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Here’s what I ordered this month: 30# of dry roasted peanuts for $48.30 (12) 32 oz. Ecover dish liquid in Chamomile & Marigold scent for $41.38 ($3.45/each) 1# of cinnamon powder for $3.85 5# of sweetened dried cranberries for $21.80 4 oz. jojoba oil for $6.50 18 oz. box of Ecover dishwashing tablets for $4.96

I joined a local food club, “Paradise Food Club”.  My first order came in this past Monday.  I’ll try to share my order every month so you can get a feel for what is available.  I was really excited to hear about this club.  It is, unfortunately, not a local or even state sourced program like I had hoped.  The products come from a United Natural Foods warehouse in Indiana.  That means I will continue to seek out local sources of food and other goods whenever I can.  The nice part is that I now have a great variety of natural and organic products at my fingertips instead of being stuck with the one or two options offered at the grocery store. Here’s what I ordered this month: 5# regular raisins (not organic) $11.13: about the same as the locally owned grocery store’s sale price 30 oz. Jason’s Naturals Aloe Vera Body Wash $11.24:  nice big bottle with a pump dispenser, natural/organic, paraben free, neutral scent so we can both use it.  I tried it tonight and it isn’t as super foamy as normal wash but I’m sure once I get used to it I won’t notice.  Also the bit

This is one of the first recipes I started using regularly when we got married.  It is so, so good.  I posted in a couple years ago as part of my 9 Things We Do With Apples post.  When I referred back to that this year it wasn’t written as clearly as I’d like.  Besides, a recipe this good deserves it’s own post. 1/3 cup shortening 1 c sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp baking soda 2 c chopped apples 2 Tbsp sour milk (or buttermilk, I use a little milk and vinegar) 2 c flour 1 tsp salt 1/2 cup nuts (optional) Preheat oven to 350 F. Cream together shortening and sugar. Beat in eggs. Mix in sour milk, vanilla, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add flour, mixing well. Stir in chopped apples or nuts. Pour in to a greased loaf pan. To make topping cut 2 Tbsp cold butter into 4 Tbsp white sugar and 1-2 tsp cinnamon. Sprinkle over the top of the loaf before baking. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out of the center clean. I usually forget to preheat my oven fully so mine take about a

That hardest part is starting, right?  So I’m just going to start this post and see where it goes.  I’ve been mulling it over in my head.  I reread last year’s post for inspiration.  Still, I basically got nothing. Last year I had a lot to write about because things were so hard and then, in the end, things were going great.  This year was pretty uneventful.  In a word, it was wonderful.  Absolutely wonderful. We laughed.  Mostly at ourselves, our dogs, at dumb things like farting or hiding from bats.  We laughed so we didn’t cry when June stole an entire freshly baked pie off the kitchen counter before Brian tasted a single bite, and again when we could only get one TV channel and the internet was out. Thank the Lord, we didn’t cry much this year.  I cried occasional tears of happiness and relief when things were going so well and coming together so nicely.  I still shake my head when I look around and see all that we have accomplished together here on the farm. Do we fight?  Of course.  Here’s how pretty much every fight went this year:  One of us would say something to

I was trying to find a good picture to use in my Thoughts on Marriage post. Instead, I ended up having some fun playing around with other pictures. These are from a recent hay day at our new friends’ The Glasers. What do you think?  Have you played with any pictures lately?  Care to share?

While I haven’t been putting up many actual posts lately I wanted to let you all know that I have been updating the “gardening” and “tour my pantry” pages. I’ve weighed in over 100# of tomatoes already this year!! That is pretty fabulous for me considering I started every single one of my plants from seed and never got around to staking a single one. The weather has been just dry enough to keep them from rotting as they lay on the ground. I haven’t used any supplemental fertilizers or chemicals – just homegrown compost. I mulched with straw once when the plants were still small. I haven’t looked around to see what good yields are per plant. I planted 66 plants so I don’t think my yields are very good when you look at it that way. However, I planted at different times and I don’t think the later plants got the chance to grow as well as the earlier ones. Next year if I time the planting better and stake them I should be able to improve the yields. I hate mentioning upcoming posts because that seems to mean I never get around to writing them BUT… I’m

It’s almost done and it smells sooo good.  Here’s what’s on the menu: Steaks on the grill from one of the steers we raised together.  Delmonico for me, T-bone for Brian. Red skinned potatoes that Brian got from our potato pots tonight, fried with garlic powder I grew and made myself. Homemade cheesecake for dessert topped with spiced brown sugar peaches that I canned last weekend. I’d say it’s pretty representative of what we’ve been doing the last couple years! 😀 What special meal do you like to celebrate with?

No pics in this post… before pictures to come.  As part of my tackling my housekeeping trouble spots I want/need to makeover our laundry area.  Doing that will solve problems #2 (laundry) and #4 (shoes) and go a long way with helping #5 (basement).  Here’s my plan… I want to implement an awesome idea I read about in The Duggars: 20 and Counting!.  Michelle Duggar keeps all of her family’s clothes in one room near the washer and dryer.  The clothes are hung and the socks and undergarments are sorted in bins by size.  With their system there is no hauling laundry baskets to bedrooms or fighting with dresser drawers.  Who needs 19 kids to crave simplicity like that – not me!!  I want to keep all of our clothes in the basement most of the time.  Once a week, probably on Saturday night, we would each bring up our clothes for the week along with enough socks, underwear, etc. to get us through.  As the clothes get worn we’ll drop them down the laundry shoot like normal.  Result: no laundry baskets upstairs ever again.  Oh, I just LOVE the sound of that!! Plus… are you ready for this?  We.could.keep.all.our.extra.shoes.down.there. 

The girls really enjoy climbing up in the hay with Brian.  To get up there in this picture she had to scale a wall 4 or 5 bales high and then army crawl across the top.  Brian’s holding her so she doesn’t jump down to me.  June can jump from the floor and easily land 2 bales high on the wagon! I got a rare group picture behind Brian’s JD 70 by saying “Everyone COME, everyone SIT… Sam SIT, Junebug SIT, STAY, now everybody STAY!!” and then holding my hand up while I backed up and snapped this.  I <3 them. 🙂 From L to R: June, Bear, Sam, and Maci. Here’s one from the other day. What do your dogs do for fun in the summer?

Yeah… about that mess of weeds I call a garden… These are volunteer tomatoes growing in with some weeds where I never planted anything this year.  You can’t tell but they’re laying on the ground. I get one or two decent sized cucumbers off my two plants every day.  That is, of course, unless the dogs find them first. Can you see the giant garden spider?  There are two of them in my tomatoes and although I’m letting them live I avoid them like the plague and scream whenever I think I accidentally got too close! Pretty Amish Paste tomatoes. Squash from 4 plants that a guy at Brian’s work sent home (Jay, I think?  Thanks!) When I said I didn’t think it would be a problem to keep the potato pots watered I wasn’t expecting these extremely hot temperatures ALL summer long.  They are pretty much dying.  I dumped out one of the small pots and the potatoes are small but good looking.  I’ll probably have to buy a few tubs to get us through the year. There is some weedy sweet corn in the long garden along with some onions that someone MOWED off.  Sure, the long garden