Summer Canning Underway

Spent the better part of the day today working on some cucumbers. Put away 5 pints of sweet pickle spears and 7 quarts of sweet pickle relish. Also dehydrated 6 trays of apple slices from our backyard tree. My feet are ready for a bit of a rest for sure!

Update: Photos:

Cucumbers ready to make into relish. I use my Vitamix to make chopping a breeze:



Relish ingredients all combined and having a 2 hour soak in cold water and canning salt:



Finished relish:



Sampling of cucumbers sliced for sweet pickle spears:



Sweet pickle spears finished:

Garden Update

Thought I would post a few photos of our garden and how it is progressing this summer. We planted most of our garden in tires this year - much easier in this hard soil than tilling!

Our tomatoes are starting to get a nice size - we have some heirloom Brandywines that are as tall as our 6 foot privacy fence!





Our second round of Rainbow Swiss Chard - we have 2 tires of these:



One of our Banana Pepper plants:



We also have red, yellow and green bell peppers.

We planted 6 tires of potatoes - 3 potatoes to each tire. We had ants get in two of our tires and kill the plants, so we had to harvest the potatoes already:



We'll put in another fall crop of potatoes as well.

This week I planted some black beans and some green beans, a canteloupe, and a couple more pepper plants, as well as a couple of sweet potatoes as an experiment.

Dad's Day Photos

Was remiss in sharing photos of the girls with hubby on Father's Day.

First thing that morning my oldest daughter and I went to the Wolf River Bowhunters 3D Archery Shoot at Herb Parsons Lake. We got there about 9:00 and went through the 20 station course by lunch time. Hubby came along to watch his oldest and her archery skills, which are really coming along well. I hope to have pictures from this event soon.

Then, we went to my mom's house to celebrate a little Father's Day with Papa - the girls all had a little gift for him and we had a light lunch.

We came home, did some work in the garden, had dinner, and then the girls shared their gifts with Dad - here are some photos:

Dad and RM (age 3.5)


Dad and MM (age 7)


Dad and KM (age 10)


Dad and all the girls:

Applesauce

A couple of weeks ago we had a really nasty storm blow through. A tornado touched down about 3 blocks from our house; trees were down everywhere; power was out for several for up to a week. We lost our power for about 20 hours.

When we were picking up in the backyard, we realized the wind had blown several of our apples out of our apple tree. Not wanting to let these go to waste, I decided to make applesauce.

Applesauce is so quick and easy to make. All I did was wash the apples and cut them in halves or quarters, depending on how big they were. I put them in a large pan and added a little water - enough to keep them from sticking on the bottom and burning, but not enough to make them soupy.



I put on a lid and gently steamed the apples to make them soft. Once they were soft, I put them through my food mill so I could get just the good apple pulp.

I put this back in a clean pan, added some cinnamon and nutmeg, a little honey and some sugar to taste.



Brought this to a slow boil, then put the applesauce in hot jars and steam canned the jars for 20 minutes. I made 6 pints in no time and we've really been enjoying it!



On the home canning list for the coming weeks this summer: Blueberry Spice Preserves, Strawberry Preserves, Cucumber Relish, Sweet Pickle Relish, Bread and Butter Pickles, Sweet Pickles, Applesauce, Apple Butter, Pickled Pears, Pear Butter, Brandied Pears, Pears in Syrup, Fig Preserves, Pickled Okra, Tomato Preserves, Tomato-Apple Chutney, and I'm sure a few others I'm forgetting!

Time to Call Congress on UN CRC!

Yesterday had an overwhelming response to the plea from ParentalRights.org to let our Senators and our UN Ambassador Susan Rice know in no uncertain terms that Americans do not support ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but that we DO most definitely support the Parental Rights Amendment (H.J. Res 42).

TODAY, ParentalRights.org is requesting that we now turn our efforts toward Congress. While 100 congressmen have signed-on as co-sponsors of the Parental Rights Amendment, many are on the fence or against the amendment, and THEY NEED TO HEAR FROM US!

Here is the email update with instructions for contacting ONLY THOSE CONGRESSMEN WHO ARE NOT already co-sponsors for the amendment:

Dear Champion of Parental Rights,

Let’s keep the momentum going! Yesterday we warned you about the Obama administration’s “trial balloon” to consider ratifying the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and your calls had a huge impact. Ambassador Susan Rice’s office even had to disconnect their phone line! You also tied up the White House comment line all day, and many Senators got a loud and clear message.

