Missed it by that much...

Stockings

We have a new doeling at Spring Peeper. Her name is Two by Two Stockings. She's a purebred registered Alpine doeling. We got her from the same place we got Marygold. I wasn't going to buy anymore goats and just keep the doelings from our does this spring. Then I thought...hmmm...what happens if Febe and Cindi just have bucklings? Then what? This is Febe's last breeding. The vet said after the signs of CAE first show, you get one more breeding out of them. So this is it. I pray for a doe out of Febe this time. I'll keep her and bottle raise her so she'll be CAE negative. That's if I can get to her before Febe does. Febe has a way of having her babies quickly, secretly and quietly. I have yet to see her give birth. We'll probably have to set up a camera in the stall so we can keep an eye on her.

But honestly...I have no idea if she's bred or not. Dave thinks that Tomi got both of them when we had a cold spell in mid September. I hope he didn't. But they haven't come in heat yet. They usually have by now. All I have to say is that I don't want February babies!!!

Whenever I go to milk the goats in the evening this is what I have to contend with...

A gazillion chickens running after me trying to get into the goat barn in which they are not permitted to enter. So I have to run in the barn, quickly shut the door behind me, go get a scoop of grain and throw it at them, so they'll leave me alone while I milk. There's not much light in the milking area so I like milking with the door open.

The wood pile we have to split...ugh

Last week our friends from Two by Two farm came and gave us a very well appreciated hand splitting and packing our firewood. They even left their splitter here for us to finish. This was a super big help. With Dave's dad moving in and everything we never got the chance to finish the firewood. It's wonderful to have such great friends!

We got another addition to the farm. The last month for some strange reason every time we see our cat Binoo, we'd call her Pumpkin. Pumpkin was a cat we had a while ago. She lived to be 15 years old before we had to have her put down because she had feline dementia and kidney failure. She was our baby before J.

So anyway, I told Dave maybe it's a sign we need another cat and call it Pumpkin......I was kidding.

He, on the other hand was not kidding. He found a cutie pie kitten and brought it home. It looked nothing like the first Pumpkin but I named it Pumpkin anyway, till last night.

I was cuddling him and he just looked at me with a very familiar look. The look exactly like Puss in Shrek when he gives his sad kitty look. So his name is now Antonio.

It was giving lots of rain today, 50-60mm. I didn't think it was giving wind also. Oy! I was so wrong. We got back from a family afternoon in Yarmouth and the loose siding was all over the place, a tree fell and my grape arbour collapsed!!

Boy that was close!

I'm so not impressed. The tree missed the greenhouse by this much! (I'm holding my thumb and finger about a millimeter apart). Remember Get Smart? He used to say...missed it by that much! All the time. I loved that show. But I digress.

Poor grapes

The collapsed arbour almost took out one grape plant. It moved the trampoline about 7 feet also. Dave was almost sick looking at the grapes.

Oh well, such is life.

Have a Blessed Evening

Lisa

Nobody's dead yet......

Ok, it's day 6 of my candida cleanse and I didn't kill anyone yet!! Woohooo!!! Only 9 more days to go. I don't have many cravings for sugar now. This I am very grateful for. I don't know for how much longer I could handle the cravings. A co-worker pulled out a Caramilk bar and I didn't almost knick it from her. I'm proud of myself. My main concern now is the lack of variety in my diet. I never thought I'd see the day that I'd be sick of chicken and fish. I always said that I could live on chicken and fish....wrong! If anyone knows of good recipes that follow the candida cleanse , please let me know. I've found some, but the website I found permitted eating fruit and my cleanse and osteopath don't permit fruit. Oh well, 9 more days to go!

I'm just about ready to call Mike Holmes!!! Why oh why is it that electricians, plumbers and carpenters think that they can leave the job and not return? Or return when they think you need the work done, not when you want the work done!!

The extension is finished. It took a while. Only the floor needs to be insulated and Dave will do that. But we actually had to hold the plumber/electrician hostage so he'd finish his job!!! We had a week of very cold weather and Dave's father was freezing! So Dave called the p/e at his favourite coffee shop and asked if he was warm? Dave said, "Well we're not!"

