Getting my ducks in a row

My life is changing.  We have this empty nester thing working and we are retired now.  I have discovered that I run out of energy a lot faster.  I have discovered I really don't like cold weather any more.  It makes my bones ache and I can't get warm.   I find myself looking for ways to do things simpler.   Right now I am pondering my garden.  35 raised beds is more than I can handle alone.

I used to get lots of help and now I know it wasn't lots of help but one helper who helped a lot.  Oh how I miss my daughter that loved to garden with me!   But she has flown the nest and gone into her own life.  So now I have discovered I am alone in the garden.  Those 35 beds got the better of me last year and it will happen again this year unless I come up with a plan.

I am thinking of removing the beds at the back of the garden and leaving a large open area.  I can till it up and plant corn there along with those vining pumpkins, squash and melons mixed in. Maybe later today I can go out and look at it and see how I can redo my garden to make things easier for me to take care of.

I guess this mild winter has made it easier to think about gardening and being able to go out and actually look at the garden and think about it.  Most years in February I wouldn't be able to see the beds at all until April or May.  But this year any snow has long since melted and I can see very well.  I also know in another week I might be able to start moving dirt and actually get rid of the beds if they have thawed out.

Now I need to ponder how many beds I really still need.  Four beds are permanently planted, rhubarb, asparagus and mint/tarragon beds.   I have also discovered I prefer bush beans over pole beans.  I have friends who love pole beans and told me they were easier to pick.  I found the opposite to be true for me anyway.  I have discovered it takes a lot of peas to get what we need for each year.  But they have to be planted early or they won't make it.  My carrots leave much to be desired and I can buy heirloom carrots cheaper locally so its not worth my growing them.  So I need to sit down with a clear mind and plan out my garden and what I really need from it.  

So how is your garden plans going?   Are you going through life changes and having to adjust too?  Has your diet changed and you now find you are buried in things you used to run out of and now you run out of things you always had plenty of?  What changes are you making this year?

Have a blessed day!
Cherlynn
brchbell@yahoo.com

Checking in

Its been a while since I've posted mostly because things have been pretty insane here.  We decided to try and sell our farm.  Our basement was piled higher and deeper and we had our work cut out.  We also finally got rural water which added to the insaneness.  Our home is a quarter mile from the road and the ground was semi frozen and hard to trench.  It was trenched right next to our driveway and what a mess we had!   We had to bring in two loads of gravel just to be able to get in and out of here.  When it got all connected we had no water pressure.  Nothing was working right.  We had waited 12 years for this and what a dissappointment!  Christmas was a nightmare with people trying to take a shower and just getting drips to wash in.  Yesterday we finally got it fixed.  I went to the water office to let them know we still had no water pressure and see if they could suggest a new and hopefully better plumber.  They went and got a new pressure regulator and showed me how to increase the pressure myself.  They gave me the name and number of a plumber too just in case.  I came home and tried what they told me to do and it worked perfectly!  We now have awesome water pressure and all the faucets now work great.

Now for the really insane part we went through everything in the basement and donated tons of stuff to Good Will and other second hand places.  Got our good stuff put away or repacked into more permanent containers in case we had to move quickly.   We also got buried in bags of nonburnable stuff we had to haul to the kids places to dump in their dumpsters.  That's another thing that  didn't get taken care of until this week.

