Peer Pressure

I can't believe it but I caved in to the peer pressure..... I bought hotdogs *grin*

My dad has been building up a giant pile of brush with all of the hedgings and tree limbs he's been collecting so that we can have a giant bonfire. Of course if one plans to have a bonfire then there just has to be weiners involved! We only have hotdogs once maybe twice a year if the kids are lucky and you should have seen the surprise on their faces when I tossed a package into the cart today. Even hubby had to give me a ribbing about caving in to my dad when I never let him have any LOL.

I'm actually looking forward to the fire, roasting marshmallows and making s'mores :) Mmm, so sweet and yummy! I love watching the kids try and keep from turning theirs into little charcoal blobs and ending up with marshmallow from one end of their bodies to the other. Okay, well maybe not the marshmallows stuck in their hair part *grin* but the joy it brings them from the simple act of a marshmallow on the end of a fresh alder stick cut straight off the tree :)

Spring is so much fun!

Hugs,
Rosina

Chicken Coop Remodel

There are so many things that need tending to every spring and poor Hubby's 'honey do' list is growing by leaps and bounds *grin*. This year getting new chicks is high on my priority list as I miss having our own eggs SO much so the coop was the first place we hit as soon as we had a break in the rain :)

I normally raise our baby chicks, geese and ducks in the garage as it's the easiest place to get the heat lamp plugged in but this year Hubby is in the middle of building another new bed for the kids so there just isn't room for my brooding pen.

So I needed to come up with a new spot that was easily accessible but our old coop is really really hard to get into unless you're about a foot tall and covered in feathers. The only solution was to cut out part of the wall :)

We assessed the situation, made mental notes of what we wanted to do and then when it was time to frame in the door we found out just how crooked everything was *grin*. None of the walls or the floor were level LOL. The original shed was built sometime in the early sixties and over time it has begun to sink making everything slightly wonky :)

Once the wall was opened up I could get a good look inside to see what sort of clean up job was needed before the chicks can go in. The floor was surprisingly clean actually but there was some leftover chicken manure that need shoveling and my little guy was more than happy to help out.

He didn't really get much of it out of the house but had a lot of fun trying. At one point though he had a huge chunk of it in his hands as we were all telling him to drop it. Nothing like packing around poo! At least it was good and dry, and sadly that wasn't the only time I had to tell him to drop it that day LOL.

I love watching the kids muck around in the dirt :)
If you don't have enough arm power to push the shovel down when digging then you RIDE it down *grin*.

Next to the new door is an old single pane window and it was just thick with cobwebs and dust so I got the windex and some cloths so that L could shine it up.

I was a little worried about letting her wipe away on the old panes as they are so fragile but the window made it through it in one piece and she was so pleased with herself :) I actually don't remember the last time that we could even see through the glass!

Who knew that opening up the wall could be so much fun :)

With the wall back up around the door frame all that was left was to cut down the door to make it fit and get some hinges so that we could hang it.

Now I just need get the floor cleaned out nicely, give the whole thing a good bleaching and then I think I'm going to white wash the walls with lime :) The lime helps inhibit the growth of any harmful bacteria and it will brighten the whole place up real nice.

We're back to pouring down rain again though so I'm going to have to wait for a nicer day again so that everything can dry out nicely after I get it good and wet *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

right now, I AM

....popping in to say hello and let you know I'm still here *grin*.

The time change brought with it warmer weather, melting snow, longer days and a break in the heavy rain showers which in turn has given us a chance to finally get outdoors and get down to our yearly farm spring clean :)

We've been busy little bees rebuilding the chicken coop, pulling burrs and alders, clearing brush, cutting windfalls for firewood and burning really big piles of brush. My oldest has been helping out with the firewood cutting and I love seeing him run around in his bright green ear muffs to protect his ears from the loud sounds of the chainsaw.

I've got lots of photos to share and hope to get back to my regular blogging real soon. I've been so tired by the time we finish dinner and all the children are in bed that I've just been hanging out with Hubby and enjoying some much needed down time :) I didn't even get my yarn along post up this week! Now that's a first *grin*.

