Happy Day of Thanks!

I hope that wherever you are, you are blessed to be with ones you love.

I'm very, very thankful for....

 This girl.

This guy.

 This pooch.

And this man.

Thankful

In the next few days, I will share some of the things for which I am thankful.

Sunrise

Save the Socks!

I love my Smartwool socks.

I love the colors and the patterns. They're so fun!

I love them so much I wear the heels out of them.

...which bums me out big time.

Replacing them with a new pair would be nice, but seems silly considering there's just a little hole. Well, okay, not so little, but still...

And they're not exactly cheap.

So what does a sock lover do?

You darn them.

If, like me, you have no clue how to darn a sock, just head over to YouTube and search for sock darning or darning socks.

Gather your supplies and get rolling. It's relatively easy. And kinda fun!

I'm not sure how many times you can darn a sock--eventually I guess it has to go to sock puppet land (pretty jazzy sock puppets!).

You can see the new brown area that I darned and a spot that need some reinforcement...

But until I learn how to knit my own (which I hope will be sooner than later) I will save my socks!

Chickens in the House!

Our buckeyes free range over our property. The house is a good distance from the road and the perimeter of our "yard" is surrounded by tall grasses. They enjoy foraging around for nummy things to eat and roam all over, staying within the grassy perimeter. Sometimes they just sit outside the doors to the house and look in at us, inquiringly. They're funny. And entertaining.

A few weeks ago, I was unloading the car after running some errands in town. HE was in the midst of cleaning and organizing the garage. During one of my trips from the car to the house HE asked me to take a look at something in the garage. I stopped what I was doing and we had a 10 to 15 minute discussion.

What I had forgotten is that the door to the house was wide open.

On my next trip into the house I noticed a few more inhabitants than usual.

They were quite polite guests--they didn't leave a mess.

And they vacated the premises upon our request (with a small bit of encouragement).

Curious little critters, they are.

Funny.

and Entertaining.

Flags and Snow

Well, our day got off to an interesting start. Shortly after my last post I got my pork chops all seared and tucked away in the crockpot, washed up the dishes and was just getting ready to jump in the shower when our electricity went out. 

I waited.

And waited. 

Then I contacted the electric company, whose automated voice service informed me "we are aware of an outage in your area". 

The hard working folks were fixing up the damage left-over from our heavy wet snow on Wednesday and I guess a few of us had to be "offline" for a bit. 

No worries.

I took the pork chops and all their good flavorings out of the crockpot. Then I put them into a casserole dish and threw 'em in the bake oven of our masonry heater.

( Ignore the chipping clay plaster...)

 I had just gotten the fire going a little while before, but the temperature was already up to 200. 

I love that masonry heater. 

My sister, kids and I were sitting down to eat around 1:00 when suddenly the electricity popped back on. 

Timing.

It's amazing how much we have come to depend upon electricity. 

Can't even go to the bathroom without it. 

Well, you can, but after a few without flushes it gets a bit ripe. 

Ah, well. 

All's well that ends well.

As promised to Michaele, here are the close-ups of the peace flags waving in our garden:

And a few snowy shots of the blanketed green...

Have a great weekend!

Visit

Big Sister is coming for a visit today. We have a great time together--she mentioned maybe doing some scrapbooking. Perhaps we'll also take a little drive down to the apple orchard.

Big sis with our niece and nephew.

It's a pork-choppy kinda day, so I pulled out my copy of "The Grassfed Gourmet" by Shannon Hayes and found this recipe to feed everyone (I'll be tripling this recipe):

Honey-Roasted Pork Chops with Apples and Onions

1 TBSP salt
1 tsp ground pepper
3 tsp rubbed sage
1 TBSP olive oil
2 pork chops
1/3 cup apple cider or juice
1 tart, firm apple, cored and cut into thick slices, but not peeled
1 small onion, thinly sliced into rings
1/4 cup raisins
2 TBSP honey

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine salt, pepper and sage and rub into the meat.

Pour the olive oil into a heated oven-proof skillet and sear the chops over medium heat, 1 minute per side or until browned. Remove from the heat, add the cider, sliced apple, onion and raisins. Drizzle with honey, cover and roast for 1 1/2 hours or until fork-tender.


Good eatin'!

And Winter Arrived

Whoops!

Guess I should have kept my big fat blog shut! So sorry to those of you who aren't big fans of snow and wind and cold. When I wrote yesterday that we were ready for winter I didn't expect Mother Nature to take it to heart. So heartily.

Thank you Mother for giving me the opportunity to see all of the ways we are NOT quite ready for winter--we still need to dig up the rest of the potatoes, put away the patio chair cushions (not sure how I missed those), finish building the wood shed and get the snow tires onto the car.

Not as ready as I thought.

But for the beauty I am ready.

And this is a beautiful snow.

psssst, hey winter....

Welcome back!

November Already...

....how did that happen?

Fall is hand's down my favorite season. The colors, the smells. The weather. The whole package. There is still a lot of green in the garden and we enjoy kale and chard fresh whenever we want to wander out and gather some. These little volunteers also sprang up.

I had planned to put in cold frames to protect a late fall crop of spinach, lettuce and radishes, but it never got done. (The frame or the planting). Next year. Perhaps early spring.

But for now most of the garden is put to bed for winter. Veggies and locally-raised meats in the freezer (including our very own chickens), jars of tomatoes and applesauce in the pantry and a respectable amount of squashes and potatoes in a makeshift storage will nourish us this winter.

The kids and I planted more spring flowering bulbs in memory of my mom--they will be a welcome sight next spring.

 

 

Peace flags made by our kids and friends flutter in the breeze-- send our wishes for peace to the universe as the winter rolls in.

We are ready.

For winter....

And peace on Earth.