All we left out was the Congress – and today it is their turn. As of now, we have more than 100 cosponsors on H.J. Res. 42, the Parental Rights Amendment introduced by Rep. Pete Hoekstra. This is a huge milestone, and one many thought we would never reach. It is amazing that we reached it this fast!

We are excited to have topped the 100 mark, but many congressmen are still on the fence, uncommitted, or just plain opposed to the Parental Rights Amendment. Today, we will let them know in no uncertain terms that the American public wants to see this Amendment passed.

Recently, the CRC has been used to challenge the US Army’s recruiting practices, threaten educational choice in Great Britain, discourage corporal punishment in Guatemala, and the list goes on. To protect U.S. sovereignty, states’ rights, and parental liberty, continue the fight for the Parental Rights Amendment.

Here is what we need you to do today to press our advantage and protect parental rights:

1. If your congressman is not a cosponsor yet, call them today and ask why they are not one of more than 100 congressmen who are. Tell them the Parental Rights Amendment will protect the current American system of family law from judicial erosion and international law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It will protect the rights of the states to continue to make family law as they do now, instead of transferring that power to the federal bureaucracy.

2. If your congressman is on our list of cosponsors, do not call them! If you want to thank them, a note or card sent by mail would be the politest way to do so. Additionally, you can do one or more of the following:

i) Contact the media. Parental Rights is not a “media darling”, so they will try to overlook our efforts and triumphs. Don’t let them! If you can write, write a letter to the editor of your local paper. If not, call your favorite radio or t.v. news and commentary program – whether it’s Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh or Jon Stewart and Al Franken – and urge them to contact parentalrights.org at 540-751-1245 for an interview.

ii) Pass along this email to as many friends as you can. The movement has begun, but must continue to grow if we are to see these things through.

iii) Visit parentalrights.org and parentsrights.us for more information on the Parental Rights Amendment. Parentalrights.org also contains a host of information on why we must oppose ratification of the CRC if future generations of Americans are ever to know freedom.

For updates of this email online, click here.

Thinking Through Fall Flu

There has been some great reading this morning (heck, actually all week) over at The Market Ticker. If you don't regularly read that blog, I cannot express strongly enough how much I encourage you to do so. You'll get some straight-forward analysis of the current goings-on of our economy, the bailouts, the markets, unemployment, the banks - everything. And it is in plain English, so you'll know and understand what you are reading and walk away having time well-spent learning something new or understanding something more fully.

Okay, fresh from The Market Ticker this morning I found this little gem of information about the H1N1 flu virus (click on the H1N1 link to read the full blog post). I know, lots of people seem tired of hearing about this and think it is just another "no big deal" flu bug.

But not so fast. We know that this virus is different from our "usual" flu viruses because it seems to prefer warm temperatures. That's why we're still seeing increasing numbers of infection of this virus in the U.S. even though it is summer.

I do have to say here that I'm very disappointed in the way the CDC is posting statistics on this virus - they are woefully behind and it has been stated publicly on many forums that most states are hardly doing any testing at all for this virus except on the most severe, hospitalized cases. So the numbers could be much higher and we just don't know it.

There are reports now coming out from Shanghai that the virus has mutated there and has now also picked up a viral sequence (E627K) that makes it also well-suited for cold climates - which has scientists now a bit worried about how this virus will hit those in the Northern Hemisphere this fall/winter. If the virus mutates enough, those who might have gotten it here in the U.S. this spring/summer could get the "new" version of it again this fall/winter.

Also, this particular flu strain is hitting those in the age range of 30-50 years old particularly hard. It is causing something called a cytokine storm in some of these individuals that are otherwise normal and healthy - basically their immune system ends up working too well when attacking this bug causing a fatal reaction.

Scientists are closely watching the development and evolution of this virus in the Southern Hemisphere that is now experiencing their normal winter cold/flu season. They hope to glean some information from the behavior of the virus that might let us have a peek into what to expect in our hemisphere this fall.

Their thoughts on what the virus will be like this fall are not optimistic. Taken from the Utah Public Health Situation Report Dated 24 Jun 2009:

CDC is now estimating that the novel H1N1 virus will be “Category 2” in severity. They are closely watching the situation in the Southern Hemisphere for validation of this estimate.
A category 2 pandemic has the following characteristics:
~Case fatality ratio of 0.1 percent to less than 0.5 percent.
~Between 90,000 and 450,000 deaths in the U.S. (compared with estimated 36,000 deaths during a typical influenza season).
~Excess death rate of between 30 to less than 150 per 100,000 people.
~Illness rate of between 20 and 40 percent.
~Similar to 1957 pandemic.

