Chocolate covered pretzels

Sure you can buy chocolate covered pretzels, but why do that when it's so much fun to make them?

We walked in the store and what's right in front of us? Candy Melts. So my brilliant husband goes hey why don't we make chocolate covered pretzels? Um hello more importantly why didn't I think of that? 

It's great family fun all the boys took a turn making some! You must watch but the kids or the pretzels won't end up on the wax paper, you will wonder what took so long to make 5 pretzels, and the kids will be on a sugar high for hours.

It is so easy! Melt the chocolate, dunk the pretzels, shake off the excess and let cool. 

Ta-da perfection!

Snow

We got our first snow of the year over the weekend, and it was the chickens first snow ever. 

It was funny to watch them take their first steps in the cold stuff. Some of them flew from spot to spot avoiding walking in it. I had fun watching the silly babes. They did eventually get used to it.

Our first chicken tracks, they are all over the yard.

Jerky & Sausage

One of the first things that Patrick ever made me out of venison was Jerky, it's one of my favourites and my friends love it too. I am always getting requests during deer season. It's like people can just sense it.

Anyway I have inherited the job of making it, since I am the one in the house that likes it the most. This year I had a helper, Gabe is getting more and more excited about helping me in the kitchen. 

We added the Cure and Seasoning and let it sit in the fridge for 4 hours.

Then we loaded up the Jerky Cannon and filled up the Dehydrator trays.

About 6 Hours later it was done! Yay, snack time.

Sausage.

We have only attempted sausage one other time and it didn't turn out like it should have. We made it in the oven that time, so this time we made it in the smoker, decided that a different approach was the way to go.

We smoked it for

Then put it in the oven for 1 hour at 300 degrees F.

The goal was a internal temperature of 165.

All done.

Well it could have turned out better, it was dry, but the flavor was ok. Patrick said he thinks it needs more fat and I'm guessing there was too much air in the casing.

It's eatable but we still haven't perfected anything. Gabe liked it, so it's a small victory. At least it's not going to waste.

Boys room

Ah the boys room. We'll this hasn't been a hard project just a drawn out one. They started with three toddler beds then they got a dresser, next we added a second dresser and then we got twin mattresses. We then got them bunk beds and most recently got the other bed all set up. It's been crazy something has changed almost every other week.

I'm glad their room is done and so are they.

Roosting

The homestead has been in my family for generations, I am the fourth generation to live here and Gabe is the fifth. 

We have had a lot of fun looking through sheds and finding things from generations past. 

My grandpa died two years ago and due to dementia his mind was gone before that. I love finding things that remind me of him when I was younger, and things that he must have built. Around 40 years ago my grandpa had chickens and this roost was in his old chicken coop.

My chickens love it but they think it's a secret.

I had to take this picture through the screen on my kitchen window. I never see them on it when I'm outside.

They seem to roost on just about anything.

This guy likes to sit in the window sill. I think it's warm. We were watching the tv and up he pops in the window to say hi.

Venison - The Other Red Meat

My favorite part of firearms season is that my husband and his friends actually shoot some deer and I get free meat for the year. We'll at least a good chunk of the year. That depends on how many the guys get. We will use Venison for just about everything, except lasagna we tried that it just isn't the same.

Growing up we never ate it, my parents went fans of the flavor. My dad has always been a hunter and he always had friends and family that would take a deer off of his hands and process it them selves. I guess I was a typical girl and thought that this dead animal in your garage or hanging from your tree was gross and weird. Well now my house is one of those houses and we are those people..

We'll here is the part I help with. Patrick and the guys went out shot them and brought them home and broke them down when I got home there was just a cooler full of meat. Let the grinding begin. We don't grind all of the meat Patrick likes to keep certain cuts for things but the rest of it gets ground for whatever we come up with. 

An awesome thing about venison is that it is a red meat that Gabe can eat. Everyone tells me they have never heard of being allergic to beef but he is, and it is a real thing. I love that we discovered this alternative!

Canning

One of Patrick's favorite things to cook/eat is chilli, however I have never been a big fan. I don't like beans and he likes it too spicy for me. 

We'll this leaves us with a dilemma. He always makes a big batch and unless he eats it every meal for a week we always have leftovers. Soooo we decided hey we should start canning. It makes total sense right? With trying to start gardening and producing more of our own foods, we really need a way to better keep them especially when we have more than we know what to do with. 

