Some things I have learned about living in the country

As you know we moved waaaaaay out to the country.  We love it but we recognize there are some trade offs and here are some of them.

During the drive into town we get to see dozens of tractors, we also get dozens of goldfish crackers all over the floor of the van.

Neighbors are considered anyone within a 5 mile radius.  One particular neighbor has a very large stained glass picture of a ram’s head in their front room window.  Nice.

I have replaced noisy neighbors with noisy cows.

Dust has become part of the decor.

Sometimes my house smells like chickens, the live variety not the lemony-herb roasted kind.

Neighbors rallied together after a crazy driver was spotted on a nearby county road.  Police arrived, spoke with the offender and returned to inform us that “everything’s okay” the out-of-towner  was actually a “pretty famous bull rider.”  The police officer reassured us that he had actually seen him ride in person.  Ahhh, fears calmed.

No more little notes on our door about how irritating it is that our dogs bark on Tuesday nights from 6-7 pm.

The bad manners of the neighborhood dogs make our dogs look like saints, and that is hard to do.

Of the many things that can and do wake me up in the morning, flies have been added to the most wanted list.

I’m almost positive our local crop duster is no other than daredevil Evel Knievel.

It’s official city slickers are afraid of dirt – on their clothes, on their shoes, on their cars and on their kids.

My country friend recently complimented me on choosing the perfect color couch – Colorado Dirt Brown.  It’s the new camouflage thank you very much!!

We don’t wear white after labor day or before labor day.

Oh I could go on and on.  We realize it’s not the life for everyone but we LOVE it!!

Thanks, Courtney

We trotted our turkeys off this morning

We kicked of our day of thanks by joining the annual turkey trot in town.  We got up extra early, bundled everyone up and braved the 23F weather.  Robert has been training for a few weeks and he ran the 5K.  Go Robert!  I wore the baby in our Ergo, pushed our son in the stroller and walked the 2K with a friend and her kids.  It was a lot of fun and a great way to start off a day of feasting.

This year as every year we are thankful to God for the many blessings he has given us.  We are especially thankful to have our little girl celebrate this Thanksgiving with us and to run her first Turkey Trot.  I am sure this will be the first of many.

Happy Thanksgiving!   – Courtney

My Favorite Apple Butter Recipe

As you read in my post yesterday we are up to our ears in apples.  Free apples nonetheless.  What’s the best about free things is that you can experiment with new recipes and don’t have to worry that you are wasting your money in case you don’t like it.  So we tried three different apple butter recipes and I have combined them to create my favorite.

We tried Overnight Apple Butter from Martha Stewart and Amy Traverso, a spiced cardamom Apple Butter also from Martha and Classic Apple Butter from The Art of Preserving.  All were great but I combined the best of each to create my own and here it is.

My favorite Apple Butter Recipe 

Makes 5 half – pint jars or 2 pint jars (with a little extra)

4 lb apples, peeled, cored, and cut into rough 1 inch chunks

1 1/2 cups sweet apple cider

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup lemon juice (shhh, I cheat and use bottled)

2/3 tsp ground ginger

1 cinnamon stick

1/3 tsp ground cardamom

1/3 tsp ground nutmeg

small pinch ground cloves

Combine all ingredients in a crock pot and set to high for 1 hour, then turn down to low and simmer all day or all night.  You are looking for consistency more than timing.  You want it to be brown and thick.  It usually takes me overnight and then several hours in the morning to cook down sufficiently.

After several hours cooking you can crush apples with potato masher to speed the process along.  We like ours chunky so I don’t bother putting through a food mill but you could do that.  It’s just one more thing to wash though.

Remove cinnamon stick, ladle into jars and leave  1/4″ headspace.  Process the jars for 10 minutes (high altitude 20 minutes) in a boiling water bath.  If you don’t can often check out a canning book to learn the detailed process of preparing jars and lids, etc.

Some more tips:

A large crock pot will hold a double batch.

Borrow a neighbors crock pot like I did to make your canning efforts more efficient.

I realize that there are no 1/3 tsp measuring spoons, we scaled this recipe down from another.  Just estimate the amounts.

I use Penzey’s spices and I always need to use less than called for on spices because theirs are so fresh and strong, especially the cinnamon.

Cardamom is my new favorite spice, so don’t leave it out!

Half a cup of lemon juice seems like a lot but we used sweet apples and I don’t like it really sweet.

Thanks,  Courtney

What to do with all those apples

First of all, I am so sorry that we have not been diligent about posting often.  With a new baby and visitors it’s been difficult to get to the computer.  We’ve also been busy collecting apples from trees in town.  And being the industrious homesteaders that we are, we had to preserve every last apple that we collected.

