HELLO everyone

Hey Kathy-this is way cool; what a great way to stay in touch.

A beginning blogger

This is my first ever post on a blog.  The purpose of this blog is to get acquainted with this new technology and to share with friends and family my passion for learning to live a cleaner and greener life.

We live in the most beautiful place on earth!  We are surrounded by mountains and I hope I never take it for granted.  Sometimes the mountains look surreal and they are truly breathtaking.  Right now, the mountains are all covered in snow.  This region of the United States is on the arid side so the snow in the winter is very important to our culture.  The region depends on the snow pack to irrigate our pastures and provide water for our livestock during the dry summer months.  A dry winter also makes for intense summer fires.  So I am happy it's snowing although the snow makes for icy road conditions.

Greg and I built a cold frame this Fall in order to extend the growing season for our veggies.  My goal was to have lettuce from our cold frame for Thanksgiving.  Two or three days before Thanksgiving we started getting snow and the temperature dropped into the single digits for 3 or 4 days.  The little plants in the cold frame were holding their own but the harsh temperatures were a little too severe.  We put a heat lamp inside the cold frame but did not get the lamp hooked up in time.  We lost the parsley, arugula, radishes, and carrots but we were able to save the Buttercrunch and Romaine lettuces and the spinach.  On Thanksgiving Day, I went out to pick the lettuce and the doors to the cold frame were frozen shut but I was able to chip away the ice and pick the lettuce.  What a thrill!  Took pictures too!

Raw Cranberry Orange Relish

For our Thanksgiving dinner we had the traditional foods but we did add three recipes of raw foods:  Almond Dressing, Waldorf Salad made with Almond Mayonnaise, and Cranberry Orange Relish made with psyllium powder to help the fruit set instead of the traditional gelatin. The bowl with the Waldorf Salad was lined with our lettuce out of the cold frame.  The beauty of raw foods is that they taste fantastic and they are not heavy like traditional or processed foods.  The food tastes alive and you get a feeling that I describe as "a lightness of being."

The Smoker Vault

We wanted our turkey smoked, so Greg put the bird on our smoker with apple wood chips around 10pm the night before.  It was ready by 12:30pm on Thanksgiving Day - perfect timing!  It was one of those meals that all came together at the right time.  It doesn't happen very often that the mashed potatoes, the gravy, the turkey, and the rolls are done at the same time so I wanted to be sure to make a note of it.  :)

We moved out to Montana 12 years ago and left the majority of our family back in Illinois and Indiana so the holidays also hold a little melancholy for us because we miss being with our families.  Our son Travis and his wife, Jackie come out every other Christmas.  We got them last Christmas so we will miss them terribly this year.  Usually Mary goes to Illinois at Christmas to spend time with her daughter.  This year, my nephew Will (Mary's grandson) moved to Montana to live with us and goes to high school here in Florence.  He will go back to Illinois to visit his family as well so the house will be quiet this Christmas.  Over the years, Greg and I have created our own traditions and fun when we are alone at Christmas and it takes some of the sting out of being alone without our families.  Maybe this year we will drive the 30 miles into Missoula and take in a movie . . . weather permitting.

Just a few more notes before I sign off.  Last year the wild turkeys started visiting our front yard, eating the berries from our tree.  We would have 12-15 hen turkeys all at the same time and it was quite a site.  A few days ago we started being visited by turkeys again but this year they are the Toms - 6 of them!  They are huge and have that funny beard.  They are fun to watch and I am always amazed that they can actually fly up into the tree to get the berries they love so much.  Our neighbors have several bird feeds so the turkeys hang out there for awhile too, snacking on the yummy seeds.  The neighbor's cat loves to sit under the bird feeders while the turkeys are sitting on the feeders.  It's very entertaining.  The next time they show up I will snap a few photos to post.

What a wonderful place we live in!  Every day is a new adventure (right up my alley).

Until next time,
Peace and health
Kathy B