ORGANIC LIVING
The Garden is in the ground! This year we have decided to attempt to grow just about everything we could possibly need to feed our family. We have planted potatos, onions, broccoli, cabbage, peppers, tomatos, squash, zuchinni, cucumbers, carrots, okra, corn, watermelons, sunflowers, cantelope, honeydew, etc.
 |
| Nature's Manicure! |
 |
| My Favorite Farmer |
We have already harvested four massive, beautiful heads of delicious broccoli. You see three in the picture because we left one at DruDrus house and she ate the entire thing before we even made it home! I think she liked it too : ) Home grown broccoli tastes so different from what you buy in the store and the crowns of each were at least 10 inches across. Thats with no pesticides---completely organic. You can't buy that at Wal-mart.
 |
| Keep it coming, broccoli plants! We love us some green trees! |
I set out 240 sweet onion sets and I am amazed at how well they are doing. Let's just say we won't have to buy onions for a very long while. I set out 50 seed potatos and 36 produced plants. They have just now started to flower which means the roots are busy underneath making those yummy potatos. I think we are just excited about eating the fruits of this planting as we are about getting to harvest them. Getting all muddy while searching for potatos has some kind of wild appeal for children. I liken it to searching for Easter eggs but you get to get all nasty while doing it and you don't get in trouble. The corn has been a challenge this year due to all the rain we have had. We set out G-90 sweet and Kandy Korn right before a massive gully washer storm. We didnt think we lost any but alas we were wrong. We lost all the Kandy Korn and the G-90 is growing in sparse at best. Philip has since replanted and we are hoping for a better harvest and a more consistent growth pattern.
 |
| 240 Sweet Onion Sets! |
 |
| Just the stalk is as thick as my finger. Just think how big the actual onion bulb will grow to be! |
 |
| Seed Potatos |
 |
| Potato Plants |
 |
| Corn |
A chicken coop is next on my wish list. The way my children eat eggs has me aching for some chickens of our own. I also loathe the thought of all the crap that is in the meat that Im feeding them when Im grilling chicken or making chicken pitas using chicken that I get from the store. Raising our own chickens would fix that and would make for a great farm tax write-off and for less crap going into my kiddos bodies. Maybe I will ask for chickens for Christmas! Philip and PJ have been working on getting fences up at the farm so that we can start having cows and raising our own beef. This has been put on the back burner due to the fact that beef has SKYROCKETED....also known as TRIPLED. A calf that would have cost 40 cents a pound now costs anywhere between $1.10 to $1.50 a pound. The herd will have to wait until the costs go down quite a bit. Until then we'll stick with chicken....or pork.
Lately I have been keeping up with several blogs whose writers routinely post recipes.
http://joyinmykitchen.blogspot.com/ is a blog I read religiously. She posts recipes that she has made herself and tasted herself. Most of the ingredients are healthy or the recipes can be tweaked so that they are more healthful. She has a recipe index that you can search where the recipes are organized in categories. I use this all the time because I always forget to bookmark the page where I saw that one recipe that I wanted to make. Silly me : )
http://happilyeverjohnson.blogspot.com/ is another blog I read religiously. Queen B is the wife of one of my high school classmates. She's a mom, just gave birth, graduated from medical school, and still finds the time to blog daily, cook dinner, and make a weekly menu for her family. She is my inspiration!!!! If only she could lend me her cape! She posts something called "Grocery Bag" every week. This is her weekly menu for her family. It includes pictures of the foods she plans to make with the recipes and links to where she found them. Amazing! She also blogs about her experiences as a working mother, daughter of the Son, wife, all around Superwoman. I enjoy reading this blog daily.
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/yeast-breads-and-rolls This website has been my go-to-guy when it comes to learning how to make my family's bread. Yes, you read that right. I have ceased buying store bought bread with all those nasty preservatives, corn syrup, words you can't even pronounce. I am baking bread, serving it hot out of the oven, toasting if so requested. Sometimes its a mile high becasue the weather cooperated. Other times its a bit squatty because someone stomped and didnt tiptoe through the house and it fell. Either way, I know whats in our bread because I put it in there!
 |
| Yummy Bread! No kids home to stomp and make it fall on this day :) |
I have also started making our tortilla wraps since we ate at least 2500 a week. I'm exaggerating! But we went through a ton of wraps. So I was reading Queen B's blog and she mentioned homemade wraps and thus a homemade wrapper maker I became! It's super easy and once again...I know what's in them because I put it in there!
We have officially opened and started eating the last jar of homemade, home canned pickles from last year's harvest and we are trying to make them last until I can get some more made. I dont think this is going to be successful though. My kids can eat some pickles. I made and canned 14 jars of pickles last July and they made it until April. That is some massive pickle consumption!
 |
| I don't think this jar of pickles is going to last as long as the kiddos want it to : ( |
We still have canned corn and canned tomatos left. I use the canned tomatos to make spaghetti sauce and salsa. We are slowly running out of things in the root cellar (AKA underneath the house). Seeing all that space open up gets me excited about all the fresh, organic food we get to put in its place! I cant wait to hear that little pop sound when those jars seal! That is truly the sound of organic living to me!
God gave us a little reminder to trust in him during these trying times. If you read my subsequent blogs when I get around to them, you'll understand the trying times I'm referring to. On Easter Popie sent us a text that included a picture of something fabulous! It was a picture of this:
And when I saw this and with everything I was going through and with everything we were about to experience but weren't aware of, God whispered in my heart,
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet their heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 7:25-34
No comments:
Post a Comment