Beauty Farming Life

Home Canning Do's and Don'ts, image courtesy of US Natl Archives During WWII, the US government pushed food conservation and a big part of the process was home canning of fruits and vegetables.  The citizens at home did their part of course but I guess it was not without incident; burns, illness, breakage etc, were apparently pretty commonplace, so the government put out this poster of "what not to do" when canning to help turn the tide. It's all pretty much stuff that still stands today when canning.  After all, canning is a process that's been around a long time. As always, you can click on the 'history' label below or to the right and see all the poster images I've been able to source online and share.  I'd sure love to have some of these, but for now, they must live on in digital online form from various archives and websites around the country.

The silver plated thrift store tray I blogged about HERE  has a new home! It's on the coffee table in the living room at the farm, and looks exactly as I had hoped.  Sort of shabby chic/casual. Now I need to figure out what to put on it.   Seems like everything I put on it took away from the beauty of the tray.  There is the obligatory tea service but again, I put some china tea cups on there, and it just didn't look right.  Then I put a glass dish on there but being clear, it sort of just blended in with the silver.  Not sure what other options there are. Any suggestions?

Graphic courtesy of USA Today I found this online the other day and was fascinated by it.  I've always been intrigued about the differences in regional words and phrases.  For example, down here in the Southern US we say Y'ALL to mean you all , even though it's grammatically incorrect.   So when I saw this, I thought I would share it.    It's a map showing how the majority of people in each of the counties of the United States describe the ubiquitous fizzy carbonated beverage we seem to love so much.  For those of you in other parts of the world, here in the US we use the words "Soda", "Pop", or just a generic "Coke" to describe them and it's pretty much based on where you live or grew up.   So, in this chart, when people want a soft drink, this is what they told researchers they say.  The red tones are where most people say "give me a Coke".  Coke can mean Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper or whatever.  Strange I know, it...

  Tomorrow night (Saturday), there will be a sky watching treat as the moon not only becomes it's regular "full moon", it will also make it's closest approach to Earth all year.  It will appear in the sky to be much larger and up to 16% brighter.  When it lies close to the horizon, it appears even larger, something they call the "moon illusion".  This time around, with the moon at its closest point as well, it should make for some stunning photographs, and I hope to capture one or two while at the farm. The full moon in May is traditionally known as the "Flower Moon".  It's also known as the "Full Corn Planting Moon" and/or the "Milk Moon". Image courtesy of: SPACE.com Click HERE  for the fancy pants scientific explanation. So go outside tomorrow night and look up at the sky, instead of down at the garden, and enjoy the supermoon!

I mentioned in one of my pre-holiday posts that we were making several of our gifts.  Well, since the gifts have been given, I thought I'd share some pictures of what we did.  I'm sort of known among my friends and family for the mix in a jar recipes.  Most of the ones we use are our own recipes that we have tried out and made to use just for the jars.  Here is the dessert jar we made, it's a jar of chocolate chip cookie bar mix...dump the jar in a bowl, mix with some wet ingredients and you end up with a giant chocolate chip cookie/brownie hybrid. This one is our version of I guess what you could call something similar to hamburger helper.  This one is actually a goulash mix.  Just add hamburger, some tomatoes, water and this jar of mix and you've got a great meal ready to eat.  The one with the bow tie pasta in it was a special request from a dear friend who loves it, it's a turkey pasta dish. Once we got them done, we go...

A view on the property Here is a picture I took last weekend while roaming around picking berries.  It's where I found the "Passion Flower Vine" that I blogged about  HERE  a few days ago and I just thought it was so peaceful. We'll be out there today, wandering this path at some point I'm sure, but doing more work. Still don't have the flower beds whipped into shape, of course I'll have to mow and edge, have an old chicken coop building to help 2nd Family move down to their house, and just general 'stuff to do'.  If I can squeeze in one last berry picking adventure, I'll do that too. Oh, I almost forgot, we may end up getting window unit air conditioners this weekend as well.  At least that's the plan at this point.  It's just getting to be so hot out there, we want to have the option to make it more comfortable if we decide to turn them on, and of course, have any guests comfortable as...

A little seed love! Anyone who follows the blog knows that I love when I get my "seeds of the month" shipment in.  Imagine my surprise when I got home recently and found an unexpected package of seeds! But these beauties came courtesy of "Bee Girl", Melissa, author of the always inspiring blog, Sky Minded & Ever Growing .  The fact that these were hand gathered and even hand packaged in homemade seed packets by her, means more to me than any seed I could ever get from the store.  So now, I'll have some more great seeds to use in planning our garden in the Spring. She sent organic and even heirloom varieties of the following:   Radishes - Cherry Belle Kale - Red Winter and Red Russian Turnips - Purple Top White Globe   Beets - Early Tomatoes - Yellow Taxi When we (hopefully) eat some fabulous meals featuring these veggies, we'll have her to thank for it.  In exchange for her seed love, we're sending some blog love...

