Farm Pantry...

Friday evening greetings my dears.. 

Welcome to the Blessed Hearth tonight.. 

We had a beautiful but very cold day and tonight is very cold, indeed.. Oh well, it is Winter, eh?  

This is just a little farm post again.. 

I find you girls like these perhaps the best so here we go again.. smile.. 

We went up there on Wednesday for the day.. 

Terry and Trevor had been up the day before smowmobiling so the house was not too cold and only took an hour or so to be really warm .. 

The first thing I did was to make up a batch of no knead bread.. 

As you can see I am using my new pantry counter.. 

This is the view out of the pantry window.. 

Pretty snowy looking, eh? 

Then I put some chicken in a cast iron pot to prepare for dinner.. 

I decided to once again use the old back porch stove.. 

It is not a cook stove just an old air-tight one but I can put 3 pots plus the old kettle on it at once.. 

My friend Becky wanted to see it but this was all I had on my camera.. smile.. 

I found an old old hand written cookbook that I used when we lived in Sussex 30 years ago and decided that I would like to make a few favourites that I had kind of forgotten about.. 

This one is Braised Chicken and I think it came from a USA Country Living magazine, I think.. 

All you do is to brown chicken in butter or oil until browned on all sides.. Then add 1 cup of sliced celery and cook for a few minutes.. 

Add 4 cups of water and let it simmer away for 20 minutes .. 

Then just add 4 peeled and chopped potatoes and a bag of frozen green beans or one of your bottles of canned beans.. 

Add salt and pepper and simmer away until potatoes are tender.. 

Add seasoning to taste with your favourite herb...

Summer Savory is nice.. 

Then while that was simmering away and the bread was rising I started making the curtains for the pantry..  

Remember when we went to P. E. I. for a 70 mile yard sale.. 

I had bought this fabric  along with a whole garbage bag full for $3.00... 

This is my little sewing kit that I keep at the farm.. 

It is an old tin full of sewing supplies that I bought at an auction.. 

All these thimbles were in it... smile.. 

Then the meal was ready so I pushed everything to the end of the table and set it for the two of us.. 

That old oven cooks bread so much better then my new one here at home for some reason.. grin.. 

Here are the curtains all finished.. 

I ended up making a little valance to match.. I had put up a little red cow one as you recall but I din't like it with the plaid... 

I will put it over the sink in the kitchen, I think.. 

The black piece there is an old set of dresser drawers that I will keep table cloths, tea towels, place mats and such in.. 

We are getting the pantry done bit by bit.. 

I have to arrange the shelves and hang more stuff and get the other wall cupboards and such up... 

Terry put the heat pipe through to the living room so now the next thing is to get the sink all in... 

I hope to get to the cottage in St. Martins because I have an old cupboard or two there that I want to use... 

All in due time... 

Here are the windmills just up the road from the farm.. 

Thank you so much for dropping by my friends .. 

So happy to hear from you all.. 

And you sweet girls who leave your comments anonymously, I am so glad to hear from you, too.. 

I wish I had the time to answer each one but I really am not consistent with that at all.. 

I do try to answer questions, though and know that I love to hear from you here or on the Face Book page.. 

Well, I must go .. 

We are having Keepers tomorrow no matter the weather.. 

We have had to postpone the last 2 weeks due to storms but I hope we get it done tomorrow.. smile.. 

I will let you know how it all goes.. 

God bless..  

LINKED TO JES

and

LINKED TO.. STEPHANIE..

These September Daze.....

Hello friends... 

Hope you are enjoying your September... 

Such a lovely month of the year and here in the Eastern provinces of Canada we are being blessed with wonderful warm weather even though we have had near frosts.. 

I need to bring in my geraniums soon to keep through the Winter.. 

They do not require much care and provide such cozy warm color all season.. Then I just take them back out and put them on the deck next Summer.. 

The one nice thing about being home again are the few visits we make up to our old farm back in the Kent Hills of New Brunswick.. 

We are quite busy here at home and could not stay long .. Terry mowed the grass and I puttered about in the kitchen.. 

Brought up a sweet old runner and wood basket from my shop... 

