The Fruits of our Labor

 "Build ye houses and dwell in them; and plant gardens and eat the fruit of them;" Jeremiah 29:5

 

This month marks two years since moving into our home in Illinois.  First of all, it flew by.  Two years of homeschool, "big time gardening", new friends, and new adventures for our family.  It's been amazing and we have really enjoyed living in this part of the Midwest.

We made it a priority to plant as much as we could that first summer.  From apple trees, to grapevines, to blueberry bushes, to even rhubarb and strawberry plants.  I wanted to share the progress.  Everything is doing amazing and producing fruit this year.  I am so excited to finally enjoy some of the "fruits of our labor":

Strawberry Plants

Last year, I lost a lot of my strawberries due to the drought, but this year a few came back and I was excited to see a few strawberries for the first time.  I planted a few more plants this year to fill in where I had lost some.

 

 

Rhubarb

This is my first season to finally have some rhubarb.  We enjoyed some rhubarb crisp over the holiday weekend. 

 

 

 

 

Blueberry bushes

 

 

 

 

Raspberry Patch

 

 

I planted about 40 new raspberry plants (which were given to me by a neighbor and friend), and started a whole new patch around my picket fence.  They are all doing very well, and I think it will be a lovely place for a raspberry patch.

 

 

 

 

Cherry trees

 

 

 

 

Apple Orchard

We have 16 apple trees so far, and are hoping to add a few more this year.  They all are full of buds and I'm so excited, even if the harvest is small.  Last year we had half a dozen apples and this year, we should have a few dozen.  I know each year will produce even more, so I get excited with each passing year.

 

 

 

Grapevine

This grapevine has very special meaning to me.  It may not look the prettiest, but whenever I look at it I remember when I planted it 9 years ago in northern WI.  I remember the first time we had grapes and my "little" kids and their tiny hands, picking the grapes and eating the sweet fruit.  This grapevine has come with us wherever we moved.  It has been from Wisconsin, to Iowa, to Indiana, and now in Illinois, where it is finally again full of clusters!

 

 

 

Grapevine

This is one of my favorite and most decorative.  It is along the front walkway into our home and is just full of beautiful clusters.  One thing I have found to work very well is coffee grounds.  Every single morning we mix our coffee grounds with water and pour it all over and around  the grapevines.  We also do this with our blueberry bushes.  It has been a wonderful, natural fertilizer and the plants are so beautiful and lush!

 

 

 

This has been a good lesson for the kids, to see that it takes hard work, patience and diligence, but in the end, the reward is great!

 

♥  Shannon

 

(all photos were taken by my talented daughter Molly)



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Catching up!

I've been SO busy, as I'm sure most are, this time of year!  So I wanted to do a quick post of what has been happening at our house.  It's exciting times as spring brings with it so many beautiful things.  The first excitement of spring is always baby kittens!

Our mama cat had four babies, and so far they are all doing well.  The kids LOVE this addition and play with them as much as they can. 

 

 

Molly is such a great photographer and loves to take pictures of these adorable kittens.  While we are on the subject of Molly and her photography, she had some exciting news as well!  She one 1st place, for the second year in a row, in the Whiteside County Conservation Photography contest.  AND, she won best overall photo, and is going to the state competition!  This contest is for 1st through 12th grade, so that was a big accomplishment, since she is only in 8th grade!  Here is her winning photo:

 

 



 

It's always exciting times, when we start planting the garden.  We had a rainy weekend, but were able to squeeze in just enough time, to get the garden rows lined up, and even planted some potatoes, lettuce, carrots and 500 onion bulbs.  I'm hoping this weekend, we can attempt to finish it up!

 

 



Me and the girls also enjoyed a Mother Daughter Banquet at our church this weekend.  It's always a fun time and I feel so blessed to have 3 beautiful daughters.  We had fun doing pictures before we left.  Of course Molly was the photographer (for most of them)

Me and Marykate had matching hair for the day and it was fun!  Especially since she was still young enough to want to match her mom :)

The weather has been beautiful this week and we are enjoying our days outdoors, as much as we can.  We are taking many walks down to the creek, which Abe loves, and I have been hanging clothes on the line whenever I can.  We are also enjoying our time in Wisconsin and have been taking lots of walks around the wooded neighborhood. 

 

 

I think our absolute favorite thing about spring is bringing out the grill.  Brent is excellent on the grill and loves to cook for us on the weekends.  We usually grill on Saturday, and make enough for Sunday's lunch.  It makes Sunday so much more enjoyable, when lunch is already prepared, when we get home from church.  I can't wait until we have fresh veggies from the garden to go along with it!

 

 

 

These are just a few of the reasons, why I LOVE Spring!