Two days after Christmas I departed with my daughter on a cross country trip.  That meant I had to get all of Christmas put away the day after Christmas and all the food had to be dealt with. We took off early trying to beat a winter storm moving in and made it to west Kansas in time to by pass the mess.  For some reason I saw that it was not going through Colorado so that is where we headed toward.  We went to the Oz Museum in western Kansas and stopped that first night near the border.  The next day we went to the Colorado dunes and then headed to Mesa Verda.  We tried to see the cliffs but it was a 30 plus mile journey on very winding roads and about half way there we realized it would be pitch black before we got there so we turned around and headed back out.  We had planned to stop in Santa fe New Mexico that night and my daughter was head strong about getting there.  We made it but it was really getting late.  Her surprise was we were spending the night  with her twin sister who had spent Christmas In Utah.  Nice surprise even if we didn't have much time together.  We had breakfast and went to the San Miguel Church together and then stopped for hot chocolate before we parted ways.  We Spend half a day in Santa Fe and then drive across New Mexico stopping at several Indian sites.  The next day we headed to the Grand canyon.  We came in a different way then we had ever done before and so I got to see things I had never seen before.  Again we had a late night getting into Lake Powell area.  The next day we stopped at a new national park area The Grand Staircase Escalante Monument.   It was quite exciting to visit this area and a place I would love to go back and explore.   We then headed north stopping in I think it was Zions.  She stopped and wanted to go hiking.  She got me to go places I never dreamed I'd go!  We climbed down into a frozen creek bed and hiked all through the cliffs and canyons.  We meet up with a herd of mountain goats.  It was quite a hike.  We ended up not getting near where we had planned to be.  We ended up in Fillmore Utah that night and the hotel had a train set up overhead going through the lobby and room they serve breakfast in.    The next day we finally got to Provo, Utah just in time for my daughter to move into her dorm.  I went to a hotel very near her.  The next day she had orientation and I had to be out of my hotel by 11 am.  She thought she could pick me up at noon so I just waited in the lobby for her.  We then went to the rest of her orientation together.  Later we went out to eat and then went to temple square in Salt Lake City.  We spend a few hours there going on tours and seeing all the Christmas lights.  Did a little more shopping and I filled her gas tank one more time.  She then dropped me off at the Amtrak station.  My train was suppose to be there at 3AM but it arrived 2 hours late.  I used to take the train from Neosho, Missouri to Kansas City when I was a kid and we took the train once from Kansas City to St. Louis with our boys but I have never taken Amtrak before.   While it ended up running late and they had over booked it I still really enjoyed my 37 hour trip back home.  It was very comfortable and very clean.  I liked being able to get up and move around.  They also had electric connections so I could keep my phone charged up.  I would not hesitate to go by train again.

The day I got home a professional photographer came to take pictures of our home.  I was scurrying around stashing things and trying to stay out of the way.  I knew he was coming so left all my bags in the car.  And until today its been really crazy taking care of one thing after another.

So if our farm sells we will probably move to SE Missouri.  We don't really care if it sells or not as we really love where we are but its really more than we want to deal with at this stage of our life.  Here is the listing if anyone wants to see it: http://benbond.kwrealty.com/listing/mlsid/108/propertyid/1971325/

Feel free to pass the link on to anyone you think might be interested.  We are close to Jamesport, MO(Amish community) and Adam Ondi Ahman, Far West, Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah (LDS historical sites)  We are the midway point between Des Moines, Iowa and Kansas City.  

So hopefully I will get back to posting more often.  Now that things have settled back down.  

Hope you all have a blessed new year and we all prosper in 2016!
Cherlynn

There is never enough time

Have you ever caught yourself saying when I get ______ done, then I can do_______.   I sure know I have said that many times in my life.  We think when we finish school, the kids grow up, we retire that we'll have more time.  But we never do have more time.   Its just that simple.

So you have to take a good look at your life and decide what is most important and make room for those things.   Sleep is important.  If you don't get enough your body and mind will shut down.  It's non-negotiable.  For me taking care of our home, daily scripture time, growing our food, putting home made healthy meals on the table are important.  You have to look at your life and decide what the non-negotiable items are in your life.

Next you have to decide what items you feel you really need to be doing.   How can you then fit them into your life in a way that you can afford financially and physically.   You think you will get to it somewhere down the road because you won't.  You have to plan now to work these important things into your life.  

I went through my life and discovered where I was wasting time.  I waste the most time if I don't get enough sleep.  My body simply doesn't function if I don't get enough sleep.  I spend to much time on facebook, pinterest and other time wasting activities.  So enough sleep helps me stay on track.  I spend about 2 minutes on Facebook.  That's enough time to wish folks a happy birthday, make a quick comment and be on my way.  I don't go to pinterest unless I have a reason to be there.  I actually write it down to keep me in focus and getting what I need and departing.  So you have to know your time wasters and stay on focus.  I can spend hours on these items or playing solitaire.  

