Gardening at Last!

Well, we are finally able to do some gardening.  Our perennial food plants are up and looking nice.

The rhubarb is almost ready to start picking.  I'm going to try cooking it with honey this year instead of sugar.

 

 

 

A couple of asparagus stalks are just starting to come up through the mulch.  We love to steam fresh asparagus and then add butter.  Yum!

 

Leaves on the raspberries.  We won't have fruit until early August, but fresh picked raspberries are a real treat worth waiting for.  Mr. M doesn't eat them because he doesn't like the seeds, so these are all mine.

 

 

 

This is part of the garlic patch that Mr. M planted last fall.  We use lots of garlic in our cooking, so it's nice to have our own that's home-grown.

 

These are new globe artichoke plants that Mr. M started a few weeks ago.  The first year we tried planting artichokes, they actually survived our winter up here.  They are perennials in warmer parts of the country, but not here normally. Those from last year didn't survive the winter.  These new plants should give us artichokes in a couple of months.  We boil them in water and then just dip the leaves and chokes in butter.  A real treat!


We planted onion sets, peas, and lettuce in the past couple of days.  We also got the fenced enclosure set up for the broccoli and Brussels sprouts to keep out the local rabbit population which seems to particularly love these kinds of plants.  For the first time last year, we had resident wrens eating any cabbage worms that were on these plants.  We saw them bringing the worms to the birdhouse to feed their young.  For the first time, we had no worms on the broccoli and hope the wrens return this year to do the same thing.

Once the soil warms up a bit, we'll be planting the rest of the vegetable seeds.

And, of course, there is the beginning of a nice crop of pretty yellow flowers.  I know that most people do their best to get rid of dandelions, and the plants do tend to grow and multiply pretty vigorously, but I really love to look at a yard full of them.  Maybe it's because yellow is one of my favorite colors.

And after such a long winter with lots of snow even into the first couple days of May, it's so nice to look at grass again.


I love this time of year.  Everything seems so fresh and new.  The grass has that bright spring green look to it as opposed to the darker green of summer.  And the new leaves on trees and shrubs help to reinforce the idea of rebirth, which is what spring is all about after a long winter.

 

 

 

Trip

Another snowy day at our place.  We have about 6 or 7 inches of really wet snow.  Fortunately, the roads are just wet right now and not slippery.


Just a few days ago my friend and I were in Paducah, Kentucky, for the AQS quilt show.  We had been planning this trip for about two years and finally made it.  We did a little side trip on the way down and went to the Fons and Porter shop in Winterset, Iowa, as well as John Wayne's birthplace there. 

While in Winterset, we went to the city park to see a covered bridge.  Winterset is in Madison County (of "Bridges of Madison County" movie fame).

Next stop was Missouri Star Quilt Company in Hamilton, Missouri, then to the Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almonzo Wilder home in Mansfield, Missouri, in the Ozarks.

While in the Mansfield area, we went to visit the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.  This is who Mr. M and I buy all of our vegetable seeds from.  It was fun being there and seeing the little town they have set up, called Bakerville.  There are several old buildings such as a hotel, general store, and apothecary, besides the store where they sell their seeds.

We saw so many beautiful redbud trees in bloom in that part of Missouri.

We arrived in Paducah, Kentucky, a day early, but that allowed us to become familiar with where the quilt show and other attractions were before the big rush.  The quilt show was wonderful; there were over 200 vendors plus so many absolutely beautiful quilts.  I would love to show you some pictures of the quilts, but we were only allowed to photograph them on the condition that we would not put them on the internet.

We spent a few hours at Hancocks of Paducah, especially in their backroom sale area.

One day we took the Dogwood Tour, which usually happens earlier, but this year we were lucky enough to be there during the later time the dogwoods were in bloom.  Many people have lights shining on their trees and they enter the contest to see if their dogwood might win as best of the year.
This picture is not only a dogwood but a beautiful wisteria as well.

Eleanor Burns (Quilt in a Day) was in Paducah all four days of the show and gave three 1 1/2 hour shows of her own each day focusing on quilts made from her new book.

It was a lot of fun; she's such a wonderful, down-to-earth person.



We also spent a while looking at the murals on the flood wall.  Paducah is on the Ohio River, right where the Tennessee River joins it.  They've had some pretty bad floods in the past, so several years ago a flood wall was built.  Then an artist painted several murals on it about the history of the city.

