Strawberries

These are the first strawberries that we picked from our own patch, so of course we had to take a picture!

Lard Soap

Since we had some of our pigs butchered I have quite a bit of lard, so I decided to try my hand at soap making.

 Ingredients: Lard (in the pan, melted), Lye, and Water

Helpful tools: kitchen scale to measure ingredients, soap molds, and immersion blender

For complete instructions find a video on youtube...there are plenty out there.

 It has to harden in the molds for 24 hours

Allow it a few weeks to set and then give it a lather!

Next time I'm going to try adding some scent.

Happy Mother's Day!

Thanks to Tim and Amy Einolf, who orchestrated getting together, we went camping with the Einolfs and Shareks for Mother's Day weekend at Ricketts Glen State Park.

The park is known for its 3 mile hike along a beautiful set of waterfalls.  

 The crew of kids before we set out

 Sam leads the way

 Evelyn and Abby

 The two peas in a pod

 Apparently, Jer thought he was Moses and tried to stop the falls

It's okay Jer, keep on believing.

Sweet friends are such a blessing!!!!

Does Drew have a tail???

 "Camp food is the best!"

 Everybody loves Jer.  Careful there Tim...Bob might be jealous!!

 The adult's dinner table was far far from the kids.

 S'mores and messy faces

 Lake Jean was being drained so we weren't able to go swimming, but there was plenty of rock skipping and tromping through the mud!

Good times.  I think camping for Mother's Day weekend needs to become an annual thing!