I like it there on the harvest table.. 

The little piece of lace on the handle has a donkey on it.. 

Imagine.. 

I couldn't sell that.. grin.. 

A dear lady gave me a whole box of kale... 

The world's most popular vegetable at this time.. 

So full of nutrients.. 

I froze a bunch.... 

And tried some kale chips... 

They were good although dear hubby was not impressed... 

I will sneak it into Winter soups for sure.. 

After he was finished mowing we went for a little drive.. 

He said he thought it would be nice to see the windmills again.. 

It was a beautiful sunny day at the farm but just a few minutes away up high was a lot of fog.. 

Some of the windmills you could barely see... 

Amazing aren't they?  

Then....

I found out why we really went for a drive.. 

Past the windmills my dear husband owns a wee wood lot.. 

I detest going up there because it is way up a winding high hill with barely a road.. 

By the time we got up there and back down I had been calling on the Lord to please get us out of there in one piece... 

I tell you sometimes I think the man has lost a couple of marbles.. 

Then he proceeds to tell me he thinks that he and Dustin will go up and take down a few maples and bring them to the farm.. 

Trust in the Lord with all your strength will be my verse for that day... smile.. 

On the sunnier side of my daze... I mean days are peaches.. 

Lots of them...

Peeled and sliced and mixed with a bit of sugar and frozen for the Winter.. 

To use on Vanilla Cake and Whipped Cream or on some Ice Cream Sundaes or perhaps a Fruit Salad... 

They will taste of Summer.. smile.. 

I imagine I am boring you stiff with all of my preserving and pickling stories but that is what I do this month and I love it... 

I am not complaining so perhaps I am bragging... grin... 

Please forgive me.. 

Here we have another almost 30 pounds of baby cucumbers made into Garlic Dill, Sandwich Dill and Nine Day Sweet Pickles.. 

The tea towel is covering some that are fermenting.. 

They are very healthy for you, you know.. 

Oh and I was blessed to find some more Queen Anne's Lace and made another batch of jelly as I sold it all at the Park sale.. 

I have made a sweet new friend on Blogger.. 

Her name is Michelle and she lives in England.. 

And you girls know how I love anything UK.. 

Well, she gave me a recipe for their type of beet pickles.. 

Over there they call it beetroot and of course we Canadians call them just beets but it is the same veggie.. 

Anyway, I have made a bottle Michelle... 

Thanks for the recipe... smile.. 

Try to go over and give her a wee visit as I am sure you will love her... 

Just click on her name above...

Now... 

I would like to share a poem that I found on the web that I thought was marvelous as it mentions another thing I love.. 

Mason Jars.. ..

Hope you will like it, too.. 

PICKLED

She gathered walnuts in June
on hot, clear days, when the nuts
were tender enough to pierce with a safety pin.
She soaked them in salt water
and baked them in the sun
until they turned black, wiped them dry,
and filled canning jars with vinegar, brown sugar,
cloves, peppercorns, and cassia buds.
She sealed the jars, carried them down
to the cellar, her knees nearly buckling
beneath the weight of walnuts,
then climbed the stairs back to the kitchen
and made sweet pickled pears
cooked in boiling water, soaked
in vinegar and sugar, cloves and cinnamon.
She pickled nasturtium seeds,
packed them in empty perfume bottles,
drenched them in vinegar —
little capers that impressed her friends
when she sprinkled them on chicken.
She pickled everything —
autumn leaves, peony blossoms,
hair pins, playbills, extra buttons,
letters from her mother —
all of these things preserved,
lined up in clear jars
on warped cellar shelves.
She loved the way the peaches glowed
when she pulled the chain
swinging beneath the light bulb,
loved the neat rows of specimens,
like screws at the hardware store.
On snowy afternoons in late December,
she cut out calendar squares
of days she wanted to save,
dropped them like wishes in a
wide-lipped Mason jar,
drowned them in vinegar,
sealed them in the sweet brine
of remembrance.

by..Cindy Hunter Morgan... 

Thank you, dear hearts for you visit and your comments, of course.. 

Praying that you have the peace of the Lord in your days.. 

xo

A Spring Weekend in Eastern Canada...