Hope you all are having a fantastic week!

Hugs,
Rosina

{this moment} Playdough fun

Inspired by Soulemama ~ {this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

This week I'm grateful for...

~ squishy playdough that brings giggles on rainy days
~ little hands so willing to help plant spring seeds
~ warmer days and less snow covering my garden
~ my husband who is only moments away after being gone so long

Hugs,
Rosina

Haylage

We decided this winter that we would keep our cow one more summer to fatten him up a little bit more before butchering so that put us in a bit of a pinch to find hay close to home and that didn't cost an arm and a leg as we had nearly exhausted the stockpile that we had.

I made some phone calls up and down the island to find that most of the cheaper bales of hay had been sold or were just to far to justify taking the truck and trailer so I thought I'd try my luck and call a nearby farmer that I know just by name on the off chance that he might have a few spare bales. Success!! He had a handful of the giant haylage bales that he could sell to me and at a really great price :)



I wasted no time rounding up the kids and getting them all plus Hubby into the truck. The kids had so much fun watching the tractor spear the ball and then watching it dangle and swing lower into the back of our truck box and then sink down nice and low :)

There are approximately 10 bales of hay in each roll of haylage plus some and a good sized bale weighs around 80 pounds so I'm estimating that one of these rounds weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 800-900 pounds, maybe more.

So with that in mind getting one of these guys out of the truck is interesting *grin*.

My dad is a rebel at heart so he likes to tie one end of a rope around the haylage and the other end around the tree, then gun the truck and rip off as the rope snaps tight and the ball stays behind LOL.

My husband on the other hand took a more gentler approach and thought that rolling it out with foot power would do the trick :)

Going, going....

Gone :)

Who knew these babies actually bounce? But they do! Try it sometime it's quite amusing *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

We're Planting!

My greenhouse isn't ready yet but I'm still going to get a jump on my tomato plants this year *grin*. After lunch today I rounded up my youngest little helper and we went hunting for the leftover stash of jiffy sevens that I knew I'd tucked away somewhere last spring for safe keeping. You know, one of those super safe places that are so good you don't even remember where it was!

I love these little things :)

You drop the little discs of compressed soil into a little bit of hot water and they magically puff right up providing a lovely warm home for your new seeds.

My five year old is growing by leaps and bounds and becoming such a great little helper that this year I let him do all of the planting on his own. With supervision of course :)

He carefully opened up the top of each of the jiffy sevens and placed three tomato seeds onto the soil and covered them up very gently. I like to plant in groupings of three. That way if any of them die or don't come up then I've got backups!

I planted 9 seeds for each type of tomato and if all goes well I should have 54 tomato plants all together. Most likely I'll loose a few due to poor germination but this will provide a substantial amount of tomatoes compared to the few I did last year. I've got great plans of canning stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce again this year. Normally I just purchase cases of field tomatoes from local farmers for this task but I really want to use my own. They just taste oh so much better *grin*.

I tried to find varieties that were well suited to growing here on the coast or for canning purposes so I went with:

Bonny Best: a strong indeterminate plant with excellent flavor. Especially good for colder climates.

Rocket: medium sized fruit, fast maturing and grow well in the short season of the coastal BC and prairies.

Italian Heritage Roma: abundant harvest of thick walled tomatoes with few seeds, perfect for tomato sauce and paste.

Lisa King: large red beefsteak, good flavor and very productive. This was highly recommended.

Polish Paste: flavorful and meaty, good for tomato pastes.

German Red Strawberry: large 1lb fruits, good producer and canning tomato.

They're all organic, non gmo and some are heirloom varieties so I'm hoping to have a great crop :) If not I'll cull the ones we don't like and pick new ones next year *grin*.

Can't wait until they start to sprout out of the dirt!

Hugs,
Rosina

Yarn Along

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

Oh my goodness, I adore the ruffled bottom of this sweater!!

I'm making good progress and have knit about 8 1/2 inches from the ruffle up. The pattern actually says to only knit 7 inches of the ribbed stitch but from what I've read on other ravelry member's pages who have knit this before is that it runs a little on the small side and I want to make sure it fits.

