It's raining... it's pouring...

and the "old dude" is sleeping. Or so says my 4 year old son :)

The rain is always so welcome here in Colorado. Tomorrow we will be cutting down a big tree in our backyard. We have just bought a Husky chainsaw for that purpose, it will be handy on the farm someday as well.

Since our fireplace doesn't really heat the house (no fireplace insert) we will be giving away the firewood for free, hopefully we can find some takers.

Gem Squash

Want to try something new in your garden next year?

Try get your hands on some gem squash seeds! If you can't find any drop me a line, I'd be happy to share a couple seeds with you :)

Gem squash is grown in South Africa and very similar in taste and texture to acorn squash, but half a gem is a perfect serving size, unless you happen to be in my family, then you'll need one squash per person!

Gems are round and smooth. You can pick them at any stage of their development. If you pick them when they are still very little then you can cook them whole and eat them seeds and all. If you let them get big but still green then they will be very tender and the skin will also be tender enough to eat if you want (like my kiddos!) Once they start getting a little orange then the skin becomes thicker and you can store them for a long time.



This is what gems look like as little bitty baby veggies.



And here they are, halved and ready for the oven. You can see the difference in the ages of the gems. The very yellow ones were allowed to riped and the skin to thicken. They make a good side dish no matter what their age!

Our favorite (indeed the only way we do!) way to cook them is to halve them and then place them cut side down on a cookie sheet with a little water in the bottom. Put in the oven at 375 F for about 45 minutes. You should be able to easily stick a fork through the skin once they are cooked. Don't let the pan dry out, top up with hot water if needed.... but don't mess cold water on the glass of your oven door in the process! The glass *will* crack very prettily, and this will happen just before Thanksgiving, leaving you without an oven. Ask me how I know! Ha!

Talk about getting sidetracked. Anyway, once the gems are done, you will remove them from the oven and then scoop out the seeds. If your gems are tender enough then the seeds will still be edible, so you can eat them if you like. We scoop out the seeds and then add a pat of butter and a teaspoon of sugar to each gem half.

A true taste of South Africa!

At a loss on what to do with all that zucchini?

Well, you're not alone! We're just about ready to start blanching ours and freezing it for the winter.

I saw an ad on craigslist this week for free zukes. We shared some with our neighbors today. I spend a lot of time visiting recipe zaar for zuke recipes and trying out new dishes.

Thankfully most of our family LOVES summer squash, so I can serve it in various ways and they will glady eat it - with the exception of our four year old who doesn't care for it too much.

One of the simplest ways we eat it is to simply roughly dice it and then fry it up in our cast iron pan, add some seasoned salt, black pepper and garlic and then cook 'til just tender. It's prettiest if you have a mixture of summer squash, like yellow ss, zukes and white scalloped ss. Throw in a few pieces of ripe tomato for a splash of red.

Good eating!

Playing catch up!

We had family visiting again for three weeks in August and we've been busy this summer as usual.. we don't seem to spend enough time *inside* to update our blog.

Our chicks have just starting laying and are proving to be extra noisy, I'm guessing they've learned well from our three older hens! We tried to put them in one area together but I had to break up a big fight so they are staying separated.

The chicks (okay, I *really* need to stop calling them chicks! ha!) are still little compared to the other 3 hens, but we'll take what we can get :)

Our garden is incredibly productive right now, we can go out daily and collect produce, it's great! Here's a photo of a small sampling from our garden.

Let's see, in the basket we have scalloped summer squash, zukes, yellow summer squash, yellow crookneck squash, a japanese cuke, various tomatoes, a poona keera cuke and a gem squash. There are other various veggies as well, not pictured here though.

What a blessing to be able to go out into our backyard and pick food for dinner... or go out in the morning and gather eggs for baking!

Jam, jam, jam!

We made some blueberry jam and raspberry freezer jam today, eight jars of each.

I love making jam, it looks so pretty in the jars and tastes so good! I can't wait until we're growing our own berries instead of having to buy them.

Happy Father's Day!

My own dad has passed on, but we called my FIL for Father's Day. I love him just as much as my own dad and have the greatest respect for him, and I'm so thankful to him (and my lovely MIL!) for raising up the wonderful man I am married to today.

To my own dear DH, thank you my love for being the wonderful Father and Daddy you are to our children. I love you so much.

For Father's Day hubby chose to spend the day at the reservoir. We started off with homemade cards, gifts and then a "Farmer's Breakfast". At the reservoir we spent a bit of time on the water, a bit of time swimming and had our wonderful "Fishing Sandwiches" for lunch, yum! We didn't actually get to do any fishing because we ran out of time, but there's always next weekend!

A wonderful day was had by all!

Useful Kitchen Gadgets: Part One: Tupperware Hamburger Press

There are so many kitchen gadgets available on the market today, many of them quite useful, many more of them not. I thought I'd write every now and then about some of my favorite kitchen gadgets.

