I live on a farm ... — country living

Brrr ... we had a frost warning last night, and it feels rather frosty this morning. After breakfast, tea, and a bit of knitting before starting my work, I went outside with the camera to catch a bit of autumn to share with you this morning. I have more photos to share this morning than I have room for in one blog posting, unless of course the entire posting was photographic ... but that would be a bit rough on those of you "tuning in" via dial up, so I will refrain. Even now as I type I see golden...

My mother's recipe box is a treasure chest filled with jewels. I used to love to browse through it, gazing and the various hand-written index cards and clippings from newspapers, magazines, and product packaging. In that magic treasure box she has recipes from her mother's farm, my father's mother's farm, her own recipes of all the dishes she made when she was raising her children, and those shared by sisters, neighbors, cousins, a nanny, and even strangers in some cases, I would imagine. My parents are wonderful people; they grew up on farms in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, the boyhood...

When I was a little girl in North Carolina Santa Claus brought me an Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas. Oh, how I loved my little light bulb powered oven. I quickly used up all of the little mixes for cakes, pie, and whatnot that came with it so my mother took me to the grocery store and showed me little boxes of Jiffy cake mix and biscuit mix. We bought a few varieties and I got started making more items. I took to baking right away, and soon needed to graduate to my mother's oven. For some reason I got into...

I prepared the pattern this morning for the Small Knitted Gift Bag, and have posted it on my patterns page for anyone interested. On Monday I'll show you all a silly and fun scarf I am making for my daughter, and I will provide the pattern for it as well. Today I will be doing some writing for a couple of clients, but I also need to bake the pumpkin pie I am entering in the agricultural fair competition. I will make two of them, one for us and one for the competition. My husband has not had any of...

[Note: I just posted photos of a couple more knitted Christmas Stockings for those interested. It is Thursday morning at about 9:20 EST.] First of all, thank you very much to those of you who joined me for coffee the other day ... whether you sat silently sipping without leaving a comment, or made your presence known with one. It was a good day, and a good time. The past few days I have actually started thinking that sometime in the future I might like to host a retreat here on our farm for some of the readers of my...