Brrrrr..... It's chilly again....And a Recipe to Warm Your Innards!

Well, we've had spring-like temps the last couple of weeks but it got chilly again with an east wind.  Rain heading our way I think...  We had a little sleet or frozen rain this morning.  Now it's just grey and damp cold.

I decided that we better get busy and eat up the frozen veggies in the freezer and get it ready for the upcoming garden season.  It'll be here before we know it!

So today, I pulled out a couple of quart bags of frozen tomatoes and decided, since it was icky and cold, that I'd make some tomato soup with basil and thyme.

 

Here ya go.

There's lots of recipes out there for all kinds of tomato soup but this one is my personal favorite (cuz I took a recipe and made it my own).

Vickie's Tomato Soup

6 cups of fresh or frozen chopped tomatoes (I left the skins on - you're gonna puree it anyway)

2 slices of onion

1/2 tsp minced garlic

a few dashes of ground cloves (or whole ones if you prefer)

2 c. chicken broth

Put these 5 ingredients in a good size pot on the stove and bring to a slow boil for about 20 minutes.  Then, puree and set aside in a large bowl.  In your pot, place 2-3 blobs of butter and a couple of T. of flour and make a roux. Cook til brownish.  Add 1/2 to 1 c. of the tomato soup mixture and whisk well so there won't be lumps when you mix the roux in your soup. OK, add your soup back into the pot with the roux and mix well.

Now, here's what I season it with...

1 t. salt, black pepper to taste,  couple of dashes of Worcestershire sauce, couple of dashes of Tabasco sauce, 2 t. sugar to taste, 1/4-1/2 t. Thyme, 1/4 t. basil.  You can also use marjoram or savory herbs.  

All this seasoning is to my taste - you adjust the way you like!  If you want, you can throw in celery or carrot in while the tomatoes are cooking and puree with the rest.  I like it without.  Guess you could put anything in it that you like..... Anyway, season and then heat the soup well and let all those goodies just mesh together!

I'm thinking sandwiches and hot soup for supper, maybe grilled cheese sandwiches..cornbread?  Anybody ever put a tad of cheese or sour cream on top of your tomato soup?

I've got a couple of my garden boxes ready and set out some little collards.  I'm not a big fan but the chickens are and I thought I'd grow them some greens.  Who knows?  Think I'll develop a taste for them?  Nah...

Hate that I missed Vee's Note Card Party today.  I'm popping over there to see what's going on.  If you didn't hear, Debbie at Of His Pasture IS BACK.  Go see her and tell her I sent ya - she just couldn't stay away from us!  Thank goodness - she's always got such great posts - timely, controversial, but sure to ring a chord!  Take care, ladies!!!

Merry Christmas!

Just taking a minute to check on all my wonderful blogfriends and tell you Merry Christmas!  Things have been hectic this past weekend with two of my kids coming in and us all squeezing into our tiny farmhouse, including 3 dogs - Bug under the Christmas tree, Gypsy the farm dog, and...

TANK (or the Tankster as we are wont to call him) or the Big Galoot or Doofus or ... or ... Tank is my daughter's dog - he keeps her company in college and they have all kinds of fun together. I was lucky to get a picture of him without two strings of drool hanging from the corners of his mouth!  Gotta love Labs!

Anyway, it's a tight squeeze. I've given up on trying to keep any semblance of order in our house until the melee of Christmasing is over with.  I've decided NOT to stress over it, just go with it, have fun with it, and clean up the mess and doghair when the holidlays are over with. (there'll be enough doghair to stuff a small pillow...)  To top it off, I was in the midst of preparing supper yesterday evening and my mom and dad were coming over, and OUR WATER WENT OFF.  Oh JOY TO THE WORLD!  The wonderful things that happen in the country!!!  So we just loaded up all the food and went to Mom's house!  I threw everything into a laundry basket and off we went!  It's back on now...Good - we can flush.

The guys in my family are doing the "guy thing" of chopping down dead trees, of which we have many after the drought we've had in the last couple of years.  It's dangerous to walk in the woods when there's any wind.  We've had several trees fall, and branches are falling daily. Luckily the weather's been nice the last few days - expecting a few storms tonight and cooler temps the rest of the week...

Adam runs the chain saw, Dad does the scooping and putting wood on the burn pile, and Tony does most of the grunt work.  My daddy LOVES to get on the tractor, so Tony is so sweet and lets him do that.

In other news, my Kiwi kids, back a few months from New Zealand, decided  that their next big adventure was to move to Denver.  They found a 3-week house-sitting job in a nice lodge home in the mountains overlooking Denver, went up and found jobs and moved up there over the Thanksgiving holiday.  They both love skiing, snow and their latest activity as of yesterday --- dogsledding!  These two  kids are SO adventurous - they were made for each other!  Dogsledding pictures to come soon!

THIS is what I've been working on for the last couple of months.  A sawmill blade 30" across for a friend at church.  His teenage son asked me to paint a train engine from Union Pacific at the Mineola TX depot on this blade for his dad.  His dad was raised in Mineola and has worked for UP for 30 years.  It was a big job because of the surface of the blade and one I do not care to repeat EVER.  But I was pleased with how it turned out and more importantly - THE SON was pleased.  Glad that's over with!

