The Story of Soup

Today was a soup day. For sure.

Rainy, dark, cold & blustery.

A good day to read & make soup.

So we did.

Lot's of soup.

Our cupboards and freezers are looking pretty bare these days.

It's been a long time since we butchered anything. And  I haven't run the canner in a while.

And since we make everything (mostly) from scratch when the freezers & cupboards are bare dinner starts to look darn near impossible.

I cooked up a HUGE ham hock the other day & picked most of the meat off that to go in some cheesy potatoes for dinner yesterday.

Then I threw the ham hock back in the crock pot with water to make broth.

So this morning I picked & strained that, added beans & onion & put it back on the stove until it simmered thick & yummy into ham & bean soup.

That was 2 (count them 2) full meals from a ham hock.

We also had a package of beef short ribs in the freezer.

Since nobody here is extra fond of short ribs I boiled those down into lovely broth. Strained & picked that this morning. Added in carrots & onions & split peas & lentils & tomatoes & boiled up a huge stock pot of beef veggie soup.

I have 7 jars of that in the pressure canner right now & enough still in the pot for another batch.

It will be nice to have some meals basically ready to go in the cupboard again.

Now I just need to make a big batch of the ham & bean soup to can. And some chili. And then the cupboard will not be so bare.

As for the freezer we have 40 some chickens waiting for a sunny day to die.

And the hogs are going on the 1st.

It will be fabulous to have pork again.

And we have a calf we will turn into hamburger & soup bones in a few weeks.

So the freezer shouldn't be empty much longer.

We also have about 7 rabbits almost ready.

And 2 turkeys (Thanksgiving & Christmas of course).

And I've been thinking about pre-mixing some of our most used baking recipes to save time & make it easier for my 7 year old budding pastry chef.

I'm thinking biscuits, pancakes,muffins, chocolate chips cookies... maybe fritters & some quick breads.

That might help breakfast to get on the table a little quicker.

If I put enough time into having things ready beforehand it is almost as simple as just opening a box or a can like most folks do.

Why don't we just do that you ask?

Well. Partly because it's important to us to know where our food comes from.

And partly because my husband has some serious health issues & many many prepackaged processed store bought foods have additives & ingredients that make him very sick.

So the easiest way to make sure he avoids those is to make pretty muchly everything ourselves.

But most of the time the food we make tastes better than what you can buy anyway so it all works out in the end.

Right? Right.

Plus I get to see how many meals I can get out of 1 cut of meat. It's like a game...how far can we stretch these bones?

Yeah I know. It's a weird housewife/farmwife thing...

Blessings.

Divided

I've been saying for awhile now that we, as a people, are too stupid to continue much longer.

Everyone laughs, ha ha, and agrees in a joking manner.

But I'm not joking. The levels to which we have fallen in such a short amount of time are mind blowing.

Compare our current political & racial climate to 15 years ago.

Unrecognizable.

Discussing it with my husband it isn't even what you could call hypocrisy. It's abject stupidity.

A lack of knowledge.

I have 2 specific matters that are on my mind right now. These matters serve as examples of discordance in our society.

I am not holding one or the other up as a good or bad so please don't read this & think you will take away an accurate picture of my political thoughts or views because you more than likely won't.

The current Trump outrage has me thinking.

I have not listened to the tape that has everyone in an uproar & I don't plan to. From my understanding he was a disgusting pig in word & deed & I am not defending him in any way.

But some of the loudest most wildly offended parties to this are  women of a liberal leaning.  Women who "object" to being "objectified".

And I have some issues with this.

I'm just going to bring up one recent event which received much coverage by the media & was all over the place with photos & videos & interviews.

The University of Texas, in Austin, had 'activists' who are against a persons right to carry a concealed weapon, stage a protest to "carry meat not heat".

Their protest consisted mainly of pretty young women walking around holding large plastic penises, commonly known as "dildos" while they smiled & posed for the camera & proclaimed their stance against gun violence.

Everything about this protest was designed to be sexually overt, in your face, shocking & offensive. And by walking around fondling giant plastic sex organs those young women OBJECTIFIED themselves.

They made themselves a sexual object in the eyes of everyone watching.

And that was okay? That was funny? That was light hearted & free speech & those of us offended by it are just stodgy & need to get with the times?