 

♥  Shannon

 

 



Because my garden just won't stop...

I thought I was done with beans. My kids had picked the last of them last week and I stepped outside to take a look and see if they had left any unpicked. I was surprised to find the bushes were FULL again! So we set out to pick once again over the weekend. I was suppose to be cleaning out my school room and organizing, in preparation for our first day of school this week.
 

I don't have a pressure cooker, so I would be freezing all these beans. I have about 30 gallon bags already frozen, so I decided to make green bean casserole for the freezer. This is one of my families favorite side dishes. I ended up with six pans after working on beans for 2 days. I blanched the beans as if I was freezing them, and then made up the casserole's and put them in the individual pans for freezing. I recommend to everyone to make your own "cream" soup from scratch. It is absolutely delicious, and so much better for you then the canned soups in the store. I will share my recipe below. I did not add french fried onions, but will add those later, when I pull them out of the freezer to bake. If I don't have the french fried onions on hand, I will add crushed croutons for topping and my family likes that just as well.

We also picked an abundance of green peppers and decided to try out a stuffed pepper recipe for the freezer.
 

I have never made stuffed peppers before, but my husband is a pretty good cook and helped out. It was pretty simple. We fried up some hamburger and onion, then added a spaghetti sauce and rice. We stuffed the peppers and topped with cheese.
 

I placed the pan into the freezer for about an hour until they were froze, then placed the peppers into gallon size bags for the freezer. I ended up with enough for six separate dinners. How wonderful! It felt really great to add some delicious, home grown, quick and easy freezer meals to my freezer, right before we started our busy school year!

  Homemade creamed soup:

1 c nonfat dry milk
3/4 c cornstarch
1/4 c bouillon
4 Tbsp dried onion
1 tsp basil
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp pepper

Mix all together and when ready to use add 1/3 cup of mix to 1 1/4 cups of water. Cook on stove top until desired thickness. Cool. I made this dried mix up in large batches and keep in my pantry with instructions for use. I will never go back to canned soup again. Thank you pinterest!

♥ Shannon

Yummy All American food

It has been a while since I posted.  We've been keeping busy with church events, gardening, and  every day life for a family of 7.  We have been enjoying some great meals from our garden and my husband is the best cook on the grill. 

These burgers were amazing, truly mouth watering.  We've been adding slices of tomatoes from our garden with a side of sweet corn.  All American food, if you ask me!

We are so excited to have our first crop of sweet corn ever!  It wasn't nearly enough for freezing, but we've been enjoying it every day for the past two weeks.  With a family of 7 we can go through a lot of corn.  I did manage to freeze one large bag of corn for Thanksgiving.  Next year, we have plans to expand our garden, to allow more room for sweet corn.  Here are a few more pictures of our harvest so far:

Max and Maddie picking cherry tomatoes

I have started freezing my cherry tomatoes, the same way I freeze blueberries.  Just wash and freeze!  This fall and winter when I make a stew, soup or chili, I will just take out a cup or two and add to the batch.  I added a cup of cherry tomatoes to my homemade spaghetti sauce this week and it was delicious!

Our pumpkins are ready, way too early.  In fact, so early some of them are going bad before we even pick them.  My pie pumpkins have definitely been affected by the drought.  I am saving and freezing what I can of them.  Note to self:  plant pumpkins a lot later next year! 

Overall, the garden has been bountiful and I am thankful for what we have harvested.  God is good!

♥  Shannon

Just another weekend project...

My daughter once said "I always wondered when dad would finally finish up all his projects, and then I realized they never end".   It's true, projects are his hobby.  He works in management, so his "down time", isn't really down time at all.  He loves to build, create, dream up and create.  My 8 yr. old son loves to help.  Between the two of them, I never know what they are going to come up with next.  I sometimes wish, he could just make a business of it, and do what he loves, but life isn't that simple... or is it??!!   Anyway, this weekend, he finished up, yet another one of his projects.  We had a lot of leftover wood from our shed project, and so he came up with this great idea for our Farmers Market stand.  Usually I help with the design, or even come up with the plan and then he builds it.  But not this time.  I had no idea what he was building or how it was going to turn out.  I was pleasantly surprised.  It's great, and I love it!  We are hoping to have a Farmers Market stand every Friday evening and this should attract some attention and hopefully get the kids some customers. 

Like I said, we used all leftover wood from other projects.  He built the boxes out of cedar and used metal sheets for the roof.  We stained the rest of the wood, varnished the cedar boxes and used stencils to paint the sign.  I am very  excited to try it. 

