A Country Girl at Heart

Lately, I've blogged mostly about the more cosmopolitan side of me.
(Cosmopolitan: adj, 1. Well traveled, cultured, sophisticated, urbane, etc...) The part of my personality that enjoys black & white photography, ultra-cute technology, poems, chic interior decor, and shopping trips.

But there's a whole other side of me too. I'm not all girly-girl, photographer extraordinare, and stylish interior designer.

I live in the country on 13 acres of woods tumbling down a rocky hill, in a log home. We raise chickens for their eggs and are considering raising up a batch for meat. We hang our laundry on the line. We've harvested basket after basket of three kinds of lettuce, tons of tomatoes, oodles of onions, and bunches of beans from our garden already, along with a nice amount of green peppers, a pumpkin, and a few squashes.
We can't even see our neighbors through the woods when the leaves are on the trees (about three seasons out of four).
The loudest things we hear are the cicadas buzzing in the woods at night and our roosters crowing in the morning. No road noise or traffic to speak of.

Here are the little darlings... some of our Buff Orphington hens and our 'extra' rooster, Constantine. (Named by my history-loving brother Mark after the great emperor himself) We think he's a Partridge Cochin... he has feathers on his feet. :D

We have another rooster that's a Buff Orphington who isn't in this shot. We called him "Oddly", because we only ordered hens, and oddly enough, he's a rooster. :D

The buffs are known for being 'broody'. They're grumpy wanna-be-mommies and they sit on the nests waiting to peck any hand that tries to steal the precious eggs below them... but we've found that if you grab them from behind you can lift them off with not much trouble. So I wrangle chickens with the best of them. ;)

My brothers Mark and Steven have the main care of the chickens, and go to work landscaping with Dad, while I do the bulk of the housecleaning and helping out with the dishes & laundry and all the cooking. They do the outdoor, I do the indoor. It's a nice division of labor. :)

Our garden is Daddy's paradise.

 He has done an amazing job this year raising up beautiful plants that give off bountiful produce. The tomatoes, especially, have been incredibly fruitful, and the green beans were (and continue to be) great! :) What's coming on now is a jungle of lush squash plants spreading out their broad-leafed vines in a wild ramble across the garden paths. Daddy loves plants, and there is ample evidence of his green thumb in our garden. :)

 Today, we plan on going up to play Ultimate Frisbee with a big group of our friends that play every Friday during the warmer months. It'll be a lot of fun. Frisbee is one of the games that gets me all pumped up and excited ... and oh, dear, very competitive. :D I was super-athletic when I was younger (not as much now) and still enjoy a close game of Ultimate Frisbee. I'll see if I can get one of my parents to take pictures of the game today so I can give you all a glimpse of how much fun it is! :)


And lately, my brothers and I have been highly enjoying this guy:

 Perry Mason! He's a defense attorney in L.A. in the late 50's - early 60's. There are complete videos of almost the whole first season of Perry Mason on IMDB.com (internet movie database) that you can watch for free online with only a few interruptions from commercials. We've been loving it. Perry Mason always manages to pull out a victory over his arch-nemesis, prosecuting attorney Hamilton Burger, and his sidekick Lieutenant Tragg.

My favorite character in the show is Della Street, Perry Mason's secretary. My youngest brother and I think she and Perry Mason should have gotten married, they make such a cute couple! :D But apparently they were just good friends in the series.

Well, I hope you all have a great weekend! I'm off to bake a tasty treat to bring as an after-game snack to Ultimate Frisbee.

God and Blackberries

God.

All-knowing, All-Powerful, Omnipresent (big word - it means he's everywhere).

I took a walk down our long, rambling, rutted gravel driveway today. I heard the gravel crunch pleasantly under my mom's crocs that I was wearing, the 90-something degree heat seemed to pulsate in the air around me, the sun shone brilliantly through the woods surrounding our log home.

I saw wild blackberries ripening in our spontaneous, entirely self-governing blackberry patch. Some are tinted with just a hint of pink, some are still a pale green, some are red. None are black yet. But I know they will be. Soon the juicy, tangy sweetness of them will be converted into jam and spread with butter over homemade biscuits.

I cannot see the ripe berries yet. I only see un-ripe ones. But I know there will be ripe berries for me to enjoy later, if I just wait a little while.

I cannot see God. In the flesh, anyway. I see him in what he does, what he has promised he will do, and what I feel when I'm listening to him.

