A Few Little Projects

Hello, friends.  I hope your week has been a good one.  Last week, I put a pot of sweet potatoes to simmer on the woodstove, for the dogs and chickens.  Some months ago, I requested that J begin saving bones from his meals in a bag in the freezer.  There were a good amount, and while we still have the woodstove going some days, I wanted to put them on it to simmer as well.  Afterwards, any meat was pulled from the bones.  The meat and broth filled just over two 32 oz. yogurt containers. I froze one, and the other is being doled out to the pups, which they're loving.  This week, he began freezing another bag of bones. 

I made Winter's Delight Jam, which helped me clean all the cranberries from the fridge and freezer.  The jam is quite lovely.  I ended up with 8c of cranberries, and adjusted the recipe to match.  I did substitute some blueberries, as I didn't have quite enough strawberries.  All the cranberries were picked through, and the chickens got the ones that had seen better days, which made for a happy flock.  I feel good about already having a head start on gifts for this year's holidays.  If you're wondering, I always use new canning lids for any jars that are to be gifts.  For ourselves, though, I often use at least some reused lids.  Asparagus, lettuce and oregano were harvested from the garden.  

J and I worked on a fence extension around the garden, for the deer.  Our 4 foot fence wasn't tall enough to keep them out, so he added extensions to the posts, and we're stapling up 4 foot fencing above the original fence.  After delivering soap in a nearby town, I did some shopping.  I got a 4 pack of swiss chard seedlings at the home & garden shop, and got them in the ground before it started sprinkling.  At the thrift store, I picked up a wool/cashmere sweater, camisole, and spool of winter ribbon for $7.  I stopped at the Dollar Tree, but there was nothing on my list, so I left without buying anything.   As I can, I continue to work on my cross stitch project.  We're trying a new experiment in potato planting.  We filled twenty 15 gal. grow bags with soil, and placed them across the bottom of the solar panels.  They'll get lots of sun, and the rain runoff.  Hopefully, the bags will keep the wireworms and fire ants out.  

I brought up the containers of tomatoes prepped in the fall, via Stacy, and began watering them.  This is a new to me technique, and time will tell how well it works.  I'll keep you posted.  There are now 24 tomato seedlings up, of the ones I started recently, but no peppers yet.  I picked up a few groceries while J & I were in town, and got a lb. bag of almond coconut flour on clearance to try for $1.45 (normally $5.79).  I use both flours in my baking, but haven't tried them combined before.  I figure it'll be easy to make GF cookies with, and they also recommend using it for pancakes, waffles and muffins.   I made a batch of cashew parmesan using homegrown herbs, and made pasta with our herbs and veggies, to enjoy with it.   That's about it for the week.