Thanksgiving 2014

My favorite holiday always comes and goes way to quickly.  Isn’t that always the case?  However, I am finding that as the years have ticked by and the kids have gotten older and more numerous, what with them bringing home fiancés and all, I have less and less energy to survive much more than a long weekend of gluttony, Christmas decorating and joyful entertainment.  And it was joyful…we laughed around the table two nights in a row.

Before the older children came home for Thanksgiving I took the two younger ones out for breakfast to commemorate the school break.  Not far from our gap in the mountains there is another hollow call Dial, it was once the post office center for its community.  What remains now is a few old farm houses, a church and Van Zandt’s Restaurant.  For the low price of $5 a piece the kids enjoyed eggs, grits, a biscuit, sausage and bacon…and I confiscated the coffee that came with their meals.  We were all happy this way.

Hiking and Mushrooms

While we have been hiking on most of these cool fall days, I’ve had the pleasure of taking  many fungus pictures.  I’ve been amazed at the many varieties that grow up here.  They seem to come in every color and shape conceivable to man.

Life this Fall

As we have walked through the seasons in the mountains over the past eleven months, we have experienced the snows of winter, seen the earth come alive with flowers and green shoots in the spring, and basked in the mild temperates of the long summer days, but nothing prepared me for the beauty of fall.  While the weekends are frantic with tourists in convertibles or riding motorcycles along scenic Hwy 60, the week days are quiet and the perfect time to tromp through the National Forest.

Horse Unit Study

The Great Pyrenees

And Then There Was A Goat; Part1

The Garden; My Newest Baby

New to the Flock

We’ve recently added some new animals to our life and completely enclosed the pasture.  Two new Cochin Bantam Chickens are wandering the yard around the house, but they aren’t quite old enough to leave any eggs in the nest box just yet.  If you have never seen the egg these birds lay, think slightly small Cadbury Egg.  They are very cute.

24 Zucchini Recipes

There is a lot of green in my life, these days.  The garden is growing and thriving for the most part, but I have way more zucchini and cucumbers than I know what to do with.  This weekend my sister-in-law and I shredded and sliced zucchini and then par boiled it so we could freeze it for future use.  And yet freezing the zucchini doesn’t change the fact that I need to eventually cook it, and in more than a few basic ways if I don’t want my family to get weary of seeing it on their plate.  Knowing this I set off to search the internet for some unusual zucchini recipes. Since I figured that I may not be the only person suffering with a surplus of zucchini I decided to share those recipes with you.

But before I go down the yellow brick road of zucchini recipes let me share some tips and images from my garden.

While everything is growing well without the use of any insecticide or fungicide, I didn’t make my rows quite as wide as I should have.  Walking down the rows without stepping on a leaf, squash, vine or beet is very difficult.  Tip #1: Remember to make the garden rows wider than 8 inches next year.  Yeah I know…you wouldn’t think you would have to tell me this, but evidently I had to learn the hard way.

Love how the squash hold their bright yellow blooms, but next year I will plant more butternut and fewer summer squash.  Tip #2:  Summer squash requires a lot of time to preserve in order to eat it later.  Butternut, on the other hand, is simply picked and left to rest in a basket until you are ready to eat it.

And now the zucchini dish line-up.  Keep  in mind that more than likely you can substitute any summer squash for zucchini, in these recipes.

1.  Zucchini Bars from – Allrecipes

On the Set of Our Front Deck

If you are on Facebook you may have seen the post that has 50 behind the scenes movie photos.  One of my favorites, as I am a Star Wars child of the ’70s, is this fun image of Chewbacca and Princess Leia.

Photo Credit: http://news.distractify.com/people/celebrities/behind-the-scenes-of-old-movies/?v=1&img=0eefe7

Not too long ago we captured some behind the scene images right here in the mountains.