So he actually showed up the next day at 8am. and stayed to finish the job till 8pm! Maybe because Dave blocked the driveway and he couldn't leave. But in the p/e's defense, most plumber's and electricians are like that. Same goes with carpenters.

The carpenter we had did an excellent job and he finished the extension, but our side is still not done. I need mouldings and casings put in the living room, bathroom, bedroom and entryway. The inside of my house looks like crap! I have towels at my windows instead of curtains. He keeps saying that when it rains he'll come and finish it. Well, helllloooo!!!It's rained several times since a month ago! He wants to finish his outside jobs before winter sets in first. Hmmm....I can kinda see his point of view, but what about the jobs you started and didn't finish! I can just imagine telling my customers at the store, " I'll mix you this gallon of paint, but I don't think you'll need the other 3 till it rains in 2 months!" I don't think I'd have many customers left. Yet, they seem to think that this sort of business ethic is fine. Everyone I talk to agrees with me and they have all had the same problems. It didn't matter what carpenter, electrician or plumber it is, they all do it!! If someone could open a business and finish their jobs in a timely manner they would make a fortune!

I also have another pet peeve...Blogger! I've been told that they can't comment on my posts, which might be why I haven't been getting many these last few months. Also the ads on the side of my posts don't show up. That's been at least 6 months. There's no way to get a hold of anyone. They say it's fixed, but it's not. BLOGGER GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!!!

Have a Blessed Evening

Lisa

Canned Apple Pie Filling

Before....

This year I planned something special with all the apples that we picked. I was going to make pies, but I really didn't have the time. (so what else is new?) I found this recipe in a Countryside Magazine for canned apple pie filling. I thought why not? So I gave it a go. Here's the recipe if any of you want to try it.

7 quarts of apples

In a very large pot put

5 qts water

4 1/2 cups sugar ( I mixed brown sugar and white sugar)

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

3 table spoons lemon juice

Bring to a boil and then add

1/2 cup cornstarch ( mix this with a little bit of cold water, the recipe didn't state this and it made a huge mess! I should have known better)

1/2 cup minute tapioca mixed with 1 cup cold water

Add to mixture and boil again. Add to your bottles, seal them and put them in a hot water bath for 20 minutes after it starts to boil again. If the apples float to the top, you're fine. If they sink in the bottle you might want to make a pie.

After....

Now I've put this recipe on here, but I haven't opened a bottle yet. So...it could be gross or it could be good. We won't know for a while since I'm on a candida cleanse and can't eat sugar , fruit, fermented foods, breads of any kind, like bagels, bread, pizza, cereals, rice, granola, rolls, pasta etc....you get the point, not dairy products.

What can I eat? Hmmmm....not bloody much!! Free range eggs, free range chicken and turkey, limes, lemons, cranberries, seeds (flax, sunflowers), no nuts except almonds, water, veggies but not corn, peas or potatoes. I can eat plain yogurt. Have you ever eaten plain yogurt? There is a reason why yogurt is flavoured! It's gross plain!! And it's just plain gross! Oh I can also eat fish but not shellfish.

I'm just hoping that it's all worth it. The reason for this madness is blepharitis. I'm hoping that the excess yeast in my belly will depart from me and take the blepharitis with it! The only problem being (besides wanting to inhale a chocolate bar at the moment) is that if this works, that is what I'll have to eat for the rest of my days. I'll be able to bring in certain fruits but not all. We'll just have to wait and see. But for the next 15 days I'm going to be one crabby chick. hmmmm....crabs would be good right about now.

Halloween is fast approaching so J. and I bought a premade haunted gingerbread house at Wally world. We had a blast decorating it.

The finished house.

Have a Blessed Evening

Lisa

Thanksgiving!

Ok, well I'm a bit off, but it's been a long week.

Our wrapped up pig.

