Now how cool is that!! From Sheep to something to wear!! Thanks Arlette for the pictures!’, ‘Stages of Wool Processing Ready to Spin…a good quality wool is  “crimpy ” which allows for easy spinning in to yarn’,

 ‘Just taken from sheep and put in a bag, lots of specks of this and that. The Cleaning is called  “Skirting ” 

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Fall coat way before shearing’, ‘Fiona The Sheep’, 

Every year I make batch after batch of this when the tomatoes are going strong and can it. But this recipe can be used to make fresh or frozen tomato sauce 

About 15 lbs of paste type tomatoes ( cut in half and any bad spots removed )
1-2 Green Peppers ( de-seeded sliced )
1-2 Carrots ( washed, peeled, roughly chopped)
2-3 Cloves of garlic crushed
1 med-small onion diced
1 Bay leaf
2-3 tablespoons of Basil, oregano\

Put everything in an non-reactive roasting pan. I have a stainless steel turkey roaster picked up at out local thrift store. Place in 325 degree oven with a light covering of foil or the lid that comes with the roaster. Roast at this temperature for about 2-3 hours, then remove cover and drop temp to about 275, roast about 2 more hours. Sauce is about ready when the edges of the vegetables get a little darker brown, but not black.  Take a stick blender and puree everything ( careful it will be hot!) til smooth. Enjoy.  You can freeze, or can this. After tasting and smelling this you ll never go back to ragu again!

For canning, I put a 14 teaspoon of citric acid and process in a pressure canner for 30 min. ( adjust for your altitude as we are at 5800 ) For some people who hate the tomato skins, you can pick them off easily with some tongs before using the stick blender! Obviously this recipe is for a bulk canning venture, you can easily scale it down for smaller batches for dinner!’

‘Last year I took it upon myself to learn how to make wine. Personally am not much a wine drinker, so am shooting form the hip as it were. First, in the recipe book was apple juice wine, ( from canned apple juice) then raspberry, sweet apple wine, raspberry current ( had a bag of extra currents in the freezer) and more adventurous Cranberry wine. This summer was able to grab the chokecherries before the birds and made wine from them. Well the first wine had been sitting in my closest and to tell the truth was not very nice to them. But the other day racked them ( change containers) and whala, I have wine! this week hope to bottle them up and make pretty labels. ( the towels are to keep it dark and preserve the color.) You can see the airlock on each one, that is to keep out outside ( hence bad) air, but also let the wine breath.