Preparing for Winter

Fall means all sorts of things-- pretty leaves, combines running, the weather getting cooler, hot drinks becoming popular, sweaters, and more.  One main activity that comes for me on the farm is preparation... preparation for the coming winter.

I was raised in a family where the summers and falls were for gardening, canning, freezing, and many other forms of preserving food. As a newlywed, I have tried my best to keep up with that tradition, but have fallen far short of what my mother always did.

Lately, the juices have been running.  By that I mean we put up apple cider and I made grape juice! The apple cider was done together with my in-laws, so that was shared work. On the property that Mitchell and I live on, we have 15-20 apple trees. The trees were absolutely loaded this year.  I already made a bunch of apple sauce earlier on this summer, and a few weeks ago, it was cider pressing time.  We loaded up apples from our trees onto the back of a pickup truck and a few cars.  We had Mitchell shake a few of the trees to get more of the apples off.  The apples were then trucked to a local cider press and once finished, the cider was placed in 35 gallon drums. We had taken 3 drums... and had too much! Thus we had to buy some jugs and bottle them out there.  Once we got them home, we ran the cider through a filter that we use at the maple syrup camp so that the cider wouldn't have sediment that would settle.  We then bottled it out into all the jugs we could round up. After all was said and done, we estimated around 110 gallons of cider was processed. And boy was it good!

The project I started after the cider (actually I made it just this last week) was grape juice. I have a small grape arbor that was planted by a man who had previously owned the house Mitchell and I are staying in. It is small and has been severely neglected for the past few... well... years at least, but it seemed to have a decent crop this year.  I decided to try out the grape juice. What was there to lose? I borrowed a steamer from my mother-in-law, Marla. Let me tell ya-- that is one nifty invention! I picked and washed the grapes and all I had to do was fill the water part and put the grapes in! Wonderful! I was able to do all sorts of other tasks in the kitchen while it drained into a pitcher.  I ended up with 2 1/2 gallons of concentrated juice, which I was pretty impressed with considering my skill level (little to none).  I will definitely try to take care of my grapes this year and make juice again!

 ^ These were all my grapes-- Not many for the amount of juice I got!




< This was my steaming operation



 The finished product! Yum! >






It has been an exhausting couple of weeks-- but once again, the Lord provides. He takes care of me. He is always faithful.

The Mast Menagerie

Cows, cows, cows... that's everyone's first thought, animal-wise, when our farm comes to mind.  Little do they know that we actually have a menagerie of other animals, small and large :) Our family likes diversity, so our animals range from turkeys and chickens to cats and dogs... and others too!

Recently, Mitchell and I brought home two puppies (currently the cutest additions to our farm).  They are both females and are a Black Lab, Great Pyrenees mix (or Pyradors if you like that better!)  They are 9 weeks old today.  The blacker one is Mitchell's and her name is Nisha- Hindi for night.  The one with more white is mine and I named her Nabina- Nepali for "to make new".  I'd like to say that I picked my name first, from my experience in Nepal and then Mitchell happened to also have a similar name with a similar origin :)

These cuties are learning quickly and bringing all sorts of joy into our lives!

I have always loved chickens. I have almost always had chickens. And then I moved. Several times. It was hard, let me tell ya :) But when I moved to my new home, my husband promised me I could get some chickens. And we did. They're delightful.  We currently have six chickens.  Three are white leghorns and three are light brahmas.  Five are hens and one is a rooster.  I also decided to set a dozen eggs to see if I can hatch them so hopefully in a week and a half or so I'll have 12 more :) I named the Brahmas just cause those are the only ones that I can tell apart :)

The cats are also prevalent in, around, near, close to, ect., the barn. By prevalent, I actually mean far-more-than plentiful :) My brother-in-law has a certain affection for them, so they stay. My favorite is a little gray tabby that I named Stuart. Mitchell rescued him from the heifer barn where he was being protected by a cow! He's better trained then my puppies are at this point :)

Several times a year our family gets several piglets to raise out for meat- some for ourselves and some for others.  The roasted hog that we had for our wedding was home-grown. It's the best tasting pig meat you'll ever find! I love being able to experiment with all the different cuts of pork and boy is it tasty! The bacon is a big plus too... :) This is our last piggy we grew out...

And last but not least to be featured is a group of animals that just got sent to the butcher's yesterday... The turkey's! They were my father-in-law, Wayne's, favorites though they were quite dumb.  They liked being entirely too noisy in the morning and they had a particular taste for Wayne's coffee ;) Their favorite pastime was to make a barricade across the driveway so that no one could drive through without having to stop and shoo them out of the way. No amount of honking and yelling would convince them to move :)

 

That is the end of my animal showcase for the day! If you ever need to visit a funny farm filled with odd animals, come on over! :)