Farmer in training

Friday Sounds

Making jerky
Now, before I tell you all about our jerky making adventures and how to make jerky, I have to tell you that I didn’t really do much of the work. Unless you count mixing the seasoning together and leaving it on the counter for several days until it had to be thrown out because it was disgusting, had Asian lady beetles in it, and had a dirty towel land in it (shh, I don’t think I told anyone else that part!). Other than eating the finished product, that was my only real contribution. Tim did the rest, so I must give credit where credit is due. This post is more about our learning how to do this rather than being able to teach anyone else how to do it. Keep tha

Impressions of Puerto Rico (Part II)
This post is only about our most recent visit. It’s more a list of impressions rather than anything chronological. Though I admit that I cannot resist the compulsion to lump things together into loose categories! (Edited to add a link to a Picasa album with more pictures from Puerto Rico). Just click on the picture below:

Impressions of Puerto Rico (Part I)
I have a post started about Puerto Rico and why Tom was there and the state of health care, etc. But instead of finishing that post, it’s much more fun to make a list of my impressions of Puerto Rico. Now, I’ve been before a few times. Tom and I went once or twice by ourselves and stayed with his dad and step-mom in their condo. I can’t remember for sure if this was one trip or two trips that have gotten mixed together in my (really bad) memory. We ate coffee ice cream on their balcony, watched movies, and had a good time. I remember going to El Yunque, to

Catching up
We’ve been busy lately, where lately means the last month. Tom was in Puerto Rico for 2 weeks before we joined him there for another week. Now we are back and trying to catch up on life and housework while also fighting a cold. I have a ton of things I would like to write about: new kittens (they are about a month old already!), another dead hen, more hens laying eggs, roosters not turning out as gentle as you had hoped, painting and redoing the floor of our half bathroom, Puerto Rico, our neighbor not wanting us to have livestock, how we are trying to prevent and combat illness naturally, etc. But it will all have to wait because first I have to catch up o

Pancakes, cornbread, and brownies
This last week, I was busy in the kitchen as usual. One thing I did was to clear out the pantry a bit and organize things. We have a lot of glass containers that we bought from IKEA more than a year ago. Some were empty on the floor of the pantry, while others needed to be combined or put into smaller glass containers. For example, I ended up putting rice in glass containers instead of leaving it in the loosely closed plastic it came in. I had an empty container that I filled with chili powder I bought at the bulk dry goods store in town, called Sugar N Spice. I need a lot of chili powder and cumin to make our own taco seasoning. I could actually use a few more glass container