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
P.S. Don’t miss a beat of our journey, subscribe to the blog and join us on social media: Facebook, Instagram.
whiteskywoods.com 