The Country Homemaker Hop- Week 5

Happy February!

It's that time of the week already... time to welcome all of you to link up your posts and join our little blog party.  It's already been four weeks since we started this little linky party and shared our first Country Homemaking posts.  Thank you for participating.

 Are YOU a Country Homemaker? 

Please join us each week and share your homemaking and homesteading ideas.  Pictures, recipes, tips, household wisdom, gardening ideas, barnyard stories, giveaways, and sewing/craft tutorials, just to name a few topics, they're all welcome.   Chime in about what's going on at your homestead.  Share as often as you like.  I love reading your great homemaking updates, stories, recipes, and tutorials so please, keep em coming!

I have a bit of exciting news this week.  Our little hop is growing. Thank you friends!  To help keep it growing, my good friend Michelle of the blog Michelle's Little Piece of Heaven has volunteered (code for I pulled her in) to co-host The Country Homemaker Hop sometimes too.

 We've been learning the ropes together since last summer, and she's ready to take the plunge, to host.  She's my dearest friend and the best cook I know, besides my Mom and blog chef phenom- Dolly of Dolly is Cooking .  I look forward to her contributions to our little homemaking community.  She is responsible for some of the best tasting recipes I've ever had.  She also happens to have a great sense of humor and is an amazing artist.  Please go by and check out her blog, if you haven't yet had the chance to do so.


Here's what I've been up to...

This last week was a bit dreary so I didn't get much done.  Instead, we took a mini-vacation to the warmer climate of the Kaweah River Valley. This is a picture I took from our campsite. It was so peaceful there.

I spent ALOT of time this weekend in the forest with Wi-Fi (after the sun went down), surrounded by the gentle roar of the river and a sleeping, snoring husband.  I got a chance to read quite a few of your posts.  I found several exciting recipes.  I am going to try a few of them this week.  In case you missed them, here they are again.  The names of the recipes are hot links so you an click on them to be taken to the recipe on the author's blog.

My plan for the week is to bake up a batch of Michelle's bread.  Doesn't it look fantastic!  So tall and fluffy.

 copyright Michelle's Little Piece of Heaven

Then, I am going to make myself one of Dolly's Mile High Chocolate Meringue Pies...  I will NOT be sharing this one...

copyright Dolly is Cooking 

  Next on my list are a few of Deana's Lemon Shortbread Cookies.  They look absolutely divine.

copyright Country Momma Cooks

I am going to get my Hubby to help me mix up a batch of Lisa's Homemade Herbal Salt Substitute and then I am going to try it on some chicken and rice.

I can hardly wait to see this week's posts.  Thank you all for your fantastic contributions.  I sure enjoy reading what you've been up to around your homestead.  Have a GREAT week.

The Country Homemaker Hop- #4

The Country Homemaker Blog Party!

How time flies.  It's already been three weeks since we started this little linky party and when this one closes, it will have been a month since we shared our first Country Homemaking posts.

I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone that has taken the time to read, share, and comment on our link ups.  This is a talented group of women bloggers; some of you make me laugh regularly, and some of you make me cry.  I have learned so much from you.  As a group, we continue to help eachother; using our own unique gifts and experiences.  Each of you contribute something special to my week and I simply cannot express how much that means to me, but I am ever so grateful.

 Are YOU a Country Homemaker? 

Please join us each week to share your pictures, recipes, household wisdom, homemaking tips, crafts, ideas and stories with the country homemaking community. Chime in about what's going on at your homestead.  Please feel free to share as many relevant posts as you have for the week.  I love reading your great homemaking updates, stories, recipes, and tutorials so please, keep em coming!

The Country Homemaker Hop- Week 3

Hello! I hope you have been having a great week so far.  I sure have.  It's been busy and cold.  I have been running a steady fire in my fireplace for the last two evenings and we even managed a few hours of light snowfall yesterday.  It was our first real moisture since Thanksgiving week.  This week, I'd like to highlight a few really nice posts from last week's Country Homemaker Hop that you don't want to miss.

I don't know about you, but sewing is my first love outside of the garden and kitchen.  I love how sewing and quilting allow me to express my creative side while making something really useful.  Anne of the Suburban Prairie Homemaker is a kindred spirit.  Her last linky was for a fantastically cute and practical handbag made from a yard of fabric.  If you missed it, check it out HERE!  

