Today’s is Groundhog Day! The kids and I watched the famous “Punxsutawney Phil” make his prediction. He predicted 6 more weeks of winter! Man, the crowd there in Pennsylvania was disappointed. From our research though, historically he’s only been 20% accurate, so don’t place any bets on his prediction – ha!
Readers to our blog live in various places, so I’m sure there are many differing ideas about what winter has been like and if it would be nice if it continued. I realize this is only our first winter here on the Keweenaw Peninsula (47th parallel north), but we’ve been loving it. It’s nice to live in a place where winter isn’t just cold with a little bit of snow here and there, but a place where it’s mild (okay, cold sometimes too), but has enough snow to truly enjoy the beauty of a white and sparkly snowy winter. The best of our winter has been snowshoeing around our own property, and finding various routes to Lake Superior on snowshoe. Winter has been very busy for us otherwise and we haven’t spent nearly the time we have wanted to snowshoeing.
Our recent homestead projects included a few things that have me thinking about summertime.
1.) We’re still enjoying squash after squash that were harvested from the garden this past Autumn. They are so sweet and delightful and I’ve been preparing them in many different ways. The squash we grew this summer were spaghetti squash and buttercup squash. We are planning on more variety in the upcoming summer. One of my favorite recipes to make is 3 Sisters Soup.
2.) I made a big batch of strawberry jam from a strawberry stock-up this summer that I had froze for just this purpose.
The jam tastes like the summer sun! Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit in saying that, but it’s GOOD!
3.) I pickled carrots. There was a good deal on carrots at the grocery store and I was in the mood for something a little different so I made a few jars of refrigerator carrots. I did an experiment using my simple refrigerator pickle recipe; I tried apple cider vinegar for one batch and regular white vinegar for another. The family favorite was the white vinegar.
4.) Last summer one of our first homesteading project was to pick and dry loads of wild raspberry leaf and wild strawberry leaf. It was great forward thinking on my part, if I might say so. 🙂 We’ve been enjoying tea brewed with the dried leaves. The best combination seems to be raspberry leaf, strawberry leaf, a few dried flowers from St. John’s Wort, and some ground-up dried elderberries.
5.) Another recent project we’ve been working on is our family Nature Journal. It’s part of our homeschooling and we try for at least one entry a week. Today Flora made an entry inspired by Groundhog Day. It went as follows:
3 things I’ll do if Winter stays:
- Build a snowman.
- Watch the Chickadees.
- Watch the Deer.
3 things I’ll do if Spring comes early:
- Watch the Deer fawns.
- Watch the baby birds hatch.
- Pick flowers!
What’s your list include?
Peace, Love, and Nature,
-L
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J & D > If winter continues long (here it’s windy and wet, not even frosty), we’ll spin and weave and knit and talk and make jams and things for selling during the summer. Or rather we’ll do more of these things, and a bit more time for reading too. And if spring warms up and brightens up early, we’ll get the tomatoes and other tender plants going in the greenhouses earlier than usual, and that way enjoy plenty of home-grown fresh and tasty foods over a longer season – we might even have a bit more of a surplus to sell ; and maybe there’ll be a few more books carried forward unread to next winter, and a few less woolly jumpers on the shelves of our shop, but wouldn’t it be dull if every year was the same. One thing we’ll miss about winter: once the grass starts to grow well again, the deer go back up into the hills, and give up raiding the gardens, which is good in a way, but also sad not to see them on our morning walks with the dogs, jumping back over the hill fence.
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Sounds like a perfect way to live WITH the seasons rather than against them. Thank you for sharing! -L
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