We learned a few things in this process: 

1. Meat is a low acid food which means you are not supposed to just can using a water bath you actually need a pressure canner.

2. A pressure canner and pressure cooker are not the same, even though sales clerks will try to sell you whatever they have. You can use a pressure canner as a pressure cooker but pressure cookers do NOT work as pressure canners.

We found this pressure canner at Walmart in the canning section. It does several sizes of jars.

Whenever we start something new we buy a book. We bought a book on Chickens and one for Homesteading, now we have one for canning.

I'm actually pretty excited about this one. It has a lot of recipes for all sorts of things to can, and tips for doing it. Now for summer to come back around so our garden will be back to producing again.

Now back to the Chilli. Patrick always makes deer chilli for when he goes up to the cabin at the beginning of firearms season. So he makes two versions of It one mild version for his friend and a spicy (manly) version for himself. 

Our friends last name is Hawley, hints the name Patrick gave his chilli.

Deer Season

One of the reasons I was so excited about moving out here, other than my dream to be self-sufficient, was that I would have a place of my own to deer hunt, archery I don't really feel safe shooting guns other than my .22 out here.

It all started in June, I was out mowing the pasture and I started seeing parts of deer laying around. I found a total of 3 deer that had been killed within the last few weeks or so. That was the last straw, after running the neighbors off last rifle season I felt like it was necessary to put up lots of no hunting and no trespassing signs.

Later when while I was moving in the guy that I had ran off's son came over and started talking to me about the guns I was bringing in and I made it very clear that his family is no longer welcome to hunt on our land (I don't think they ever really had permission)

In August I set up a deer camera and put out some salt lick to see if there were any deer left in the herd. As of now from what I have seen on and off camera we have 2 nice 8 point , father and son, 1 adult doe and 2 yearling that I think might be bucks. I have a name for the father of the heard I call him phantom because the only picture I can get of him was when he jumped the fence next to the game cam and when I see him out in the woods I can never get a shot at him. 

The hunting pressure out here will be almost none for a few years to try to get the doe population back up so I can have a healthily herd. In addition to low hunting pressure I am going to plant a little over half of the pasture in a food plot this spring, and if money allows I would like to fix the pond so it holds water. After all that is done there isn't much of a reason for the deer to leave this area, other than for breeding do to the lack of doe but I can hope that some of the construction on E will push some of the deer over here where they are out of the way.

The Boys Bathroom

The boys bathroom talk about a project. Well we bought a new vanity for it an 18" instead of the 24" that was in there because it was butted up right next to the tub and a shower curtain wouldn't fit between. Well I got out my phone to of course take pictures of our little fix and Patrick grabbed ahold of the vanity.

Tada. the vanity crumbled and so did the wall behind it. Lesson #1 of remodeling always expect the worst because if it can go wrong it will.

so we ripped it out

and the floor

and everything else down to the bare bones. Oh and remember the closet we made the waterheater? This is where the Water Heater was to begin with.

We covered up the window. Why would you put a window in the shower to begin with?

 

We literally replace everything the Tub the Toilet and hey there is that vanity we wanted to put in.

With all the water issues that we have found we aren't taking any chances. That red paint around the shower. That is a water barrier that we painted on our already water resistant sheet rock.

We Painted the walls green.

Well after one really long, hard day working on the bathroom it is finally fully functional. There are still some finishing touches that it could use but it looks great. Oh and now the boys don't have to come up stairs to use the bathroom!

Our baths little update

We have big plans for this bathroom and the bedrooms upstairs but for now we just want to make it a little more like home.

Before:

We added an exhaust fan.

It has a light and a heater. There's no more being cold when you get out of the shower!

We painted the walls brown. We actually chose one of the colors we originally looked at for the kitchen.

Someone previously painted over the tile I haven't decided what I want to do with that.

Picnic table

So During the Summer this Picnic table was $98, in Late August Early September I noticed that it was on sale for $75 and it wasn't even cold outside yet, so I patiently waited and now that it is mid October it went down to $55. I am so excited we have been wanting a picnic table. I think it was a great investment.

The boys were all at home when we put it together but sadly I didn't get any pictures of the work in progress.

Here is our finished table :)