Jwyatt83

One of my favorite seasons in the garden is strawberry season.  I have to say that it is by far my favorite garden crop. 

When I was a young girl I used to sit in my mom's strawberry patch and devour the strawberries. In high school I worked at a strawberry patch for a few summers as a picker in the morning and sales in the afternoon.  I also consumed a bit of strawberries (and strawberry shortcake and strawberry smoothies!) there.

Now I have my own strawberry patch.  And yes, I still sit in the middle of the patch and eat strawberries.  Lots of them.

I have grown to know my habits though, so I have planted a big enough batch to support my in patch strawberry eating, to supply fresh strawberries for my kids to enjoy, and to have extras to preserve.

Strawberry season is now over, but for about 2 1/2 - 3 weeks, weather pending, I bring in a batch of strawberries like the ones pictured here every other day.  (Not pictured are the cups of strawberries that I have eaten in the patch that day.) The best thing is that my patch is still expanding!

It takes around an hour or so to work through the patch to pick the berries.  Remember, I pause often.   When I get them into the house, I find a spot for them in my fridge until I can spend another hour or so preparing them, which is usually the opposite day of picking.

Last year I would freeze or preserve them as jam by the individual batch.  This year, however, I have shaken things up a bit and separate out the larger berries for freezing and the smaller berries for jam within each batch.  This has seemed to work out well for me. 


To start with, I fill my sink with cold water and dump my berries in.  I swish them around a bit with my hands, drain the water, and repeat until the water is clear.  It usually only takes a couple of fills.


Next, I fill my strainer as much as possible to drain some water, followed by placing them in my salad spinner.  I don't have too many kitchen gadgets in the house, but I do love my salad spinner.  Not only does it help my garden lettuce to stay fresher longer, but it has made preserving all of my varieties of berries so much more efficient and improves their quality. (Especially the raspberries which hold water so well in their empty core.)


I spin the water off of the berries, one bowl at a time.  As I remove them from the spinner, I destem them.  I have tried many methods for destemming strawberries, including using many gadgets at the berry patch.  My favorite method is by far using a thin baby spoon which quickly scrapes/pops off the tip with very little berry waste. The berries are then divided into a bowl for smaller berries and a bowl for larger berries. The smaller berries are placed back into the fridge until there is enough for a batch of jam, usually within another picking or two.

The next tool that I use is an egg slicer.  This slicer quickly and evenly slices berries to the perfect size, and held upside down, it drops them right onto my pan for freezing.  I could freeze them whole, but I have found that the berries don't get used up as quickly when they are sliced as you can get so many more berry bites with sliced berries.


For my freezing pans, I just cover cookie sheets with washed cereal box sacks. They are cheap (free), sturdy, and the berries come right off of them.  As pictured, I spread my berries across the pan, being careful that they don't overlap much which helps them freeze individually.


I used to just flash freeze them to the point where the outer layer was frozen, but I have changed to freezing them overnight to where they are completely frozen. I have found that they are just easier to work with this way.  Once they are frozen, I simply crumple up the cereal bag from the outside in, make a pile of berries in the middle, and then lightly push on the pile with the cereal bag covering them in order to separate any berries that have stuck together.

They then get put into sandwich baggies, 2 cups at a time.  Just as I do when canning my sweet corn and other veggies, these sandwich baggies get placed into a gallon freezer bag.  This method allows me to grab out, or shake out, just the portion of berries that I want.

This year I froze a new record of 32 baggies, or around 64 cups, of strawberries.  They will be enjoyed in our homemade oatmeal and occasionally over ice cream.  I'm looking forward to freezing even more next year!

And then there is the jam. As I mentioned, the smaller berries get set aside and used for jam. This year I made 2 batches of strawberry jam, equaling 18 1/2 pints.  I could have made another batch or two, but we had a big event coming up on the farm that needed my attention so we just ate the rest of the little berries, which was just fine!

You can find the instructions for jam making in any Sure-Gel packet, but I thought I would just add some snap shots of my kids helping me and some basics of the process. 

