September 2013 – A Month Of Photos From The Red Double Wide

30 September, 20133 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 2 Comments

Happy Fall Everyone!

The last days of summer went out with unusually hot temperatures, and the first days of fall came in very wet (for around here anyway). September brought lots of changes with me going back to teaching at our local Christian School, and the girls going back to school there. My poor garden has been severely neglected, (it’s more like a jungle than a garden) but as you can see we are still harvesting the benefits of our early summer work.

Bread — Whole wheat bread and hamburger buns.

Saturday has become my, baking/laundry/blogging/gardening/chicken coop cleaning day! I am trying to learn how to plan meals ahead of time and get as much done on the weekends as i can. I want to keep cooking real food from scratch as much as possible with this new schedule. This is a big challenge for me, as my organization skills are MINIMAL! (just ask my husband) Good thing my girls are big enough to help and the men in the house are patient. 😀

I have learned that gardening is all about NEXT year. So many things I want to change and do better next spring. I guess that’s part of the excitement of a garden. 🙂

This past month I posted about butchering our Cornish Cross chickens and then I wrote a story about Stinky going to the fair. After that post I had several people express concern about Stinky someday ending up in the cook pot. I want to assure everyone that Stinky will live out her free range life here at the Red Double Wide with no fear of ending up in the cook pot! 😀

Thanks for visiting and have a good week!

August 2013 – A Month of Photos From the Red Double Wide

31 August, 20133 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 6 Comments

WOW! August is over already?!?!

Hope you enjoy some of my photos from August.

Bag Of Wheat — This a HUGE bag of wheat that my dad harvested. We are going to supplement the chicken feed with it and Digger wants to experiment with fodder.

Wind Storm — We had a nasty wind storm that blew over several corn stocks. I was glad it didn’t do more damage.

Tomato — We have dozens and dozens of these….now, if they would just turn red!

Bee — I am very pleased with how many bees I hear and see while in the garden. 🙂

Some of our corn grew CRAZY tall. A few of them are over 12 feet tall and the ears are so high I'm going to need a ladder to harvest them! — Some of our corn grew like CRAZY. A few of them are over 12 feet tall and the ears are so high I’m going to need a ladder to harvest them!

Sun Flower — One volunteer sun flower came up in the middle of our garden. I decided to let it grow and I’m glad I did. It’s absolutely gorgeous! I counted 30 blooms on it at one point. 🙂

We ended the month of August with the county fair.

Showing Chickens — This isn’t the greatest picture but I wanted everyone to see how the fair and chickens are a family ordeal! They all did so well with ALL of their projects. I am a very proud mom, sister, and aunt!!!

September will be bringing many changes. I have decided after much thought and prayer to go back to teaching at our local Christian School and the girls will also be attending there. This means lots less time at home. I am hopeful that I can keep up with cooking from scratch, gardening, and my blog!

Thanks for stopping by the Red Double Wide!! Hope you are all getting to enjoy this harvest season. 😀

Easy Fresh Green Bean Recipes

21 August, 20133 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 21 Comments

Green beans, green beans, green beans every where. I have planted green beans many, many times, but never have they tasted so good or been so abundant! (it must have been those heirloom seeds?) We pick them about every three days trying to keep up with them.

All these green beans have let me get acquainted with my brand new pressure cooker!

So far I have canned 20 pints and 14 quarts. I’m thinking that will get us through an entire year, especially since Digger isn’t fond of canned green beans. I have given some away to friends and family and the rest we have been enjoying with dinner.

Here are 2 super tasty ways to EASILY add fresh green beans to your dinner.

First find a REALLY cute niece to help you snap the beans. 🙂

Bean snappen — She took her bean snappin job VERY seriously!

If you don’t have one of these (my sympathies) it CAN be done alone, BUT it is very boring.

After the beans are snapped and you have picked up all the beans off the floor and cut all the little teeth marks off of them, give them a good washing! (I told you, not boring with a cute helper)

Grease a cookie sheet and place as many snapped and washed beans as your family will eat for dinner on the cookie sheet. Drizzle with some olive oil and sprinkle sea salt and freshly ground pepper on the top. Place in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. This is soooo easy and so yummy!

The next recipe is my favorite because it involves BACON!

You will need fresh snapped and washed green beans, bacon, and a small onion.

Chop up the bacon (I used 6 slices) and fry it until crispy. Place the bacon on a paper towel to drain, leave the bacon fat in the pan and add the onion and green beans (about 4 cups). I used half of a LARGE onion I bought from our neighbors at the farmers market….wow! Let them saute in the bacon grease for a few minutes, stirring often. When they are done to your liking, drain excess liquid then add the bacon back in and stir. Add Salt and pepper to taste.

That’s it; deeeelicious! I ate this for lunch yesterday…well not ALL of it, I shared a little with the girls. 🙂 Digger who won’t touch a green bean out of a can will happily eat either of these easy fresh green bean recipes!

Happy snappin everyone!

July 2013 – A Month of Photos From the Red Double Wide

1 August, 20132 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 6 Comments

July was a month of bbq’s with great friends, many 4-H meetings, baby chicks, HOT weather, gardening, and allergies! Despite the sneezing, runny noses, and watery eyes it was a wonderful, busy month.

We started off the month by celebrating the 4th of July with a family trip to the beautiful San Juan Islands. It was a great trip and so wonderful to see family that we hadn’t seen for a while. Visiting the beach was also wonderful!

Two days after we got home from our little vacation our meat chicks arrived!

They are the girls 4-H projects. To read more about our meat chickens click here.

