The Country Homemaker Hop- Week 2

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. ”
― C.S. Lewis

Are YOU a Country Homemaker?  

Do you make nutritious meals from scratch, labor in a vegetable garden, or raise livestock?  Do you do these things because of the love you share with your family and a desire to provide the best for your loved ones?  If you answered yes to any of these questions; than like me, you must be a country homemaker and WE WANT YOU!

Please join us each week to share your pictures, recipes, household wisdom, homemaking tips, crafts, ideas and stories with the country homemaking community.  Chime in about what's going on at your homestead.


Country Homemaker posts will open to link ups on Wednesdays at 12:01 am and will remain open to links all week long, through Tuesday night at 11:59 pm.   

Here's what I've been up to this week...

In the kitchen-

This week I prepared and froze three batches of cabbage soup from the last of the FARM SCHOOL cabbages.  (Dinner tonight, yum). 

I got lucky at a yard sale and scored a food dehydrator (with a fan) for $4.

 I have been working on several more of Mary Mulari's "Church Lady" aprons, assembly line style.  I really love the way they look and being reversible adds to their functionality.   The scalloped bottom hemline is so feminine and pretty.  I got the last one cut out last night while my friend Michelle was visiting.  

*Church Lady Aprons- examples, not mine!

 *These are MINE!  Still in pieces...

During my evenings this week, I plan to press and pin as many of the 56 pockets to the apron sides as I can, before I fall asleep...

In the garden-

The Hubby gave me a new nickname this week: "The Butcher", after I pruned our fruit trees.  He'll thank me for it later, when he gets to eat all those BIG, pretty apples and peaches.

I took cuttings from the trees and planted the last of them today, in my veggie garden.  

I roto-tilled my small orchard and re-shaped the soil beneath my fruit trees into a shallow basin, to improve watering efficiency.  Then, I built up small earthen burms against the crowns of my fruit trees to prevent crown rot.  (Fruit tree crowns do not like having water against them).

I installed a few branch spacer bars (made by the hubby from a 2x4) on a pear tree that keeps putting out scaffold branches that are too narrowly separated from the trunk. (A common problem with pear trees).

I am preparing my veggie garden plot plan.  I seem to have some time yet as the weather here continues to be unseasonably warm and dry for January and there's no change in forecast for the near future.  I am debating whether or not to direct sow some cool season crop seed in the garden, or to start them indoors.

What's going on at YOUR home this week?