Busy Hands Homestead

I haven't ventured outside or changed clothes since I got up Saturday morning. Yesterday I went through the annual ritual of cleaning and rearranging the house to accommodate all of the house plants moving back into our living space. By the time I looked at the clock is was 5:30 and I figure I might as well spend the rest of the day in pajamas. The whole point of these posts and participating in the #SNAPchallenge is to raise money for Double SNAP Dollars, which doubles the purchasing power of SNAP benefits spent on fresh fruits and vegetables.  So please, if you have the resources and value expanding access to fresh fruits and vegetables, take a moment to DONATE HERE!   My family has lots of practice cooking on a limited budget, because SNAP used to be our food budget.  These posts might make it seem too easy, but it wasn't.  I am calculating the Double SNAP Program into my daily expenditures, which helps a lot! I also have the benefit of being raised in a fa...

I have been wanting to make homemade pop-tarts for what seems like an eternity. There is nothing like being confined by freezing wind and driving snow to bring out the baker in me.  "Lets warm up the kitchen and make pop-tarts." To this Ivory promptly responded: "What are pop-tarts?" To this moment it had never occurred to me that she has not experienced a pop-tart, which means that I have no pressure to meet the expectations set by the pop-tarts sold on grocery store shelves. So we started mixing, rolling and cutting. We spread filling into the center of the hears: strawberry butter I canned last summer, slowly caramelized apples that were a bit mealy for eating out of hand and finally a dark purple plum butter that is a reminder of the last warm sunny days of fall.    While snow piled up outside, we ate warm pop-tarts with a side of scrambled eggs and a good strong cup of coffee for breakfast.  It was delicious. To be honest, I don't ...

Do I have a stopping point?  An end goal?  I can't remember any more.  Six quart jars of Amarito Pears line the back of my kitchen counter and six more are ready to go.  I am out of shelf space. The extra shelves Adam hung in our kitchen are filled to capacity.   I am stuck between projects. The things on my list are forever long. I have moments of panic when I remember some thing that I need to do and have not yet done. With only a box and a half of pears sitting in the back room, I feel that I can finally take a moment to sit down - reflect - and recall the sequence of the season that is now filling the kitchen shelves. June  6 - 1/2 pints of Rhubarb Orange Jam             I opened the first jar two days ago - It is fantastic! 3 pints of Pickled Baby Garlic July  5 - 1/2 pints Strawberry Rhubarb Jam 6 - 1/2 pints Cherry Jam with Apple as Pectin 6 - 1/2 pints Cherry Jam (with Palimosa Pectin) ...

I passed from one decade of life into the next. Cups clanked, water boiled, voices volleyed and I stared up at the dome of the tent above me. I pulled Sylvan closer. My little snuggle bug. My last baby - who hardly is confined within the parameters of a baby anymore. Ivory slept all night in her own tent. Her zippered flap just a few feet from mine. I smelled coffee - breathed deeply:  Life is good. I shimmied out from under the covers and crawled out of the tent. Loons raced across the lake. We were camping with friends and it just happened to be my birthday. After rounds of breakfast, adult canoe rides, observing never ending dizzying games of tag all the families piled into cars and set out on their respective adventures. We picked up a handful of national forest flyers, a forest service map and we huddled over the lines in the front of our car and picked a spot on the map - Morrell Falls - That is where we will go.  We picked huckleberries on the w...

We have been waiting to harvest our carrots.   This is the first one we harvested.  The kids pulled it out of the ground. This carrot is not the sort of carrot you will find at the grocery store.  It is fat.   It is huge.   It has five fingers.   It is the kind of carrot that makes it into Ivory's lunchbox.  The carrot is chopped up with peanut butter ready for the dipping.  From-our-garden-cucumber, peach, and a home baked whole wheat bread sandwich  - peach jam (freshly made) and almond chocolate spread - and one tiny chocolate oatmeal cookie round out the rest of the lunch. I like this school lunch thing. More on the lunch box: This is Ivory's  Planet Box .  I ordered it for her this summer.  It has woodland fairy magnets and a purple lunch bag in which it rides to and from school.   I know they are pricey, but I view it as an investment.  It is stainless steel, has few pieces...

A small piece of paper torn form a Red Lion Hotels notepad has been floating around my kitchen for the better part of two weeks. It has been clothes pinned to my cooling rack above my kitchen counter.  It has been shuffled under papers on the catch all corner.  It has been used almost daily for the last week and a half. I am afraid I am going to lose it in the shuffle. Scribbled on it is a recipe for Egg-less Apple Cider Pancakes. A recent experiment that turned out to be fantastic.  Ivory, Sylvan, a few more kiddos (10 total), two mamas and I gathered the early fruits of a transparent apple tree, passed them through the hopper and pressed fresh apple cider.  This left me with a giant bowl of sweet, fresh and delicious cider. We sipped cups of the thick juice, but eventually the kids stopped asking for it and I still had a bowl full left.   What to do with all that juice taking up valuable space in my fridge?  The solution: make panc...

"There is a big seed in this one." Sylvan is beaming at me, shoving the fourth plum into his mouth in under five minutes. "Slow down. You are going to get a belly ache." We went on a walk through the neighborhood and passed a tree tucked into an alley that had dropped the most perfectly ripe, pink and purple plums.  We picked them up and brought them home. They are our latest edible find. A few days ago we picked spearmint up the Rattlesnake in the Bugbee Nature Area.    It is dried down and ready to be tea on cold winter nights.    These beautiful and delicious shaggy parasols popped up in our neighbors yard (currently empty and we did ask the landlord's permission) and I used them in our frittata yesterday.  The remainder of the mushrooms are opening up and we will pick and grill them soon. (These mushrooms are what a portabello mushroom you can buy at the grocery store attains to be.  They are meaty and dense and juicy.) Fo...

3 Mamas 6 Kids 3 Dogs We all piled into three cars and drove an hour to pick huckleberries. Small, red and purple berries dot the understory. Each one falling, plunk, into the bottom of my container until finally the bottom is covered. Our fingers red and sticky.  Two mamas, six kids, three dogs, a hour drive there and back:  Totally worth the effort.  Huckles, as Ivory calls them, in the freezer.  Huckles in the scones.  Huckles in this morning's pancakes.   The sweet and tart juicy fruit reminding us that summer is almost over - it is Huckleberry time!

The colors of summer are breathtaking.  The the almost black cherries staining our fingers and faces a bright red. We reach, stretch and pluck hand fulls of cherries and drop them into our baskets.    We eat our fill of cherries in the dappled summer sun. The sun is high overhead. We are hot and hungry and tired. The boxes of cherries are lined up in the shade of the garage. Seventy pounds of summer are coming home with us. We follow the dusty dirt road to the edge of the lake and jump into emerald blue.