Dahlia

I picked these from the yard today. 

Many more buds to bloom! 

I'm looking forward to them blooming; they're one of my favorites. 

Pickles

We finally made pickles out of our cucumbers! 

When I say "we", I actually mean Eric did all the work. 

Anyway, he found a recipe for Bourbon Pickles and decided to try it out. 

We had to triple the recipe since we had so many cucumbers but if we like them then I'll be glad to have so many jars.  

The end result was about 15 pints (although he used pint and a half jars and a couple quart jars). 

Today's Garden Haul

Since it is summertime, I'm afraid that most of my posts are about gardening and our produce because that's what we are absorbed in currently. 

Anyway, our garden has basically gone crazy and is producing a ton of produce for us. We could not be more thrilled. 

The amount of tomatoes we are able to pick several times per week is incredible to me since we had nearly twice as many plants last year and got maybe one dozen tomatoes total, for the entire season last season. 

In addition to the tomatoes, have melons coming in now as well. We've eaten two cantaloupes and one tiger melon so far. 

We have pickling cucumbers, eating cucumbers, carrots, two kinds of radish, zucchini, two kinds of squash, a variety of peppers, a variety of tomatoes, strawberries, green beans, several variety of melon, basil, dill, parsley, cilantro, onions and several variety of pumpkin. 

We are hoping to can some tomato sauce, paste and crushed and stewed tomatoes for homemade pasta sauce. 

In addition, we are also canning salsa and pizza sauce. 

We're also blanching and freezing carrots since they're basically done for the season. 

It's been a lot of fun this year and it feels like our hard work is paying off. 

Here are a couple pics from the haul today: 

Zucchini, pickling cucumbers, eating cucumbers. 

Pear tomatoes, black prince tomatoes, German orange strawberry tomato and a bunch of San Marzano tomatoes. 

The San Marzano tomatoes are great for pizza sauce and pasta sauce. 

Tiger Melon and Cantaloupe. 

Well, I'm off to slice up a cucumber for snack! 

Green Beans

We harvested the green beans from the garden and ended up with quite a bit. 

We decided to freeze them in sealed baggies so we can pull them out for dinner throughout the year. 

We ended up with 6 decent sized freezer bags of green beans and this is just our first haul of the season. 

I'm loving how our garden is finally paying off! 

Summer Rain

I am just loving the rain today! 

I truly enjoy a summer rain. I love when it has been hot out and the rain comes to knock the dust down, wash away pollen, water my plants and just kind of give us an overall cleanse. 

Plus, the rain generally brings out these beauties: 

These were taken in my back yard. 

Eric was able to get a photo of the ENTIRE rainbow with his wide angle lens but I was using my phone so I was limited. 

A double rainbow and we could see the whole thing! It's the little things that make me feel happy. 

Now, we're off to sit in the hot-tub and enjoy the rain around us. 

I love Mother Nature! 

Relaxing

My brother, Jeremy and sister-in-law, Katelyn gave Eric and I a freestanding hammock last year and we've been anxious to put it up since we've had it. 

It did not have a stand with it and we do not have two strong trees close enough together to hang it from so we finally ordered the stand and assembled it yesterday. 

I am already in LOVE! 

It is so comfy and easy to move around the yard into shady spots. 

The kids were all very curious about it and the baby was having a blast climbing on and off, over and over again. 

We relaxed in it for a little bit yesterday and I snapped a few photos of Eric and the kids and one of him and I. 

Thanks again, Jeremy and Kate! We love it! 

Guinea Hens

Recently, we purchased Guinea Hens to assist with our snake "problem". 

They are supposedly quite good at notifying anyone and everyone around that there is a predator or just something unusual around. Basically, if it doesn't belong, they let us know. Not to mention, they will eat a baby snake. 

All of that convinced us to go ahead and get the creatures with faces only a mother could love. 

I happen to enjoy the Guineas (and I actually think they're kind of cute) but that could be because they were such cute chicks and we have had them in with Hunny Bunny on the back lawn since they were just wee little chicks. 

So, fast forward to tonight... We now LOVE the Guineas. They have earned their keep already and have a special place on our ranch and in our hearts forever. 

They notified us of a decent sized Rattle Snake right past our back lawn tonight. The little killer was all curled up in our dead iris leaves and they set off the alarm bells. 

The scariest part is that our 1 year old was playing on his swing set about 8 feet away and all the dogs were out lazing on the lawn close by. Thank God that Eric heard the commotion and was standing right on the back porch at the time. He quickly ran over and grabbed the baby. As he was headed in, I could see something was wrong so I asked of there was a rattle snake out there. Eric said yes so I quickly went out and called all the dogs inside (which was like offering them a steak dinner, they love being inside). 

Of course, the baby was having a fit because outside is his very own Disneyland AND he can open doors now so we had our oldest lock the doors while Eric and I dealt with the snake. 

I kept an eye on the snake while Eric loaded his gun. He needed to use a different method of "disposal" this time because he would have had to reach a hand in the plants to evict the snake and that was too dangerous. 

So, the snake was dealt with by a couple of .22 rounds. Good thing Eric is a good shot, he was a goner pretty quickly but man, was he pissed. 

After the head was removed, we let the kids come outside to take a peek and gave them yet another snake lesson. 

Here is the little killer (and the snake, haha): 

This bad boy had 4 buttons and was quite fat. He was maybe about 26 inches long, give or take. 

He had his mouth open because he started to strike when Eric took his first shot. 

So, this year we have had 6 rattle snakes and are delighted to have Guinea Hens! 

