Where to begin.

It again has been a while since I have posted here.

 It seems life can get busy, both on and off the homestead. The winter job can be some what demanding and once it's over the homestead can become demanding as well. with the onset of middle age I am beginning to feel the effects of years of manual labor to most of my joints, morning is difficult in the area of getting the arthritic joints loosened up and moving. I'm told this is the age most people start to complain about such things. Well with a few young ones still home slowing down much isn't an option.

 We do have most of this seasons garden in and hope to finish it all up by this coming weekend. Our teenage boys are being a big help along with our 10 year old, who by the way can't wait to start the next chore. Some changes have come about on the Homestead. The All American canner we purchased last summer is a wonderful tool for those that are serious about canning, the one we have will hold 14 quart jars and was a great time saver. Greens were in abundance last year and we canned many quarts of them. This year is another aggressive growing season with more garden space added. If all goes well we will have a good share of our food put up. Something that my wife and I feel is more and more important as we learn more about how the FDA refuses to insure the safety of our food. I'll be posting on some of those issues in the near future.

 Another change we made this past winter was the purchase of a new wood cook stove, I know Grandma's old stove is an heirloom and had served our family for several generations, trust me it wasn't a decision that was made easily or taken lightly. The thought of replacing her gave a big lump in my throat. With the so called propane shortage they said we had last winter drove the cost of it to a price we weren't willing to pay. So we fired the old cook stove up in December and it cooked and baked for us each and every day. The problem was it needed constant attention and feeding to regulate and this didn't give my wife allot of time for anything but sitting there while cooking. There is no turning your back on a wood stove of this nature while baking.

 Now sitting there isn't something my wife takes gently and in February I started looking around for a modern wood fired cook stove. It was easy to find many replicas out there, but they had the same problem that our old one did. A wood box was just to small to burn for very long. They were wonderful looking with all their black and chrome, but they wouldn't do what we wanted. It wasn't long before I found one, I researched it and low and behold I found yet another both boasting very large fireboxes and burn times. A little comparing of the two gave us our choice, the toss up was between the Pioneer Princes and the Kitchen Queen. Both made by Amish folks, one made in Canada, the other in America.

 Our choice was the Kitchen Queen, not just because it was made in America but because in my opinion it was the better stove between the two and it had options that would interest most homesteaders. Once the stove made it home there was no doubt that we had found as good a quality cook stove as could be found anywhere and it's cost is reasonable. We have been cooking on her since we got it hooked up and it hasn't gone completely out since early March. The 17 gallon hot water reservoir is another cost saver, so far I haven't had to hook up the hot water coil inside the fire box as it heats the water very well from the back of the cook top and the smoke pipe. We also haven't had a propane delivery since November. Now that warm weather is here and we continue to cook with wood, it has become apparent that by July and the middle of summer may be to hot to have a wood stove going in the house.

 The stove does have a summer grate that we will try, however we won't be able to bake with the summer grate installed. So comes a new project on the homestead, we will build a summer kitchen along side our new woodshed and move Grandmas cook stove to the summer kitchen where she will see continued use for our family. We will however continue to can on our propane stove only because the large six burner stove provides more room to operate our canners, and with three canners going most of the time I'm not looking for more heat generation in the house that time of the year. Besides I'm sure it will take some practice to learn how to can on the wood stove, something I don't have time to experiment with this season.

If by chance you have considered cooking with wood I would say a newer more modern cook stove over an antique, unless you are looking for a novelty. Our Kitchen Queen is rated as a home heating stove as well and it did a fine job in early spring without any help from our regular heating stove. The oven is easy to operate and holds a nice steady temperature for a long enough period of time to bake a Turkey, and it does a wonderful job with bread as well. Overnight burn time is great and reloading in the morning was all that was needed.

 I have posted photos on our web site. In the mean time if you are interested in doing some of your own looking here is where we purchased ours.

http://www.woodstoves.net/cookstoves/kitchenqueen.htm

GMO's

This is a long, but very good clip on GMO's. It is very much worth learning what these genetically modified crops can do to you and your loved ones. After all we homestead so we can provide our families with the highest quality food we can produce.

Why should man mess with nature? I know that God can do it better than anyone.

Everything You HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods from Jeffrey Smith on Vimeo.

Pondering

The American dream only four decades ago was a good job, a comfortable home, and a nice car. Today, the American dream demands guaranteed employment, a retirement plan, a home, two or three cars, a vacation home, summer cottage, lake house, travel trailer, or motor home, insurance that covers everything and every possible situation, and a college education for all of the children. The possession of material things and a guaranteed future that allows us to use those things has become the standard by which we judge success.

The initial purpose of material things was to make our lives easier and more comfortable. However, over the years they have begun to take control of us, rather than our controlling them.

The affluence of the American way of life has mixed blessings. On the one hand, our prosperity has made life much easier and money more available. On the other, things purchased by this affluence require a great deal of our time and attention. In fact, the urgency of our materialistic lifestyle becomes a tyranny that demands and consumes most of our energy.

Industrialization provided a higher standard of living with a shorter workweek. In the early 1900s, it took every family member working 60 hours per week, many times seven days a week, just to make ends meet. By the mid-twentieth century, the average workweek was 48 hours, and in most families the husband was the primary wage earner. Now, in more than 70 percent of American families two incomes are necessary to support the family's materialistic lifestyle.

Yet most America's consider the pursuit of these material things to be normal and acceptable. Nevertheless, most are not content with their lives. So, in essence, rather than providing more contentment, abundance has produced less contentment and we still live a life of want, even with all that we own.