Jonathan, my 3 year old did a great job helping smash the berries for me with a potato masher.
Isaac, our 5 year old, helped measure out the sugar needed.  I have heard that when making jam you want to use 100% pure cane sugar and not sugar which includes beet sugar.  Apparently, beet sugar does not allow the jam (or jelly) to set well, and it can end up runny.  I've never experimented with the sugar which contains beet sugar, but the 100% cane sugar has always given me a nice set.

Once the berries were mashed and sugar measured, Hannah, our 8 year old, added in our packet of Sure-Gel to the berries.

The berries were then heated to a rolling boil, and then the sugar was quickly added in, returning everything to a rolling boil again for the appropriate amount of time.  This is a step where I ask the kids to stay back since there is often some very hot splattering going on.

Once the cooking process was done, preheated jars were filled with jam.

Rims were wiped clean.

And heated lids and bands were placed on the jars as Hannah fished them out of the heated water.


The jars were then placed back into the pot to process which I had them heating in, this time filled with berry goodness. 
And after their processing time was complete, they were pulled out to cool.


Once the jars were cool, I labeled them and had each of the kids who helped put their initials on the rim of the jar as well.  As talked about in a previous post, throughout the year, as we enjoy produce preserved from our farm, we acknowledge who all helped with the meals being served and remember the memories made, something that the kids now find great enjoyment in!

Usually, after strawberry season I am move right along to the next season of my garden. This year, however, there is a bit of a lull due to the garden getting in later than I would have liked - a combination of a rough 1st trimester of pregnancy, a challenging end to our home school year, and projects that needed to be accomplished on the farm outside of the garden.

As I try to remind myself often, I just need to be faithful with what I have been given and trust the Lord to provide in His own way through the areas and times that seem to be challenging as well as the times areas and times filled with ease.  At least I know that this year I will get to enjoy the (strawberry) fruits of my labor!

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I was given an egg slicer as a wedding present, and I don't think I have sliced more than a dozen hard boiled eggs with one. I have, however, sliced gallons upon gallons of strawberries to freeze and bananas to dehydrate with one. My original egg slicer broke a wire, and I tried to replace it with one from a nearby store which quickly broke as well.  After reading many reviews, this slicer went on my Christmas list.  It is a tad more expensive than others, but I give it heavy use and it is holding up great!





This little salad spinner is perfect for spinning water out of berries for freezing, which greatly improves the quality of the berries frozen.  Not only that, but it is wonderful to spin batches of lettuce from the home garden, helping the lettuce to last longer in the fridge.

In a couple of weeks, however, we’ll see just how well these guinea eggs were fertilized this year, and we’ll see how this year of focused guinea raising goes. We have a few kinks to work out, such as corralling these flighty birds to keep them where we would like them and catching them during processing time. We do have some different plans of attacks for the year including sending off the year old guineas who have taken to wandering a bit more than we would like and roosting in the rafters, setting up a roosting area where we can shut the door and actually catch them, as well as some ideas to keep them in the pasture area more.


I’m not sure if guineas will be a permanent part of our farm or a “It was fun while it lasted” part of the farm. Even with the challenges of these skiddish wandering foragers and the times of unwanted, not-stop rusty gate noise, they do provide wonderful pest control, a unique meat, and quite a great deal of entertainment as they charge though the pasture in mass, scaring an array of insects into the air, and darting around to gobble them up.

Do you have any experience with guinea fowl? If so, I'd love to have you share!


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Looks like Julio’s and Alex’s prank has backfired! They probably didn’t think through what would happen if you’d give Chuck’s ego another boost. It might just end up exploding!

i would read today’s shortpacked!, some of you, it is edumacational

And the mug goes to …

William Vergonet! (Boy, I hope I spelled that right)

Thanks for playing, guys! We’ll have another contest soon. I think it’s great that a mechanic won the Julio mug! The runner up and winner of the CW book is Adam Jacobs. Please write us a PM or email with your address and we’ll have the prize to you in no-time!

Speaking of Julio, this is another of my favorite strips because it’s very relate-able and I may or may not have lived this moment in my aviation career (strongly leaning towards “may”).

People who know me know that I used a Muppet Show ring tone for certain individuals and a company I used to work for. We also used to listen to music while working with Panaca Jane and even had dedicated playlists for going to a fire, returning to base, or recons for example.
Of course Chuck, being the aviation movie fanatic that he is, has to play “Ride of the Valkyries” every time he goes out flying the helicopter. I’m guessing it’s followed by “Fortunate Son” and “Paint it Black”….

