Bringing in the Harvest and other stuff...

Just so you know... I'm posting up a storm... kinda.

This is all about bringing in the harvest.  Should have posted this in November too but...

This is a pan of tomatillo sauce, some onions and garlic in the upper corner and peppers in the middle.

Roasted... so pretty.

And now all blended up ready to be canned..

Pretty tomatoes... This year the yellow and orange did much better than than the red tomatoes.

Canning from that day.

I guess Halloween is the other stuff!  Aaron suggested I use some cookie cutters to decorate my pumpkin for Halloween..

Turned out pretty good.  Unfortunately this is the only picture I got of our pumpkins... Emily's is to the right and shows a nice tree scene.  It just doesn't show up in my picture. I think Emily got a good picture...

Emily got ambitions and made tons of Lucy bread (Lucy is our sourdough starter)!  It was way good and the nieces and nephews were suitably impressed at Sunday dinner (not pictured, English muffins).

This is what happens when you wash all the aprons together...

more canning.. tomatoes, apples and apple juice.  Aaron pressed it and I wanted to see what it would taste like if we canned it... tastes like apple juice!

Most Fridays I make pizza on Naan bread made with Lucy.  WAY easy.  and I put squash and fresh tomatoes on it when we have them.  Also use our own Mozzarella.

More canning... Apples and salsa.

Applesauce, salsa, tomatoes, apple juice,

Apple jelly (used up the rest of our small cans)

Emily asked me to bring in the celery.

Look!  It looks like celery!

There was quite a bit from the two she planted... it multiplied to the side.

We dried a bunch but its pretty sad to have all that work go into one small jar (not pictured).

So Emily canned cream of celery soup!  It was way easy and tasted great in the green bean casserole Emily made for Thanksgiving.  We will probably can more cream of soups since it was so easy and came out great.

We also stored 2 bunches in water in the fridge (the two with some roots left on them) so we could use fresh for Thanksgiving.  There is still part of a bunch on our counter cuz it looks pretty and has started to grow more roots and leaves.  Its an experiment on how best to keep celery.

This is us bringing in the corn stalk harvest for the goats...

Emily had bought a chipper.. the goats don't eat the stalks unless they are in smaller bits.

We got quite a few bags stored away for winter!

Since Jared helped us, Aaron and I went and helped him chipper up a bunch of his brush pile.  Then we brought the chips back to our house and mulched some of our front garden beds.

Unfortunately the bees didn't work out again this year.  Aaron opened up the hive to discover they had left rather than died as Emily feared.  It appears the queen was killed the last time Aaron and Alec opened up the hive and they tried making a new one but for some reason it didn't work out so they all left.

It was nice to know the reason as to why it failed but as Emily says, this operation is getting rather expensive if we have to buy bees annually...

More canning... applesauce, tomatillos, and beets.

And just in case you are wondering, this is about how much our chickens weigh.

Aaron made a chicken feeder such that the chickens open up the lid themselves by stepping on a flat lever.  This way Emily doesn't have to feed as many wild birds since chickens/ducks weigh more than sparrows/doves :).

I need to get a picture of the final product.  Emily and Aaron are still working on getting the proper balance on the weights and having the fowl understand what they need to do.

K... hopefully next post will be about Thanksgiving.  Try to get it in before more Christmas craziness.

Supposed to be October Post

I totally missed October.  Thought about it, didn't do anything about it. Actually have a draft rant post about dumb books I could have posted... But like I said in the previous post, this is for me right?

If you don't comment I will be sad.

Singing.. my first real directing experience! Aaron played his recorder with us and Jared said it sounded really good.  Didn't realize he had come to hear till he texted me afterwards.

One Sunday night I asked Alec to play through a song for me so the babies all sang with us.  I like singing together.

Our Sunday dinners have gotten so big most of the time we use 2 tables. Its great.

Since Megan and Adam stayed with us for a month while waiting to get into their apartment we made her play with us on her viola.  I also made them practice and then sing with the choir when we performed.  Price of staying at the Aunt Hill!

Megan forgot her instrument since it was out in the parlor instead of up in their suite and I sent a picture to say it missed her.

Happy Talk like a pirate day!

The Friday before conference I got a big pile of sand delivered,

then jacked up the barn and tried to create an even surface...

to lay a bunch of pavers on (half of which I got off of KSL for fairly cheap.. that's what determined the color).

I decided pavers were more useful than concrete since all these building are supposed to be temporary.  Pavers can be reused or resold but not a big slab of concrete.

It looked really nice until the goats spent the night in there once (accidentally left the door unlocked.. Aaron has now placed a bar across the door).  The pavers do keep the dust down but it didn't quite work how I had planned so Emily has bought some stall mats to put down.  Live and learn I suppose.

My California PE finally came.  All very exciting.

Since we now have 6 goats, I bought a metal shed off of KSL and Aaron went with me to deconstuct it... luckily we first tried setting it straight onto Clarks trailer and it worked! Phew.

Thanks Clark for letting us use the trailer!  Thanks Jared for letting us use the truck!

It might have shifted a little bit on the ride home but we got it safely home before it tried to fly off.

Look, Aaron bring shed.

Look closely behind him in the goat shed.. I jacked up OB3 (goat shed) a bit and put it on blocks.  We were trying to get it up out of the water that drains off both our neighbors barn and the shed. So then put rocks around the base and filled it in with sand to raise it up.  Emily put hay down on top of that and its nice and soft.

Maybe eventually we can try concrete but if we are going to that much trouble we might as well put in a big barn!

Aaron pulled the new shed around..

Right where Emily wanted it.  Now Tulip and kids can stay nice and dry even if Spots is being a pain and kicking goats out of "her" shed.

Getting ready for Conference...

Always a working conference in this household (canning pears).

Traditional donuts after priesthood session.

Sunday breakfast of crepes!

Our spread...

Sunday group...

conference makes us a bit tired...

Bailey listening closely

And Jared too..

Sharing what they learned in conference...

It's always fun to have everybody with us to listen to conference!

The next thing on the list of stuff to do was get stinky Bud fixed.  Emily had tried to sell him on KSL but there weren't any takers.

So poor Bud had to become less than a man.  Funny story, the Vet (Kate) sent her assistant back to get the horse castigators. Apparently he was as big as the yearling horse they had done that morning and the little clippers weren't going to do the job...

He is very friendly but so stinky nobody wants to get close and he had been separated from the girls for weeks... although Tulip is so laid back she got pregnant from Bud's ONE escape that lasted all of a few seconds.  And it turns out that Spots (who ISN'T related to Bud) did not get bred by him, although she thought she was and skipped a cycle. Which of course meant we thought so too.  Sigh. Once again, live and learn.

He stood like this for a while after the operation as the drugs wore off.  His body actually healed quite quickly, although when he was out with the girls a couple days later he didn't seem to want to jump and run :)

He's happy now hanging with the whole herd even if he jumps up on his sisters just to annoy me.

Jalyn had a birthday (shout hurray!)

She wanted the same cake Emily had made last year... I think it turned out really well!

Jared actually did the frosting. Amy told me to ask him cuz he's good... and he was!

And it appears the cake was good too...

Just trying to make those nieces who didn't come for Sunday dinner that night jealous...

This post is long enough... I will do another one with all the canning pictures.