How are you all?  We are well into the month of January and it's been a few months since I've posted.  We stayed home this winter instead of going to Texas, Jim was hit very hard with pneumonia this past October and it actually had taken a few months to finally get his strength back and is finally almost 100%.

We got 15 chicks this past September and they are doing awesome and are 17 weeks.  When we got the 15 chicks Jim was hoping that one of them would be a rooster.  Well sure enough, I informed him after feeding them one morning that I think he got his wish, one was indeed a rooster, one of the Delaware's was a roo and he seems like a very nice fellow and should work out just fine.

We have gotten down to 0° during the night a few times and they did just fine.  I actually think raising chicks in the fall/winter months is much nicer.  We do not heat our chicken coop and don't believe in doing so, it's just how we feel about it.  If you do that's fine you have to do what works for you and your chickens. 

We plan to integrate both the "bigs" and "littles" as we call them.  Right now they are separate, but they have been able to see each other on a daily basis looking at each other through the fence.

Last spring when we got our batch of chickens we got 6 roosters but one of the hens ended up being a rooster.  Our plan was to pick a rooster to keep so that we can hatch our own chicks and the others we would butcher and put in our freezer.  After seeing how the roosters did one-on-one with the hens we ended up with the rooster we have now and we named him Rudy.  Long story short, we cut up two of the roosters (they weren't that big) and I made chicken stock with what was left of the carcass.  There is nothing more tasty or nutritious than stock you make yourself.

Let's see what else has been happening since I've posted last.  Our cook stove isn't looking so new anymore and I will say it makes an awesome woodfired pizza.

I wanted to grow pumpkins so that I could either can or freeze the pumpkin to use later in the year.  I ended up with only 2 pumpkins and probably got 6-7 cups of puree, but I was able to make a couple of pies with it over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, and still have some in the freezer to make something else with it.

Back in August we drove to Iowa to pick up this beauty.  The top of the cabinet needed some work on it, and Jim with a little bit of help from me got it looking pretty nice.  We cleaned and oiled it and she runs like a top.  I couldn't believe how nice she sews and I can't wait to start sewing on her.

Life is treating us pretty good here.  We have totally embraced winter and even read a Little House on the Prairie book called The Long Winter, out loud to each other.  That was quite nice and I couldn't imagine going through a winter like they went through.  I recently bought a t-shirt from The Prairie Homestead which is a place I love to visit, but the shirt reads Old Fashioned on Purpose, and that is how I live my life now, I'm Old Fashioned on Purpose.

You all have a wonderful day.

The other day it was raining leaves, it was very windy and there was a bit of a mist in the air.  The wind was blowing so hard it actually looked like it was snowing only it was leaves floating in the air.  Summer has truly come to a close.

I finished up canning the last of our peppers.  I'm so excited to try them come winter.

We took a drive and bought some honey and garlic up by Black River Falls.  It was a beautiful drive and a perfect way to enjoy the day by taking a drive.

A new stove entered our home.  We sold our old one, she served us well for 10 years, but we were wanting something more.

The chickens are doing great and we ended up getting a second batch of chicks this fall.

It's just been absolutely busy around here, trying to get all our gardens harvested and put up for the winter, but all the hard will be so worth it come winter.

It's been really busy here around the homestead.  Jim's been working outside doing odds and ends, getting rid of the burn pile that has grown over the year.  It's always good to burn it before it gets too big and the fire ends up being too huge.  Stacking wood by the sugaring area for when it's sugaring time, we definitely don't want to be low on wood when we're boiling sap.

I stayed in and did some prep work for a recipe I wanted to make this week.  I had to go to town to get a couple of the ingredients that I didn't have on hand, one being chili sauce.  Now, I'm a label reader and if it has high fructose corn syrup in it I won't buy it.  Well the two chili sauces that they carried both had it in them...ugh!  I just couldn't pull the trigger to buy either of them.  So, I pulled out my phone and looked up homemade chili sauce and I found a recipe for a maple chili BBQ sauce, okay I could work with that.  When I got home I made the sauce and made another one that is actually chili sauce, and they both are delicious.  Instead of vinegar I used apple cider vinegar.  I just may end up using them both in the recipe I'm making.

A few days ago I started 3 sourdough starts.  I'm actually experimenting with starting them with different flours, all purpose flour, our fresh ground flour and I did two yogurt and buttermilk starts with all purpose and fresh ground, just to see how each of them do.  It looks like a science lab in my kitchen right now :)

Here I am ready to do the first feeding on one of them.  I mixed 1/4 cup all purpose flour and 1/4 cup fresh ground whole wheat flour together and added that with 1/2 cup room temperature water to my sourdough starter, covered it up and put it back to do it's work for another 12 hours, which then I will feed it again.

See the beautiful action that is going on here?  You can also see where the starter had risen at one point then fell back down.

Here are my two yogurt/buttermilk starters, not much action going on with them, they take a bit longer to get going I'm told.

We woke up to 0° here in Southwest Wisconsin this morning, hubby says it's cold out but no breeze of any kind so he says it's quite beautiful out.  I'll just believe him and stay in my nice cozy log home with the fire burning in the wood stove :)

Our canning season is still going strong.  We went to the apple orchard this fall and bought some honey crisp apples.  We usually get the seconds as they are cheaper in price.  I received an email from the orchard we usually go to that they had a BOGO sale going on, which is buy one box, get one box free.  Since it was busy here this fall, but who am I kidding, it's a ALWAYS busy here, but since I was busy I didn't get to the apples right away so we lost a few to rotting.  BUT, I was able to make applesauce out of the remaining good apples.  We really didn't lose that many but it sure seemed like it at the time I was going through them.

This time before I cooked the apples I peeled them.  Oh my goodness, I will always and forever do that when I make applesauce again.  

It was so much easier when I was putting the apples through the sieve, I was not fighting the peelings.

Twenty-four pints of delicious applesauce ready to be put down with all the other canning we did this fall.

I not only canned the applesauce, Jim and I canned more venison stew from the deer he got and the potatoes, onions, and carrots we grew in our garden this year.

Earlier in the fall we canned our peppers and potatoes and made tomato sauce with the tomatoes we picked.  When I say we, I do mean both of us.  I am very fortunate to have a husband who enjoys canning as much as I do.

It really feels good when you do a garden, and come harvest time it's very exciting to preserve the food we've grown.  It's a lot of work but so worth it in the end.