Thanks, Girls! Great job. 

Ground Beef

Ever since the first time Eric made homemade ground beef, I cannot eat the other crap bought at the grocery store. 

Ours is free of the pink slime, is fresh and has very low fat content. 

It is made from: 

Brisket, Sirloin or Tri-Tip (we mix this one up each time) 

Beef Short Ribs 

Chuck 

I cannot bring myself to buy ground beef at the store anymore, it has to be the homemade stuff or none for me now. 

Eric has his meat grinder that I bought for him at Christmas and he loves to use it so it is a win-win for me. 

Here is our recent batch of ground beef: 

This is about 10.5 lbs. 

I cannot wait to have hamburgers tonight! 

Pickling/Canning: round 1

We are still early in the growing season but our pepper plants were full to capacity. 

We harvested all the peppers from the plants and had over 10 pounds of banana peppers and 7 pounds of Jalapeños. 

Here are the results of the first pickling day of 2014: 

Those bowls are full of Banana Pepper rings. 

We ended up with 26 pints of Banana Peppers and 21 pints of Jalapeños. 

Not bad for the very first haul of the season! 

Now, to find more jars for cheap, we're going to run out this year for sure. 

Life on a Ranch/Farm

The work is never ending when you have three kids, a plethora of animals, a home, garden, etc. 

For us, it's a labor of love (most of the time). 

We've recently been doing projects to "beautify" our back yard and areas surrounding our house. We do not like clutter around the house and try to keep all the junky looking stuff to a minimum and not keep it by the house IF it must exist. 

Here are a few of our recent projects that were pushed into completion by the June 21st Retirement Party of my wonderful Husband. 

New garden shed. All of the gardening stuff we previously had on shelves behind the garage is now contained in this beautiful shed next to our garden. Easy access for planting, mowing, watering, etc. 

I finally got plants potted in the old wood stove my Grandpa gave to me. We picked the ground cover Jasmine since it fills out so nicely, smells fantastic and is hearty. We placed the stove at the corner of the garden and it can be seen by pretty much anywhere in the back of the house. 

This is part of the area where the gardening stuff used to be, behind the garage. We bought the (locking) hot tub cabinet on Amazon, we bought the chairs at Home Depot and the little tables at Big Lots. The fire pit we've had for many years (and rarely use). 

This is the rest of the area where gardening stuff used to be. Again, chairs are from Home Depot and table from Big Lots. 

We added a pop-up and partial fence for privacy in the hot-tub. 

Previously, if someone drove up the driveway, they could see right into the hot-tub. 

We have some pretty decent gusts of wind here so we anchored the canopy down with sand in the galvanized buckets. 

As shown in the hot-tub photo and this one, we also put out all of our solar lights that we've had in boxes for several years. Most all of them work too! They've been exposed to elements for the past several years so we did not have high hopes. 

Beside the garage, we bought these little storage "sheds" for all of our garbage and recycle cans. I love having them tucked away and organized! 

We planted more ground cover Jasmine in the flower bed directly below the deck. I can't wait for it to really take over. We also added irrigation as I was hand watering before and it was time consuming and ineffective. 

One of our favorites; we planted more rosemary! This is planted on the hillside right over the back deck. We are so excited for this to really take hold and consume the hillside. It's so barren looking now and everything struggles to grow there except the rosemary we planted two years ago. 

We have many more little and big projects going but that's all the photos I have taken for now. 

Gru's Girls

Meet Gru's Girls: 

They are Lucy and Agnes. 

For those who are familiar with Despicable Me (1&2), we will hopefully soon be naming two Lambs Margot and Enid. 

Yep, the girls are most likely pregnant and they typically have twins. 

Hopefully we get all or mostly girl Lambs so we can eventually breed them with Gru and sell the offspring (minions). 

Early Morning

This is what happens early in the morning on our back porch: 

She loves to come up to the back porch first thing in the morning to take a dip in the kids' pool. 

If it wasn't so cute to watch, I'd be annoyed because she dirties the water and leaves poop on the patio surrounding the pool. 

Before the kids come outside each day, I have to clean the pool out and rinse off the patio or else our 1 year old will have the poop all over him (not that it has happened or anything). Haha. 

Sometimes she'll even head out to the garden and lay an egg on the outskirts of the overgrowth of the lavender or pumpkins. 

We recently purchased a companion for Daisy Duck #1 and our Daughter named her Daisy Duck #2. They are Blue Runner Ducks. 

Both hang with the chickens and I think they think they're chickens because they run around with them all day, they scratch with them and where the chickens/chicks go, so do the Daisy's. 

Garden 2014

We are so beyond thrilled about our garden this year. 

Eric and our five year old Son have worked very hard on the garden and should be very proud of the results. 

We have so many tomatoes, we have been able to give some away and are planning on canning the rest.  

We have so many peppers that we are pickling them in batches and plan to can some salsa as well. 

Cucumbers too!! 

We are loving having the squash and zucchini coming in daily and my pumpkins are going crazy this year. 

We added a "trellis" for our cucumbers so they can grow up and are a little easier to pick. Eric made it out of a cattle guard that we bought at the feed store. 

This is by far the best garden we've ever had and I think it is because we went ahead and switched to overhead watering. We have a well so the water doesn't burn the plants. 

Anyway, enjoy some photos: 

I'm sure it kind of looks like chaos but it's just FULL of hearty, healthy plants! 

Now that our kids have contributed to the work in the garden, it has opened them up to eating sooooo many vegetables they would not touch previously. 

The garden makes me happy on so many levels.