Yet those young women & others like them ~ with the same ideology, the same belief system~ are the ones crying out the loudest about Trumps dirty mouth.

So let me get this straight~ it's okay for them to make themselves a public spectacle of a sexual nature but not it's not okay for anyone to notice or call them on it or respond in kind?

Welcome to America in 2016.

Now again~ I am not defending Trump. I am not saying speaking about women as sexual objects is okay.

I'm saying it's BEYOND hypocritical to put yourself out there as a sexual object & then cry foul when it comes home to roost.

I know many many women who do NOT put themselves out there as sexual objects. They dress modestly. The behave modestly. They have decorum. They are ladies.

These women have expressed offence & outrage at the words on that tape.

I know many men who would never speak like that about a woman. Or anyone for that matter.

They express offence & outrage. From these sources it rings true & honest.

From the young women fondling the giant plastic penises? Not so much. From the people who listen to certain music types where filthy language, violence, sexual abuse & just plain nastiness IS the common thread of the that genre?

It rings empty.

Yet if you call them upon this hypocrisy, this complete inability to follow rational thought, you will be met with outrage & anger & accusation.

I'm not even going to visit my second example in this post. I can barely stomach what I have covered.

As a people we are lost. We are discordant & in a word, stupid.

You doubt me?

Look around you.

Look at our choices for President of the United States.

Our once great nation is joke.

We are crumbling from within.

Just as the saying goes: United we stand. Divided we fall.

We have never been more divided.

Politically.

Racially.

Religiously.

Something to think about.

Blessings.

Autumn

I was recently chastised for not blogging enough...

So here I am. And I'm thinking I really do need to blog more. If nothing else it's helps to get the words out of my head & it gives some place to put things I may need to find again.

I had to take some pictures of the goats to put on Craigslist so I took a bunch of a random pics of the garden & some of the animals & my pumpkins.

(I love pumpkins. I adore pumpkins. And all things pumpkin related. Bread. Cake. Muffins. Cookies. Pancakes. Pie. Sigh. Now I'm hungry...)

We've had almost a full week of freezing nights so there was no saving the garden. I had to face facts & call it a season.

I was really really wanting more time for the pumpkins & the tomatoes but, alas, it was not to be.

I picked all of the green tomatoes I could & put them in boxes to ripen. And I picked all of the pumpkins that had hardened off enough & artfully piled them about as decorations.

Very few of my pie pumpkins ripened so unless I can glean some from someone I won't be processing any this year. We keep the big ones & the gourds around to look pretty until Thanksgiving & then we feed them to the pigs & the cows & the chickens.


I got lots of beautiful Cinderella pumpkins this year but no bright orange ones. They all came out a creamy yellow. Cross pollinating with some of the squash would be my guess on why.

It was kind of a rough gardening year. We had a hard frost in the middle of June which bit back the tomatoes & took a big chunk out of our 90 day growing season. It wiped out the cukes & the peppers.
Then just as everything was getting a good start we had another hard freeze in the middle of July.

So all in all I'm pretty pleased with our harvest.

The cabbages & kale did great. Beets were so so. I have more turnips & carrots than I can shake a stick at. Potatoes did well. Onions were a little puny. Green beans did well. Tomatoes were pretty sad. I'm pleased with my pumpkins & sgetti squash.

We're working on pulling up all the plants to feed to the animals.

We've had a good barter year. We traded a heifer for several ton of wheat hay. We traded a butcher hog for several ton of oats. Which is all good because the animal inventory on the farm keeps expanding.

We have 2 milk cows, 26 calves, 8 hogs, 6 goats, 18 rabbits, over 100 assorted birds, 3 horses, a donkey, 2 dogs & 4 cats.

Holy moly.

Thankfully more than a few of those are slated for the freezer before winter sets in.

We have our personal wood cut but not split & stacked. That is something the boys work on after school on nice days. We're hoping to get enough cut to sell some this year.

Winter is staring us down & we still have much to do to be prepared & ready for it. Still lots of general clean up & moving pipes & equipment to safe places where it won't get lost or damaged under the snow. Some fencing repairs & barn fortifying needs to happen.

Chickens need to die. Calves need to get sold. Pigs need to get fat. The rest of the veggies need to be stored away.

I love autumn. It's definitely in my top 2 seasons. I think winter beats it though. Snow trumps all.

I hope you've enjoyed this farm update!

Blessings.