Why I didn't post in October...

This month DH and I have been working on the house. Of course ive been canning and I put that up on my facebook page for the blog. If you want to see more pictures go on over there.

But. Our livingroom carpets were gross when we moved in and with 4 pets they kust got worse. We had planned to replace it, and we have been saving money to do it. Im not going to tell you how much we spent on this project, but it was a lot. And we did all the labor. I can't imagine what this would have cost us to have someone come in and do it!

And of course i have some pictures for you! 

I took pictures of the room/areas before i started the job. 

Yuck right??

I forgot to get a before picture here. But you can see how bad the carpets were i. The others. This is the largest part of the room. 

All nasty carpets took me most of the day to rip out. Then there was all the sand and dirt underneath it!! Then i had staples and tack strips to remove too. 

Me and declutter dog were up to the task at hand! We filled this bucket 4 times with tack strips, room dividers, and staples. Oh my word! If i have to pull another staple in my life it will be too soon!!

So after everything was removed it looked much better.

The natives were getting restless though. 

We decided to replace part of the sub floor, due to some damage. (Dont do it if you dont have to folks! This was a lot of work!!) we swept and swept and swept again. 

Then it was time to lay the underlayment down. Oh look im going the wrong way! 

So we had to move it and cut it to fit and then move the wood as we went too. 

(Not light!)

Finally we got that going the right way. 

And we're ready to lay the wood down. (That piece is just holding the underlayment down for now.

Fall 2015 Capsule Wardrobe

Autumn in Minnesota is a funny thing. It can be 80 degrees and then suddenly it's 50. And the nights get cooler and mornings seems to stretch into night with the dew and frost touching the ground longer. Watching the leaves change and sipping warm cider or coffee while the breeze blows is heaven. Until one day, it's 20 and you didn't realize winter was coming so early.

I seems that summer is slipping away from me at an ever increasing rate.
I've been canning up the last of the garden harvest and bringing in the winter squash for storage.
The garden will be tilled one last time and the meat chickens all slaughtered.

Now, what will I be wearing in the cooler weather?
I've got pants that seem to rotate seasons with me and a few shirts.
I keep all my long johns and swim wear together in what I call a seasonal drawer.
I bought a few new pairs of wool socks for winter. How I love wool socks!

I wanted to have more flannel shirts and warm sweaters in my closet. But, realistically I still have a few of them. I need to see how they go together.

I'm having a problem of whether I should stay with the colors that I've been using. The navy/pink/mint with purple and yellow thrown in for good measure. But, I've decided to go with a navy/red/white/mint with a touch of black  for more of a autumn feel. I'm making a red skirt from some wool that I've had for awhile with flannel pockets. :) (so cozy!)
And some red corduroy flare pants.

It's likely that the pants will not be done before I start wearing it all, but it will be a welcome addition once the chill sets in.

I've been using stylicious (a free app) to put outfits together.

Downton Abbey Quilt-part 2

Well, this quilt has been tough. I did it as a challenge and it was that! 

The top squares are together and all I have left now to do is put them together in strips, make the middle and outside strips and attach all of that together. Then the top will be completed and go off to the quilter. 

On the left side you can see the fabric that tI will be using for the strips in the middle.
If you are interested in the pattern it is "Wild Rose" by Chris Hoover, All of her designs you can see here including this one and a few others that I really like.
This is a intermediate pattern and I really feel like I stretched my quilting abilities with this one. I feel really good about it so far!



This is my master bedroom. It normally looks this way, I didn't clean anything before I took this picture. I'm actually proud of my accomplishments in keeping a clean house. It's a daily struggle for me. I am working on my daily habits still. Laundry day is a success.



This is where the quilt will be going. Hopefully, you can see the reasons why I chose the colors that I did. I want it to look good in this green tea room.

I hope to have some pictures of the finished quilt up as soon as I can get the rest of it attached and off to the quilter's house.

How much meat do I need for a year?

I don't think I blogged about this last year, but it's been an on going conversation with my Mom as to how I could make sure we're getting good quality meat and how much I should produce. Last year, around this time;I had ordered a quarter of a bison, a whole hog and a tenth of a bison for all ground meat later. We have not ate it all yet… 
I even gave some bison ground meat away for Christmas presents so people could try it out. 

So. many. pork chops. I’ve got the receipt for what I ordered last year and we are not going to order any more chops. We are ordering half a hog, a quarter of a bison and a lamb. 

We only have one upright freezer and the regular sized on on top of the fridge. 

Last year we had 170 lbs of bison(with both orders combined), and 278 lbs of pork. I slaughtered 3 chickens and 2 rabbits at maybe 5 lbs a piece? So, 15l bs of chicken and 10 lbs of rabbit?

But,  no deer meat. I really miss that. Although some people DH works with gave us a bag of venison burgers. I wish I could get some venison like I used to have access to back home. I think next year I’ll have to take up deer hunting. One deer would probably set us up just fine with everything else we have. 