Which songs do you guys think are on his Fixed Wing playlist?

Hope you’re all having a great Friday morning, everybody! Rejoice! The weekend is near! To everybody who’s at the AERO in Friedrichshafen today, come and meet me at the Fliegermagazin area (A5-325) where I’ll be signing books from 11:00 to 13:00!

i turn thirty-five today

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**As I transition to www.TheBeginningFarmer.com I am quickly realizing I'm not as web savvy as I had hoped! In the meantime I will be posting here as well for those of you subscribed through RSS ... and hopefully will have that fixed soon.**

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to participate in a Practical Farmers of Iowa Farminar about "Making Niche Pork Work for You at Any Scale". The 90 minutes scheduled for the on-line event (you can click the link above to watch a recording) went by faster than I could have imagined and I learned a lot along the way. There were so many great questions from Kate, the other beginning farmer, that we didn't have much time to talk with Phil Kramer about Niman Ranch. Luckily I happen to know Phil because his farm was where we purchased our first Hereford gilt so I asked him if he would be willing to come on "The Beginning Farmer Show" to talk about raising pigs for Niman Ranch. Phil takes us through the process of bringing Niman Ranch feeder pigs to the farm all the way through taking them to the pick-up location and everything in between!

In the second part of the interview Phil and I talk about the profit possibilities when raising pigs for Niman Ranch, the art of being a farrow-to-finish hog farmer, and of course we dig into a discussion of Hereford hogs which is something that Phil and I are both passionate about. If you have any questions for Phil about Niman Ranch or just raising pigs from farrow-to-finish in general please leave a comment below and I'll make sure Phil gets your question and answers if he is able to.

Links Relevant to This Episode

I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with "The Beginning Farmer" and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links ...

• Crooked Gap Farm
• Crooked Gap Farm on Facebook
• Crooked Gap Farm on Twitter

I hope that you have had time to try out The Pressure Canning Process and that you are feeling comfortable with your pressure canner now.

If you are just jumping in on my series on Beginning Pressure canning, I invite you to read my first post about Understanding Pressure Canning, followed by The Pressure Canning Process which gives you a step by step tutorial on becoming familiar with your pressure canner.

If you you feel like you are getting the hang of your pressure canner, it is now time to start filling your pantry! 

 

Preserving the Harvest

When most people think about filling their pantry with pressure canned products, they often think of jars filled with produce from the summer's garden.  Pressure canning is a wonderful way to preserve the bounty of your harvest, especially if you don't have freezer space or a root cellar to fill.


Low acid produce such as green beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, corn, carrots, peas, asparagus, and even onions and peppers can all be safely preserved to enjoy and cook with throughout the year.

Although fruits and tomato based food with a high enough acidity (sauces, salsa, tomato juice, stewed tomatoes, etc.) can be safely canned in a water bath, they can also be pressure canned with a reduced processing time compared to the water bath.

Whenever you select produce to can, make sure that you use produce that is free of blemishes (which could contain more of the organisms that spoil food) and that is not overly ripe (for the best flavor, nutritional quality, and longevity for storage). 

What if you don't have a garden?  (To see my post on Gardening to Feed a Family, click here.) Don't let that stop you!  Here are just a few ideas on how to acquire delicious produce to pressure can:

• Join a CSA - Community Supported Agriculture farms will supply you with weekly shares of their harvest throughout the growing season.  
• Farmers' Markets - Farmers' markets allow you to select the types and amounts of produce that you would like to preserve.  Make sure to talk to the farmers about the origins of their produce, however, since many farmers' markets allow individuals to sell produce that has been shipped in. 
• Produce Auctions - Produce auctions are a great way to buy bulk produce for canning. If you search around on Google, you might be able to locate produce auctions in your area. My mom and grandma often frequent the Wapsie Valley Produce Auction in Hazelton, located amongst the Amish near my hometown. More Iowa produce auctions can be found here. Although most of the produce is grown locally, it is still a good idea to ask about the origin of the produce.
• Check with Friends and Neighbors - There are many gardeners out there who garden just as much to get their hands dirty in the garden as they do to consume their crops, and there are many land owners who have fruit trees but do not eat all of the fruit.  These gardeners and landowners often have more produce than they can handle. Don't be afraid to ask them if they ever have an abundance to sell or barter for.  You might even be able to exchange some garden or fruit picking up labor for crops. I know of many individuals who have spotted plentiful gardens or fruit trees on walks or drives and have ended up with large amounts of produce.  Don't be shy! :) 
• Purchase from Stores - If you aren't able to grow or purchase any local produce, you can always purchase your produce from the store.  This allows you to have foods on hand and ready to go without a trip to town, and you can also get nice sales on certain crops when they are in season.