I will not get to enjoy those blackberries if I just sit comfortably in the house, in the air-conditioning, on my big soft bed, waiting for them to just fall into my mouth. Procuring those berries takes a little, well, maybe a lot of effort. I might be scratched by those wicked thorns, bitten by chiggers, (shudder) and burned by the sun while picking them.

I will not have a very fruitful life if I just coast along, not making any effort, acting totally lazy about improving myself and the world around me and refusing to grow up. Fact: Growing up is hard. There are thorns, there are bugs, and there are burns.

Yet ....

I know there is something greater waiting for me. Those ripe blackberries beckon. New stirrings and awakenings are rising up from the depths of my heart. God is real. This I know. Not just because the Bible tells me so - I see Him. He calls me by name. He comforts me when I've been hurt, and he is there when I cry out to him. God is with me as I walk through this life, and He will be waiting to welcome me into His heavenly kingdom someday.

If you haven't cried out to God, ever, there's no time like the present. If you grew up in church but ... something's stale in your relationship with our Heavenly Father- don't wait anymore. Refresh yourself. Spend some time with Him.

Get ready to pick those blackberries.

Love & Blessings,

Making Caramel Apples and Getting Very Sticky While Doing So...

This is how you make Caramel Apples. Well, this is how we make them, anyway.

Unwrap a whole bag of KRAFT caramels into a medium-sized pot. (A double-boiler will work better, but if you stir it well you could probably use a normal one.)

Turn burner on to Medium-Low.
Prepare your apples by washing them and sticking popsicle sticks into the top. Place them on buttered wax paper to wait for their caramel coating.
Observe the happy Caramel Apple makers in action:
Stir the caramels while they are melting.

Pretend your apple is a microphone and you are singing into it while you wait for the caramels to melt all the way.

When caramel is completely melted, hold apple in pot...

...and spoon caramel over it until completely covered.
Place apples on buttered wax paper (on a plate or other hard surface) and let chill in the refrigerator.Once chilled, (after about an hour of patient waiting) Let sit on counter for 15 minutes. Really. Otherwise they will NOT come off the wax paper. :) Trust me.

And there you have delicious caramel apples! ENJOY!

Julia

Blackberries, Part 2

Yes, that is what you think it is. JAM! After I had accumulated several containers of blackberries we made a batch of blackberry jam. Oh wow. If you think blackberries are yummy, you will melt over this jam. It is the last word in deliciousness.

This is the canner, the huge pot we boil the jars of jam in to make the sweet stuff 'jell'. (I couldn't load the pictures in the order I took them so just bear with me) :)
above you can see a picture of Mama picking up a boiling jar of water. The cookie monster was helping as well in the bottom right corner. (haha) :D
There's a better view of the jar and steam from boiling water.

after stirring up the blackberry juice liquid and boiling it in a pot of water we ladled it into jars that had been boiled in the canning pot.
Mama has a handy little funnel-thingy she uses to fill the jars with the sticky, sweet Jam.

Here are blackberries in the sink, being washed for jam preparation.

A handful of blackberries, oh so plump and juicy.
Here's a close-up, you can see how huge they are...that was one of the average ones. Some are bigger than that.
Here my brother Mark is using the food mill to strain out some of the blackberry seeds...you know, the ones that get stuck in your teeth....
Here's Mama stirring the jam mixture...

I just realized I didn't take a picture of the finished jam, with lids. We do put lids on! :) We also made blueberry jam, and a blueberry post looms in the near future...

I love canning! I have a lot of old-fashioned hobbies. Quilting, Crocheting, Canning, Sewing, and all sorts of things!

Let me know if you like one of these hobbies as well!

Julia

Blackberries

The blackberries have arrived! They are delicious this year. Last year they were not as juicy or sweet, due I think to less rain last spring than we had this spring.
Here they are on the plant...you can see there are some not yet ripe.

I spent some time picking them this morning, which was a good idea because now, in the afternoon, it is very hot outside. What I noticed on our bushes was that there were some that were still red, and even some still pale green. They will eventually ripen into a delicious juicy black, and then will be picked and eaten fresh or made into jam.

We have several patches of blackberries scattered all over our hill. It's a difficult task to pick them because blackberry plants have very sharp thorns which snag clothing and skin. Ouch! Sometimes I wonder why they must grow those painful thorns.

Julia