I'm already knitting the largest size possible so I don't think making it a little bit longer will hurt :) I stretched out the stitches around her waist and it looks like once I block it when I'm done it will just fit perfectly. Definitely no time to dilly dally on this one or she'll outgrow it before I finish *grin*.

A few more inches and then the pattern changes to divide for the sleeves and shaping the neck and I've read ahead on the pattern and it looks a little greek to me! Cross your fingers that I'll be able to continue knitting along smoothly without to much difficulty :)

On the book front I have to admit I really haven't done much reading at all. We've read a few more chapters in the Little House in the Big Woods but there hasn't been much reading time for mama. I've been so slow with my reading that I actually had to return my copy of the Happiness Project back to the library as it was requested by someone else and I couldn't renew it :( It will be a couple of weeks now before I can get it back. Hopefully when it's my turn again I'll be a little speedier!

Happy knitting :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Chickpea Cannelloni ~ Recipe

When daddy is away the rest of us go vegetarian *grin*.

Hubby is completely meat crazy and wants it pretty much for breakfast, lunch and dinner and by the time he leaves to go back to work the kids and I are totally ready for a meat moratorium :)

We love chickpeas so I thought it would be fun to make cannelloni with a vegetable and chickpea filling and for a first try I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

I started with:

2 large carrots
1 stalk of celery
5 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 a sweet onion (approx. 1/2 cup)

I grated the celery and carrot and then pureed all of it in my blender until it was completely smooth.

Next I added:

1 egg
1 cup of ricotta cheese
1 cup cooked spinach
2 cups of chickpeas
2 big bunches of fresh basil & parsley (approx. 3/4 cup each)
Salt and pepper to taste

Add all of the above ingredients into your blender or food processor and blend until smooth. I like to puree it like this so that the kids don't know exactly what vegetables I've put in because each of them has specific likes and dislikes and if they see something they don't like they want to pick it out. This way it just tastes good *grin*. If you like more texture then you can definitely blend it less and personally if it was just for me I wouldn't blend in the spinach. It all depends on who your food critics are! LOL

Note: I used dried chickpeas. If you want to try making your own place your 1 1/4 cups of dried chickpeas in a large glass bowl with 4 cups of water and let sit overnight until morning. When you wake up transfer your beans and water to a cooking pot and make sure you have at least twice to three times as much water as your beans. Bring to a raging boil and boil uncovered on high for 10 minutes. After that reduce the heat and simmer for 1-2 hours until tender. I find it usually takes closer to the 2 hours for mine to be fully cooked. You can also do a double or triple batch of beans all at one time and through the rest of it in the freezer portioned out for future meals to save on some cooking time next time!

With your chickpeas and vegetables all mixed together add 1 cup of shredded Pecorino Romano cheese or another one of your favorite cheeses and 1/2 a cup of brown bread crumbs, stir together and you're ready to start filling your cannelloni noodles :)

Oven ready cannelloni noodles have to be the easiest type to work with because you can fill them in their rigid uncooked form but you have to have enough liquid in the pot when you cook them for them to soften properly.

So to create my tomato cooking sauce I used two tins of regular tomato sauce plus two tinfuls of water to double the volume and then added the following herbs to create an italian flavor :)

1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 tablespoon onion powder

In a large 10 x 13 greased baking dish pour in enough of your tomato sauce to thoroughly cover the base of the pan.

I have to tell you I came across the EASIEST way to fill your cannelloni noodle!! Put all of your filling into a large freezer bag, snip off one of the bottom corners and you have created the perfect piping bag for filling your noodles :)

If you place the tip of the bag right inside the noodle while you're filling it, the pressure as it gets nearer the top will actually push all of the filling down towards the bottom creating an even fill. Just keep the base of the noodle against the palm of your hand to prevent it from blowing out the bottom. Don't ask me how I know that *grin*.