 

When There Isn't a Harvest

The gardening season is not the only time that you can have foods to pressure can.  My pressure canner runs regularly throughout the winter months as well, which is a great time to can. The heat provided by the canner is actually welcomed, unlike in the summer months.  There are also many jars available that are being emptied of summer produce. These jars can be filled with ready to go meals or with ingredients for meals. This significantly cuts down on your meal preparation and clean up.  Many of my winter canned goods are my "fast food" canned goods. 

Here are some of my favorite things to pressure can in the winter:
 

• Meat - What would I do without my canned meat?!  I have almost forgotten how to cook with meat from the freezer.  Pork shanks are cooked down to fill jars with tender pulled pork to be used in sandwiches, soups, seasoned with my homeade BBQ sauce, and seasoned with my homeade taco seasoning for tacos or fajitas.  Ham hocks are also cooked down for ham for scrambled eggs, casseroles, ham and beans, pizza toppings, ham sandwiches, or ham and noodles.  The same goes with chicken, turkey, and beef, all waiting to be added to casseroles, soups, or to be used in sandwiches.  Canning meats can be so simple and so rewarding, especially on those evenings when you want to provide a hearty meal in a short amount of time. It is also a great way to turn lesser cuts of meats into ingredients for a wonderful meal!
• Broth - Pork, beef, chicken, and turkey broth are a staple in my pantry. Broth can be made from soup bones, bones left over from a roast or broiler bird, or from the extra liquid used when preparing meat to can. The nutrients pulled out during the process of making broth are very healing and nourishing to your body. Broth is wonderful to use in soups (no more of those MSG filled bullion cubes!) and to cook noodles in or rice in for extra flavor and nutrients.  Save whatever bones are leftover from your meals to use for broth or check with your local farmer or butcher if you are in search of bones to use.
• Beans - I once turned my nose up to cooked beans, but now I am constantly canning dried beans: black beans and mixed beans for soups and various dishes, beans flavored with my homemade enchilada seasoning (to be mashed and used in burritos, taco dips, or as refried beans), beans flavored with my homemade chili seasoning (ready for my 4 jar chili meal), beans canned as baked beans, and even a few other seasoned bean experiments. Cooking with beans started as a necessity to add protein into our meals when we need to sell much more meat than we ate. I don't ever recall eating any beans besides baked beans when I was growing up (nor did I want to), but now our family has really grown to enjoy not only the savings of using beans in recipes, but also the flavors of all of my seasoned beans.  Plus, if you use broth as your liquid, you take away much of the "reputation" that comes with beans
• Soups and Stews - Soups and stews can be made up specially to be canned, or you can multiply your recipes to allow for extra soup to can. Jars of premade soups are wonderful to have on hand for days when there is sickness in the house or when you need a filling meal in 10 minutes or less. One of the best parts about these meals is that the only cleanup you have is the jar, pan you heated it in, and the bowl and spoon you used to eat it with (if you even bothered using a bowl!)
• Food From the Cellar - If you are blessed to have a root cellar and produce being stored over the winter months, don't be afraid to can some of it up if it is still in good shape, especially if you are nearing the end of the season.  Potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, squash, and carrots are all wonderful crops that can be pulled out and canned.  It may seem a bit silly to can them, but the convenience of having them precooked is well worth it. I often open a jar of pumpkin squash to make a quick batch of pumpkin bread for the kids' snack, and the flavor of my fried potatoes when using canned potatoes beats the fresh potatoes hands down!
• Produce From the Store - If you are just getting started pressure canning and are planning on canning produce during the upcoming growing season, you just might want to try heading to your favorite store's produce department, picking up some veggies, and giving them a try in your pressure canner.  You probably won't be saving much financially, but the practice could save you considerably (time and money) when the bounty of fresh produce comes on fast and furious from the garden or a local producer.