All this to say, continue to pay attention to this virus and how it is behaving. I recently found a whole forum board dedicated to international discussion and information sharing on H1N1 - you can go here: Pandemic Flu Information Forum.

If you don't already have a plan of action for your family for this fall in case this virus turns very ugly, you should. You should be prepared to "self-quarantine" if needed and stay put in your home for at least 2 weeks to 30 days, possibly longer, because of waves of infection.

Start thinking now about the items you would need to have on hand to do that. Make your lists and start gradually making your purchases now, so it is not such a big hit on your budget all at one time. I'll post soon on what we think some of the essential items are to have on hand and what we've done to prepare for just such a possibility.

Feel free to share any first-hand experiences you've had with this virus, or preparations you've taken for your family.

Action Needed on the U.N. CRC Treaty

***IMPORTANT UPDATE AT END OF POST***

I received this update this morning from Parental Rights.org - a wonderful organization that works to keep parental rights where they should be - with parents; and is working hard to fight against the U.S. ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

The administration is now "testing the waters" (as they indicate in this update) to see if they are going to draw much opposition for ratifying this treaty - and we need to work quickly and loudly to make our voices heard that we do not support the US ratifying this treaty.

If you are not familiar with the UN Convention, it is most urgent that you take the time to visit Parental Rights website and get educated about this convention and all it does to TAKE AWAY rights of parents.

The threat is real, it is huge, and judges throughout this nation are already using parts of the CRC to make legal rulings regarding families. You can visit this link THE THREAT to see real examples of rulings that are using CRC to break apart families and undermine parental wishes.

I urge you to keep abreast of developments regarding this treaty; in addition to taking away parental rights it is another example of taking a UN Treaty that once ratified, becomes the overwhelming law of the land here.

Here is the update I received this morning - please read and take action:

Dear Friend of Parental Rights,

Monday in a Harlem middle school, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told a group of 120 students that administration officials are actively discussing “when and how it might be possible to join” (that is, ratify) the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). As before, she also communicated what a disgrace it is that the U.S. would stand with only Somalia against such a widely-accepted treaty.

This is the first direct public statement by the Obama administration that it will seek ratification of the UN CRC.

In my 30 years of political involvement, I have learned to recognize this as what is called a “trial balloon.” Like in World War I trench warfare, our opponents have “sent up a balloon” to see if it will draw fire. If things remain quiet, they will proceed with their plans to push for ratification of the CRC in the U.S. Senate.

To discourage them from doing so, we need to make sure that our voices are heard with unmistakable clarity. We must let the Obama administration know that we oppose this anti-family, anti-American treaty.

Here’s what we need you all to do:

1. Call the White House comments line at 202-456-1111. Tell them you heard the administration wants to ratify the CRC, and you strongly oppose this giving away of U.S. sovereignty to the UN. Also keep in mind that this treaty gives the government jurisdiction to override any decision made by any parent if the government thinks that a better decision can be made—even if there is no proof of any harm.

2. Call Ambassador Susan Rice’s office at the United Nations. Tell her that you want her to represent the United States to the world rather than trying to get the United States to go along with international law initiated by the UN. Her office number is 212-415-4000. UPDATE: It turns out Susan Rice's name is not in the automated directory. However, there are three options to fix this. Please dial ONE of them, and deliver the message that you oppose the CRC, and that she should represent Americans to the United Nations rather than push a UN agenda on our country.

1. Dial the main line at 1-212-415-4000, and dial 6 to leave your message; OR

2. Dial the Public Diplomacy Office at 1-212-415-4050 and leave a message; OR

3. Dial her office directly at 1-212-415-4404. Again, you will need to leave a message.

This is not a message they want to hear, so do not expect a cordial reception. The important thing is to get the message through.

3. Contact your Senators and urge them to oppose ratification of this treaty. (Find your Senators’ contact information by typing your zip code into the box here.) Ask them also to defeat it once and for all by cosponsoring SJRes 16 – the Parental Rights Amendment.

It is very important that we speak up right now. Please call before you close this email!

Sincerely,
Michael Farris

Find this letter online.

UPDATE from ParentalRights.org: Congratulations!

The office of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice has been inundated with calls! The first phone line we sent out has been completely shut down, and the voice mail system for all of their lines has been crashed.

This means you can't likely get through, so what do you do?

You no longer need to call the U.S. office at the U.N. Instead, please contact the White House comment line at 202-456-1111. It may be busy - we have kept it busy all day -- but keep trying. It is only open from 9 to 5 (EDT), so time is limited. However, you can also send them a message online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/.