Victory Vitamin C image courtesy of: Florida Historical Society Here is a double feature for today.  I thought these posters were pretty neat.  During WWII, they not only urged people to grow their own food, and can their own veggies, they also pushed locally grown (and US grown) fruits and veggies. In this case, the push was for the nutritional and health benefits of Florida grapefruit juice by showing, healthy, in shape soldiers, presumably to persuade others to buy Florida grapefruit juice and get just as healthy. Cool to see the push from the farmers and growers. Perhaps an early version of the "Got Milk" or similar ad campaigns that we see today.  I guess Vitamin C does a body good, ha. 

We've had quite the rainfall the last couple of days.  2nd Family, who lives at the other end of the driveway, sent these pictures to me while I was at work. She said that 4.5" showed in the rain gauge and it was still raining.  This doesn't count the rain from yesterday which was probably an inch or two more. So it's most likely the farm has received almost 7 inches of rain over the last two days.  These are the kind of rains we usually get in Spring around here so it's kind of unusual this time of year.  It's because of a warm front backing up from the Gulf of Mexico and bumping into a cold front coming from the other direction.  Warm+Cold= storms and rain These are views from their yard and porch.  It was far too much to ask her to drive the quarter mile up to our house and snap a few pictures.  I'm sure we'll be out there during a monsoon and I'll get some firsthand pictures, ha.

After my blog post the other day about the unknown flower, which has since been identified by all you wonderful readers, I have been doing some online research and learned all sorts of fun facts.  Turns out this wild variation of Passion Flower, which later develops into a fruit, is closely related to the more common Passion Fruit (they are cousins).  It goes by a number of names when it grows wild: Wild Passionflower, Maypop, Apricot Vine, Mayapple, MollyPop, Maycock, Old Field Apricot, and White Sarsaparilla.  Who knew? They bloom from May thru September, and then edible fruits emerge about two to three months after the flowers.  The fruit is sweet smelling, yellowish, and about the size of an egg when ready to eat and are pulpy and sweet inside.  They also "pop" when squeezed or stepped on, hence the "Maypop" name. It is a perennial vine in the Southern US, and grows wild in these parts pretty much...

Rustic Arbor, photo courtesy of Fox Hollow gardens I'm not even sure what this is but when I saw it, I decided that someday, I want one!  I believe it's an arbor, made of found wood branches.  I can imagine relaxing under it after a long day, or just sitting and reading a book on a cool afternoon.  I love how it's kind of hidden amongst the greenery. I wouldn't even know where to begin to make something like this, but that's why I post these photos every Thursday, to share something I see that inspires me to want to someday do something like it on the farm.  This blog and my inspiration posts are like my own "Pinterest", LOL. Enjoy your day, we are finally enjoying a sunny day after several days of gloomy, rainy weather.

Here is just one of the many dewberry hauls we have gotten over the last few weekends.  Sadly "dewberry season" is officially over now.  I got the last couple of buckets yesterday.  Now, what to do with all these berries?  Here is how we do it, a great way to keep them almost as fresh as the day they were picked: The first thing to do is...   ...rinse and wash them!  I use this berry colander, which was my Mom's, it's ceramic and supposed to be non reactive with berries, but there were so many, I ended up using a mesh strainer anyway, no problems with reaction. Once they were washed a few times, I poured them onto a couple layers of paper towels, just to take some of the moisture off.  Then you take some more paper towels... ...and put them on top of the damp berries, gently patting them down.  This takes off some more moisture from the top side.  Then spread them out in a...

Cracker jars on pantry shelf Last Friday, I posted HERE about some cool jars we found at Ikea.  Well this Friday I thought I'd share some more of our storage plans.  I've been collecting these  cracker jars  (also called biscuit jars) from various stores or online as I find them (on sale) for about a year.  The link I posted is to  Amazon , where they always have them and frequently at great prices.  They aren't vintage of course, but they do have that vintage look that we like so well.  I also find them at other local stores and big box retailers in town. These are the shelves in the mudroom/pantry.  I took one shelf and set it at this level to maximize usage below and then figured out how many I could fit in the space.   Turns out the magic number is twelve...three rows of four jars!   Set of Cracker jars on pantry shelf They come in three sizes, 1 quart, 2 quart and 1 gallon, so that was a perfect way of setting up...

Sears Kenmore 15,100 BTU Window Unit Yay, we have cold air, but, alas, with an asterisk. We bought two of them Friday night after work.  Since they were on sale at a great price, and were the largest BTU's you can get for 110V electrical, the timing was just perfect.  We got them loaded into the Jeep, took them out there, and carried the heavy monsters into the house.  The instructions, as I feared, left a little to be desired, but after about 2 1/2 hours, we had the first one in and turned on.  Wonderful cold air blowing into the room and it started cooling down the house, at least the front part of the house. So we decided to go ahead and unpack and install the second one too.  Actually, 2nd Man voted for waiting until next weekend, but I said let's just do it, while we don't want to do it and get it over with.  You know, like when you just rip off a band aid.  So we did.  Second one only took about 30 minutes start to f...