Learn new skills and read more.  Make use of your time and don't waste it.  Learn to be frugal so you can stay on budget.  Don't say you don't have time until you take a look at your life and get rid of the things that make you waste time.  Plan ahead and don't let things surprise you.  Christmas is coming and it cames on the same time each year.  I plan in January what gifts will be given so we can buy throughout the year.  No surprises unless my other half keeps our finances in a stranglehold all year long but I can usually get home made gifts made up out of my stash to help out.  I found some neat gifts that could be made quickly out of old sweaters right after I had given a whole bag of them away.  So if you need quick gift ideas go search on Pinterest if you have a stash of old sweaters!

So good luck on finding time to do the things you really want and need to do.  If you continue to say I'll do that when I have time you already know now that you will never do it if you don't make time to do it now.  

I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving with your friends and family and have a very blessed Christmas season. 

Cherlynn
brchbell@yahoo.com

My favorite thing to do with the abundance of green tomatoes at the end of the season

My family loves fried green tomatoes.  And we sure miss them all winter long.   A few years ago I tired an experiment that worked perfectly to give us this special treat in the dead of winter.  I'm going to tell you how to make up these green tomatoes to keep in the freezer and fry up when wanted.

       

First you need the green tomatoes.  At the sign of our first frost I dash out and pick all the tomatoes left in the garden.  

Now you need to slice them and I use a mandoin slicer to make fast work of the job.

Now because they will be frozen you HAVE to blanch them.  You need to bring water to a boil and drop them in and leave them for 1 minute and then pull them out and put in to ice water.  Blanching stops the action of the fruit ripening any farther so make sure you do this step!

Now you are ready to coat them in your flour seasoning mix.  I grew up just using flour, salt and pepper.  Some folks like to add in corn meal.  Just use what ever you normally use.  

Now layer them on trays.  I found that lining the tray with plastic wrap really helped to remove them after frozen.  I've tried using just the tray and I've used foil, wax paper and they all were hard to remove the frozen tomatoes.  Plastic wrap was easily lifted and I wa able to remove the tomatoes easily.  

Now that I have these into the freezer I will wrap the rest in newspaper and let them slowly ripen in our basement.  I save these treats for after the holidays.  By January winter is begining to feel to long and thats when I fry the first of these up as a side dish for dinner.  

They taste just like they came from the garden and are a wonderful treat as we wait for winter to pass.

Blessing to you and hope you will enjoy this specail treat too!

Cherlynn

brchbell@yahoo.com

Why I don't trust most things at Walmart

Walmart buys stuff from the cheapest vendors.   Most of them are based in China.  They are counterfeiters on lots of stuff.  Paul Mitchell Shampoo is one that's been proven the Walmart stuff is counterfeit product coming from China.  Every time Paul Mitchell   has a claim filed on their shampoo they ask for the product and proof of where it was bought and 100% of it has come from China and was bought at Walmart.  How can you tell if its a counterfeit product or not?  Its almost impossible to know.  China has been expert at counterfeiting products around the world.  Somethings don't really matter like books but many are important to know.  Like children's toys and clothing, food and beauty products, medical supplies.  The problem with the Paul Mitchell shampoo was it caused people to go blind.  Paul Mitchell shampoo is 100% natural.  I love their products so to have something that causes blindness shows its a counterfeit product.   Some say that Walmart has no clue that they are buying and stocking counterfeit products but I beg to differ.   They know they are buying at the cheapest price and most of it is coming from Asia on container ships so they might want to turn a blind eye but someone most certainly knows.  More importantly to me is that they don't care.
The only way to avoid counterfeit products is to buy from a reliable place.  There are lots of good places to buy at.   Do I shop at Walmart?  Yes, but I sure do think about everything I buy and if it matters if it's counterfeit.  I do most of my shopping elsewhere and am grateful that I know what is going on.  I wanted to make sure you know also.

