My son is absolutely in love with our chickens, so he wanted to have a chicken birthday party. They made a game of “pin the beak on the chicken” by drawing our polish crested rooster on a big sheet of paper and making little beaks for everyone to try to pin on the right spot.
I made his cake from the directions at Taste of Home.
I have found that when we save our seeds, we usually end up with more than we need. So, we made homemade seed packets and decorated them. We plan to give them as gifts.
We printed this seed packet pattern onto cardstock. Then we cut them out, folded them and decorated. The kids decorated these and had a great time doing it!
Our chickens have been growing and growing. They are so fun to watch. We let them free range all of the time that we are home (which is most of the time). We feed them kitchen scraps, so now they all run up to the backdoor anytime someone goes outside hoping we brought treats with us.
I have a small herb garden in my backyard. It has chives, mint, oregano, thyme, chamomile, and parsley in it.
To dry the herbs for use in the winter, I cut some stems, bundle them together and hang them upside down to dry. It is best to do this early in the morning after the dew has dried.
Here, I have cut oregano, thyme and parsley to dry.
I wanted to make and can enchilada sauce this year with our extra tomatoes, but I couldn’t find any recipe that sounded suitable. So, I decided to just can tomato sauce. It is much more versatile anyway. Now, I can make anything I want out of it.
Here’s how I made some enchilada sauce with one of the jars. Since I had a quart of sauce, I multiplied this recipe by four. I am leaving it smaller in case you don’t have home canned tomato sauce to use.
Enchilada Sauce
3 Tablespoons chili powder
3 Tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon oregano
3 cups water
1 – 8oz can tomato sauce
Put all ingredients into saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens.
When I quadrupled this recipe, it made enough for us to have enchiladas 12 times. I put the extras into freezer bags in the freezer.
Every summer, I cook up our fresh tomatoes, peppers and onions into a delicious, versatile spaghetti sauce and freeze it for winter. It makes preparing spaghetti, lasagna, or any recipe calling for a jar of spaghetti sauce a snap. I also love it because I know how much better it is for us than any of the store varieties.
Frozen Spaghetti Sauce
20 cups tomatoes – peeled and chopped
3 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 cup chopped green pepper
5 cups water
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoon oregano
1 Tablespoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon pepper
3 Tablespoons canning salt
Mix all ingredients and simmer for 2 hours, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and add 4 – 12 oz cans tomato paste. Stir well. Cool and freeze in ziploc bags.
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To peel the tomatoes easily, just pour boiling water over them and let them stand for a few minutes. The skin will just slip right off.
I put the onions and peppers through the food processor until they are small enough that nobody can pick out any parts they think they don’t like.
The tomato paste really thickens it up nicely. This year, I got a great big can from Costco. It was a little cheaper than buying the four cans and I had enough paste to make several batches of spaghetti sauce.
It helps to lay the bags on a cookie sheet in the freezer until they are frozen. That way, they stay flat.
I seem to miss the occasional zucchini in my garden and it gets really BIG before I find it. I like to use these in recipes that call for shredded zucchini. Here’s how I freeze the shredded zucchini to use later.
Wash, and cut up zucchini.
Then, shred it in your food processor.
Measure it. I freeze mine in 2 cup quantities because my favorite recipe uses 2 cups of shredded zucchini.
When you defrost it, it is a bit watery, but I just put the whole thing into my recipe and it turns out just fine.
You could just slice your peppers and freeze them, but I have several recipes that call for a can of green chilis, so I fix my peppers up this way to use in those recipes instead of buying a can of chilis.
I grow anaheim peppers, but this would work with any hot pepper. Be careful when you work with hot peppers. The seeds can burn. Wear plastic gloves to be safe.
Just cut them up into small pieces, then put them in a pan and cover them with water. I take the seeds out – you can leave them in if you like spicier. Boil them until they change color and are tender.
After they cool down a little, pour them into ice cube trays. Freeze, then take out of trays and put into freezer bags.
If you want to save seeds from year to year, you must plant heirloom varieties of plants, not hybrids. I grow Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach. When it starts to get hot in the early summer, your spinach plants will bolt and get quite ugly looking. Don’t pull them! If you leave them, they will produce lots of seeds. 
Once they have produced seeds and are all dry, pull them up and hang them upside down to dry somewhere. This step is probably not necessary if it is a dry year. It was raining every other day here so I wanted to get them inside to finish drying.
Now, just pull off the little bunches of seeds and store them until planting time. Be sure to get enough for your fall and spring plantings.
Here’s how to freeze all of that excess summer squash and zucchini.
Wash the squash. Slice. I slice mine between 1/4 and 1/2 inch.
Blanch the squash for 3 minutes. To blanch, bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. Pour the squash into the water and boil for 3 minutes. Remove from boiling water and cool immediately by submerging in ice water.
Drain and freeze.
