Monday, October 22, 2012

Ambitious Monday

Good Afternoon Everyone,

Well, its October 22, and I am pretty ambitious.  Over the weekend, I had some red and black plums that I had received in my Prairie Paks, (like Angel Food Ministries), and these did not get eaten.  They were starting to get soft, so I cooked them down and ran them through my squeeze-O matic and made a plum jelly/butter something.  It looks like it will set up good.  I also had two quarts of peaches from my house neighbor's tree that did not set up when I canned them, so I had them in the frig until I could get to them, which was today.  Since I had the canner and everything up and going, I thought I'd better get the peaches done.  Its a cool day here and perfect when you have to heat up the kitchen.
I also got some golden delicious apples, and pears from my October prairie paks which I picked up Saturday morning.  I think that I am going to let them ripen up more and then peel and core and process them also for some jam/butter.  These fruits are very hard, and not real good eating, but I can doctor them up for jam or butter and use them up.  I hate to waste fruit,

It isn't too bad here today, cool and in the mid's 40's F. Later in the week, its supposed to change to much colder.  We still have no rain, or  moisture.  We are around 12" below normal for our area, which is very, very dire.  Farmers around here has started putting in the hard red winter wheat, and there is little if any soil moisture for the seeds. We also need snow cover for the seeds to be protected from the cold winter air.  If we do not get any moisture soon, the 2013 wheat crop will be history.

Well, over the weekend, my car quit.  I went Saturday morning to pickup my Prairieland food paks.  They are similar to the Angel Food Ministries that are around the country.  My old car started and I got to the church and picked up my paks, and then the volunteers loaded my car up.  Get in the car, and.....nothing.....  I thought it was the battery.  It is old, about six and half years old.  One of the older men who volunteer came out, and got his pickup over and tried to jump start  my car, and nothing,  and another came out and listened under the hood, and thought it may be the starter.  So, I called my house neighbor and she came and picked me and my load up, and then had to call a tow truck to tow it home.  Its a Cadillac and has hydraulic brakes and steering and you cannot tow it behind a pickup as there is no steering or brakes if its not running.  SOOOOO........I have another bill I don't need.  It needed a starter and so D went to check on prices on starters, and then started working on it, then another PROBLEM........the bolt broke in the frame that holds the starter on, SOOOOOO....this morning, the tow truck picked it up again, and towed it to our mechanic so the bolt can be drilled out.  While its up on the hoist, the starter will be put in, its there, and so it will be done.  And SOOOOO another bill.

Really not much else going on.  Its been very quiet, which  is fine with me. I have not heard if the sale of the park went through or not.  I have not heard anything from the man who was possibly going to purchase my  contract.  I really suspect that the sale will not go through.  With the non existence of titles, and no VIN's, I do not think that a title company or an owner would risk a very pricey purchase.  But I guess, if the moron owner wants his money, he'll have to get to work and produce titles, VIN's and bill of sales on all trailers, including mine.  He (the owner)  is a true moron in the first degree.

I did not get to my patio over the weekend.  Plans changed when the car had problems, and we pulled the car into the carport to work on it, so my space to put the porch things under there while I sorted through everything was taken up.  I am going to shoot for tomorrow to work on the porch.  It will be the last day of nice weather, and then cold, and possibly rainy? (I'm not going to hold my breath).  It's so funny, you have all these plans to get something done, and wham, something else moves into position and makes sure you don't get it done.  I am really perturbed about the car, as I wanted to get my sewing machine.  That's burns me the most.  I am not a car person.  I know they are to take you from point A to point B, but I am not a car nut.   They have their purpose but I am not excited about cars.  And it bothers me to locate  the parts to repair them, the parts  are almost beyond my income,   Leaves a lot to be desired.

So anyway, I did  some fun things in the kitchen.  I hope that my jelly/jam/butter sets up.   I am not a master when it comes to jellies.  I hope that it was worth it.

