I live on a farm ... — recipes
Split pea soup for the soul
art country life culture dogs faith family farm food friendship gifts home inspiration knitting Life love pets photography recipes shopping women
Two days ago at the break of day I saw that all of the branches of all of the trees were covered in white, snowy ice. As soon as the sun was up high enough to hit the trees our world exploded tiny little sparkly bits of magic. This happens once or twice each winter, or it has for the five winters I have been here. The trees along the river bank become especially sparkly with ice twinkles, amplified by the sun light bouncing off the white snow along the frozen river that lights the branches up from beneath. It...
The foods that bind us
apples blogging cookie recipes country life country living culture dating faith family farm food friends gifts Holidays home inspiration knitting Life love marriage personal recipes relationships shopping women yarn
I made twenty dozen of these scrumptious cookies to send off to loved ones this Valentine's Day. A chocolate-based cookie, I used premium bittersweet cocoa powder, doubling the amount the recipe called for. In addition to a standard dose of semi-sweet mini chocolate chips, I added one bag of large Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate morsels so that each cookie would have one or two extra chunks of premium bittersweet chocolate. With other interesting ingredients like whiskey and coffee, these cookies seemed the perfect choice for a Valentine confection. Everyone who received them seemed to agree. I gave my husband his own...
Why Santa dropped by my place today
art biscuit recipes Christmas country life country living family food friends friendship hand knit dishcloths inspiration knitted washrags knitting Life love photography recipes women yarn
I dreamed pumpkins grew in trees
agriculture art country life country living family food gardening Halloween Holidays knitting Life love marriage photography pumpkin recipes recipes relationships romance Thanksgiving yarn
We were expecting freezing temperatures overnight a couple of times this week, along with a few evening snow showers. So far we have had a good frost, some rain, and some cold temperatures ... but no snow. Knowing that colder nights were coming, I began to worry about our pumpkins because they are out on the porch and in the yard for display purposes right now. However, I want to store and in some cases freeze some of them for cooking purposes throughout autumn and winter. Those worries led to an interesting dream the other night, some of it scary...
Let the wild things flourish
art biscuit recipes country life country living faith family flowers food gardening knitting Life love photography Quilt Trail recipes thoughts travel
Unpredictable, lush, and abundant. That is how my garden grows. When I look out at our barn these days I sometimes catch my breath at the wild, vibrant sprays of color from the many of wild flowers growing there underneath our quilt block. This accidental farming business is a pretty good deal that gets better and better as summer evolves. The other day I was out picking a few more raspberries when I noticed a huge thistle shrub growing out beside of an old garage foundation behind the house. Purple top hats nestled on the tops of hundreds of thistle...