Right now the Mama of the household is breathing a sigh of relief at the recent wedding of my baby girl!!! Here is a great picture of the Houpa Tom and Joel (the groom) built (this is where the pastor, bride, and groom stood during the wedding). My boys went back to the woods and collected these straight sticks. This meant a lot to Bethany (the bride) that her brothers would do this for her. Tom and Joel made the lantern posts out of old wood we had collected. Joel painted them and we decorated them with toulle and plum colored material. The flower pots were planted in the spring.
This picture overlooks our pond (which is kind of a lake right now), our field, and the neighbors horse pasture. My goodness, we live in a beautiful part of the country!
Labor Day our tomatoes came on like a flood so we were in the kitchen canning salsa. Now, if you've never canned salsa you're missing out! It does take a lot of work but many hands make light work, so the more help the better!!! Home canned salsa beats any restaurant salsa hands down. The secret is FRESH ingredients, and fresh ground pepper so if you haven't used your pepper mill in a while dust it off and get to crankin!! Even if you don't have time to can, right now is a great time to cut up your garden veggies, just a little bit at a time, and have fresh salsa with those tacos or tortilla chips for dinner!
It's coming up on evening time. Tom and Jamin are taking our 9 week old chickens (fryers) to the butcher. We've kept them in the chicken tractor the whole time and fed them very well. They are fat and ready for the freezer. We do not do our own butchering but an amish family south of us does. I don't have the stomach for such things and they only charge a dollar a bird. It's worth it to me!
Celia is in the kitchen baking whole wheat rolls and baked spaghetti for dinner tonight. Oh man, I know a lot of people don't live in community but if you find the right people to live with it is a God send! One person does one thing while someone else is doing the other. Lots of work gets done, not to mention we laugh a lot, play a lot, and do almost everything together.
Bethany and Joel are probably heading to their new apartment by now with the work day winding down. I still expect to see her walk through the door at any minute. I hope she does walk through the door sometime this week she's still got stuff in her room to pack up and take to her own place. :)
Josiah is at work. He is a Swordsmith, you know. He makes Janapese Swords. Last weekend they had what's called a Hammer In. It's where people from all over the world come for a conference like weekend. They have lots of demonstrations and wares to sell. This year they had a very special guest, a man known in the Japanese Swordsmith world as Sadahito from Shizuoka, Japan. I just called Josiah a minute ago to ask how to spell 'Sadahito' and he told me, "Sadahito is on the four wheeler right now with a huge smile on his face!" Josiah's going to try and get a picture of him sometime this week on the four wheeler so you can see him. That will be fun! I'm so glad they (Rick and Josiah) found him something fun to do, the pour guy doesn't speak much English and I worried that he would be bored this week. Guess not.
Later, when the guys get home we need to head out to the big garden (it's probably an acre) and pick some more pumpkins and melons. They're going like hotcakes at our little veggie stand out front. This is so much fun!
Janele :)