Homemaking sister Lynnie of the blog Invited to the King's Table shared a great idea for the prettiest little fabric postcards HERE and a creative sewing solution for molting hens being pecked, chicken saddles! HERE!  Effective and adorable.


Kathleen of Rose Prairie Quilts and Farm shared one of the best machine needle turn applique tutorials I have ever seen.  She has an interesting technique that involves a glue stick, basting glue, and Ricky Tims Stable Stuff Poly sheets.  She gets the best points and smooth curves.  If you haven't had a chance to read this tutorial, please do HERE.


In the kitchen this week, we had several really nice recipes shared.  Candy of Lazy J Bar C Farm introduced us to her homemade vegetable beef soup recipe HERE.  It's times like this that I wish I had smellovision...

Dolly of The Hibiscus House, Dolly's Designs, and Dolly is Cooking blogs shared her yummy coconut pie HERE!  

Karen Lynn of The Lil' Suburban Homestead blog shared a wonderful post of her January greenhouse garden HERE and a link up to her cool Saturday Blog Hop- The Ole' Saturday Homesteading Trading Post HERE!

THANK YOU LADIES!

 Are YOU a Country Homemaker? 

Please join us each week to share your pictures, recipes, household wisdom, homemaking tips, crafts, ideas and stories with the country homemaking community. Chime in about what's going on at your homestead.  You may share as many relevant posts as you have for the week,please try not to share the same post twice.  I love reading your great homemaking updates, stories, recipes, and tutorials so please, keep em coming!


Country Homemaker posts will open to link ups on Wednesdays at 12:01 am and will remain open to links all week long, through Tuesday night at 11:59 pm.

The Country Homemaker Hop- Week 2

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. ”
― C.S. Lewis

Are YOU a Country Homemaker?  

Do you make nutritious meals from scratch, labor in a vegetable garden, or raise livestock?  Do you do these things because of the love you share with your family and a desire to provide the best for your loved ones?  If you answered yes to any of these questions; than like me, you must be a country homemaker and WE WANT YOU!

Please join us each week to share your pictures, recipes, household wisdom, homemaking tips, crafts, ideas and stories with the country homemaking community.  Chime in about what's going on at your homestead.


Country Homemaker posts will open to link ups on Wednesdays at 12:01 am and will remain open to links all week long, through Tuesday night at 11:59 pm.   

Here's what I've been up to this week...

In the kitchen-

This week I prepared and froze three batches of cabbage soup from the last of the FARM SCHOOL cabbages.  (Dinner tonight, yum). 

I got lucky at a yard sale and scored a food dehydrator (with a fan) for $4.

 I have been working on several more of Mary Mulari's "Church Lady" aprons, assembly line style.  I really love the way they look and being reversible adds to their functionality.   The scalloped bottom hemline is so feminine and pretty.  I got the last one cut out last night while my friend Michelle was visiting.  

Church Lady Aprons- examples- not mine!

During my evenings this week, I plan to press and pin as many of the 56 pockets to the apron sides as I can, before I fall asleep...

In the garden-

The Hubby gave me a new nickname this week: "The Butcher", after I pruned our fruit trees.  He'll thank me for it later, when he gets to eat all those BIG, pretty apples and peaches.

I took cuttings from the trees and planted the last of them today, in my veggie garden.  

I roto-tilled my small orchard and re-shaped the soil beneath my fruit trees into a shallow basin, to improve watering efficiency.  Then, I built up small earthen burms against the crowns of my fruit trees to prevent crown rot.  (Fruit tree crowns do not like having water against them).

I installed a few branch spacer bars (made by the hubby from a 2x4) on a pear tree that keeps putting out scaffold branches that are too narrowly separated from the trunk. (A common problem with pear trees).

I am preparing my veggie garden plot plan.  I seem to have some time yet as the weather here continues to be unseasonably warm and dry for January and there's no change in forecast for the near future.  I am debating whether or not to direct sow some cool season crop seed in the garden, or to start them indoors.

What's going on at YOUR home this week?