Giving it a Try

Since this post is coming out in February, here are a couple links to some of my photo tutorials that can be tried out now.

• Preparing Broth from Soup Bones 
• Canning Dried Beans 

Also, recipes and instructions for each of the areas of canning listed in this post can be found in the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving. 

And since canning meat is such a help to me, I thought I'd add a quick tutorial of one of the easiest ways to can meat. This can be done with cubed meat or stew meat.  This meat can be used in casseroles, soups, stir fry, or spaghetti sauce. It is so quick, so easy, and so helpful to have on hand!

Purchase or thaw cubed stew meat. I used approximately 15 lbs to give me 18 pints worth of meat.
Add just enough hot water to cover your meat.  Bring your meat to a boil. During this time, you will want to prepare your canner, jars, and lids if you haven't already.


Once your meat has been brought to a boil, turn off your heat and begin filling your jars.  I like to use a slotted spoon to lift out the meat, and then I dip out enough liquid with a measuring cup to fill the jar to the proper head space, both of these done with the aid of a canning funnel.

Process your jars according to time and pressure given with your pressure canner.

Here is a photo of my finished jars.  The jars on the left are fully cooled, and the jars are the right are still cooling.

A note on fats: You may notice the lard that has rendered out of the meat, which has solidified at the top of the jars on the right as they cooled.  I have recently been leaving more fats in my meat since it is a healthy fat from our pasture raised animals and is an important part of our young childrens' diet.

When I prefer to remove the fats, I use my fat separator (aff link) when I add in my liquids or I chill the meat overnight to remove the fat as shown in this post.  After the fat has been removed, just reheat your meat back up and continue on.

Now What Do I Do?

If you have read about Understanding Pressure Canning, have gathered your materials, and are comfortable with The Pressure Canning Process, here are some next steps you can take.

1. Think about where you can purchase crops or meats for canning.  If you can't grow or raise them yourself, try to find a local producer so that you are working with fresh products.
2. Try something simple.  Flip through the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving and find a recipe that you think you would enjoy and one that doesn't require too much work.  This is a great way to build confidence.
3. Determine what types of canned goods you consume the most.  This is a great place to start since you will quickly see the rewards of pressure canning your own food. 
4. Look forward to my next post on Organizing Your Canning!

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You can check out the aff links below to learn more about these canning tools, and you can also read about them in the first post of my series, Understanding Pressure Canning, where I talk about how to pick out and find good used equipment.

We should send Chuck on one of those flirt seminars. But on the other hand, maybe not, because we’d be missing out on a lot of entertaining missed approaches!

Night lights illustrate dramatically the relative economic activity of cities and countries.

In recent years, there have been so many thoughtful, intelligent first-person accounts of average people suffering from depression that one wonders why in 2014 people have such a difficult time accepting the notion that the most complicated part of the human body can break, just as any bone can.

The latest comes from Indianapolis, Ind., where the widow of TV reporter Rick Dawson, who killed himself last September, has written an explanation of what drove him to suicide.

The day Rick chose to kill himself was no different than the hundreds of days we’d experienced leading up to it, and I had no reason to believe it would be any different than the hundreds that stretched out before us.

So why that day? Was it the notice I found that the electricity was about to be turned off again? Was it the pending conference with our attorney and the bank’s attorneys about the foreclosure? Was it the anxiety of potential job interviews? All of these things or none? I am learning to live with not knowing.

So why do I choose to pour out all of this, to reveal what most of our society views as flaws in the successful American male? Shortly after Rick died, a dear friend’s father-in-law attempted suicide, a man who’d been a pillar in his community for decades, a minister and so much more. Then the successful author Ned Vizzini, who’d opened so many eyes to the ravages of depression among young people, happily married, father to a young son, walked off the roof of his parents’ apartment building at a holiday gathering.

NAMI finds that men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women, and without the warning signs. My man is one of those men. What will it take to open our eyes to the toll being exacted?

