Rabbit Sanctuary

Here are our bunnies. As of right now we have 7.

(plus Harvey who lives inside cause hes old and possibly blind)

They are all boys. No girls allowed!!!

They get along great and they are super cute.
We will not breed them or eat them. We got these guys from the local shelter. We can assume they were lonely back yard bunnies. Now they have lots of company, treats, attention and room to romp. In the spring we intend to open up their run onto the grass....
and add some more bunnies too. I am hoping to add some larger breeds (the smaller rabbits seem too feisty!) and some lops....thats the ultimate cuteness. Gotta love rabbits. They are soooo cute, soft & completely quiet. They eat on the cheap and their poop don't stink (under these conditions). I have always had rabbits but having a large colony of pet rabbits is a dream come true.

Dan is 29

Yesterday Dan turned 29. Today he and Ben popped in and we had a

little ice cream cake together in his honor.

me a bloggin tonight

This is me a-bloggin tonight :)

Chickens

Uncle Ricky offered us some hens and I said....NO THANKS.....then~

I changed my mind! lol. We now own 6 chickens in red, black and white.

Interesting bunch o ladies.

Vayda says that she thinks they are Democrats. I said, "why?" She says, "Because they spend all day saying buk, buk, Barack- buk, buk, Barack"

Funny crap yo! lololol

The Goats

For all of you who are wondering....our goats are still behind the fence. lol. We have the same 7 as we have had all summer. They have done a fabulous job mowing the pasture down for us. They are super cute and we really enjoy watching them romp around in back. Maya has spent a lot of time man handling them so most of them are really friendly now....even the two original looney toons! Oh~ we think Vaydas doe, Penny, may be all knocked up! That means kids in Feb :) We shall see.

Molly graduated

Oops! Forgot this post. This June our friend, Molly, graduated from Waterloo high school. She had a party later in the summer and Vayda and I went to celebrate with her :)

Homecoming

Vayda and her friend, Abby, went to the Romulus homecoming this weekend. The girls looked fantastic and they had a great time!

Fermenting

After I discovered Kefir I discovered fermented veggies. First I did sauerkraut. It made me deliriously happy to watch it rot on the shelf for 6 weeks. :) Then Vayda and I chopped a ton of Chinese cabbage, turnips, radishes, carrots, kale, sea weed. We layered the veggies with sea salt, crushed by hand and jammed into jars. 3 days of fermenting (rotting) is all it took to make a YUMMY freaking, super healthy jar of goodness.

Tomato Soup

I have made tomato soup for Maya Rae for 7 years in a row. The girl lives on it all winter long.

My original recipe had flour and butter in it. This goes against all the modern canning rules so I changed it up a little this year with really good results.
For starters...I don't fuss with blanching the tomatoes. Such a big ol pain! All I do now is wash, lop off the tops and toss them in chunks into the blender. Zooom! Then I dump the pulp into a colander. The pulp that comes through goes in a quart jar and the seeds go in the compost bin. (that's the compost pale you see there on the counter)

I put 1 stick of butter in a sauce pan and saute 1 cup of chopped onion. Because Maya doesn't like texture in her soup I pour the hot butter and onion in the blender to puree the onion.

Back in the pot. Add 7 qts of tomato pulp/ juice. 1/4 c salt, 3/4 c sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoon pepper.

I let it cook for about an hour at a simmer. Then add 2 cans tomato paste. Boil 10 min. Pack in jars. Process in water bath for 30 min.
Add equal parts milk, heat and serve. mmmmm.

Dutch Oven

I got us a cast iron dutch oven at the Salvation Army. Paid $6 ! Gotta love "Sally Ann's".

Vayda scrubbed it down good then followed the directions on the bottom of it to season. Here she is was rubbing that puppy down with shortening. It turned out really nice. I cannot wait to make soup on the wood stove with it.

Canning

This seasons canning has added up to a lot less than I had wished. However, because the tomato crop was so good I did get a lot of tomato products done. The first was spaghetti sauce. This turned out pretty good. Too loose though. Not a biggy. I just add a little can of tomato paste when I cook it.
Then of course there is salsa. Didn't have to do a ton of this. It turned out really great this year. The produce was super fresh and I made a point to limit the amount of liquid in each jar so its got a great consistency.

