Milestone...

Well, the ol' girl made it. We reached 200,000 miles on our Subaru Forester. She's been a great vehicle for us and is still going strong. Here's to another 200,000! We hope.

It's Winter!

Last week marked our first measurable snowfall. Our two day total was around 14 inches. Wednesday was a snow day for pretty much the whole state. After getting stuck a couple of times and encountering broken bolts on the four-wheeler, we managed to make it out of the driveway. Now, the temperature has dropped considerably and it's very cold. We had a slow start, but winter is definitely here with an exclamation point now!

Blackberry Jam!

The blackberries were especially big and sweet this year for some reason. We never planted these, they are just "wild" around our property in a couple large pockets. It seemed a shame to let them go to waste, so we tried our hand at making jam for the first time. I did the picking (thorn scratches and all) and Mayme did the jam making. It turned out great! We got seven half pints of delicious jam out of the deal. We look forward to trying again next year if the crop is good again. We also just got a Presto 23 qt. pressure canner. This will allow us to can things we couldn't before like soups, green beans, etc. We're looking forward to trying some new things this canning season.

First Egg

It’s Saturday and it’s raining, so it’s a lazy day around our house. I went out to check on the chickens this morning around 10am and found Gertrude in one of the nesting boxes. About an hour later Jason and I heard Gertrude come out of the coop…Ba gok, Ba gok, Ba gok!!! So we went outside and along with all the other chickens started heading to the coop to see what all the commotion was about. I had a pretty good idea, and there it was…our first egg. It’s small, about half the size of an average egg, but we’re told the more they have the bigger they get. We’re glad we could be home for the first one.