A short trip to North Carolina

Sveta went with me to get some apples up in North Carolina. We stopped at the welcome center for her to see some things inside and she feel in love with the burning bush! She needed a close up!

After getting the apples, we stopped at another farm where they made some cute animals.

Here are the horses. She also loved the huge pumpkins. She's excited to learn about Halloween and we got a small pumpkin to carve a jack-o-lantern.

September catch up!

I have been going to blog several times this month but it's been a hectic month and "stuff" got in the way so I'm playing catch up.

Our "princess Haily" turned 4 on September 14. They have a wonderful Grandma Fuller who makes various princess play dresses for them to use. This one is a little big but Grandma Fuller can make it right. How can I compete with princess dresses! I am giving Sydney piano lessons.

It doesn't matter what size box we happen to get in the mail, big boy, our cat has to use it as a nap.

Once the heat let up some, we've had a final push from the garden with some extra produce. Our peppers have outdone themselves and I have made the most delicious pepper relish.

I have been planting various types of baby greens in the greenhouse and picked this yesterday! It made the best salad!

That catches me up for the highlights!

Let the sun shine! We are solar!!!

We are hooked up and are now solar! They got everything tested and hooked up on Saturday. It didn't take any time at all for the batteries to be charged and going. Even today (Monday) with rain, it is still charging. We are still testing capabilities but during the day, except for the air conditioning, we are running solar!

Now we have to start the process to be hooked into Duke Energy and let them pay us for unused power!

Budding artists!

Sydney and Haily love art. (They did not get that gene from me!) I found some water colors and one fun thing they love to do at Grandmas is get paper and go out on the front porch to paint beautiful pictures! They get some on the porch but I don't care, the rain washes it off and they love it!

Solar panels are up!

Here is the 30th solar panel going up on the roof.



I have started breathing easier now that they are just above the deck!



They have gotten pretty proficient at this.


Here they all are up on top! You cannot see any of them from road in the front of the house.


Now for hooking up and testing the batteries and testing the load on the house!

Canning Beef Stew!

One thing I've loved about canning the past two years are starting to can meat and starting to can convenience foods. I dug up some of our potatoes this week and had some tomatoes and onions left along with some of our herbs so I added some carrots and stew beef and made some delicious beef stew. Fortunately, one jar didn't seal so we were able to eat it for dinner. Yum! All I can say is we didn't can enough to last through the winter. It will make delicious lunches and an easy last minute dinner!

Sveta got her VISA!!!!

Sveta went to Moscow this week and had her physical and interview at the US Embassy. This took all week. She took a 24 hour train trip on Tuesday and came back Friday night/Saturday. She got her patriarchal blessing while she was there and did get to do a little bit of sight seeing. It was her first time in Moscow. At the embassy, she was asked some questions and fingerprinted and then was told she had her VISA!

We talked through Skype with her yesterday after she got back. The plan is for her to get things organized and pack up what she can bring and then come the first of October and they are planning to be married in the Columbia SC Temple on November, 11, 2011! Everyone help make her welcome!

Canning away!

When I got going in the garden this summer, I didn't think we'd have as good a harvest. Last week the paper said we had the hottest summer in 100 years of record keeping. But we have kept things watered and I have been canning almost daily for the past six weeks. It's starting to wind down to just eating out of the garden. We have okra coming off and are still getting tomatoes, a few cucumbers and green beans, a couple of melons and a ton of peppers.

We have been getting some good deals on peaches for canning and have taken advantage of that. I just love how peaches look when they are canned!

We also U-picked a couple of bushels of tomatoes last week so I could make some wonderful tomato sauce and a few other things. We have had several bushels of tomatoes from our own garden but there are so many things that I can with tomato. I love having them to make soups, salsa, sauce, juice. . . I could go on and on.

We are going solar!

Michael and I decided that we wanted to go solar as much as possible so we invested in a 8 KW solar system for the house. The past two weeks, Michael and our friend Bob Libby have been installing it.

I have to admit, it makes me very nervous to see them up on the roof. They installed the rails that hold panels and did all of the wiring they needed for the rooftop part before putting on any panels.

Eric and Ryan came to help move the panels from the garage to the roof. We have a total of 30 panels but they installed 9 on Saturday.

It took a while lining them up but they think it will now go a lot faster once they have done this first set.

Here is the panel that the wiring will go to and convert the power and below these we will have the large batteries that will be charged and store.

When it is done, we will have Duke Power hook it up to the grid so when we have extra power, they will buy it from us and we will use what we need instead of their power. If the power goes out, we will have our batteries capped and can use it without being on the grid! We figure we will probably be able to almost run the house except for the air conditioning!

Bloom where you are planted!