Storing up food!

I saw a Facebook quote this morning:   "GARDENING.  It's cheaper then therapy and you get tomatoes".  How cute.  I do think gardening is therapeutic.

I'm loving my pressure canner.  I now answer to "the crazy canning lady". I've been doing lots of canning and freezing these days and it feels good to get food put away.

Here's a few harvesting, canning, and freezing pics.....

A pretty big broccoli harvest this year...if you look close you can see the worms.  just kidding.  i picked off all 200 before taking this picture.  what can i say?  it's organic!

This is the first time i've canned green beans, verses freezing them.  I'll do some of both...

Pickle day was a success yesterday...

We discovered wild raspberry bushes all along the old railroad bed behind our house.  We love raspberries and they were free!

They eat most of them before they ever make it to the house!

Another new one...chicken broth!  I never have any thawed when i need it, so how handy to have it canned.  i go through a lot of broth in the winter for soups.  This broth is from a couple roasters i cooked up this week.  After i picked the chicken i put the bones and skin back in the pot, added water and simmered to make more. 

Blueberries!  Froze most of these for smoothies, pancakes, and snacking. 

I have enough red beets this year to can my own.  Nothing like red beets in the winter! 

This one is probably the most exciting, Rod's even pumped up about it.  Beef!  Our roasts are tough, VERY tough. No matter how you cook 'em.  But by cutting them up and canning them, it becomes tender as ever and with great flavor.  The boys eat a lot more beef this way, and i enjoy not having to watch everyone spit out their meat cause it's too chewy. 

Also canned some meadow tea concentrate.  We'll find out in December how this one turned out.  I canned enough to supposedly make 8 gallons. 

We even put some bunny in the freezer this week.  Not this one though.....yet :)

The fun has just started; we still have corn, tomotoes, apples, peaches, and whatever else i might try!

wedding

A few of you non-facebookers are waiting for these :)
Carly and Derrick had a fabulous wedding here Sunday!  Can't imagine it going any better.  Weather was great, ceremony was meaningful, food was super, and fellowship was fun...

Carly had a vision when she saw our place and she ran with it!  Love how she set up and decorated...

 

Plenty of fun for the kids too...Candy drop, bounce house and train rides!

The boys enjoyed playing with Carly's 9 nephews, ages 9 and under!  Here they are getting nice and dirty before the wedding...

A random highlight for me was Saturday, during the set up time i spotted one of the grooms aunts and recognized her right away as my favorite NICU nurse when the twins were in the hospital!  it was neat to reminise with her.  small world!

Congrats to the new couple!

You know your raising boys in the country when......

.....checking each other for ticks is part of the routine.
.....they often ask "are we going to butcher that?"
.....Anywhere outside is their potty. 
.....Your just-turned-2-year old says
     "Amish neighbor"
.....They remind daddy to check the groundhog trap
.....You send them out to get the mail and they come
      back an hour later. 
.....They happen upon a fox skull while playing
      outside. 

I love my little country boys!

new websites

A few websites that are new to me, that i'm excited about::

First one is a link to Tumblebooks, an online storybook reading site, the boys love watching these stories and reading along with it.  This is new to me, maybe others have known about this before! go to http://online.lancasterlibraries.org then click the blue tumblebook link on the left margin, scroll down again to tumblebooks, then put in your card number (you need a library card to do this), and scroll and click tumblebooks again.  This should bring you to the books!  they have a big selection!

A wonderful canning website!  http://www.simplycanning.com/  - i've started pressure canning last year and love it.  it opens up a whole new world.  yesterday i did 7 jars of beef.  Today i did green beans and red beets.  On my list of new things to can is broth and apple butter.  There are lots of easy to follow instructions for canning on this site!  Pressure canning OR hot water bath canning.  Very helpful.

Healthy desserts!!  This is a cute blog filled with recipes for yummy desserts with a couple changes so we can consider it a healthy dessert :)  http://www.chocolatecoveredkatie.com/

Flying weekend

This weekend was the Father's Day weekend Fly-in at Dillsburg.  We decided to camp out overnight this year, last year we just went up for Friday evening.  The weather was great.  Rod didn't take his Parachute but he got 2 rides from other guys with their flying machines. 
We started off Friday in the pool and then supper.

Then to the runway to set up camp and watch the airplanes..

Here's daddy getting a ride on his dream machine....

I thought Clay was going to lose his voice, the way he was squealing about all the planes..He was getting into it..But sometimes it was "no like noise".

The boys made a friend next door.  This is his plane..Brad took this pic.  I think he's better then me at taking pictures :]

Saturday morning, bright and early.

This got the boys asking for rides in an airplane.  Saturday night Rod took Adam up in his parachute.  I wasn't sure how he'd do, it's a little scary when you first take off.  But he really liked it, they stayed up for 45 minutes.

Before:

AFTER:

A video of takeoff:

Adam wanted so bad to fly down to Tractor Grandma's last night for our get together.  It was just too windy.  That'll give him something to look forward to for another time!

A great Father's Day weekend for a hard working father!

This week there's nothing on the calendar!!  But we have a wedding here Sunday, so i'll be weeding and tiding up around the barns.  I'm excited for Carly and looking forward to connecting with some old friends that will be at the wedding!  It's 8:50 Monday morning and the boys are all still in bed!  Gotta love summer :)  (and late nights!)