Friday, October 19, 2012

Closing on another season

Here we are closing on the crops in our garden....getting ready to till for the winter and already got the pig barn and chicken coop boarded up. We have had some pretty cold nights already. So cold that we actually lost the 2 youngest chicks. :(
We had a pretty awesome year and I am hoping next year is even better. We got 188 quart size jars of spaghetti sauce, 66 stewed tomatoes, 45 diced and 30 tomato soup. We also got to make green tomato pickles. We made quite a bit of sauerkraut and ketchup and bbq sauce as well.

It looks like our boar has done his job and Miss Piggy is pregnant. We will find out for sure later on. Which means sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas we shall be getting baby piggies! :D

Our first hatchlings of our chickens have finally started laying....just in time too. Since it is getting colder and days shorter they are laying less. We go through quite a bit of eggs so we run out pretty fast. Which also means its time to butcher the males. They are starting to get too manly! LOL

Right now since the harvest has subsided I am taking the frozen chicken bones out from the last butchering session and making homemade chicken stock and freezing them in an ice cube tray and putting roughly a cup into freezer bags and using them to make soups and rice. Homemade stock is wonderful!

On another note we have decided to homeschool our children.....public school is just not a fit for our family, a nice thing about all my kiddos being home is they get to share in some extra chores. ;)

Ok well dinner is on the stove and my youngest Smith is now starting to fuss, so I am off!