Place each filled noodle into your tomato sauce leaving a little bit of space in between each for expansion...

and once all of your noodles are filled and in the pan, top with the remaining tomato sauce and a sprinkle more of cheese :)

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and serve up with some garlic bread and salad :) So yummy and the kids had second helpings so I'm calling this a smashing good success! LOL

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more yummy recipes?? Check out this week's Hearth and Soul blog hop :)

Deer Watching

I just had to share these neat photos of a deer that stood right outside our family room window :) We were all sitting here as it walked right up the pathway and at one point stood right in front of the window looking in!

The youngest two tried as hard as possible to stand quietly without fidgeting and talking but no matter how much noise they made the deer didn't seem to take much notice. All I can think is that it must have been mighty hungry. It ripped off mouthfuls from the cedar tree at the edge of the window rapidly while glancing our way every once in a while.

Such a neat experience to be only mere feet away :)

We did have a mighty nosy bear that stood outside this very window a few years back and even pushed on it with his paws (some of you might remember Dennis the Mennis) but this was a much more enjoyable experience *grin*.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Seedy Saturday

Seedy Saturday.... the unofficial start to spring *grin*.

I must say it was mighty spring like today in the comox valley :) The sun was shining and it actually felt warmer. Maybe it was all in my head LOL. My morning didn't start out all that spring like as we scraped thick ice off of the car windows and fought our way up to my mom's house through the icy ruts of snow that had formed over the last couple of days.

At 8am we were all packed into my car and slip sliding our way out of the yard when I came across actual parts from underneath my car frozen into the humps of snow in the driveway! I'm always worried that something is going to break off as we scrape and skid along the icy snow in the winter and it finally did. My dad had a good look underneath and couldn't see anything seriously damaged as it was just part of a rock guard underneath. Phew, nothing to to bad but not good either.

So back into the car we went and once we finally hit the highway the car started to shake and lump along the pavement. My heart sank. Something was wrong with the car. We limped it back home slowly fearing the worst and had good old dad check it over again *grin*. The final verdict... my tire had frozen solid in the position I had stopped in last night so that when we drove on the pavement it was round three quarters of the way and the last quarter way around the tire was frozen straight like a board!

In all my life I have NEVER had my tire freeze flat on the bottoms in the snow and ice. My cousins in Ontario who experience -30 or lower temperatures have talked about it before but here on Vancouver Island!? It was like some crazy dream LOL. By 10:30 things were thawing and my tires assumed their regular round shape and off we went *grin*.

Spring, you can hurry up and come anytime now! LOL

Just after noon we finally arrived at the seedy saturday :) In past years we've been there right at 10am and the lineup to get in is HUGE, but this year it was actually nice to just walk in without having to wait. Although we did miss out on all of the interesting and unique potted plants that would have been available for purchase for the opening hour.

Inside was an entire room filled to the brim with organic seeds, fruit trees and bushes, rhubarb and strawberry plants, seed potatoes, garlic, mason bees, honey, gardening supplies, informational displays, seed swaps where you can bring your seed to trade with others for new veggies or flowers you don't have and so much more.

At one of the tables my youngest who was with me got to watch a batch of mason bees emerge from their winter cocoons. So cool!! They were very docile as they came out so they let us have good look inside the jar without the lid :)

At other tables we got to sample Jerusalem Artichokes, crack hazelnuts with fun little wooden screw type nut crackers and at one table M even found one lovely lady that happily fed him cookies while I browsed the seed racks *grin*.

I picked up quite a few different tomatoes for canning this coming summer, a great assortment of sprouting seeds for fresh sprouts, beans, peas, and I even purchased a giant block of Oyster Mushrooms so that we can grow our own mushrooms. I can hardly wait to see them start sprouting up! The fellow said it should take about 2 weeks and we'll be able to start harvesting them :)

I think we were there at least a good hour browsing and shopping but I could have spent much more time. They host a series of workshops throughout the day as well. This year's topics were seed saving, the zero mile diet, mason bees, healthy soil and more. One of these days when all of the children are old enough to be left home I think I'm going to take advantage of the seminars :)

Have fun at a seedy saturday near you!

Hugs,
Rosina