A Month of Thankfulness - Day Four

 

Today I am thankful for always having enough to feed my family.  It may not always be the things we love to eat, but it is always enough to keep us from going hungry.  The blessing of raising much of our own food means that even if there may not be much money, there is always a meal.  

A Month of Thankfulness - Day 3

Today I am thankful for my "simple" life.  I live in the country, we raise our own food and the kids know the value of a little hard work.  It's gratifying to look out the back window and see the rabbits and ducks.  I love the sound of the rooster crowing.  Merlin, our Great Pyrenees, barks all night letting predators know he's protecting our stock and I'm able to sleep soundly.

It's a pretty good life.

A Month of Thankfulness - Day Two

Since I made my day one post on November 2nd, you get two posts today.

Today I am also thankful for my children.  Even when they drive me nuts, I can still look at them and be amazed.  They remind me to stop and really enjoy the small things in life.  When I was young I never gave much thought to having kids.  It wasn't that I didn't want them (as some people seem to believe), it was just that it didn't matter to me if I ever had them or not.

Now that I do have them, I have been blessed to experience a whole new view of life by watching them grow and being privileged to guide them as they grow.

A Month Of Thankfulness - Day One

Many people participate in "A Month of Thankfulness" on Facebook by posting something they are thankful for every day in the month of November.  I have decided to post mine here.  I've wanted to revive my blog for quite some time now.  So what better way than this.  I'll have a month where I know every day what I'll be posting about.  And it will help me to really see all the good things in my life. 

So......

Today I am thankful for all the friends in my life.  Thank you for not giving up on me.  Thank you for still being there even when I'm too busy to call.  Thank you for understanding when I'm having a bad day.  Thank you for making my bad days better.  Thank you for just being the wonderful group of people that you are.  If you are my friend, that means that you are important to me.  Even if I don't talk to you often, you are in my heart.  I cherish each and every one of you.

Finding Balance

When you raise livestock predators are one of the biggest worries you will face.  After having a fox in our front yard this morning I have been thinking about the balance we try to keep with nature while still protecting our livestock.

Like most who raise animals, we have had to shoot the occasional predator who was threatening our livestock.  I will admit there is a certain feeling of satisfaction for me being a woman who is able to handle these situations.  Yet at the same time there is a feeling of sadness for the animal who's life I had to take.  An animal who is doing the same thing the rest of us do, just trying to survive.

We have fences for some of the animals, but some of the chickens and ducks roam free.  We have losses, but do our best to keep them to a minimum.  We could confine these animals like we do our goats, but they would not be happy with that and their diet would not give us the healthy, flavorful meat we are trying to provide for our family.

We have also added a beautiful Great Pyrenees dog to our homestead.  Few predators venture into the area at night now because they hear him bark and growl.  They know that there is a fierce protector ready to do battle if confronted.  The hope is that it will mean less loss of life both for our homestead and the wildlife around us.

The fox we saw today was run off.  Yet it now knows what is here and that there may be a meal to be had.  So I am forced to ask myself if I could shoot such a beautiful creature if it becomes necessary.  The answer is probably yes, but only if I had no other choice.

I have learned that some times we face things in life that are hard.  We have to balance safety and security with respect for what is around us.  It's one of the hardest things we do.

Yippee!

I decided to go looking for morels today.  Unfortunately I didn't find any.  However I did find this nice, healthy looking gooseberry bush growing near the edge of the blackberry patch.  Now I'm excited!  (Yes, I'm aware how little it takes to excite me.)  That makes four that I know of now.  Maybe I really will get to make some gooseberry jelly soon.  

Salad!

Sorry the picture is a little fuzzy.  I took the picture with my phone and had not intended to blog about it.  Then I ate it and it was too good not to share.

You can't really tell from the picture, but that salad is HUGE.  That is a small serving platter, not a dinner plate there.  The best part, besides being delicious, is that the whole platter of food is all of 275 calories.

It's very lightly dressed.  Just enough to add flavor, but there is no actual dressing feel to the salad.  If you think you just could not possibly have a salad that isn't coated in calories dressing you must try this trick.

Dressing Ingredients:
1 tsp Red Wine Vinegar
1/4 tsp Olive Oil

Yes, you read that right.  I dressed my salad with just 1 1/4 tsp. of oil and vinegar.  Simply combine the oil and vinegar.  Then toss it in a big bowl with with the greens for your salad.  It will coat your greens in an amazing flavor that will leave you wondering why you were ever skeptical.  Seriously, try it.

Now for the rest of the salad:

2 Cups Salad Greens (any of your choice)
1 Tbs chopped Green Onion
2 oz Cooked Chicken, diced
1 Large Hard Boiled Egg, roughly chopped
1 oz Part Skim Mozarella Cheese (I used sliced string cheese)
Salt and pepper

Toss the greens with the dressing in a large bowl.  Put the greens on a plate and top with the onion, chicken, egg and cheese.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Because I'm a food snob to some degree, I'll add that you really should invest in a pepper mill so you can have fresh ground pepper.  The flavor difference is amazing.

On the side I just had 8 spears of steamed asparagus.  If you actually just counted the spears you will notice that two never made it to the plate.  What can I say, I love asparagus.

Now, go enjoy a salad.

Babies!

The best part about spring at our homestead (other than the melting snow) is goat babies!  Cream Soda gave us two healthy bucklings last week.