Sunday, September 2, 2012

Labor Day Weekend - Sunday

~ Not planning on leaving the homestead today.

~ Hubby wants to do a lot of mowing including our small hay field.

~ Even though it's a gorgeous day outside, I think I'm going to make myself tackle inside chores I've been putting off for too long. It will feel good to get them done. Or at least started.

~ Papa Pea suffered a bit of shell shock yesterday. He and I made a quick trip into town to pick up some free wall cabinets for the garage (fruitless trip as they were gone when we got there) and the crowds of people in town for the holiday weekend almost sent him over the edge. He couldn't wait to turn around and "get the heck out of Dodge!" It just serves to point up what a blessed little sanctuary we have back here in the woods.

~ I tried a new pasta dish for dinner last night that was FABULOUS. If you want to look at the recipe go to the post by The Iowa Housewife here. I made it with the first cutting of my fall crop of spinach from the garden. Boy-howdy, was it good! (Couple of notes: I didn't understand the "1/4 tablespoon water" in the ingredients so just left it out. I only added half as much sausage as called for and, for us, it was fine. Didn't have vermicelli so substituted linguine. I had to cook it a lot longer than the 3 minutes but it turned out fine.)

~ Thanks to Erin's alert to the sale of the reusable canning lids on Tattler's site, I'm going to bite the bullet today and put in the order for my first Tattler lids. I've been debating trying them for a couple of years because of mixed reviews. They sure will be a wonderful money saver in the long run if they work. Thanks again for the heads-up on the sale, Erin!

~ We're letting mama bantam hen and her four little chickies out into the big world of our poultry pasture today for the first time. They'll still have access to their own little house and shelter if fowl society becomes too much for them.

~ We've always felt that September and October were the very best months in our area for getting out and enjoying all the great out-of-doors has to offer. For the years hubby was teaching, of course, it was impossible for us to take advantage of the season as these two months were super-busy ones for him getting into the new school year.

Anyway, for the past few years of his retirement, we've been pretty much hell-bent on working hard on all the things we couldn't get done when he was working full-time off the homestead. This year, we are bound and determined things will be different.

So, good-bye until the first of November.

Hahahaha! (Just trying to be funny.) No, nothing big or grand planned that will take us away from home for more than day trips or possibly short overnights. But we are going to be trying to drop our gloves, hoe, chainsaw, paint brushes and tool belts frequently to get out to canoe, hike, grouse hunt, sight-see and generally make the most of the fantastic couple of months of weather ahead of us. We might even spend some time reading all day on the front deck or in the hammock. 'Course, that would mean we'd have to actually put up the hammock for the first time this summer . . . but stranger things have happened. I can hardly wait!

17 comments:

Lisa B said...

Have fun enjoying your fall. I wish I lived in a secluded area. I get so antsy around crowds I feel my skin crawling. I d make a great hermit. Someday Someday Someday u cant see me but I m clicking my heels together. Tell Papa Pea I feel sympathy for him.

Mama Pea said...

Lisa - I do about 90% of the errands off the homestead and hubby is more than happy to stay home now that he's retired. I get a real kick out of him when he has to go into our small (tourist) town and he has trouble dealing with so many p-e-o-p-l-e! I'm an introvert also and can stay home for days and days without feeling a need to see other people. I think all of us homesteaders are a little that way. Heck, otherwise we'd be living in condos right in the midst of things, wouldn't we? Hang in there, if it's a dream of yours you'll end up just where you want to be!

Carolyn said...

Ah, Fall is coming, isn't it? Glad you're making a plan to actually ENJOY the Autumn season. Hope that mama hen & chicks do well on their first family outing.

Going to click on the recipe link you provided but I'm going to not only have to substitute the type of pasta used, but as I have no spinach, I'll just have to use lambs quarters. I'll let you know if it worked out or if the chickens got it.

Mama Pea said...

CR - So far Mama Hen has refused to bring her little family out of their safe dwelling. Maybe she knows better than we do when the right time is for them all to venture out into the world!

Lambs quarter should work fine in the pasta recipe. The strangest thing . . . we usually have our fill of lambs quarter growing in the garden but this year I don't think I saw more than three plants of it. What's with that??

odiie said...

Mama Pea,
I've used the Tattler lids for two years now. Last year they didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, this year I've learned how to use them and I love them.

Fall is fabulous in Minnesota, isn't it? Trying to get the produce into the cellar and the last of the firewood in so we can do a bit more hiking and maybe even get some camping in.
From Glory Farm,
Rhonda

Mama Pea said...

I think that's the whole thing with the Tattler lids . . . you have to develop the "touch" for how to use them. Wish me luck!

Amy Dingmann said...

Hope you are able to experience amazing wonderful and relaxing things the next couple months. You really do live in a beautiful part of the state! And as far as Papa being shell shocked about going to town...I HATE going to town. HATE. I don't blame him one bit. (Did I mention i HATE town?) Hate it. :) People are dumb, and that's all Ima gonna say. :)

Tombstone Livestock said...

you know as soon as you get that hammock out and put it up you will be inviting early snow.

Sue said...

Sounds wonderful! Time for fun. You could join us to go look at star-fishies and sea lions and maybe kick some puffins. Just kidding. About the puffins, I mean. I don't REALLY kick them. They are too fast for me-LOL!
Enjoy the season--it's the very finest time of year.

Mama Pea said...

Mama Tea - So, tell us how you really feel about going to town. When I go, I get in there as early as I possibly can . . . when the stores I have to go to first open . . . and then get back home as soon as I can. I change out of my clean clothes, put on my work grubbies and pretend I never went!

Mama Pea said...

Tombstone Livestock - You're saying it would be safer to skip the whole hammock thing for this year, huh? (If not snow, then days and days and days of drizzly rain!)

Mama Pea said...

Sue - Hmmmm. Star-fishies and sea lions and puffins. Methinks you are heading for the west coast? If so, please stay out of the populated areas. Too many people, too much traffic and the bottom half of that coast is going to fall into the ocean one of these days.

Jane @ Hard Work Homestead said...

I hope you are having a fun and fabulous Labor day. And I am with Papa pea, I just hate being around large herds of people. Gotta love the off season.

Kathryn D. Duke said...

Your Fall garden is coming along just fine...I am still winding down my small garden and NO new items planted...how do you get it all done???

Mama Pea said...

Jane - I sometimes wonder if it's a good thing that both hubby and I are stay-at-home bodies and dislike being out in crowds. Maybe if one of us were more extroverted, we wouldn't be such hermits. But then again, if we're both happy, what's the problem? :o}

Mama Pea said...

KDD - Well, as I said to Jane above, we're both really happy being home here on our little homestead and don't spend much time going to Las Vegas or on cruises! We love our little sanctuary here and raising as much of our own food as we can is important to us. As the saying goes, I do get tired, but never tired of what I do.

Erin said...

I'm excited to get those Tattler lids too! Hopefully they will be as great as I'm hearing. I feel Papa Pea's pain, the first thing I thought of today after Labor Day weekend passed was "we get our beaches back"! Now go schedule some canoeing - I'll be doing the same next week, hubby finally got some leave approved but we have to stay in the area, so with the kids in school we will be able to kayak just the two of us, it will be strange LOL