My husband made a comment the other day that, “we must have the cleanest kitchen in the county.” I don’t think this comment was because our kitchen looks that clean, but probably because he has seen me cleaning it so much. The reason I have been cleaning it so much is because I have been using it so much. In just one day last week I put a roast with veggies in the crock pot, then I started a pot of soup that would be for the following days dinner. I then made a batch of soap (pumpkin spice), cleaned some beeswax, then made some pumpkin bread. In between each task I was washing, drying and putting away dishes and wiping down counters. After all was said and done I cleaned the floor and of course took out the trash. There have been several days this week that my kitchen has been busy like this, cleaning beeswax, making face, hand and body balms or lip balms, cooking squash or pumpkins for eating, freezing, making pies, bread, and most recently pumpkin fruit leather in the food dehydrator, as well as cooking three meals a day and canning the left over vegetable soup. The clean-ups continue between each task, but no, I don’t believe I have the cleanest kitchen in the county, and I don’t believe I would want to. If I were to see a perfectly clean kitchen I would think that it is simply a show case, and not used for so many practical purposes as mine.

The other thing I have been experimenting with is candle making. I plan on posting about this soon.

While I’ve been busy with all of my kitchen projects, my husband has been tending to the farm. He finished the harvesting of the pumpkins and squash, the peppers, eggplant, cabbage, carrots and swiss chard. He brought in several truck loads of horse manure to be spread in the gardens before he puts in the winter cover crop. He also checked all of the bee hives. We lost one. We are not certain why, but the hive was completely empty when he checked it. He took one full box of honey from one hive, and since it does not have frames we will harvest (package) this as honey in the comb. He decided to leave each hive with an addition box full of honey for the winter. In the spring, when the bees begin making food again, if there is honey leftover we will harvest it then.

Until next time 🙂