Well, my friends, I pray that you all have a Merry Christmas with your families, friends and loved ones and that the Lord may bless you richly with wonderful new memories now and in the coming year!  May the beauty and awe of this most holiest of nights scatter your stress and mess and draw you unto Him and His unfailing patience and love. 

Sending warmest wishes from Sand Flat Farm!

Vee's Wednesday Note Card Party!

I'm back in blogland a bit - just to check in and see what you all are doing before the Christmas Rush gets rolling.  If you've not joined up with Vee's Note Card Party, well here's your chance!




 My selections this month are SNOW SCENES from SAND FLAT FARM  -  here goes~~~~~~

My little yellow farmhouse - the back...

My garden shed...

In the orchard...

AND, finally, the sun breaking through on Sand Flat Farm!

If I don't get back before all the Christmas festivities begin....

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

SNOW!

Just had to show ya'll some snow photos. I know we're all sick of snow, but we haven't had snow like this since back in the 70's, I think ... Debbie at Of His Pasture can rub it in a little bit now that we're getting some. haha! First a few of the farm - we went into work at noon, so I hightailed it out the farm to get some pics! This may not happen again for another 30 years!

Now, then, I'll do a few from our neighborhood at home... K?

Played with this last 'un a little bit. Enhanced the colors. The values were there but not quite that much color.  So, there's my snow pictures. I took 124 but I thought I'd spare ya'll.  You folks up north probably are tired of looking at this stuff. I'm tired of the cold, but it was nice to see this amount of snow.  It'll be gone tomorrow as it's spose to get up in the midi-50's'...  Ya'll take care now, ya hear?

Winter and Spring

Here's a little something that we've never seen before around here.  ICE on our pond. Back a few weeks ago when we were having temps in the teens for several days I made a point to go down the pond and see if there was any ice down there. Sure enough, there was!  Wadn't very thick ice, but ice nevertheless.  Kind of a bad photo into the sun. Could that little green area/dot be some kind of ghostly figure?  I keep running across that Paranormal show on TV.   I don't think I've EVER seen where they've actually got a ghost on film.  Just alot of dark shots, shivers, and goofy sounds that "they" say are from spirits. Any of ya'll believe in that stuff?  Not me...at least I don't think so...

ANYWAY, my thoughts have been turning to my garden and spring.  I have to think about that this time of year else I'll get the SAD blues.  I'm trying to just "be" in the present but it's so hard for me.  In Texas, we do have an advantage of warmer weather where we CAN set out root crops and some other things at this time of year.  I know of folks that have had their onions and a few other things out practically year round.  I sorta follow my daddy's lead on when to set things out. He usually goes by the Farmer's Almanac and of course we have to do things around the weather and our schedules.  I got my garden tilled up this past weekend, and set my onions out yesterday afternoon in the 20 mph wind.  Our daffodils are coming up and the paperwhites have already bloomed and are fading...

Tony got everything started off. Lowe's had some ripped 40 lb.bags of cow manure (which they sold to us for $1.50 a bag - all you have to do is ask about ripped bags and if they have any they'll discount them bigtime!), and he and my son Josh loaded up a ton (literally) of manure and dumped it all on the garden plot.  I put two bags of pelleted lime on it (makes the onions sweeter and not so hot, helps the tomatoes not to get blossom-end rot, among other bonuses).  Then we tilled it all in together plus all the leaves for some good compost-y stuff. 

My garden has improved each year.  I even expanded it this year. We moved a side fence and added another area specifically for corn.  It will be alot of trouble, but this year after thinning the corn sprouts out, I'm going to either stake the stalks or put a row of temp. fencing up between the rows.  The wind blows so hard on the rise where Sand Flat Farm sits that it will flat knock the corn over on the ground.  Anybody got any good ideas on how to keep worms from getting into the ends of the ears?  I'm trying not to use pesticides etc.

Josh is lending moral support and supervising the burning of deadwood and weeds and old rotting fence posts.  He's great at lending moral support.  Actually, he did most of the tilling and all of the fence-taking-down, but Tony and I had to have a turn. It's so nice to have sons that can do heavy work for you.  Josh is so laid back and calm - never gets ruffled about anything. Very serious type. He's quiet but when he has something to say, you better listen, cuz it's probably somethin' profound.

Here's yours truly taking her turn on the tiller.  It's a monstrous heavy thang, but it's SOOO much easier than doing it all by hand which is the way we've been doing it.  I got this tiller from my uncle's estate way back in September when he and my aunt both passed away within the same week.  It's a workhorse, and the bonus - I'll always think of my uncle Bob whenever we use it.  He'd have loved that I have it - I was pretty crazy about him.  He always had a huge garden...

So anyway, that's what I've been doing, besides working.  Working at work, and working on 2 of our 3 houses trying to get one ready to rent, one ready to sell (maybe) and then there's the farm. It always keeps us busy, but we absolutely love it!  I'm researching materials for a chicken house and run now. I want to do it cheap, use recycled materials - but not trashy-lookin', etc. I'll keep you posted on that project.

Take care my dear friends!  I don't thank you all enough for coming by, for your comments, for your interest into my little world, for your prayers and concern.  Thank you just doesn't cover it!  Love you all!