Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia.  How you doing this 29th week of 2023?  The 4th of July celebrations have come & gone so now it's time for the Grands to start gathering up their stuff for Back-to-School.  Kevin went to the gun show, I went to Moma's to make relish.  We got an upright freezer & Kevin spent a lot of time putting stuff up out of the garden.  I worked in a neighboring office 50 minutes away, so that took up most my daytime.  The Rose of Sharon was so beautiful this week, all bloomed out with it's abundant purple flowers.  Kevin likes the mimosa trees that were in full bloom this week too.  It's my birthday month so I'm sharing a little each week this month about how it was growing up in the mountains.  We let the chickens out of their house for their 1st time since they arrived as babies, so I'll tell you how that went.  Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll talk more, come walk with me...

Celebrating my 16th Birthday.  We had cake
& ice cream.  Moma made that shirt.

*  I got my 1st real job when I was a Junior in high school.  I got hired at Lay's 5 & 10 department store.  Some folks called it the dime store, others called it the 5 & dime.  Me & several others around my age were hired to wipe & clean the shelves.  We also organized & straightened the products.  We worked after school till close & worked weekends.  I eventually worked the cash register & stocked shelves.  I worked there a couple years or so till I got married.  Around that time the store sold & changed to Fred's department store.  Earlier in my teen years, Moma operated a laundromat.  I remember having to help roll coins that were collected out of the machines.  Sister & Me helped wipe the machines clean & swept the floor from time to time.  A few times I stayed at the laundromat by myself making change for people & washing, drying & folding a load or 2 of clothes for people. 

Celebrating my 56th birthday at work along with 3 other employees having July
birthdays.  Supervisor Tammy made a chocolate cake for the occasion.  I worked
with Tammy some 30 years ago at the beginning of my career.  I've always tried to
follow my work moto "Always be nice to the people you work with, you
never know who will end up being your boss someday."

*  The garden is doing good overall.   The bell peppers & carrots are not going to produce much if anything.  The okra is still growing but Kevin says it's poorly, so we'll see.  We hope to at least get a mess or 2 of okra.  I did see several pods growing while I was out there gander necking around in the garden the other day.  Kevin worked on getting the onions put up in the freezer & cooked us a mess of green beans & corn bread.  We haven't grown any sweet corn the past several years.  Kevin picked us up a half dozen ears at the produce stand down the road.  Hopefully we'll be able to get several more dozen to put up in the freezer.

The sunflowers are starting to bloom.  They are reaching for the sun & towering
above everything else in the garden. There are lots of green tomatoes, I fried some
up for supper one night.  Kevin added some more support for the tomato vines.  

Moma cutting up vegetables to be put in
her little food chopper to be chopped up.
There are way too many cucumbers there
than what was needed for making the relish.  

*  Kevin helped me gather garden stuff to take up to Moma's to make relish.  Our bell peppers didn't do worth a darn this year, as I mentioned earlier, so all I had was a couple of banana peppers & 1 scraggly bell pepper.  Our banana peppers did good & we've put some of those in the freezer already. We had more than enough cucumbers, so Sister traded their neighbor some cucumbers for some peppers.  Their bells were gorgeous.  The youngest Grands were there at Moma's house, so the relish making was a fun family affair. 

Grand went with Sister to round
up some more bell peppers. 

The littlest Grands kept busy getting
familiar with the veggies & kitchen utensils.
Milk tasted so much better drinking out of
that measuring cup than it did in a sippy cup.

Mixing up the chopped veggies, smelling the strong scent of
vinegar before the pot got too hot.

6 pints & 2 half pints of relish.  Moma said she liked to make relish sandwiches.
  I like relish on my hotdogs, pinto beans & use it to make salads such as egg salad,
 ham salad, chicken salad, tuna salad.....  There were a couple of those gorgeous bell
 peppers & a couple coolapeno peppers (non-hot jalapeno) leftover that came with
 the neighbor's vegetable trade.  I brought those peppers home with me & put them
in the freezer.  I had never heard of the coolapeno peppers.  Sister said she used
 those peppers to make jalapeno poppers & that they were great.

Move rocks - they are still right there,
still piled up.

*  A few of our other planned projects around the house for the week...  Kevin seen a tree service truck in town with a load of wood.  He talked to them & asked what they were going to do with the wood. The guys said they were going to try to find a place to dump it.  Kevin asked if they were going to get rid of the wood for free & told them he had a place to dump it. They took our address then later in the day, brought the wood & dumped it.  We'll use the wood in the firepit & Kevin has plans to put a woodstove in his shop.

Chop wood - Kevin got started on
chopping, splitting & stacking the wood
to dry.  That one there with the target,
Kevin says will be good for ax throwing.

Weeding - See the new growth of the
primrose? I got that grass pulled up
from around all the primrose.
I gave the grass, roots & all
to the chickens.

*  We tried to fix as much stuff as possible from out the garden this week.  It seems like most the produce all comes in at one time.  We cooked it, canned it, froze it, traded it or shared it. This is the 1st time we've grown cucumbers, that I remember in our recent history of growing a garden.  I researched to see if cucumbers could be frozen & what to do with them other than what I know to do with them, slice them & eat them fresh, make pickles or relish with them & to put them on your eyes while you're resting.  I read that cucumbers can be frozen just like we freeze the squash, but they will get mushy.  They are then good for smoothies, soups & such.  The squash will get mushy too, so that's the reason we fry them still frozen or make a casserole with them.  I also read about roasting & baking cucumbers like we would do with zucchini squash.  We didn't plant any zucchini this year so perhaps we'll use the cucumbers in zucchini recipes. I got a recipe for cucumber bread so I'll see how it goes.

The carrot plants are dead as if the carrots
 are ready to harvest. Kevin pulled several
 & said the carrots were about an inch long,
 don't know what happened.  There're not
even the size for baby carrots, more still
like just a root. We still have canned carrots
in the pantry from last year, so will be eating
those up this winter.

Deer burger sliders, green
fried mators & squash
casserole for supper. Kevin
had cucumber slices too.

   

Kevin made the squash casserole using this recipe handed down from Moma.  He
usually leaves the casserole making up to me, though he did most the cooking this
week while I worked more hours on the job.  His casserole turned out simply delicious.
 I told him he needed to make casseroles more often.  He said he used a whole onion
instead of 1 tablespoon. The recipe does recommend using a little more onion.  Also,
he used cornflakes instead of the crackers or stuffing because that's what we had on
hand.  Sometimes I put cream of chicken soup in the recipe when I make it. Really, I
think you could use any kind of cream soup.

*  It'll take the chickens a little time to figure out how to go in & out of the chicken house.  We had to catch them to put them out then we had to catch them to put them back in.  They stayed close to the building during their 1st time outside. The rooster on the ramp has his eye on Rose & he didn't back away as if he was protecting his flock. We were going to let the chickens stay out a couple hours that 1st time but after about 20 minutes, thunder rolled a couple times.  We thought we better get them back in before it came up a rain.  

*  Driving on the curvy winding road to help out another office wasn't too bad, considering. One day there was a section of road closed that took me on a detour to some place I didn't know where I was at. One day it came a down pour of rain that I couldn't' see where I was going.  One day a tree fell across the road & I had to wait for the tree to be sawed, chopped & cleared out of the way. I was thankful I was only 15 minutes late to work instead of the hour to 1 1/2 hour that I had expected.  I didn't see the tree fall but the driver on the other side said he did see it fall as he rounded the curve.  One morning I saw a wild hog & was so thankful it didn't step out into the road.  I wouldn't want to dive that road every day, day after day after day.

                                                                       
                                                                            

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has you week been?