Look at the wonderful cobblestone street; it looked like it might have been original.



We were in Paducah for five days so we had a lot of time to enjoy the beauty of the area, but were also very impressed by the friendliness and hospitality of all of the people we met there.  We had heard that those who live in the South are so very nice, and we found it to be true.

We had such a great time and may go back again someday (or maybe to another quilt show--Houston, next time??), but it's nice to be back home, too (even though we have snow and no leaves on the trees or flowers in bloom).

Quilting and Snow

Winter is still hanging around at our place; in fact they're predicting another 6-8 inches of snow for tonight and tomorrow.  By this time last year I had already cut the grass 3 times!


So to keep busy when we'd normally be planting part of the garden, I've done some more sewing.

This quilt top still needs a couple of borders before I can sandwich and quilt it, but the bright colors help me to think about summer.

This is a tote I made out of a stack of fat 8ths I received at the quilt retreat in November.  I wasn't sure what to make with them, but I think they turned out well on this project.  My friend made an awesome bag to take along when we go to the Paducah quilt show in a couple of weeks.  It inspired me to make a bag as well, although mine is pretty ordinary compared to hers.

Rendering Lard

We took one of our pigs to the butcher a couple of weeks ago, and picked up the meat earlier this week.  We ended up with a lot of nice fresh pork plus plenty of ham and bacon.  We also got 24 lb. of fat to render into lard. 

Here is part of the fat; I had already put some in the pan.

Ready to start heating it.  Rendering isn't hard; it just takes a while.  Some people do this in a crockpot, but I prefer to use the stovetop. 

I set the burner on medium-low to medium and took out the liquid with a ladle as it accumulated.  Here you can see a bit of the liquid around the edges.

This liquid went into glass jars.  It looks a bit yellowish here, but will end up white after it hardens.

 This white lard is perfect for making pie crusts.  I use a recipe that was handed down from my great-great-great Aunt Lena.  I've been using her recipe for about 40 years; it makes the most wonderful pie crusts.

The next step is to cook what's left a little longer to get crispy cracklings.  I put these into a bag and into the freezer.  They taste a little like crisp bacon and will be great to sprinkle on salads.

The lard that comes from this part of the process is darker and can be used for frying. 

This is the first lard I've rendered since we previously had pigs in the mid-1970's. 
It's nice to have pigs again and therefore fresh lard and good meat. 

Back

Well, it's been longer than I thought it would be since I last posted. 

These are a couple of quilt tops that I've finished in the past few weeks.

Now I just need to do the finish work on them.



I went to my friend's house up north for a few days to do some quilting and visiting, and it ended up being nine days away from home.  The reason:  snow--lots of it one day all along the route home and the next day high winds causing blowing and drifting snow with difficult and hazardous travel conditions.  I just got home three days ago.

This is what part of our place looks like right now.  And the temps are generally below what the average is for this time of year.  Global warming??  What a joke!

So, we'll probably see the ground by mid April or so.

Hope the weather is nicer where you are.

Break

When I was trying to decide what to write about next, several topics came up, such as canning, gardening, chickens, baking/cooking, etc.  However, some of that is not happening right now, and some just isn't very interesting at the current time.  In terms of "how-to" posts:  cooking on a wood cookstove, starting seeds, recipes, quilting; these have all been done very well on other blogs, and we probably don't need yet another post on how to make laundry detergent, for instance.  At any rate, I currently don't seem to be very motivated.  Part of it is that we are still in the middle of winter, although the high temperatures this week will be in the 30s, so that's encouraging.  My decision then is to take a bit of a break from posting, although I'll still continue to read my favorite blogs.

Here is a picture of part of our yard from last summer.  Looking at it gives me hope that spring will soon be here. 

I'll be back in awhile; until then, take care.

Ready for Spring!

Well, we had another 3-4 inches of snow last night.  I promise this is my last picture of snow for this winter.  Yes, fresh snow is pretty, but by this time of year I'm getting really tired of it.  And you are probably getting tired of seeing pictures of it on this blog.

By February I generally have a bad case of cabin fever; so, today I pulled out all the pastel, spring-color things I could find.

Then I put them around mostly in the kitchen to brighten my day when I'm in there and to help me to think thoughts of spring.

Yes, these are artificial flowers, but they still brighten up the space.

Now, with all this nice color in the house, can spring really be far behind? 

Happy Valentine's Day!!