The reactions to Rick’s death were nothing short of stunning. I was overwhelmed by the outpourings from others who either survive depression every day, live with someone who struggles with depression, or just wanted me to know how Rick’s story touched them.

I think he would have been shocked, seeing the devastation of his closest co-anchor, the wrenching anguish of our son’s best friend, the sheer bewilderment in the faces of our friends and colleagues at his service. Would knowing have changed anything for him? I’m sad to say I don’t believe it would have. That dreadful veil of depression kept Rick from seeing how others would be affected by his decision as much as it kept him from realizing how loved he was. He was caught on an awful carousel of mental and emotional despair.

I am still often asked if Rick’s suicide makes me angry. No, it just makes me sad. When I found his body, I just kept telling him I was sorry, over and over. I was sorry that he’d felt that was his only choice, because it wasn’t. I’m sorry we lost a good man, I’m sorry we lost our future together, because we didn’t have to.

We don’t have to live like this. We don’t have to bear it and we don’t have to watch those we love suffer either.

Depression is treatable, but we must change the stigma that forces sufferers and their families to hide it. Experts say at least one in four Americans lives with a mental illness. Is it you? Is it someone you care about? Research from other countries shows that if you treat illnesses like depression the same way you treat a broken bone or cancer, by making it socially permissible and easily addressed by a doctor, lives will be saved.

(h/t: Vince Tuss)

I am taking a short break from my series of posts on Beginning Pressure Canning to give you a chance to gather your materials I shared about in Understanding Pressure Canning and to do some trial runs as described in my photo tutorial on The Pressure Canning Process.

During this little break, I'll give you a quick glance around the rest of our mudroom.

When I decided how I wanted to finish off our mudroom, I decided that I wanted it to look like the outside of the house to give the feel that you hadn't quite entered the house.  After all, it was going to house all of our farm gear, which I was assuming would be quite dirty.  I was right. Hence the name mudroom. So please excuse the mud. :)

If you read my post on Managing Mittens in the Mudroom a few weeks ago, you read all about my struggles to organize our children's hats, mittens, and gloves, as well as seeing what I eventually came up with.

Well, the rest of the mudroom has been about as equal as a struggle as the mittens.  We are finally getting to a point where we can function in there though.  I'll walk you around, show what all we have going on in here, and share more than you would probably ever need to know about a person's mudroom

First of all, to gain your orientation, the photo above is directly to your left as you step inside our mudroom. There is a window above the mittens, and if you take a few more steps forward, you will find yourself walking into our house.  We won't go in the house today. If you turn your head from the left to the right, you will see the rest of the room.

Along the outside wall of our mudroom is where I attempt to organize the rest of our farm gear.

Next to the light switch is fun little chicken key holder that my parents found for me on one of their flea market excursions.  It not just holds our keys, but it also is a handy spot for Ethan's headlamp, which gets used quite often considering many of his chores are done during the dark hours of the day, when he isn't in the office or at the other farm he works for.  The wind chime partially shown above was a wedding present from Ethan's grandma and gently chimes when a summer breeze blows through the mudroom window.

Hanging on a nail in the wall beside this, is our electric fence remote, quick to grab and handy to use!

You will also notice across the top of the area shown is an array of Amish style farm hats.  My parents live by an Amish settlement, and when we were dreaming of farming, I bought the family some of these for Christmas.  My parents have picked up more sizes since we moved to the farm so the kids would have shade to wear on our treeless (shadeless) hill. 

Also, hanging on the wall are mostly Ethan and my farm coats. Yes, we have a lot of them. Just like you have the right shoes for the right occasions, we have the right farm coats for the right occasions. When you are out doing chores or working on a project for an extended amount of time, you want to be dressed right, especially in the winter.  Not too cold, but not overheating.  Thankfully, many of these coats get put away when the summer warms up.

Under the coats is my shoe shelving. Like my mittens, in another moment of mudroom desperation, I constructed our shelving by again wandering around to see what I could find. I ended up grabbing two empty milk crates and a couple loose boards to set across the top.  This year, as little feet have gotten bigger, I decided that I needed another level.  I was able to find one more board, as well as some bricks.

