Chinook Massage Therapy

Couldn't resist marching down the road with torches,  but we had no pitchforks! It has been many months since my last post. I actually started writing this post in mid-July. Much of the summer was spent moving my parents off the farm, and trying to squeeze in the usual summer activities of gardening and camping. We made Indiana Jones style torches (with bison tallow that I rendered), rescued 3 week old kittens (Kibbles & Bits moved to town with Mom & Dad) and picked wild strawberries.  In August we had a belated high school graduation complete with a parade and fireworks. It doesn't seem possible that we have an adult son now. He's now working at his dream job at the local museum! Congratulations Donovan!! Indian Head Massage Indian Head Massages have a long tradition, not only as a massage, but a beauty treatment and family care. Traditionally, women in India would massage all their family members. Oil is applied all through the hair as a cl...

End of An Era and No One Knows what the Future Holds The end of the school year, work reopening and the process of moving my parents all collided the end of June and beginning of July. Plus father's day, an 18th birthday, a 16th birthday, my mom's birthday, our 21st anniversary, and the graduation that wasn't. So time for blogging is few and far between.  The farm has been in my family since 1913, and since the 70s, my parents have also farmed my grandmother's family homestead. That's over a hundred years of deep roots to dig up since they have sold it to a neighbour and decided to move to town. It took the whole first week of July to just deal with the clutter that needed to be disposed of properly. Paint cans, electronics and glass were hauled to the transfer station for recycling. A load of building supplies to the Habitat for Humanity Re Store, another to the thrift store. Anything that can be recycled or repurposed is something that stays out the garbage. My fa...

I mentioned, briefly in passing, in the summer cooking post, that we made homemade root beer. We have been making homemade wine for years, mostly from kits, a little from scratch. A year or two ago we ventured into gluten free beer. Now that we had invested in the bottles and capping tool, I wanted to make root beer. Me, being me, wanted to do it completely from scratch, with sassafrass and sarsparilla root. Turns out it's really hard to get in Canada, and expensive to ship. So, we finally decided to do it the "easy" way and pick up a root beer package from our local brew store. The "kit" comprised of a small brown bottle of flavouring syrup and a packet of yeast. If anyone hasn't made wine, mead (remind me to tell you my mead story one day!) or beer, here's the process in a nut shell. In a big bucket of water add some type of sugar and yeast. Let it ferment, and you get alcohol. The type depends mostly on your sugar source; honey=mead, fruit juice=wine,...

Waste not, want not!  As we continue to empty out the freezer in preparation for the beef and chickens we ordered from local farms, we are coming across all sorts of things we forgot about. The big bag of suet has been rendered into tallow for future projects. I also found some beef liver that was buried. Half of the family really like organ meat, but these are old and freezer burnt. So the plan is to dehydrate them into dog treats. The liver was sliced thin by the butcher, so it doesn’t require any prep. The key to good dehydration is small pieces or thin layers. Liver Jerky for Dogs It turns out that dehydrating liver smells REALLY bad! It stunk up the whole house! We had to haul the dehydrator out of the laundry room in the basement, on to the deck. I felt bad for our neighbours. I said I would never do it again, but Rodeo really loves them and she's not a fan of store bought dog treats. I probably just have to let enough time go by that I forget the smell! I also fo...