First up is my Tupperware Hamburger Press system. As far as I know you can't get these new anymore, but there are many available on Ebay and other sites. Now, of course you can make patties by hand, but when you have seven people to make patties for these make the work a lot quicker, easier and cleaner!

The set includes a press, sleeve/ring, patty freezer keepers and lid(s).

Start off with your ground meat mix. A perfect mix is made of either ground beef or turkey, egg and spices.






Insert sleeve/ring into one of the patty freezer keepers. Scoop out some of the meat mix (about 1/3 cup) into the keeper.





Get your press....








And press and turn gently.








The result :)








Remove sleeve/ring.








Snap another keeper onto the bottom keeper.








Repeat, and then snap on the lid. If you plan on using the burgers immediately, put them in the freezer for half an hour or so to firm them up before grilling. Otherwise, put in the freezer and remove when needed.

Memorial Day Weekend

Our Memorial Day long weekend has been quite the busy one. We decided to buy a dog run kit as a run for the chicks. At least this way we can easily break it down and take it with us when we move. It is 7.5' x 13', and 6' high and was quite easy to put up, everybody helped :)

Getting it located was a little bit of a mission, but we managed okay and finally got it where it belongs. We had to bury the one side a little to get it level, but all in all I think it looks great, and the chicks think they are the bees knees! Once they were released into it they ran around like hooligans chasing each other and attempting to fly all over the place. Funny chicks :)

Because of the roof overhang on the front of the coop and the height of the run, we couldn't have the run right against the coop, so we had to make a caged tunnel from the coop to the run. Hey, you do what you have to! LOL!

We left as much greenery as possibly for them to peck at, I'm sure it won't be long before it's all gone and just dirt.

I also took some time to plant the pots out front.... because of our huge tree I can only put in shade plants. I LOVE hosta, and got two different types.

I think I prefer the first one, but variety is the spice of life, or so they say! We've also reseeded the grass out front, so it should be looking real pretty this summer!

And, as always, Impatiens in the two big wooden barrels :) I also love Impatiens, so pretty.

I found a stripey pink one, pretty eh?


Well, that's our news for this weekend. We hope those of you in the USA have had a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend, and took a moment to remember the fallen.

Chicken coop - complete! (Well, almost!)

We finished painting the coop inside and out, still have to add a bit of framing here and there to pretty it up, but it's in place and the chicks went into it this morning for the first time.

We still have to build their pen for outside, but they have to stay in the coop for the first couple of days anyway, so this works fine. The poor chicks are convinced they are going to fall through the mesh on the bottom... in a few days they should realize they are perfectly safe!

Hard to believe they were tiny little bundles of fluff just a few short weeks ago!

My Birthday

I had such a lovely day on my birthday. Since it was on the weekend hubby was home and that always makes the day extra special. My hubby and children treated me like a queen all day. Thank you to my family and friends for their gifts, phone calls and lovely emails :)

Hubby spoilt me.. he won a gift card to Best Buy from his work and he used it to buy me a new laptop. He also got me a laptop bag for my birthday, so now you know where I'm writing these posts from! LOL!

Our church had a function on Friday night and part of it was a Bake sale, and I bought my birthday cake there. It was made and decorated by our Pastor's wife. Talk about yummy!

All in all, a lovely day!

Soil... and lots of it!!!

On Friday we received our 15 ton delivery of topsoil. That is a LOT of topsoil.

We've added bunny poop to it and put it into our boxes. Whew, talk about a lot of work!

Over the last couple of days we've started planting out the boxes with out seedlings. Quite exciting to see everything going in :)

Mother's Day

I am fortunate enough to have not just one or even two wonderful women to say Happy Mother's Day to, but THREE of them.

My mama - my biological mother. A lovely lady who understands me like no other.

My mother-in-law - I am so fortunate to have such a wonderful MIL. She made me feel like part of her family from the very start and I love her and the rest of my DH's family as if they were my own blood relatives.

My USA mama - a precious lady who started out as a family friend of my DH's family. She quickly became just as dear to me as my other two mothers.

Each of these dear ladies holds a very special place in my heart and I am so blessed to have them as part of my life.

I was terribly spoiled by my family for Mother's Day. DH let me sleep late and woke me at 9 am with a cup of coffee. Once I was awake my children came in with hand made cards (my favorite kind!) and little gifts from each of them. My hubby gave me a new quilting rotary cutting mat that has all the quilt template shapes on it. It's a nice size for quilt cutting.

When I came downstairs the children had two lots of handpicked flowers waiting for me. Aren't they lovely? I especially like the simplicity of the first arrangement.

