There you have it, yogurt, butter and cheese.  I have been having so much fun, especially being able to make butter, we have no calf on our milk cow right now, so we are getting a lot of milk and cream.  I am so excited to try the hard cheese when it's ready, I put a wax on it and will turn it at least twice a week.  We are making hay while the sun shines. 

Yesterday we had the vet out for a preg check on our milk cow and she's not pregnant, we were pretty disappointed.  So, we'll try AI once again and maybe the third time will be the charm.  Still haven't tapped trees yet but not sure how much sap is running yet.  It's busy, busy, here on the homestead.

Good afternoon, it's been a busy week here. 

On Monday, I did laundry and made garlic salve. 

I remember when I was a young girl and my dad wasn't feeling well, an older women Edie in our church told him that she has something that would help him and that was garlic.  I'm not sure how the garlic was used at the time, but my dad wasn't interested but thinking back I wish he had taken her up on her offer of help. 

I believe Edie did things naturally.  I remember seeing alfalfa drying in her home that she used to make tea with.  My cousin and I would ride our bikes over to her apartment to visit from time to time and walking into her small apartment you could smell that distinct smell of garlic.  Edie was my cousins grandmother and spoke her mind which I never minded as a young girl, my cousin and I would enjoy our short visits.  Though she wasn't my grandmother I would sometimes think of her as my grandmother too. 

I wish that my cousin and I could sit and visit with her again as adults.  Edie had passed away many years ago and I do think of her often, especially when I get a whiff of garlic I think of her. 

I would love to turn the clock back just for one more visit.

It rained and it was supposed to be a whopper of a storm with 50 mile per hour winds...ha...that didn't happen, but we did get rain and it was windy a bit, but not 50 mph winds.  I thought that popcorn would be a great thing to have for lunch.  I recently bought a whirley pop popcorn popper and I'm here to tell you it is an awesome way to make popcorn.

And as always when it's bad weather either snow or rain I always want to bake or make homemade pizza, so of course that is just what I did.

I just had to sneak a peek at the doughs rising.

Living where we live here in Wisconsin we cannot find a place that makes a good pizza.  So since we can't go to the pizza I decided to bring the pizza to us.  Over the years I have used many different crust recipes and this crust is from Jill over at The Prairie Homestead.   It's a flavored crust and the last time I made it I didn't put the seasoning in the dough, this time I did and it was delicious and very flavorful.  The recipe was enough for 2 crusts and so what did I do, I made 2 pizzas.  We love leftover pizza.

I made sourdough bread but not my usual sourdough recipe.  I used Kate's over at Venison for Dinner sourdough master recipe.  I made the sandwich loaf and the cinnamon rolls.  I did not frost the cinnamon rolls and don't think I will, there is enough sugar in the rolls that make them sweet enough. 

I will confess that I messed up on the roll dough.  I have been having trouble getting my sourdough to pre-ferment and ended up with 2 ferments so instead of tossing one out I decided to make bread and the rolls.  But, and that is a big but, the cinnamon roll dough I missed a step..oops, but I thought I'd try making them anyway.  There wasn't any difference in how the doughs rose but I think the rolls ended up being just a tab bit heavier than the bread, although they are still delicious.  

I hope I didn't get you too hungry with all the baking here on the blog.  I have to tell you about the plates the pizza and cinnamon rolls are on.  Believe it or not they are not paper plates.  I bought them a few years back down in Texas.  I don't remember the cost but they are from a company called  One Hundred 80 Degrees. I don't believe you can directly buy them from their website.  I love eating certain foods on them especially in the summer months.

It's hard to believe that we are smack dab in the middle of July, one more week and we see if we get any chicks hatching...stay tuned.

I seem to average one blog post a month these days, or even less than that at times. Maybe I did two last month, anyway, has life changed for you at all in the past year?  Well it has for us in many ways.  We are not retired yet, we are still growing and preserving as much of our own food as we can and I’m looking forward to getting my seeds started. I have big ideas and plans for the garden and I can’t wait to get started, tho it’s still a long way off yet.  The hens are laying great and did pretty good this winter even during our very cold snap we had. I think if I’m remembering right we had at least 12 days of below zero temps. I was away at a quilt retreat last month and we woke up to -21 degrees.  That was cold. 

Our electric bill last month was outrageous, even though we heat with wood and our furnace never turned on during the harsh cold, something smells fishy to me about that. So, I decided I’m going to hang clothes out on the line even if there is snow on the ground, plus I’m putting our oil lamps to good use instead of just collecting dust for me to dust later.  It’s actually quite quaint to read by the oil lamp and enjoy a cup of coffee. 

Sugaring has started up.  I’m thinking it’s a bit early this year so we’ll see how long the season will be.  The seasons seem to be just flying by so fast to me and I’m not sure I like that. 
The snow is slowly melting with the warmer temps we have been having, and now you could say it’s officially mud season, our 5th season. 

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 a few days into March already and spring seems like it's just around the corner.  I'm sure though we'll be getting another snowstorm at some point before winter decides to make it's departure here in Southwest Wisconsin.

