What I've been up to lately....

Canning! That's what I have been up to. And I'm so ready to be done with it. I know many people around here have larger gardens than we do, but this is the biggest one we have ever had. Our cucumber plants have been quite fruitful. I think we are set for pickles for two years now. Most of the pickles at the store have yellow dye in them. We avoid food dye like the plague, so I wanted to make our own. But this was a lot more than I had in mind. The big jars are half gallon jars. We have dill, relish, bread and butter, and lacto fermented. Unfortunately, no one here likes lacto fermented. I had just wanted to try it. And I had to try a few different dill recipes before we discovered we liked my sister in law's recipe. So I have pickles no one wants to eat. All that work for naught.  I have a little over five gallons worth total.

Then there are the tomatoes. I now have four and a half gallons of homemade spaghetti sauce and two and a half gallons of homemade salsa. I also have canned tomatoes and the plants are still going strong, so there will be more. 

Canning sauces takes a long time!! I had no idea. I am thankful for the organic produce, but I don't think I'm going to mind winter either. ;)

Reviving My Blog

I'm reviving my blog. Since I will be deleting my facebook account, I will now use this blog as a way to keep everyone updated on what my family is up to. I'm changing the name and the look. All the old adoption posts are still in the archives, as this used to serve as our adoption blog when we were walking the path to adopting Hannah. That story is pretty cool and what God did amazes me, so I want to leave that available.

People don't understand why I'm leaving Facebook. No one upset me and I'm not having a disagreement with anyone or anything like that. It's very simple. I am addicted to Facebook. I am on there way too much. I do not want to be the mom who is always on her phone instead of enjoying her children. I don't want to miss out on this time I have with them. Somehow, I blinked and my oldest is almost 10. I know that if I blink again for too long, he will be headed off to college. So Facebook just has to go. That is the entire reason. My children are more important to me and they going to come before everyone else's objections, as they should. But I do understand that people want to keep up with us, especially as we undertake this new journey in farming. So I do want to allow people to be able to do that. I'm not going to have the blog post to Facebook. If you don't want to miss any of my blog posts, all you have to do is follow the blog. This is done by going to the right hand column and scrolling down until you see the link to sign up for email updates. After you do that, you will be emailed my new posts so you won't have to remember to check back here for updates.

I'm not trying to become blog famous or anything like that. Don't expect these to be deep posts that change your life. There may be some that are thought provoking from time to time, but in general, I plan to keep a low key "here is my everyday life" kind of feel to things. I do plan to read the comments, so feel free to ask questions.Posts from me will say "Wrapped in Love" until I figure out how to change that, as that was the name of my sling making business (and the reason I initially started a blog).

I'm headed to bed now. There will be more to come this week!

~Nikki