Wild Moon Cottage is a small working homestead in the pristine Ozark Mountains. We have dairy goats, poultry, organic herb and vegetable gardens, a start of a tiny fruit orchard, several black walnut trees, wild berries and fields of wildcrafting goodness. We raise our own milk, our own eggs, much of our own medicine and food. I do laundry by hand, make my own vinegar, candles, soap, bread, cheese ........ For a living I am an artist and herbalist. My goal for myself and our homestead is to be as self sufficient and self sustaining as possible.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Samhain & the New Year

Merry Samhain !


Tomorrow is the first day of the First New Year. January will be the first day of the Second New Year. The new years are very good times to ask for things. Put out to the universe what you need or even really want in life. We always focus mainly on those who are without. Warmth, shelter and full bellies for those who have nothing. I will always make those prayers.

I will also speak aloud what I want for us and I'm speaking it here....

I want a good sturdy cabin (not to huge, not to small) on 3.5 acres with a good well, less than 300 feet so i can add a hand pump, and electricity close enough or in place so that i have time to work on power alternatives. I want it to be private and secluded but not to far from good small town. I want this at a good fair price, from an honest seller, in witting, at a down payment and monthly payments I can easily afford.

........

The day has been lovely! A nice breeze, warm, sunny, perfect.

No eggs today and none for the last 3 days. The Wyandottes are coming out of molting so maybe they'll start laying soon. The Stars should both be laying daily by now but maybe they're a bit slower to mature. Or they're sneaking into the goat pen and milking Thistle at night *o*

We've been trying to eat a lot from the freezer so that I won't have to worry about the foods there whether we can keep the freezer going or not. But it dawned on me yesterday that i should can at least some of that food so i'm going to start on that right away. I'm actually going to splurge and buy some small jelly jars. i have plenty of pints and quarts but no jellies. I have quite a few berries frozen from the summer including strawberries from earlier so i plan to make some jams and can some pie filling.

Speaking of strawberries .... I have come to terms with the fact that I will likely lose a great deal of my plants again. So I've decided to focus on saving a few, mainly the food plants. All the fruit and berries ... blueberry, strawberries, raspberries, apple trees, the horse radish and rhubarb. Most of the herbs I have seed for or should hopefully be able to find again easily. My beloved Jasmine, my Great Grandmother's Iris and the Lilies Nik got me. And the potted Rosemary. We'll see what happens but that's the basic current plan :)

On one of the groups I'm on someone asked about cooking turkey in a cast iron Dutch Oven ...

My Dutch Oven was stolen a few years ago so i haven't tried it since this way but ... One year I cooked our entire Thanksgiving feast on a cast iron wood heat stove. I used a large turkey breast and prepared it like I would for oven baking, a little thyme, onion, cracked pepper and olive oil. Cover and set on a good bed of coals inside the woodstove. The DO I had at the time wasn't made for coals on top but I set wood around it to help hold them on and piled as many as I could then left it for about 30 or so minutes (the times are a very rough estimate because I really have no idea. I watched everything closely and went by smell a lot). When the turkey was almost done I carefully unburied it and took it out, added cornbread and sage stuffing and water and put it back in for about 15 or so minutes. When the stuffing was almost finished I took the cover off and let it cook about 5 minutes more. It never browned like the oven but did brown some and was the best Thanksgiving dinner we have ever had.

Everything else was cooked on top of the wood heat stove except the rolls which I bought pre-made and warmed in tin foil inside the woodstove. We had turkey, cranberries, cornbread, mashed potatoes, green beans and rolls.

No matter how you celebrate or don't celebrate, I hope you have a Safe and Blessed Samhain !!!!!

3 comments:

the wild magnolia said...

Great post.

Wishing all requests, put out and spoken to the universe, to settle in your life.

Happy Happy Samhain!

Missouri Gal said...

Happy Samhain to you as well. I keep a note book to keep track of what comes into fruition. And I got my camper I was wanting to keep me grounded and close to nature.

Gypsisoul1111 said...

Hey that was me! I love your blog. We are very similar. I am going to copy what you did on your blog for my turykey in the DO and I already have the cornbread stuffing mixings. I got my DO on sale at Harbor Freight, I love it and I want to pass it on to my daughter with my grandma's cast iron fry pans and my mom's pewter plate I use to grill steaks.
Cyndie