Wood Stove Cooking & Spoiled Kitties

Wood Stove Cooking:














Back in October we had early snow, 2 weeks of snow storms. During that time we also had a short (4 hrs) power outage. It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to try cooking on the wood stove that keeps us warm. So I found my dutch oven and put it on the stove with water to see if it would get hot.....it boiled nicely.

So the next day, out came the onions, carrots, celery, chicken, noodles and broth. The soup simmered nicely on the stove all day. It turned our really well and once the cold weather returns I will try cooking on the wood stove again.














The kitties in our house have become very spoiled. It used to be that they were not even allowed in the house, now they have taken over the sofa. Here is Missy Mew taking her afternoon nap in my chair (I cover it with a sheet to keep the hair off). She looked so cute I just had to share. Me Moew, has his spot as well, so when you come to my house and see sheets all over my sofa it is because of the kitties. LOL.

Summer & Winter

Look at these beautiful tomatoes that were harvested from our plants last week as we approached our first deep freeze. I thought it ironic as I sliced these pretty slices for our
sandwiches, that outside it was snowing, snowed all day.














Here you see summers fruits above and below winters fruits, snow. We are about a month and a half early this year with the snow fall. This should be interesting to see what kind of winter we have, this morning temps 17 degrees.

Taken from the dining room window.















Looking out the studio window (below).

Wedding

On Sat, Oct 3 we attended the wedding of friends. We have been to another wedding held in the same location and it is just beautiful.

The Medical Lodge Campgrounds and State Park is a beautiful place no matter the why your there.

Here are some pictures of the area where the wedding was held, sorry my camera did not even come close to showing the amazing beauty.

One more thing, I love Wyoming weddings, notice what everyone is wearing. Enjoy.

Herbs for cold and flu

Rosalee on Methow Valley Herbs is having a blog party featuring bio-regional herbs for colds and flu. To see all of the country wide herblists who are sharing herbs of their area go to the Blog Party here

Here are a couple of local herbs for the Big Horn County of Wyoming.

Goldenrod, not to be confused with ragweed, goldenrod is a very valuable plant to have in your yard or near by, here we will only look at it use for colds and flu.

Goldenrod (Solidago virgaurea) is antiseptic, expels catarrah and soothes inflamation. It is useful in treating coughs, colds and sore throats, because it can reduce nasal secretions. (1)

From the (1) Secrets of Native American Herbal Remedies..."The Chippewa chewed the dried roots to relieve sore throat, while the Zuni chewed the crushed blossoms for the same reason. The Chippewa also drank a decoction made from the roots to treat lung trouble."

From The Complete Book of Herb's by Lesley Bremness...."Infuse 2 teaspoones of dried flowering stocks in 1 cup boiling water for 10 minutes, drink 3 times a day"

According to Jim McDonald..... put a dropper of tinture into a bottle of water and sipe to ease alergies.

Another herb that I have been learning about and am amazed at what it can do is

Red Clover (Trifolium partense)

Red Clover is expectorant, reduces spasms, is useful in clearing congestions and for calming coughing reflex in bronchial infections.

Mrs, M. Grieves in A Modern Herbal pg 208 says..."The fluid extract of Trifolium is used as an alterative and antispasmodic. An infusion made by 1 oz of Red Clover to 1 pint of boiling water may be helpful in cases of bronchial and whooping cough.

Two easy to find herbs that can help us during the cold and flu season.

Winter is A comin

Winter is just around the corner, it is time to begin gathering wood for the stove. We heat only with wood, so we take several trips for wood.

The mountains are so pretty, I love being up there.















Below is the valley from a neighbor/friends land, they let us get our wood there. The day is was hazy so the picture is not very good, but if you will click on the picture you will beable to see better. In this picture you are looking down on the valley where we live. You can see the green around the creeks that run through town.














Here is the results of our day. We have to unload yet and cut and split, but that will be this next weekend. One more trip like this and we will be set.

Wood Siding

OMG we are starting to look like someone cares about this place (why is this underlining everthing), I did not ask it to do that??? Sigh.

Last weekend, Kirk did the log siding on the bays. We have been oiling the wood over the last week or so, but believe it or not it can use more now that it has been up for a week and in the sun.















A close up view (where'd the under lining go, crazy). The log siding is in pine and the framing wood is dougfir, it has a red tint to the wood and stands out nicely against the pine. Note the upper windows.....lol, my paper curtains. The afternoon sun really beats in there (and below), and since I have no curtains up there as of yet, I taped paper in the windows to block some of the sun...thus the heat, it really helps.





















Today the greenhouse gets its face lift, it has been OSB sheeting for so long, it is going to be nice to have the new siding on it. Just maybe we won't look so much like the "Helkies" (trailer trash of Hinkley (where we used to live)).

The BEFORE.........................................




No those are not ghosts
I have had to put row
cloth on my tomatoes
The dagone grasshoppers
are eating everything
although they are not eating the
tomatoe plants, just the
fruit............
It does kind of look like I
am ready for Halloween.





The AFTER...............














It still needs the facia boards, well the whole house does. My plan is to paint the facia the green of the shutters. I really like this green. I wanted the siding to be the green cement board but the greens they have are (in my opinion) ugly. Kirk wanted to do the logs, so that is what we did...er....he did. I put my 2 cents in where ever needed.















Though I haven't any pictures (new flower beds are not really so great to look at), I have begun 3 new flower beds on the edge of the hill. Another finaly, some landscaping. I have plans but it is not good to get ahead of ones self. It has only been 4 years since we started this adventure and I think we have come a long way from bare ground and 1 1/2 people doing all this work (I am the 1/2).

So tomorrow, I think we will be going to the mountain for wood. I have landscape pictures to share next time. We live in such a pretty place.

Blogs on Facebook

I just added 2 of my blogs to FaceBook, they are suppose to automatically post via the RSS feed so I am trying it out.

Here goes;