Well,  its getting late,  and I am tired.  Standing gets me in the back and I stood in the kitchen for a few hours, and I think its time for some herbal tea and jammys.

Have a wonderful week, everyone.
Hugs



5 comments:

  1. Often, when a starter motor refuses to turn, a good whack with a hammer will change it's mind. I've done this several times; and it works!

    I shall make apple sauce today for the freezer. I'll be thinking of you.

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  2. Dear Vicki ~ I am so sorry to hear about your car woes. Stuff seems to pile up on us, and sometimes it's almost more than we can bear.

    You had a productive day in the kitchen and that is always nice. I made a loaf of oatmeal bread in the machine, and made a pot of potato, rutabaga, leek, carrot soup. Both turned out yummy.

    Tomorrow I'm going to cook a chicken in the crockpot, minus the breasts, as I cut them off and save them for a nice meal.

    It is still warm and humid down here. Our a.c. fan stopped working, so we are sweating and surviving. It has been cooler though and that's nice. We should be getting rain from 'Sandy' sometime this week, and then in a week or so it will go down into the 50's for a short period. It sure beats the heat and humidity.

    Oh by the way, I got that same comment about free glasses, and decided not to post it so deleted it. I wonder how many people they have bombarded with their spam?

    Love and hugs to you ~ FlowerLady

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  3. Dang, I too am sorry for your troubles. I wish we lived closer, probably could help each other out.

    We've been doing a lot of canning also, only the hubby doesn't want me to blog about it. Says I already put too much out there!

    Our rural area has a lot of fly-overs (copters)checking things out.
    Looking for drugs, illegal building, septic system type of things. We/he think....
    Well, put in your own nefarious thoughts!
    Funny though, we had a infestation of giant grasshoppers this year, all they were interested in were food crops.

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  4. Vicki, I do know what you mean about unexpected expenses....we have had our share recently.

    I did the same thing with my little plum crop two years ago except I think I just picked out the pits by hand when I cooked them soft....then added the sugar and made what I call plum preserves. We have really enjoyed them.

    I still have a few apples to work up and need to get on it, but company is here and our son is coming down this weekend. I will try to squeeze it in sometime.

    Hope all the preserves turn out super and the car isn't too costly to repair.

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  5. Well, dang, Vicki!

    I know what you mean about unexpected repairs absorbing the money for a desired purchase. Been there, done that! We had to buy a new washer, found some more things wrong, sent the part we bought back for a refund. Washers are not cheap. We had to replace our freezer during this summer. They're not cheap, either. Seems like it's been one thing after the other. It must be "in the air".

    Still no rain? Oh, I worry so much about the grain farmers and their crops. We had a nice rain a couple of weeks ago but since then things have dried back up, what with the howling winds, and we're back where we started from, with rainstorms either fizzling out at our borders, or going around us. It's so frustrating. This morning we're getting our killing frost, and so at least there'll be less to have to water.

    Our Angel Food Network isn't very good. There tend to be things in there that no one would buy. Chicken nuggets that are almost all breading, one time some chicken patties that had so much spice in the breading that we couldn't eat them. Tried scraping off the breading and they were like the nuggets with hardly any meat at all.

    Jam is about all that can be done with hard fruit. I use the windfalls for jam and they are usually under-ripe and have bad spots to be cut out. But we have enjoyed many jars of jam from fruit that, by other people's standards, were not fit to eat.

    We looked into buying a little farmhouse on 17 acres several years ago. It had two trailers on the land that were rented out. Our insurance company said that they weren't insurable once they were over 20 years old. We were afraid to buy a place with old trailers on it that people were occupying. If something happened, we could be sued for everything we had. That might be a hitch in the sale of your trailer park. I cannot imagine why there are no VIN numbers. Even if he provided numbers, if there are none on the trailers to match up to, I wonder if it would matter. Like you, I don't look for the sale to happen.

    Hang in there, dear, take it one day at a time. Hugs, Ilene

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