My Crazy Life as a Farmers Wife

Fresh Picked Flowers

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.

-Robert Herrick

I'm a little sad typing this...thinking about the limited number of fresh bouquets left before the frost decides to devour my garden. One thing I have really enjoyed this year, is bringing in fresh flowers from the garden every week for bouqets. The flowers are so bright and cheery...and I love displaying them in my home. I especially like to put them in old mason jars or vintage juice glasses. We have also enjoyed delivering the bright bundles of flowers to our grandmas as well.  Sunflowers and Zinnias are my personal favorites. I've been snapping photos of my summer bouquets all along...

Canning Recap 2012

It's been a busy summer. My garden produced so well, and the bounteous crop has kept my kids and I very busy. We have frozen peas, zucchini, sweet corn, and fresh basil pesto; canned green beans, dill pickles, peaches, nectarines, plums, corn relish and TONS of stewed tomatoes. I have enough salsa, pizza sauce, green salsa, and spaghetti sauce canned from last year, so at least I was spared from a few items this year. It's been a lot of work, but I'm thankful for homegrown deliciousness to feed to my family all winter. Here are a few more canning photos from this season. I'm glad to say that we are almost done with our preserving...thank goodness for a long Idaho winter, or I don't think I would ever be motivated to do it again. LOL! I'm worn out!

Canning Dill Pickles

I'm attempting to catch up with all of my photos...so don't assume I've done all of this crazy work in the matter of a few days. These are photos from the past several weeks...but I'm simply trying to get caught back up on my blog.

We've had a great yeild of cucumbers in the garden this year...and we've put up dill pickles twice now. We've even given away cukes to three different families so that they could make pickles also! Here are a few photos from our pickle-making adventures this year. Here is the recipe for Sherelle's Home Canned Dill Pickles

(Shelby was multi-tasking...holding my sweet niece Briella while helping with the pickles)

I also can't forget to show you the sweet little canning clean-up package that the folks at Bon Ami sent me...

The products smell super yummy...but my favorite part, is the adorable packaging! They don't have to hide under the sink with my other cleaning products! They get to sit out because they are so cute!