Cherlynn
brchbell@yahoo.com

Making your own salad dressings

So many are suffering from food allergies like I am. I have discovered I'm not really allergic to wheat just can't handle GMO grains. Unfortunately I have learned I really am allergic to all soy even non GMO stuff. It makes it hard to be able to buy anything at the store now. So I make my own.

To start with I have to make my own mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is easy to make on your own. I always make mine in the blender so here's my recipe.

Blender Mayonnaise

Place ¼ cup oil (your choice any kind will work) in blender with 1 egg, 1 teaspoon each: dry mustard and sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt, a dash of cayenne red pepper, 2 Tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar. Mix on high for 5 seconds and then slowly drizzle in ¾ cup of oil. You may need to stop the blender and scrap down the sides. Now you have non GMO soy free Mayonnaise to use as a base for your dressings.

Make your own Ranch Dressing

I make my dressings up in pint canning jars.

Put ½ cup mayonnaise and ½ cup buttermilk in the jar. Now you can use sour cream or yogurt instead. Any combination as long as you use a total of 1 cup total. BUT if you want it to taste like Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing you will want to use the buttermilk and mayonnaise. Now add 1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar, 2 cloves crushed fresh garlic (or ¼ tsp garlic powder) ½ teaspoon each: onion powder, dried parsley, dried dill, and dried chives, a few shakes of cayenne red pepper, salt and pepper to taste. Shake in the jar well and use within 2 weeks.

Russian Dressing is hard to find but easy to make:

1 Tablespoon finely chopped onion

1 cup mayonnaise

¼ cup chili sauce

up to 4 teaspoons of bottled horseradish if desired

1 teaspoon hot sauce, Frank's Red Hot Sauce works best

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

¼ teaspoon sweet paprika

fine sea salt to taste

In a mortar and pestle mash onion to create a paste or use a large heavy knife to mince and mash the onion into a paste. Put into your jar and add in the rest of the ingredients and shake to blend. Use within 2 weeks.

Thousand Island Dressing

I have a more elaborate recipe but this one is very simple and does the job just fine.

In your jar, add:

½ cup Mayonnaise

2 Tablespoon ketchup

2 Tablespoon sweet pickle relish

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon paprika

¼ teaspoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon lemon juice

a few drops Worcestershire sauce

a few drops of hot sauce

Shake well in jar and use within 2 weeks.

Vinegar and oil

You can use any type of oil or vinegar that you would like. The important thing to know is you must use 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar. I put mine in a salad shaker container and leave on the table. I use ¾ cup extra virgin Olive oil with ¼ cup balsamic vinegar. Very simple and so very good.

Honey Citrus Dressing

Into your jar add:

¼ cup vinegar

1 cup oil

2 Tablespoon honey

4 teaspoons lemon juice

2 teaspoon orange juice

½ to 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

¼ teaspoon dry mustard

a dash each of ground red pepper and black pepper.

Shake well and use within 2 weeks.

Italian Dressing

Into your jar add:

¼ cup vinegar (any type)

2/3 cup oil

2 Tablespoon water

1 teaspoon each of garlic salt, onion powder, sugar, parsley and salt

1 ½ teaspoon Oregano

¼ teaspoon pepper

a big pinch of basil

a pinch of celery salt

Mix and shake well in your jar.  

Hope this helps you!

Cherlynn

Getting Mosquitoes to go have dinner elsewhere

I heard about this a few months ago and have tried this and so has several of my friends.  It really works.   Listerine.  Pour it on a wash rag and wipe down with it or put it in a spray bottle and spray it on.   It worked 100%!  I couldn't believe how they buzzed all around me but not one landed for their blood sucking dinner.   If you are going to be out long term, put it in a small spray bottle and take it with you.   It does wear off after about 25 to 30 minutes so having a spray bottle handy to refresh works great if you are sitting out at night.

Hope this helps you enjoy sitting out at night this summer!

Cherlynn