We missed the December giveaway because of the holidays.  Thanksgiving and then of course getting ready for Christmas. So now we're in a new year and we are starting our monthly book giveaway and for this month, we're going to have two books ! Two books = two winners! Here is this month's giveaway.  For all the gardeners out there it is: Green Guides, What to Do When in Your Garden It's a great book that shows step by step what to do each month in the year.  For example it reminds you which bulbs to plant in Fall to have color in Spring, when to weed your flower beds so that you have less weeds later, and when to take cuttings later in Summer to plan it all again. Copyright 2011, the book is 256 pages long and filled will lots of color photos. As always, and for those new to the blog, the rules are as follows: You should be a "friend of the farm" (follower) and leave a comment here on this thread that you want to be ent...

Here is the shower curtain we got for the bathroom.  It just came in the mail the other day (bought it online).  We liked the colors, because the yellow is a recurring theme in the house, and the gray is a nice accent color we hadn't thought of.  We will be able to pull from it when decorating the bathroom.  I'm seeing yellow and gray towels, rugs and accessories.  The white is a slightly "off white" when you see it in person, and that fits in as well.  Heck, the pattern is even reminiscent of the pattern on the master bedroom comforter so that's a nice bonus.  This is one of the rooms that we weren't sure what direction to go as far as decorating so hopefully this will let us move forward.  Of course, we still need a water heater, but that's another post...

Save Seed for Victory poster, image courtesy of US Natl Archives Here's a good one and in light of the recent seed gift I received, it seemed appropriate.  This is from WWI, circa 1917 or so.  The Government was urging people to save the good seed, the valuable and well growing seed, because that could be a key to victory.  Unknown seed could be defeat.  In other words, they wanted citizens to save the seed from good and prolific crops to reuse for the following season.  This could help guarantee future good crops. Perhaps a bit over the top as when it came to the war effort but the message is still pretty relevant today.  There is one line on here I love most of all: Good Seed Wins True then, almost 100 years ago, and perhaps even more so today. Heirloom and organic can be the key to victory in 2013! Don't forget to enter the giveaway here

Arbequina Olives close up What is this, you might ask?  It's a closeup of some olives.  Yes, olives, growing on a tree, in a clay pot, in the back yard!  This is one of several trees I still need to transplant to the farm, just not sure where I want to put it yet.  If it survives in the ground, it is a tree that will last literally for decades and I want to find just the right spot for it out there.   Arbequina olive in a clay pot  Above is a picture of it in the clay pot where it is now.  It's a large pot, about 18" across, and when I bought the tree it was probably a foot tall, if that.  It's 5 years old now and about 4 1/2 feet tall.  It needs to get in the ground so it can grow to its full potential!   Closeup of tiny Arbequina olives  Here is a closeup of how they grow, almost like clusters of grapes, and as you can see, in all stages of growth, from tiny to large.  I would assume they produce at var...

I love this image of "Barnabas", our party/dinner tree.  He's an old (over 100 yrs we believe) Mesquite tree next to the house.  In the Spring, he's covered in soft, green, fern like leaves. But in the Winter, as seen here, he's stripped bare in all his nekkid glory. I've always thought that he looks like a tree from the set designer on a Steven Spielberg or George Lucas movie.

Photo from CountryLiving.com (via VonnieThe HappyHippy!) Sometimes, we get unexpected inspiration from other places.  This photo was sent to me by Vonnie over at "The Happy Hippy", one of our very sweet readers. Please be sure to check out her blog:  CLICK HERE TO VISIT HER BLOG . She found it while she was surfing the web for ideas and inspiration and was kind enough to think of me!  (THANK YOU!) I love this image, everything about it just screams to me to do something similar.  From what I have learned, it's the Connecticut garden of Pamela Page.  It looks like  is LOTS of work, but hey, nothing beautiful is ever accomplished without a little sweat equity, right?  Ironically, when I was looking at the area that I am slowly, but surely, clearing out for our future garden, I decided something simple and rectangular would be the easiest to work with...fence off a big squarish space and then start filling it in, a little at a time. And...

I'm all about the deal, and recently, I was at a local grocery store and found turkeys on sale.  It was just after the holidays, and they still had a few left that were fresh (not frozen) and had a "sell by" date of a few days later.  Sure, if I was buying one for a dinner a week from then, no, not a good idea, but after our success of the Thanksgiving turkey we roasted, I figured, why not buy two and go home and roast them and put them up? So are you ready for the price?  $5.00 each!  TWO 14 lb turkeys, for $10.00! So below is how we did them:  We started by removing the giblets and rinsing the turkey.  Then we rubbed it down, both under the skin and on top of the skin, with olive oil and our "farmhouse seasoning" blend of spices. Then it was put on this  Beer Can Turkey Rack , on a foil lined baking sheet in the oven.  We put it on the bottom level rack and roasted it for 1 hour at 450 deg. We didn't use a bee...