Are you a tea drinker? I only started drinking coffee about 15+ years ago and did not drink tea, that is until I had a cup over at a friends cabin in upper Wisconsin, and I have been hooked. I'm not a fan of just straight black tea or green tea.  I love the one that we've been drinking in the evening. It is a bit more spendy but seeing that we only drink one cup in the evening I figure I deserve that pleasure.

Oh my goodness, I am totally in love with the whole sourdough baking process.  I have finally started to master sourdough baking.  I don't use any commercial flour in my bread recipe, we grind our own flour, which has actually taken me a while to figure out.  The bread I made the other day I used half fresh ground rye and half fresh ground wheat, with the sourdough starter.  Both breads turned out absolutely beautiful and delicious.

Sugaring season is upon us and it's going to be the first time without our Sadie running around the sugar bush, or trying to drink up the sap that is running over the side before it hits the ground as Jim is pouring it into the tank we use to gather the sap.  Sadie loved this time of year as well as the snow, she was a good companion out in the bush.  Especially like tonight when the sun is going down, and darkness has crept up on us, and hearing the coyotes in the distance, I definitely feel the void with her gone.  We sure do miss our Sadie girl.  Despite missing Sadie it feels really good to be sugaring again.  It feels so good to smell the air after being cooped up in the house during the cold winter days that sometimes prevented us from venturing outdoors, at least preventing me from getting outside as much as I'd have liked to.

Wowzer, it's been almost a month since I've posted last.  I totally didn't mean to do that.  Life here on our little homestead has been good.  We seem to be taking it to a new level, not anything crazy, just adding some animals again.  We haven't raised meat birds for a few years and I am almost totally out of chicken, so we will be getting meat birds and laying hens. It's been quite a few years for those as well. I am looking forward to definitely doing both, especially the layers, it will be wonderful to have our own eggs again. We've been getting our eggs from a neighbor, but he's been having health problems and doesn't have any hens at the moment. Then we found some local eggs at an Amish store but they are a bit away from us and have to make a special trip to get them, so it will be nice to have a few of our own hens.

I did get some pH strips to check the ACV pH level.  The blog that I got my recipe from suggested getting them and I am so glad I did.

I have been making more homemade foods like the sourdough bread. I recently made homemade apple cider vinegar, and it tastes so good. My plan this year is to make catsup with the tomatoes we grow, which I've been wanting to do for a long time now, just never have done it.  I have a list of foods I want to make and possibly can this year. There is just so much we want to do around here. In the works is a greenhouse and hopefully a root cellar.

I've been so busy doing things around our home which feels like I'm nesting over here, that I haven't picked up the knitting needles for some time, though I have been doing some quilting, and I hope to show those here on the blog.

We have been known to grill in the winter months around here.  With the deer Jim got he grilled some steaks from the backstrap and they were absolutely delicious.

I wasn't always a fan of deer meat when I was young, maybe it was just the way it was cooked.  I always felt it was tough to eat.  I made a tamale pie with the ground venison and it was so tasty, we are getting a few meals out of it which I love.

I've been finding some really good recipes but the thing is they are all on YouTube, so I have to write them down.  I have this notebook that I've been logging what we've been canning and the amounts.  I thought why not put recipes into this notebook as well. 

I love to hand write my recipes in pencil, just incase I need to change things in any of my entries.  I got this tamale pie recipe from Lori over at Whippoorwill Holler.  It really is the best tamale pie.

We don't have really much snow right now, we got a dusting the other night, but we have definitely had some cold temps, so with cold temps I love to cook.

When we woke up this morning the temps were hovering around 0°.  I had to go to the big city today for a dental appointment, well Madison isn't quite the big city compared to some cities, but coming from a small town it is big to me.  On the way I noticed that the temp was 17° and I don't believe that it got any higher than that. 

I don't show my home very much but since I'm feeling rather comfortable sitting in my easy chair trying to do a post with the lights low and my string lights on, I thought I'd take a couple photos of my kitchen and dining area of our log home.  I absolutely love our log home it's very simple and yes I am a collector of things.  I don't have a dish washer and when we remodel our kitchen, which we plan to someday I don't believe I'll have one put in.  I have to think on that one.  I really don't mind at all washing dishes by hand, in fact I will gaze out the window to see what is going on outside or I'll do some thinking.  Especially doing the breakfast dishes, I'll think about what I plan to do that day, what needs to get done around the house, or whatever else pops in my mind.

Once the winter temps have really settled into stay, our wood stove stays lit.  But I will admit when warmer months come I am ready for the wood boxes to be put away for the season, I'm definitely ready for warmer weather then. 

I don't believe I posted about the blue hoosier cabinet that Jim made for me that is in the photo below.  I was looking and looking in antique shops for one but could never find exactly what I wanted.  So Jim decided to make me one and it is custom made for exactly what I wanted it for.  He also made it so that we could put our grain mill on it, so we have it permanently set up to grind flour whenever we need it.

I haven't really done a whole lot of Christmas decorating yet, or done any Christmas baking.  I am for sure going to make my Grandma M's Finnish prune tarts and my mom's Christmas butter cookies.  I still have time to do both decorating and baking.

Our life here is simple and we like it that way.

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.