❇ Snowmen in a Jar ❆

If you're the type of person who goes around singing "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" all winter, now you can preserve your snowmen until the spring thaw.  And even if you don't like snow, you can't help but love these snowmen in a jar for winter decorating. In keeping with the "Canning Jar Week" on Farm Chick Chit Chat this week, I offer this decorating idea.  After all, like it or not, winter is just around the corner.

Pumpkin Cake in a Jar

We canned fruits and vegetables, relishes and sauces, and now we've really done it.  We canned cake!! This was truly as easy as baking a cake, and it tastes delicious. Imagine canning cakes to have on your shelf to open when a last-minute guest arrives.  Or picture tying ribbons around the lids and giving these jar cakes as appreciation or thank you gifts.

Choosing a Color Scheme

Do you have a hard time choosing colors?  It seems to be a topic that comes up often in my circle of friends and acquaintances.  I think we have all struggled with color choices at one time or another.  When choosing the colors for our shed, I stepped back and looked at its surroundings.  I wanted the shed to blend in rather than stand out, so I chose shades of green that matched the leaves of the wild cherry trees and the branches of the blue spruce evergreens that neighbor it.

For the door, I used a shade called "Sumac Red."  It perfectly matches the fall leaves of the Sumac trees that are visible above the roof.  In the summer also, the door coordinates with the blooming seed pods on the Sumac trees.  In addition to harmonizing with nature, this color scheme works because green and red are opposite (or complementary) colors on the color wheel.

All That Mint!

If you grow mint, you probably know it will take over your garden in short order.  I have an herb garden right outside my kitchen door.  I grow mint and herbs in pots to keep them from getting out of control.  In our area, temperatures frequently drop below freezing in the winter months.  The potted herbs grow dormant in the winter but will come back in the spring.

Apple Mint (also known as wooly mint), Spearmint, and 

Peppermint.

We enjoy having lots of fresh mint during the summer months for cooking and adding to brewed iced tea and other refreshing summer drinks.  But what do you do with all that mint in the garden at the end of summer?  Before the first frost hits, harvest all your mint and herbs and preserve them to enjoy those subtle flavors all winter.

Tender Hearted

"Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." (Ephesians 4:32)

Sometimes it is very hard to forgive someone who has wronged us.  Sometimes we don't want to forgive. We want to hang onto the anger because it feels like a way to punish the wrongdoer.  But in reality, we become the wrongdoer too when we refuse to forgive.  

God forgives us for all of our sins because of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross to receive the punishment we deserve.  Why be a punisher when we can be a forgiver?  The truth of the matter is that the one we are really punishing is ourself. When we refuse to forgive, we are allowing resentment and bitterness take up residence in our heart.  

God forgives us, not because we are forgivable, but because He is forgiving.  God loves us, not because we are lovable, but because He is loving.  We need to become like Him.  We need to be loving and forgiving, not because others deserve it, but because Christ's love flows through us into the lives of others.  When Christ resides in our heart, there is no room for a bad tenant like unforgiveness.

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Corn Chowder

 

Feeling a bit chilly outside?  Here's a chowder that will make you warm on the inside and keep you coming back for more.  It is easy, easy, easy and so, so good!  It's goodness only gets better overnight, so if you're having some guests, you can make this the day before and re-heat it the next day. Recipe follows:

Hickory Hollow Farm

Fall is so beautiful in Pennsylvania.  The tree lines are vibrant with color and the late-season produce is just as colorful.  Hickory Hollow Farm accentuated the season this year with an open house to the community.  Farm settings just seem to accentuate the glamour of autumn!

Vintage Nesting Boxes

"Buffy" setting in the nesting box.

Our nesting boxes were gifted to me by a friend, which makes them extra special.  She retrieved them from her aunt's old vintage hen house.  This is a simply constructed box with four compartments, two face boards to form the frontals of the nests, and two perches for the hens to use for support when entering the nests.

Since this relic was old and dirty, we gave it a good power-washing and disinfected it with a natural enzyme disinfectant to kill off any mites, lice, fleas or ticks that may have settled in. (We used Manna Pro Poultry Protector.)  We left the boxes out in the sun to thoroughly dry out, and then we screwed them onto the wall of our hen house.

We filled the nests with straw and sprinkled them with diatomaceous earth, which is safe for chickens but effectively controls all sorts of pesty bugs, such as cockroaches, ants, earwigs, silverfish, fleas, crickets, millipedes and centipedes. We also sprinkle DE on the floor of the hen house.

Since hens like their privacy when laying eggs, I made curtains for the boxes out of old vintage seed bags.  I cut them to a suitable length and hemmed them on a sewing machine so that the hens wouldn't get their feet caught in any frayed edges.

I like vintage.  I like re-purposing old things. I like "free." And I really like my chickens!