After a quick breakfast of fruit we left for the historic farm museum. I LOVE it there. There are two different homesteads there, the one is from the 1860's and the other from the 1890's. We usually start with the 1860's farm, but this time we decided to start with the 1890's farm. It has a fully functional Barn, Blacksmith Shop, Farm House, Coop, Garden and Fishing Dock.

After that we broke for lunch. We had a picnic in the park. Fishing sandwiches - yum!

After lunch we toured the 1860's farm, also fully functional. It consists of an Orchard with bee hives, Cow Paddock, Pig Pen, Cabin (tiny!), Barn, Root Cellar, Coop/Shed, Sheep Shed, four crop fields, School House and an Ice House.

It really is a wonderful place to spend a lovely day.

My DH always insists that I not do ANY work on Mother's Day, so I had the day off from everything. He and the children really treated me like a queen all day, it was wonderful and I feel truly blessed to have the family I have.

Chicken Coop

We spent the evenings of last week and this weekend building our new chicken coop. It's going to be quite a bit bigger than I first imagined!

We based it on some of the coops on http://www.backyardchickens.com/ using the 4 x 8 size to best utilize 4 x 8 plyboard pieces.


DH and DD13 hard at work.


View of the nest boxes.


My wonderful DH and beautiful DD13.


While we were outside I saw this bug carrying this huge worm. It appears to be some kind of flying ant, but much bigger than any ant I've ever seen, and it has huge pincers. It obviously had someplace very important to get this worm to, so I followed it.


And I was surprised to find that it was on its way to this hold in the ground. It pulled the worm in after it. If you know what this interesting bug is, please let me know!

Anyway! More about the coop.


Our little chicks are so big now! They spend days outside, either in their brooder or else in a little pen I have set up for them. We decided to see what two of them would think about their future living quarters.


Awwww... they're so cute.


LOL. DD13 peeking through the chicken entrance door.


And here is the back of it, as you can see we have it painted with the primer coat, and we have the roof on. The door on the back is for cleaning and "human" access to the coop.

It's not finished yet, this week we'll finish the painting (it will be green) and add the final touches. Once we have it moved to it's final home we'll add the outside pen.

Playing in the dirt :)

This is Colorado for you. This morning we woke up to sunny skies. By 12 pm it was snowing. By 1 pm the sun was out again and it was nice and warm. Today we planted out the cooler weather seedlings and also planted turnip, rutabaga and snap pea seeds. I LOVE the smell of that fresh, rich dirt, it's lovely. We also started more warmer weather seedlings. Mid May marks our approximate last freeze date.

We still have to clean out the rabbits and figure out a new chicken coop. Those chicks are HUGE now and not quite as cute as they were when we first got them, LOL. They'll need to go outside soon.

Speaking of dirt and chickens, while we were turning over the soil the kids were finding earthworms and feeding them to the chickens who thought they were in heaven! Funny biddies.

Where's my worm!?

On the moving to a homestead effort: We have saved up enough for a 20 to 30 % deposit on the property we're looking at in Missouri and have contacted a local bank to find out if we can qualify for a 2nd home loan so we can get started. We plan on buying the property and start paying it off while we're still here and DH has a great paying job. Exciting stuff!

Life is almost back to normal! :)

Well, our houseguests have left and our children really loved getting to know two of their cousins!

We were so lucky to have a really good snow the second day after they arrived, so the two boys could experience their first snowball fight, snowman, sledding, etc. Great fun!

Here is a group photo of the whole bunch of us. A lovely lady sent us money for a family outing so we all went to Amazing Jakes which was GREAT fun for everyone! The adults especially enjoyed the Go Karts, even "Ouma" rode once or twice :) Thank you my dear friend for treating our family, and being part of creating some very special memories!

Today was "Take Your Child To Work Day" so DD7 got to go this time much to her delight.

It was the first time she got to participate in this day, and she's still there with DH as I write this, and thoroughly enjoying herself!

At lunch time the rest of us drove out there and had lunch together at a buffet restaurant and then all the other children got to tour Daddy's work as well.

In taking the children to DH's work I again avoided any highways. I get ridiculously panicked when I have to drive on a highway/freeway. I don't know why, but I was glad to find out today that I'm not alone in this fear. Fear of road travel is called Hodophobia, but I'm more fearful of highways/freeways, especially either merging onto a highway or having other vehicles merge onto the highway in the lane I'm in... I can't even stand it when DH is driving and I have been known to close my eyes when there are lots of cars merging onto the highway (when DH is driving, not when I'm driving! LOL!) How to get over it? I don't know.

Anyway, enough of that. We had a lovely lunch and the children really enjoyed seeing where DH works, I think that's important for them to know and see.

Our garden is coming alive and all the bulbs that were here before we bought this house and coming up everywhere, it's so pretty! Here are a few photos from yesterday:

Well, that's all for now, I'm sure everyone is enjoying the return of Spring and getting those veggie gardens started!