Rawberry Kitchen

Here is a great site for all the things you need for home food preparation needs:

Rawberry Kitchen . One of the perks of living next door to the website owners is all the fantastic foods to sample and share. I am having a blast in my kitchen by saving and using my fresh foods.

Nancy is a great teacher of how to work with food. Here is one of her great recipes:

Island Coconut "Ice Cream!"

Chrome, Apples and Cake

I have been very busy with fall harvest, cake making and food for preserving. I have no desire to eat food after working with it all day. So for dinner I will have cucumbers. I made a "death by chocolate" cake for a friend's birthday. It was fudge cake, mocha filling and chocolate cream cheese icing. My friends said they were on a sugar high after having a piece of it.

I still have apples and pears to can and peppers to dehydrate. I just had to take photos of my kitchen in progress. With the shiny pans and cake holder glowing in the setting afternoon. And Poppy resting in the sunbeam right in the middle of it all.

Stacking 52 Bales

We do not own a pick up truck, yet. So we asked for some friends to help us get hay for our horses. They said they could get 50 bales of hay in their truck, and they did! We were impressed this feat could be done; being newbies to getting hay. We learned a lot about quality hay and stacking of hay for transport. We got our hay home and began stacking it in our garage for the winter. I was impressed with the architecture of the barn we visited, it was built in the 1970's, as old as I am. It was made from the lumber of the trees on the property.

Sleepy Day

Some days everyone just want to relax and sleep. Like my baby colt and his pasture mate taking a break. And mama cat sleeping on my jeans and in the sun while horse lessons are going on below us.

Snapping Turtle

This week I noticed a creature going across my meadow at speed and that it was not one of mine. Upon getting a closeup I saw it was a snapping turtle trotting to our stocked pond. We headed it off at the pass to relocate it to the uphill pond that is more reptile friendly. But this snapper was in no mood to be relocated. It hunched up like a rabbit and leaped up at our faces and hands. It had clearly learned how to defend itself. My husband caught it and placed it in our muck cart for easy relocation. It was much happier in the shallow uphill pond filled with frogs.

Stable Building

We have been digging holes all through the hot summer for the beams for our stable. Now the weather is cooler and the beams are in place. Now we are adding the roof and cross beams on our stable. It has taken months to build but it is now closer to complete thanks to donated ladders and advice from friends. We need to order the roofing tin panels. The cooler weather means limited horseflies to deal with.

Poly and Pumpkins

Here is our first poly charity quilt we made for the local nursing home. Only 39 more quilts left to go. The pumpkin quilt is one my students made for show and tell. Gets me in the mood for fall!

Poppy and turtle

The turtles are on the move in the Ozarks. This one was walking across our driveway one afternoon. Poppy decided it was worth his time to investigate. Eventually he grew bored and left the turtle alone to mozy back into the woods.