Hey y'all!  Don't be surprised by the new look.  I love the beach and everything about it.  However, I'm in a country mood right now. 

When Donald and I got married back in '78, we moved onto what was a 7 acre farm.  We didn't own all the 7 acres, our house is near the edge of the acreage.  Long story short, we have a 1/2 acre of land, but mostly in the back where it now hides under the trees.  Our front yard is only 36 feet from the foundation of the house. 

We have a creek behind our house and along side our house and a spring that pops up where it wants when it wants, which is kinda cool.  Our water supply comes from the well in the front yard and we have a septic tank in the back.  Our house is run by electric so when the power goes off we can't even flush the toilets which makes me mad!

I'll write more later, but just wanted to let you all know you haven't come to the wrong place!

Blessings for now!

Something is Bothering Me

I  got problems floating around in my head.  I mean, everybody has problems, but every once in awhile I have conflict going on in my brain. 

What I'm going to write about is not to take sides on eating meat.  In fact, I've been a meat eater all my life.  My dad used to tell me that I needed to eat meat for protein and protein was good for the blood.  Who's to argue with dad?  Besides, roast beef, meatloaf, bacon, ham is so good.  

But here's the thing:  I'm beginning to want to NOT eat meat.       It's crazy, right?  No?  For some reason I started to search out videos  on the humane way to kill animals that I put on my plate or sandwich.  And what I found make me sick.  Mostly, there is no humane to kill an animal.  I watch one video that is suppose to be the kosher way to kill.  Holy moly...slip the cows throat while it's alive and bleeding out.  The poor animal is still mooing but no sound is coming out and it's down right disgusting.  How can that be kosher???  Now, I searched out the way the humane way is to kill the animals and holy moly, shoot them in the head with some sort of nail gun {that's the cows} and the pigs they gas them.   Not to mention chickens have their heads put into a long tube hanging upside down and their poor necks sliced all the while they are skirming inside the metal tube.  Again, disgusting. 

Recently, I've been watching homesteading videos where one is living off the land {and their animals} and it's confused me even more.  I've watched videos of people  getting orders of baby chickens and they are cooing and ahhing over them and saying how cute they are and they are gonna make beautiful chickens with colorful feathers......then a months later one homesteader opens her freezer door and in there the viewer sees packages of chickens.  She says, here's my chickens, but don't worry I'll order more chicks next season.  I understeading homesteading because I was even checking out backyard chickens myself.....to have as pets!  I could never eat my pets.  Even when I went fishing in my teens it wasn't until I was an adult and had children that I actually ate a fish I caught.  I just couldn't.  Now, it's getting that way with the meat I eat.

While I'm cooking meat, the thing I'm thinking about  is not how tasty the meat is gonna be, I'm wondering how bad this poor animal suffered.  

Now, my grandma was raised on a farm.  They were self sufficient.  They had to be.  Her favorite food was chicken.  Don't get me wrong, I love fried chicken, but now, I look at that bird and wonder how bad it suffered, how scared it was.  

I'm a Christian, no hiding that fact.  Jesus ate fish.  God said 
It is okay to eat meat.  But now, I can't help to think that the meat I'm eating had a life and how scared it must have been when it was being killed.  How can I be a part of that?

I asked my husband if I started making some vegetarian meals would he eat them and he told me he'd eat anything I'd make.  

And that is where I am right now, right this minute.  I don't think I can find any vegan fake meat that comes close to the taste of meat.  Yet, watching meat cook only reminds me of the suffering that animal must have gone through.  

This is my problem.  

Changing the way one eats, even if it's a weight loss change, it's hard.  But, I really think eating more vegetables and less meat and maybe no meat at all is the way I'm gonna go.  I think if I can make some dinners without meat and eventually cut out meat that's the best way to go.

Blessings!

Gardening!!

Let's talk weather.  Has spring arrived yet?  I know it has on the calendar, but what is it really like outside?  Cold, warm, cold warm, that's what it's doing.  Such tease when one is anxious to get plants in the ground.  I did plant peas a couple of weeks ago, but I can tell you, going outside every single day to see if you can see just a little hint of green can drive a person crazy.  It's like watching water boil.  However, today I saw maybe three peas just breaking ground!   Wahoo.  

The family room in our house is starting to look like an outdoor garden indoors.  It's fun to start planting and watching the seed grow into a plant, but sooner or later, just like kids, they need to go.  (hahaha).  Seriously though, please warm weather, come here soon.

Squash, cucumbers started in the aerogarden

Another view:  in the pots are catus, tomatoes, and strawberries

I just started peppers

Blueberry bush

Onions

 You can see I need to get these in the ground or, in my case, in my rain gutter growth garden.

Speaking of which, here is a picture of garden set up this year:

Here's the beginnings of it

This are rain gutters.  Right now we are trying to save money so we had some aluminum gutters we are using.  But probably plastic gutters would be better

We are using 3 inch net cups on the bottom of the buckets.  We drill a hole in the bottom to insert the cup, then the cups sit in the gutter with water in it.

All the buckets will have holes in them like the third from the left.  It allows the roots to have air.

I'm so excited to see how this set up works.  There is a man named Larry Hall who came up with this idea.  He's on youtube and also has a facebook page if you'd like to look him up.  Amazing what he invented!

I celebrated my birthday yesterday.  Will put up pictures in my next post.

Blessings!