♥  Shannon

Bountiful

Talk about being busy!  The garden harvest is in full swing here.  The above picture is what we picked over the weekend, just for Saturday's meals.  I have been either in the garden weeding and picking, or in the kitchen peeling, freezing and cooking.  It is definitely a blessing to have the abundance of food for our table, but my back feels differently :)

Thanks goodness for my little helpers.  Today we picked beans and peas and I have been freezing them and saving some for fresh eating.

I also tried a cucumber salad recipe that I found on pinterest, and I am anxious for my husband to try it tonight.  It supposedly lasts up to 2 months in the fridge.... we shall see, if it lasts that long!

At the end of the day, I've run my dishwasher a few times, done a few dishes by hand, and my counter tops usually are full of clean dishes and bowls of fresh veggies for tomorrow.

 

So, we are keeping very busy here, but so thankful for a great garden this year.  My freezer is already filling up, and up next tomatoes!

♥  Shannon

Swimming, Sweet Treats, Sunflowers & Summer

Summer is in full swing at our home.  The flowers are blooming, the kids are doing a lot of swimming, and I am taking advantage of a slower month, to just enjoy these HOT summer lazy days.  There isn't much left to do in the garden, but wait for harvest.  We've been enjoying potatoes, onions, peppers, peas and lots of cabbage.  My beans and tomatoes will be ready soon, and then I will be busy!  The carrots and corn are slowly, but surely growing.

What would summer be without swimming?  Every year we put up a small pool for the kids and they usually spend the afternoons out in the water.  Well in the last few years, the kids have been hard on our pools.  The every day wear and tear of 5 kids in a pool is hard on them, and frankly, we are tired of buying a new pool every year.  Then, last year we moved in here, and set up our one year old pool, to discover we had LOTS of iron in our water. Our filter couldn't keep up with it, and it just wasn't worth the time and energy we had to put into it.  We were out of options, but knew we needed something for the kids on these HOT days.  Leave it to Brent to come up with an idea.  He bought a blue poly stock tank and set it up for the kids. 

The kids have been loving it.  It's 9 ft wide and almost 3 ft deep, so not too big to be worrisome, but big enough to be fun for my 3 youngest.  They play for hours everyday!  As for the iron in our water, I am learning how to keep it clean without a filter.  I do have to use a few chemicals, some chlorine tablets, and I just purchased a small spa vacuum, so I can get out the iron that settles on the bottom.  So far so good, and a lot easier to take care of, and the kids can't destroy it.  Plus, when they out grow it, we are thinking of digging it down into the ground and using it for a pond.  There are lots of fun ideas out there for stock tanks, where as a pool, just goes in the trash.  Plus it has a drain, for easy clean out.

I also love the fact, that it fits on our patio, keeping out a lot of grass, and well, we just don't have a lot of flat surfaces to place a bigger pool.  It's great having it by the covered porch as well, so I can sit out and watch them in the shade.  Ahh, the comforts of home!

We have been enjoying a lot of fruit this summer as well!  We've been blessed with LOTS of raspberries from friends, and now I have a few growing in my garden.  We have had blueberries, cherries, and strawberries.  I found a fun recipe on pinterest that I wanted to try out for the 4th of July, as my kids LOVE fruit!

So simple, just layer blueberries, cool whip, and strawberries.  But, of course I had to take it one step further.  We have a family favorite fruit dip, that I thought would be great, as a substitute for the cool whip.  Here is the recipe:

1 tub of cool whip

1 package of instant vanilla pudding

1 cup of milk

1 8oz container of sour cream

Just mix all together and chill!

My kids LOVE this dip, and would eat it all by itself as a pudding if I let them.  I added a little extra cool whip to the recipe, when using it for these fruit dishes, because the dip tends to have a more yellow tint, and for the 4th, we needed Red, White & Blue!   

So, there it is, a peek into our summer so far.  Hope you enjoyed!

♥  Shannon

Ahhhh Sweet Rain!

It FINALLY rained today!  It's been weeks!  We were getting so close to drought conditions here in Illinois.  I've been watering like crazy, but haven't been able to keep up with my apple trees as much as I would like.   I woke up to dark skies and the sound of thunder rolling in.  We ran outside and watched and waited.  Praying, hoping, it wouldn't pass over, yet again.  We could hear the thunder and see the lightening in the distance.  And finally, sweet rain!  We all sat in the porch and just watched as the rain swept through.

I've never been more thankful for rain.  It was a beautiful sight! Such a relief, and that's just for me, a lady with a garden and some trees.  I can't imagine how the farmers must feel.  Between yesterday's hot temperature and todays rain the garden is really growing and so are the weeds.

Here are a few pictures I took after the heat and rain.  I love July, because that is when you really start to see some serious progress in the garden!

I see raspberries!

Everything looks so bright and green now.  Thank you God for the rain!!

♥  Shannon