Pizza sauce. This was a first. It made a lot more than I expected.

I made it a little too spicy but its good.
The ketchup was really easy and its yummy. Just made several half pints. We don't need that much. Will never be able to buy the super market junk ketchup again.
Of course the season started off with jam. I did strawberry, rasberry, staw/rhu, rhu/pinapple and we had some left over grape jelly from last fall. I gave a good bit away to the grown kids. I want to do that every year.

Pickled beets for Jody.

A lot of what I did was a first time this year so its been a little hit and miss. Everything sealed well and tastes good so we will enjoy it. I am still hoping to put up some potatoes and applesauce before I call it quits for the year.

Ready for play group

Maya Rae's favorite day of the week is play group day! She has several wonderful girl friends there. This day she was all dressed up and ready to go head out before I even got out of bed!

Crazy for Kefir

With all the digestive malfunctions I had this summer I got reading about healthier nutrition.
We are already organic vegetarians but there is always room for improvement on these things.
I started drinking Kefir from Wegmans. I loved it so I went looking for a way to make my own.

The magic of YouTube led me to Kefir grains. These grains are actually gooey cultures. You just put the cultures in a jar, cover with milk and let it sit...and ferment....for a day or two. Ta da!

Its kefir! Its like a drinkable yogurt with a kick. Its loaded with probiotics so its

really good for ya!

You can see the fermentation bubbles here.

I drain the kefir & put the grains back in the jar to start again. I put the kefir (liquid) into the blender with 2 ripe bananas (per half gallon) and some raw honey.

mmmmmm!

You can buy kefir grains online (get milk grains not water grains) or get them on your local Freecycle. I got mine from my Aunt Judy's sister. Thanks Roxanne!!!

Saige & Maya Rae

Saige and Maya Rae have been playing together often these days. These two have been friends since they were 3 and 5. These days they play in bursts and waves.

New cook book

This is my new cook book. I am in love with it! All the recipes use REAL ingredients. There are numerous articles about healthy eating and health in general. Very interesting!

Jennas little girl

Meet our newest cousin~ Olive Elizabeth Ditzell
This is Jenna's little girl. Mom, Dad, big brother-Miles, and little Olive are well and happy.

Art

Even with all the icky this summer I did manage to get 2 art projects done. (just 2~sigh)

This dog portrait was commissioned as well as a little girls bedroom mural. I dont have pics of the mural yet. See my art blog at .... http://handcraftedbyme.blogspot.com

Garden

Oh my poor poor garden was soooo neglected this summer. Being that I was sick all of July and August its excusable but still sad. I lost most everything to overgrowth and weeds.
However, the tomatoes did really well this year. Even with the neglect they hung in there and produced like crazy!

Early in the season I put in 3 rasberry bushes. These are our very first berries! Awesome!
Somehow, I accidentally planted cherry tomatoes...? Thank goodness Jody likes these cause we were swimming in them.

Back to school

Back to school. Maya Rae dove right back into the books with enthusiasm this Sept. Shes been plugging away on her math all summer long so it wasn't exactly a hard transition. She likes her work and looks forward to my reading to her every day.

Vayda started off at New Roots again this year but 2 weeks in she decided she'd rather be close to home so she transferred back over to Romulus. Hard to believe...academically speaking but makes so much sense when thinking in terms of schedules. Shes very happy now.

We went to the fair!

The Great New York State Fair!
When I was a kid we went every single year. I loved that. Since we have had so many kids and a long journey with limited money to burn we never were able to take do that.

This summer, after all the misery with the abscess (see my body blog at... http://bodyenlightenment.blogspot.com for details) I really needed to be happy and see the kids and Jody happy.
Greg wanted to take Nick so we decided to go together.
Nick liked the quiet animal buildings.

We saw a real, live bald eagle.
Mommy's favorite is the bunny barn!

Oh- and the butter sculpture. I love the butter sculpture.

Oh and the fresh milk.

and...

The girls liked the midway of course.

We had an amazing time!!! I could barely walk after that wonderfully full day!!!!