I must admit it was a wonderful family and friends weekend. On Sunday we went to my parents house and ate turkey with pumpkin pie and lemon pie for dessert. (ok, I guess there was potatoes and veggies and such somewhere in the equation, but honestly Thanksgiving is about turkey and dessert .) Yummmm..... Dave's father my cousin and his wife came also. It was a good time. Len, Dave's father had never met my cousin. He found that they were nice but he found that they talked alot. Ha ha.

The finished product.

The next day we went to our friend's house, Sheila and Keith. We went here two years ago for Thanksgiving and had a ball! They've got an outside brick oven that they cook in. So they make a mean turkey at thanksgiving. That and a way of bringing all sorts of people with different backgrounds together, it makes a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration.

Keith and his oven

This year was a bit different. We had two 35 lb whole pigs in the freezer! So not knowing how to , or what to do, flying by the seat of our pants we got the pig ready for cooking. We started by filling the cavity of the pig with apples, onions and a sauce I concocted. We stitched him up, wrapped him in aluminum foil (about 3 boxes worth), then wrapped him up again in copper wire.

Sheila reading a blessing.

We brought him to Keith's and shoved him in the oven for several hours. He came out golden, delicious and very moist. Yummmm.....

We also had record breaking temps on Thanksgiving weekend. It was just as hot as July.

On another happy note...Febe is doing extremely well. Between quadrupling her MSM intake and having the farrier come over and fix her feet I think that we've helped her alot.

On an unhappy note...on Thanksgiving weekend we went to the Pines Resort for a craft fair. It was a disaster!! No advertising had been done, so nobody showed up. On Saturday I sold 5 soaps, on Sunday I didn't sell any. I was not happy. I kept seeing that nice weather outside and all the things I could be doing. I was not happy. Oh opps...did I already say that? I was not happy. We were left comment cards. They now know I was not happy. Neither was anyone else. Most people left at noon on Sunday. I made a commitment to stay, so I did.

So how was your week?

Have a Blessed Day.

Lisa

I've made the big time now!!!

It's been awhile, yes I know. I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I'm still here. I'm just trying to grab a hold of the world that seems to be spinning out of control. At the moment we are in need of another 4 or 5 hours in a day to make ends meets. FIL is moved in completely. He has his good days and he has his bad days. Today was not a good day. He's a lot worse than what we originally thought he was. His memory is going everyday. But there is nothing we can do. Other members of the family think that he is fine and he should still be on his own. That's all I'm going to say about that.

We did our large yardsale. It rained like a bugger but we did it anyway and sold everything. What didn't sell we called a person that buys estates and he came by and bought the stuff. Phew! At least that's gone.

Many things still need to be done before winter sets in an the way it's going that happened yesterday with the snow we had. I'm getting over-whelmed. The inside of our house needs to be done. While we had the siding off the house we changed some windows so that means the living room we just painted needs to be repainted, sills and casings put back in etc.... Our firewood isn't split, insulation needs to be put under the new floors etc.. etc.. etc...

We went apple picking last week. I have two bags of apples awaiting my attention, it'll have to wait another week. I found a recipe for canned apple pie filling and that's what I want to do.

Two weeks ago I was invited to speak to a group of ladies about my soap and our little farm. One of the ladies said that she was going to write a small article about me and my soaps in a provincial french newspaper. I couldn't believe it when a lady called me about my soap. She had seen it in a newspaper article!! I flew to the store to see and lo and behold there was the article and it wasn't a little one either, it was almost half a page!! Holy Schmoly! A picture of me and everything. I've made the big time now baby! Woohooo!!!

Mamma needs a new pair of boots! I had to invest in a new pair of rubber boots. Mine were only a year old but somehow it got a big crack over the ball of the foot. I was sick and tired of getting a wet left foot, so I invested in insulated rubber boots. From the kids section no less. I guess Walmart doesn't believe that adults need new rubber boots.

Well it's time for bed. I actually had to miss work yesterday because I was so sick. J. and I spent all day on the couch sleeping with Simonne. I've never seen a dog like that yet. She'll stay on any couch or chair that you put her on. She's so cute, perfect for an elderly person.

Have a Blessed Day.

Lisa