Iowa Girl

First....do I really qualify as a "girl" anymore? I guess not, but forever in my own mind I can be, right? If I am a girl, I'm an Iowa Girl for sure. That includes all the trappings of rural life, minus the farm I suppose. I enjoy being home, raising my children, taking care of "the homestead", growing a garden....and then comes the fun part...."putting up" the produce.

I love that term. "Putting up" the vegetables. It makes me think of 1930's Iowa farm wives in full aprons shelling peas on the lawn. I don't necessarily adore the process, but the results are fantastic. Pulling out a quart of homegrown, homecanned tomatoes in the dead of winter to make a pot of chili....there's nothing like it. It's sort of sad though to think how far away from this way of life so many of my peers have strayed. Levi even had a man he works with stand dumbfounded at the idea that a person could "can" anything in their own kitchen. Maybe that's part of what is wrong with society...we can't rely on someone else to provide everything for us...that includes the food we put on our table. For an investment of $20 in seeds I will have a freezer and pantry full of more vegetables and fruits than I can use in a year.

So if the economy goes completely coput and you're starving to death, come on over.

I've got a nice shovel and some leftover seeds I'll borrow ya.

The Painted Birthday Suit

Didn't you know? All the most gifted artists paint in the nude...or is that on the nude?

Raising them Right

Today as Marsh and I picked raspberries he came across a particularly large one. He exclaimed "IT'S AS BIG AS CY'S BEAK!!!"

You know you're doing a good job when the kid uses Cyclone objects as measuring references. ;-)

Red White and Blue

Happy 4th of July....a little late.

The Will to Live

Our century old maple got an "extreme makeover" last fall after threatening to fall on our house. We were sad to see it go, but excited for it's second life as the tree house pedestal (coming soon to our backyard :-) Our tree guy, Cy, said the tree was well over a hundred years old and one of the biggest he'd ever cut down. It had seven major limbs that were the size of normal trees themselves. After removing the entire canopy of the tree, 7 limbs and all we thought the tree was done for. THOUGHT.

Now get very quiet....listen carefully....can you hear it? That's our tree yelling at us from the backyard.....I......WILL.....NOT......DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is what we found last week. Good luck tree.