
corn
beans
potatoes
onions
garlic
limas
peppers (red, banana, Jalepeno, Cayenne)
tomatoes
brocolli
cauliflower
cabbage
kale
zucchini
yellow squash

I think I'm most excited about the beans this year.  The bamboo tee-pee's are already getting covered with growth.  Last year we didn't have any luck with them, they just wouldn't grow.  New to our garden this year are the onions and garlic, and so far the broccoli, cauliflower and  cabbage are doing well and look healthy.  The squash plants have been blooming for a few weeks and we have our first squash growing this week.  We're looking forward to a bountiful harvest this summer.  I'll keep updating here as our garden evolves this season . . .  a record of this year's garden.

It's his turn

It seems like only yesterday that I was introducing you all to our newest guy in the family.  He’s been with us already for a whole year.  I’m stunned.  This has been the fastest year of my life.  He’s a joyful little bundle, loves to be held, loves to play with all his siblings and loves to say his first word, "good!" 

This birthday celebration I wanted to keep simple.  Simple in a 7 person family kinda way.  I picked a rainbow theme, bright and definitely cheerful and is he.  I was coming up empty handed as far as a handmade mama gift, so last minute I headed over to Good-Will and purchased a large men's tie-dye t-shirt to sew him a pair of pants for the party!



Party production was at its finest in the wee hours the night before!  Sewing, and cake decorating made for quite the memories, was so glad to get the machine back out again, it had been far too long.

We had an amazing day!  Everything came together perfectly for his first little birthday.  So many memories were made that day, I'll never forget how he ate his cake and how he played outside, how nice it was to have family over and relax and enjoy the day in a non-stress kind of way.  We're so grateful for this little guy, his sweet, and charming personality.

Happy 1st Birthday Nathaniel Gene!
xoxo,
Mama

Christmas Eve

Its been a busy week for us!  Cooking, sewing, giving, crafting, and lots of celebrating.  Merry Christmas!

canning apple jelly ~ 2nd batch

10 apples went into the Breville this afternoon, juice was cooked with 5 cups of sugar and almost 2 boxes of pectin.  My vote is that 5 cups of sugar has a better taste than the 7 I made earlier in the week, just like I thought ~ intuitive cooking!  This was a really really good batch!  I realized as I stood by the pot stirring that  the pot had a familiar aroma and that it was essentially apple cider made into jelly.  Yum, next on the agenda will be apple cider with mulling spices from Williams-Sonoma.  Hopefully there will be a chill in the air again soon!

Apples to apple jelly ~ a quick course

Autumn is here isn't it?!  Where has the time gone.  Wasn't it just last week when we were in birthday mode around here?  We have three September birthdays which makes the month of going back to school, that much more fun and hectic.  As I opened our last jar of apple jelly from my pantry recently, made two years ago, I knew what we were going to do with our apples this year.  Make more jelly!



I looked back through my blog and realized I have never explained how I make apple jelly.  There is a quick post about it here, but no mention of how I made it.  So today we are.  I've done it two different ways.  The old way was to peel and cut the apples and boil them, drain the juice (you need 6 cups of juice), then add 1/4 cup of sugar with a pack of Sure-jell pectin, bring to a boil, then add the remainder of the sugar (about 6.75 cups).





This year I came up with a new way.  I first juiced the raw apples with my Breville Juicer (lots of instagram photos floating around of that brilliant machine!).  All the apples in that pic rendered 6 cups of juice.  What I love about juicing the apples, is that it is pure apple juice, not watered down from cooking the applies, and its quick, no peeling involved!  The juice then goes into a pot, brought to a boil, then the same process of 1/4 cup of sugar and box of Sure-Jell pectin is added.  Once that comes to a boil, I added the 6 3/4 cups of sugar (7 in all).  After checking the gel consistency, I ended up adding almost the whole second box of pectin to get it the way I like my jelly, not too firm, and not runny.  Then I scooped it into sterilized jars, and sealed them.  This batch tasted a tad too sweet for me, so I'm making another batch using 5 cups of sugar to see if I like it better.  Either way, they will both be delicious, fresh from the farm to my kitchen to be stored and opened and enjoyed for many seasons to come.



{The two jars with white tops went straight into the fridge to be eaten this week with my family, they are not properly sealed for storage.}

:: tonight ::

Baby sleeping, dinner prepped . . . life is grand!, originally uploaded by homebirthmama.

Baby sleeping, dinner prepped . . . life is grand!

eating local ::

Eating local has become more important to us over the years.  There is nothing like eating local when it means "backyard" local; "backyard - garden wish we had our own farm"- local, or "this is the best we can do and are making the most of it"- local.  You get my drift I'm sure, my heart is fondly desiring more acreage in our future.  But for now in making the most of what we have, we expanded our garden this year.



Daniel has done an amazing job this year tending to our garden.  The most I could do this year is help organize seeds and make row markers.  New this year to our garden has been potatoes, turnips, radishes, beets, carrots.  We expanded our corn, have less tomatoes, but our squash are doing well for once.  It has taken us a few years to learn where there is more sun and where spots are less fertile,  which crops do better on which row and on and on.  I even played around a little this year with planting by the moon.  I wanted to do a post on it earlier this Spring, but it just got too complicated.  So far it has served us well.  I like to think of gardening as a school of nature.

This is the time of the gardening season, where I get to go out and freshly pick our dinner each afternoon.  I prefer to pick and eat as we need the food each day, while my husband on the other hand loves to "surprise" me by harvesting a whole row at one time to preserve.  A few weeks ago, a lot got wasted because we weren't prepared for the amount of work it takes to preserve that much food (it was turnip greens).  As I said, successful gardening is a learned process.  Next year, I will be ready and prepared for that type of cooking and preserving, but for now, I'm learning as much as I can and am enjoying what is and what is left to come.  It only gets better each year.

Days/Nights of Christmas Part 5

This week we have played new games, seen our paperwhites come and go, brought new greenery into the house, admired 1,000's of lights, baked, enjoyed an amazing Nutcracker performance. We are so grateful for each of our days and nights through this holiday season. They are each so different yet filled with much excitement and anticipation, yes, much anticipation from us all!