Ethan and my shoes and boots go underneath, and the kids' shoes go on the shelves. Like the gloves, my kids have learned that they need to be responsible for their shoes as I remind them that not picking them up is like telling me I need to.  As you can see, most of the shoes are fairly well matched. It's not beautiful, but it does the job.  I'm thinking that one of these years, as soon as I finally get everything situated to where I want it, I might ask my dad, who builds custom furniture, to build for me the shoe shelf that I have drawn up in my head.

Past our shoes and coats is a wooden locker that I picked up for free when our town's head start was moving.  My mother-in-law helped me paint it, and after hanging hooks inside, it became our kids' storage area. This is where they hang their farm coats and snow pants, as well as where they keep their boots.  We used to keep the gloves and hats in the little cubby above, which was disastrous.  Now that area is used to keep sunglasses, the tool belts that I made for them, and any other extras that need a place.

On the far end of the locker, on the far, far side of the mudroom, is a hook to hang (hide) our farm coveralls.

On top of this unit, from the far right to left, is a basket for Ethan and my gloves and hats, a tool carrier for tools Ethan wants to have handy, another basket for farm outdoor odds and ends, and also a tool carrier for myself.  This tool carrier got put on my Christmas list this past year after trying to hunt down Ethan's tools for projects that I try to work on when he is gone or for home repairs that I attempt - every farm wife needs one of these! (Plus, her own tools!)

Now to the opposite side of the mudroom.

Right as you walk in, you have a mudroom sink that greets you, calling you to wash off all of the farm dirt that was acquired outside. This is also the sink I use to wash up our chicken eggs, and the cabinet underneath makes a great spot to store egg cartons.

Above the sink is a medicine cabinet I recently installed where I keep things like band-aids, sunscreen, and bug deterrent, and hanging on the wall beside the sink is a rooster towel holder, gifted to me one Christmas from Ethan.

Above the towel holder is our little egg basket that I bought Ethan when we still lived in town and were wanting to add some chickens in our backyard.  Although this little basket doesn't quite do the job anymore, it's a great egg basket for small helpers who tag along.

Underneath the towel holder is our ash bucket which I shared about in my post  A Glimpse Around Our Woodstove.  This ash bucket can get quite hot when first filled, which is why it gets set on our cement floor, painted brown to add to the barn-like effect of the room and to try and help hide the dirt - a near impossible task in this room.

Next to the sink is our family freezer.  I was very excited this year to get a freezer back for our family's use since every year prior our freezers have all been used for our business.  Actually, I was excited to get our mudroom back as well. Before we finished our freezer room, which now holds 6 business freezers and our market supplies, our mudroom was the central location for our farmer's market business.  The two freezers, towers of coolers, and marketing paraphernalia did not help the sanity level in the mudroom one bit!
 
Past our home freezer we now have 2 incubators and a hatcher.  I'm thinking these might get a stand built for them so that they can be stacked three high (we have 10 foot ceilings), since we are also wanting to add an egg refrigerator to this room this spring.

For now, we have our egg hatching cabinets in two locations, and atop one of our incubators you will find our real egg collecting baskets, a watering can, and Ethan's batteries for his power drills. The space that will be consumed by the egg fridge makes a handy spot for Ethan's chain saws, used frequently to cut wood for our wood stove.  *Sigh*  I guess we'll need to find a new spot for them . . .

If you were observant, you may have noticed from the photo showing the whole wall of coats and from the photo showing the stack of incubators, there is a curtain along the back wall.  I'm not allowed to tell you what is behind the curtain.  Just kidding.  Actually, there is a small mess behind the curtain.  Stacks of tubs, a coat bar for hanging coats we don't want farm filth on, and an area that will hopefully soon be transformed into shelving for my overflow of canned goods that are now stacked in my hallway. Some day I hope to replace the curtain with some sliding closet doors resembling barn doors . . .  Someday. 