Also, contact your Senators. Find their contact info. by typing your zip code in the box here. Their offices also close at 5 (EDT), so try to get to them quickly - or call tomorrow!

Please click here for more up-to-date information on this campaign before calling our office.

Homeschool In Jeopardy In Britain

Found this information today on ParentalRights.org - Britain is now using the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to argue for an END to homeschooling for British parents - something that could very well happen in the U.S. if the Convention is ratified here. Those of you who homeschool are well aware of the opposition we have out there and this Convention, if ratified, would indeed be used against us by the NEA and others to take away our homeschooling rights. You can read more about what's happening in Britain here: UN Treaty Jeopardizes Homeschool Freedom in Britain.

If you want more information on the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child, you can click on the link to read why it is such a danger to parents across this country, as it will virtually strip away all of your parental rights to rear and educate your children the way you desire or think is best for your family.

Wordless Wednesday

Cattle Negotiations

As many of you already know, each of our daughters has ownership in one or more of our cows and any subsequent calves they might have. When the calves grow up and are either processed (steers) or possibly sold (heifers), they receive a portion of the profits. If the heifer is retained for breeding stock, they will also own any of the offspring and a portion of any subsequent sale of that offspring.

My oldest daughter, KM (age 10), currently owns Scarlet and her heifer calf Victoria. Victoria is a first calf for Scarlet and was born on February 4, 2009.

M4-D Victoria:


My middle daughter, MM (age 7), currently owns Polly Pocket, Bathsheba and Bathsheba's bull calf Coffee who was born on May 5, 2009. She recently sold Polly's heifer calf from last July (Sparkleworks) to a little girl who wanted a pet cow. Polly is due to calf again any time.

M4-D Coffee:


My youngest daughter, RM (age 3.5), currently owns Patches, her bull calf from last May, and her bull calf from this May 17th - she named him Pudding because he is the prettiest color of milk chocolate that I've ever seen.

M4-D Pudding:


I own Sugar Plum Princess and her calf from January 2007, Truffles, who is now our herd bull; her bull calf from Dec 2007 - Thunder and her heifer calf from Nov 2008 - Chrissy.

LKF Truffles:


M4-D Chrissy:


I also own Lana and her heifer calf from Dec 2008 - who is yet named.

Well, after our recent trip out to check on everything this weekend, it appears that negotiations have started for some changes in ownership.

My middle daughter has decided that she really likes the looks of Lana's red heifer calf and proceeded to begin negotiating with me to buy her. She also asked for a bill of sale and a certificate of sale "suitable for framing". Tough negotiator, she is. We agreed on terms and I'm printing up her bill of sale and "certificate of sale suitable for framing" this evening - complete with a photo of her purchase. She has decided to name her "Berry" - because she reminds her of the color of ripe berries. MM has determined that she wants to increase her numbers of breeding cows so she can have more calves and ultimately more money when they are sold/processed - she keeps saying she is saving her money to be a veterinarian.

M4-D Berry:


Then, my youngest daughter decided that she really liked the looks of KM's heifer calf, Victoria. Well, my oldest daughter is all about making a deal and having extra funds to pay for her new archery habit. She's much more interested in archery than cows, so she agreed to make a deal with RM. RM is now in the process of trying to earn enough money through extra chores to pay for Victoria.

Nothing like raising a few cows to teach children about various and sundry aspects of life, is there?

Strawberries!

Finally I was able to get some fresh strawberries! Every year I seem to miss them, as they are ripe right in the middle of our spring beef processing and deliveries and I'm usually too busy to get any picked. Strawberry jam is my all-time favorite and each year I'm always wishing I had some put away.



We went last Tuesday and picked about 5 gallons - I'd love to have 5-10 gallons more, but this is probably all we'll have time for this year.

I divided them into 3 groups: a group for making jam, a group to slice and put in the freezer for pies or ice cream topping and a group that was ready for immediate eating! The girls all helped me cap and slice them, which made quick work of everything!





I'll post when I get the jam made. I'm waiting for a new pectin to arrive that I'm going to try. It's called Pomona Universal Pectin and it uses LOTS less sugar than regular pectin. It even has recipes for using no sugar at all.



I purchased it from The Canning Pantry. It seems a bit costly, but if you look at how long this pectin will last and how much less sugar you'll be using, it is definitely worth it! A 1 ounce box is enough to make 2-4 recipes using 4-6 cups of fruit per recipe. I'll be sure to blog the jam making so you can see how well it works out.