Here’s what we have made with the FREE apples we have collected:

15 gallons hard cider (ready in 6 months)

2 gallons apple cider vinegar (also ready in 6 months)

10 quarts apple juice

10 quarts dried apples

18 pints of apple butter (3 different recipes – I’ll share my favorite in another post)

5 pints and 5 half-pints apple cranberry relish (for Thanksgiving of course)

gallons and gallons of fresh apple cider that we drink daily

All of the above was made from the fruit of roughly 4 trees.  Only one of which was cared for and had nice, healthy, large fruit.  We had several unknown green apples varieties, probably Granny Smith, and 3 different red apple varieties.  We were told one tree was Red Delicious and Winesap and the other was unknown but reminded me of a Gala or Fuji apple.  I personally thought the green apples were best suited for cider, the red delicious made great crunchy dried apple chips and the others were perfect for spiced apple butter.

Hope this inspires you to process some of those apples you have laying around and maybe even make the cider press that Robert has made.

Thanks, Courtney

Happy Independence Day

Wishing you all a safe and fun July 4th!

Robert and Courtney

NeilMed Neti Pot Giveaway on Facebook

Today, NeilMed is giving away a free Neti Pot if you Like them on Facebook.  I couldn’t find the link directly on Facebook so try going to their website and going through the Facebook button they have at the bottom.  Hope that works.  I was sent an email so it was  little different for me.  The say that supplies are limited so hurry on over.

We love this product and use it seasonally when allergies get bad.  Now is your chance to try it out.

Happy 4th Anniversary

Last week was our fourth wedding anniversary.  We’ve been following the traditional gift idea schedule and the fourth is fruit/flowers.

What did these little homesteaders exchange?  Gifts that compliment each other of course.

Courtney received a one year old dwarf meyer lemon tree.  She loves meyer lemons and cooks with them, makes marmalade, and the list goes on in perpetuity.   Some reported 40-50 lemons from a three to four year old tree.  This is one that we’ll keep potted until we have a large enough greenhouse to plant it in the ground.

Robert received the Ames True Temper 8′ fruit picker.  This will be used to pick apples for making as much cider as we can this fall.  Oh yes, we will add yeast to some of it, don’t worry.  Eventually, it’ll pick the hard to reach meyer lemons, as the tree can reach 10′ tall at maturity as long as it is protected in a greenhouse here in planting zone five.

Thanks, Robert.

Reminder: Plant Your Seeds

If you live in a cold climate now is the time to start planting your tomato and pepper seeds.  Johnny’s Select Seeds says to plant tomatoes 5 -6 weeks before last frost and peppers 8 weeks before last frost.  Okay, I admit it we’re a little late for the peppers but better late than never.  So get moving, those seeds aren’t gonna plant themselves.

10 Things We Learned About Driving Across the Country

As you know Robert and I drove from California to Colorado last week with our 2 dogs (ha, still got you hanging), toddler and my mom.  We had a cattle trailer filled to the brim with our junk and I drove the minivan crammed with more junk.  We did have a great time and we learned a few things on our journey.

1.  Flying is fast, my mom did a great job of reminding us of this on the way.

2.  A cranky toddler versus a hungry pregnant lady, its a toss-up.

3.  Toddlers can be pacified with a DVD player in the car and no I am not ashamed to admit that.

4.  A 20 minute stop always, I repeat always, takes 1 hour.

5.  Sparking on the rear brake is definitely a problem.

6.  Walkie-talkies are not just for truck drivers.

7.  Dogs don’t always love car rides.

8.  Route 66 memorabilia was actually tempting while on the road.

9.  A navigation system’s got nothin’ on an old fashioned paper map.

10.  My husband can put up with more than any man, woman or child I know, I think he is part Superman.

Thanks,  Courtney

We’re home, we’re safe and we’re happy

Well I bet you thought we fell off the face of the Earth or something.  Not quite but something nearly as bad, we didn’t have internet.  Dun, dun, dun.  It was a rough few days.  No internet and no television.  We actually had to resort to looking out the window to see what the weather was up to.  We did cheat and use the public library but with a toddler who doesn’t have a library voice our time was limited.

So here we are, in our new home, with internet and cable.  The drive was interesting (we’ll share that later), the house is lovely and huge, and the area is charming and the folks are friendly (quite a concept coming from Southern California).

As soon as I had internet I quickly started looking for a few items we needed to purchase: couch, washer and dryer, etc.  Then I set to finding us a CSA so we can actually get some produce this summer.  Our backyard is landscaped and we think that it might make the landlord mad if we rototill the grass under and plant veggies.   For those of you who grow all your own food, kudos, I wish I was you.  For the rest of you, CSA’s are a great way to get local, fresh, healthy, usually organic vegetables, meats and eggs.  In a CSA you partner with a farmer and they deliver your vegetables to a local drop point weekly throughout the growing season.  Sometimes you can pick up on the farm which is a fun activity for the fam.  They fill up fast though so get on their list now to ensure summer produce.

Needless to say we have been busy getting internet problems worked out, trying to avoid going to the laundromat,  sourcing vegetables and meat for the year, growing a baby, chasing a toddler and caring for a new puppy.  I am going to leave you hanging on that last one.

Thanks,  Courtney