Good Evening everyone.. 

So glad to have you stop by and visit for a bit.. 

Did you have a good weekend?  

Just thought I would post a few pics of our doings here on a Spring  weekend in New Brunswick.. 

We had glorious weather .. 

Cool but sunny with a bit of brisk winds.. 

Terry and I woke up on Saturday with a desire to have ourselves another farm day.. 

We had had a busy week and it just seemed like it was calling our names.. 

We find it a very relaxing thing to do.. 

Our old place is located between two hills and the wind breezes through there.. Usually, there are a herd of cows out beyond the barn.. (They belong to someone else..smile) 

And there is never very much traffic and so quiet.. 

Relaxing if you know what I mean.. 

You would think to hear me talk that we live such busy stressful lives instead of two old mostly retired ones.. grin.. 

Anyway, we headed out that way and stopped for our traditional coffees to drink along the way.. It only takes us a half hour but we enjoy our Tim Horton's .. (Canadian coffee) 

Well.. when we arrived in a wee town that we need to go through to get there we realized that it was the annual  River Run...

There were trucks galore with ATVs on trailers everywhere you looked.  There were folks on bikes and walking..

Cars parked along the road for miles..  

We need to go over the river to get to the farm so it was kind of fun to see what was going on.. 

To be honest we generally try to stay away from the event as it is quite a party.. smile.. 

The public were warned that the police would be out in healthy numbers and they were..  

Well, we ended up at the farm in one piece..

We met quite a bit more traffic then usual.. Two cars every mile or so .. I told Terry that Prosser Brook had bumper to bumper traffic..  

I thought I was hilarious but you know he takes that place seriously and did not get my joke.. LOL.. 

Gotta love him.. 

When we got the place warmed up a bit I decided to make bread and put on a ham to cook. 

Terry worked away at cleaning up the yard. 

I wanted to do some switching furniture around and we did that for a few minutes.. 

We had bought the old hutch you see in the pic at the auction..

Twenty dollars, I think..  

It looks a bit better then the enamel top table that was there.  

It just needs to be painted especially the mended drawer.. 

Things need to be arranged better after it gets it's paint job..

We had lunch/supper and then decided to take a drive up to the windmills.. 

There was still snow up there and the maple syrup pipes were everywhere.. 

They must have got a pile of syrup this year.. 

The windmills are awesome and there are so many of them.. 

They are located up in the Kent Hills ... 

Well, when we came back down there were a bunch of young fellows mud-bogging up the snow mobile trail..

Oh my word....

What they do to those vehicles is unbelievable!!!

Covered in mud and gears grinding.. !!

And grinning their heads off.. 

I don't get it..  

On our way home we saw one lonely boater under the bridge but most of the activity was over although there were still lots of traffic.. 

We were almost out to the highway when we pulled up beside this poor lad.. 

We heard them say that had hoped that when they got on the road that the air would cool down the motor but instead it blew up

.. 

Believe me...

He was not a happy looking camper.. 

I guess it was fun for a bit.. 

To be honest..  

I guess I am an old woman but I tried to get Terry to explain to me what the sense in this is.. 

You take a decent truck or whatever and put it through all the mud you can and perhaps ruin it.. 

For what??? 

He said most of these guys probably work in garages and fix them each week and then head out again on the weekends... 

????? 

I guess if that is a priority for them then it must be worth all of the hard work to pay for it.. 

Whatever.... 

Then on Sunday we attended church in the morning and evening.. 

Wonderful lovely presence of the Lord.. 

Our grandsons were there and we were talking about the farm.. 

I told them I wanted a donkey and some sheep.. 

Today when we got home I had a tweet from one of them telling me I could buy a donkey for $600.00 and they found me 2 sheep for free but I had to give the owners the wool for the first year.. 

Isn't that precious!! 

I am trying to talk Terry into it.. 

How do you think I will make out??? 

Have a good night dear hearts and thanks so much for all of your sweet comments.. 

I love them.. 

Until next time.. 

Faye.. 

Wow.. this is a long post.. 

Hope I didn't bore you to death.. 

Don't read it.. just look at the pics.. grin..