I'd eventually like to raise my own pigs, but with what we are eating we'd only need one pig a year. I suppose I could raise 2 pigs every couple of years. 

2014 meat

170 lbs Bison

278 lbs Pork

  15 lbs Chicken

+10 lbs Rabbit

473 lbs of Meat

2015 meat (expected)

100 lbs Bison

160 lbs Pork

  60 lbs Lamb

  30 lbs Chicken

+50 lbs Rabbit

400 lbs of Meat

Hmm, after looking at it like this I might harvest less rabbits than I thought. I don't harvest that many rabbits right now because I'm still working on my breeding stock  getting regulated. I am phasing out the dutch rabbits. I sold 6 of them, enough to buy a few bags of food. Then I had another litter, 3 more little rabbits... I have 5 left. So, I guess I'll eat the other 4. One of them I'm not sure I could bear to eat. She's almost like a mascot to me now. 

Per my Mom's suggestion I tried to get it around 356 lbs. On the premise that you will have 1 lb. of meat per day. For our household that's a 1/2 lb. a person. Some days we have company and eat more, for example a roast. And some days we don't eat any at all, when we go out or have salad. I went over last year, by a lot. It’s really hard to estimate that when you have to order by the half or quarter. I don’t know how large the animal is to begin with…so half of a 300 lb hog is 150 lbs, but what if the hog is only 190 lbs? But seeing the numbers in black and white from last year will help me going forward. It created a baseline for us to work with. I think I did ask for a smaller one this year. So, we’ll see how that goes. I am excited to try out the lamb this year. We like to try something new every year. 

I’m trying luffa plants and lamb this year. HA HA, I just noticed that they both begin with the letter ‘L’.
(This blog post is brought to you by the letter 'L' and the number '2'.)

We ate maybe 1/2 to 3/4 of it? I have been buying hot dogs at the store this past year, and some sliced meats, but not too much. This year I’m going to get more brats done and see what my options are for sausages. Since we’re going to eat them anyways I need to get them with the meat that I’m buying. Plus, no nasty additives in these. I’ve found that I don’t buy too much meat at the store. Oh, and I bought a few bags of shrimp. They weren’t as good as the fresh ones back home…but what did I expect? HA HA. I miss the seafood too. Not sure how I can deal with that. Maybe I can barter with a fisherman? I really hate fishing. I fall asleep or run up and down the river bank or if I'm in a boat I just jump in cause it's so hot. 

Anyways. I’m still working on getting this down. I know last year we spent about a thousand dollars on meat. But, that’s not too bad really. That's a bit less than $84 a month. Not too bad for all the bacon, steaks and ham we can eat.

If I could do that each year and grow (almost) everything we need from the garden we’d be doing really well. Then I’d just need to figure out the grain situation. 

I’ve found that buying potatoes at the source helps a lot too. $5 for 50 lbs. They last a pretty long time. 

I do this because I want to be able to regulate the chemicals and antibiotics that are in our meat and food sources. 

As of now, we have fresh eggs, rabbit, chicken and veggies on our homestead. And I buy the pork, bison and lamb from a neighbor. Literally, down our street. 

Let me know what you think, are you doing anything to be more self sufficient or community sufficient? 

Strawberry jam with a new recipe

There were more...but we couldn't stop eating them out of hand. 

DH and i picked berries together and it was such fun. (in June...)Ive never been strawberry picking, only peach picking(In August before school started again).  My Mom and I used to go picking peaches together. There aren't any good peaches up in Minnesota. They advertise them, but the ones I've bought have just been flat in my mouth. No zing the way a peach should have. That sweetness that drips down your chin and pulls your mouth into a smile as you eat it. Nope, they just don't exist here. Only in South Carolina. I know that you think Georgia produces more peaches than anywhere, but they don't. South Carolina produces more peaches, Georgia just advertises more.

I digress, strawberries. So living in a different location brings different fruits and vegetables to the dining room table. I may not be able to get sweet, fresh peaches here in Minnesota. But, the strawberries are out of this world! I've never tasted a strawberry picked right off the bush and still warm from the sun. It's a slice of heaven. I wanted to save that strawberry heaven feeling, so I decided to make... strawberry jam. And of course, no complaints from DH as it's his favorite flavor of jam! 

Making strawberry jam 

I also made some apple jelly. You can see the finished apple jelly on the left and the strawberry jam on the right. And the peanut butter that I had to buy so we could have PB&Js with all the yummy jam! 

I took this recipe from my favorite canning book. I'm sure you would love it. 

The Better homes and garden canning book. I've made almost every recipe in it and it is wonderful! 

If you can only get one book for canning I would say get the Ball book for the year and then get this one. (I know that's 2, but you can get the ball book in a set each year so it's practically free!) 

Another thing to add to my pantry/cellar that's going to be in the basement. 

I can't wait for that jam to set so I can have a sandwich and a cuppa tea. 

All in all I used about half of the box of strawberries to make 8 half pints and 1 pint plus a little bit that I didn't fill up a whole jar so it's in the fridge.  Not bad for a few hours of work I'd say!