Here is the view from the back end of our mudroom. Because we have 10 foot ceilings, we had to join the wall boards to reach to the ceiling.  The white trim covers the joint, and above the trim I display fun farmy things.  On the left wall are some old traps and a cool seed bag from some open pollinated corn we experimented with one year.  Continuing around is a wall hanging from a foreign exchange student who was in our youth group which depicts a farm in her country, along with a wall hanging of an African Guinea Fowl coincidentally given to the year we got guineas by my Uncle who is a missionary in Zimbabwe. A bit lower, beside the window, you will find Ethan's snow shoes and a pig wall hanging he gifted me one Christmas. And up high again, along the right wall, is a rooster clock positioned to check the time by a quick peek inside the door, two lanterns that we have used for school when our power went out, and a rug beater that is no longer solid enough to beat my rugs but is still pretty.

Like I said, this is probably more than you ever wanted to know about someone's mudroom.  I'd love to hear anyone's tips or tricks they might have to offer since it is still a work in progress. As hard as it is to function within it though, I can't even imagine trying to be able to function without it!

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This tool carrier is the one I ordered with my Christmas/Birthday gift money.  I had been eying Ethan's over the last year as I realized how helpful it would be for me to keep my house and garden tools handy.  It has a generous amount of pockets, and it even has a little box that fits underneath to hold nails, photo hooks, or whatever else I want to store for my building/household projects.  I just wish I would have gotten one sooner!
I do have to admit that although I thought Ethan's headlamp, similar to this one, was a little silly when we first started the farm, I use it quite often too now.  When I'm out in the dark, by myself, trying to get something done as quick as I can to get back inside (yeah, I'm wimpy in that I prefer not to be out in the dark by myself), I appreciate not only light but also 2 hands to work with.

Last week we had much new life show itself on our farm.

Much anticipated 2014 baby pigs were born, pigs which will be raised by our 9 year old to hopefully show at fair for 4-H this summer.

A wobbly legged bull calf awaited our discovery while being licked clean by it's mom after just being delivered.

A set of twin lambs appeared in our bedded lean-to, just a day after Ethan and I literally spent hours trying to convince our herd of ewes that the lean to was a cozy place for them to stay for awhile.

In the early afternoon, when our youngest ones lay down for a nap and our older ones work on independent activities, I try to accomplish tasks that I am not able to do with lots of little ones running around.

Almost always during the growing season this time is spent in the garden, with livestock, or doing other farm work. On a rainy day I might be inside catching up on canning produce that has been waiting for my attention.

The winter months, however, look a little different.  Although the pressure gauge on the canner might still be wobbling, filling emptied produce jars with meats, broths, and seasoned dried beans, I do spend quite a bit of extra time inside.

Some of this time is used for checking, planning, and preparing school lessons.  Some of it is for taking care of construction projects that have been patiently waiting around the house (yes, after 5 years in our house there are still some projects that need to be finished) or even working on the fix-up projects that come from the general wear and tear of living in a house.  There are also those projects that have been put off and put off during the seasons where work outdoors was calling my name: paper work, filing, deep cleaning, reorganizing, purging . . .

While I do still join Ethan outside many mornings and evenings throughout the week to help when he needs a helping hand, and I still do go out on my own some afternoons to take care of projects that might need a bit extra attention, it is nowhere near like the summer . . . until weeks like last week come around - when the baby animals start appearing. 

Part of the reason that I go out is to check on all of the little ones to make sure they are doing well, or even to see if more little ones have joined them. 

Although that is just an excuse, I think one of the bigger reasons is to just be outside by myself again.

Don't get me wrong, I love being outside with my family.  I love working on the farm with my husband. I love having our 4 kids tag along beside me - learning, enjoying, and playing.

But I also love being outside on my own.  It's a time to step away from the pressures, lists, and worries that too often confine me.  A time to remember the truths and promises given to me through God's Word as I soak in the wonders of the work of our Creator, weather it be freshly falling flakes of snow swirling in the crisp air (or the power of a surprise blizzard!), the stillness of a resting garden echoing the hand fulls of seeds hidden by tender young hands - seeds that produced a bounty to nourish us through these cold months, or the new born farm babies who are discovering their legs as well as the world around them.

Yes, when new babies join the farm my days are added to, but what is added is increasing fullness. A fulness of time, but also a fulness of heart as I take in the beauty and wonder of our Maker.

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And it looks like he just bought some 30 year old second hand chains on Craigslist and they came in a 60 year old box. Well, a penny saved is a penny earned!