Spinich & Raspberries — First harvest from the garden

We have an AWESOME group of people from our church that came out and joined us for a taco feed and go-kart party. Our go-cart track goes through our hay field and it’s about three-fourths of a mile long. As you can see from the picture this is not a clean sport! Everyone was sooooooo dirty but it was a blast!

Garden 5 — My weed filled garden! The corn is taller than me now. 🙂

Painting — The girls painting the new chicken pen for their 4-H meat chickens.

Hope all of you had a great July! In August I’m looking forward to our county fair and preserving the harvest from my garden.

Fresh Raspberry Breakfast Muffins

24 July, 20134 March, 2018 ~ Grace ~ 36 Comments

This recipe has been moved to our new blog SufficientAcres.com. Click here or on the picture to take you to the recipe.

An easy breakfast or healthy snack with berries strait from the garden….yummmm!

May 2013 – A Month of Photos From the Red Double Wide

25 May, 20131 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 7 Comments

Another month gone by! Here are some of my favorite photos from May.

DSCN6817 (640x469)-1 — Moving straw into the barn….the easy way!

DSCN7012 (640x480)-1 — The lilacs in the front yard were beautiful and smelled wonderful.

DSCN7026 (640x480)-1 — This is my niece in the garden. Playing in the dirt is always fun!

DSCN7080 (518x640)-1 — Jo’s cat had three kittens….this one is Marshmallow. 🙂

DSCN6843 (640x480)-1 — The kids found many “wooly worms” aka caterpillars.

DSCN7163 (640x457)-1 — This is Digger working on the new garden fence with help from the chickens.

The potatoes are growing that we planted in the recycled potato bin!

This is Stinky she is guarding Diggers truck and trailer. To read Stinky and Diggers story click here.

DSCN7200 (640x320)-1 — This picture really didn’t do this sunset justice….absolutely gorgeous!

May was a good month, the first couple weeks were warm and beautiful. They involved LOTS of mowing and weed control. The last couple weeks were cooler and wet, we found ourselves indoors quite a bit. Everything is nice and green now and I’m looking forward to a nice warm June!

Recycled Potato Bin

8 May, 20131 January, 2017 ~ Grace ~ 15 Comments

We have not had good luck in the past growing potatoes. With our dense, clay like soil we ended up with very small funny shaped potatoes. The past few years we haven’t even tried, but this year we are planning to have LOTS of home grown potatoes to store away for the winter. A potato bin filled with a top soil, sand, and compost mix seems like the best way to go.

If you read about our “Red Neck Art Project” you know that Digger replaced the deck on his trailer last month. He used the old boards off the deck to made a HUGE potato bin!

Here is the finished product. It’s 4′ wide, 12′ long, and 2′ high and I bet you’re wondering what the pole across the middle is for.

Pretty handy, right? Digger moved it into the garden and the girls and I planted potato starts! It’s the first thing we’ve planted this year and it felt good to be in the dirt. We’ll layer several inches of mix every few weeks as they grow which (hopefully) will fill this thing to the top by the end of the season with large, correctly shaped spuds. In the fall Digger will bring the excavator back and lift the bin off so we can easily harvest them!

So that’s it: Our super cheap, handy dandy, recycled, potato bin, with an excavator handle!

Spring in January

18 January, 201323 November, 2016 ~ Grace ~ 2 Comments

On New Years Day we managed to slip and slide our way out for a shopping trip. We had a foot of snow and were trying to stay off the roads, but the necessity for dog, cat and chicken feed forced us to venture out. We got to the feed store and to my pleasant surprise they were having a sale! Don’t you just love it when you go to the store for a specific item and it just happens to be on SALE!! (BONUS) With all those red sale signs I COULDN’T just get what I needed and head for the door, so I started to brows. 😀 I soon spotted one of those lovely signs above several racks of newly stalked garden seeds! Oh man! I wanted to start dancing and spinning and giggling and throwing packets of seeds into my cart!!! Pumpkins and cucumbers and beans OH MY!

I purposefully kept my hands on my cart as I ogled the rows and rows of beautiful seeds. Constantly repeating to myself “January, winter time, snow, January, winter time, snow……” That seemed to help, I slowly lost the urge to break into song and dance. Then I spotted the sprout seeds…YEEHAW!! It doesn’t mater if there’s snow outside, we can grow sprouts inside. 🙂

Here’s how to grow nutritious, yummy sprouts ANY time of the year!

What you need:

1 quart size mason jar

Cheese cloth and a rubber band or sprouting lids (pictured below)

Sprout seeds and water

My girls had been given these sprout grower lids as a gift from their Aunt Kate so we used those.Put 2 tablespoons of sprout seeds into a clean quart size jar. Fill the jar about half way up with water then place the cheese cloth over the top of the jar and secure it with a rubber band or just screw on the sprouting lid with the smallest holes. I do this in the evening so they can soak over night. 8 hours is about right.

In the morning dump the water out through the cheese cloth or sprouting lid. Then pour some water back into the jar, swirl around and dump water out through the sprouting lid again to rinse the seeds. Prop the jar up sideways in a bowl with the lid side down. Like this:This is so remaining water can drain yet allowing the air to circulate through the jar. Keep them on the counter out of direct sunlight.

Rinse seeds 2 to 3 times a day, always propping the jar lid side down in the bowl. It will take 4 to 5 days for them the reach the desired length. We ate most of ours on day 4 (on sandwiches, wraps, and salads) but if you have any left overs just store them in the fridge. These sprouts were sooooo yummy!! We have our next batch started and now I’m looking forward to growing…red clover, broccoli, mung bean, radish…..and so on. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of sprouts.

Even though we have a while to wait before we see signs of spring outside, it’s wonderful to have a little taste of spring in January!!