March! I love March! This month always seems like the turning point for the me in the year. I want to do things because winter is almost over, spring is coming, and the weather is getting warmer. In Iowa, the weather was so mild this winter that winter did not seem like such a hardship!

We started off the month with my oldest turning 17! Where did time go? How did she get so grown-up? She is becoming a wonderful young lady who we are all very proud of!

Besides her birthday, both of the older girls were involved in the school play and did wonderfully! Paige graduated from DARE and is now very knowledgeable about drugs and alcohol. Paige and Dane have been loosing teeth and we are seeing a lot of gaps!

I have been canning this month! Canning in March! I can’t believe it, but that shows how much my attitude has been changing in being self-sufficient and making more of our own food. I canned 6 quarts and 1 pint of chicken stock. Rob brought back some green beans from Florida and I got to can 16 pints and 6 quarts of green beans. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts were on sale this month so I canned 14 pints of chicken also.

I love having this stuff on my shelves and knowing that it came from my efforts. I know some of you think that canning is a lot of work, but really it is not that much work and the results are well worth the effort.

I also know that I do not have nearly enough pint jars. I will be scouring garage sales for more of these as well as more rings and lids. I am getting my garage sale list together for what I want to find this year. This is very helpful to me to have a list and keeps me from becoming a cast member on Hoarders.

Otherwise, we have been cleaning the house aka spring cleaning. The house has needed it! Wow! I need to do a lot more, hopefully this weekend when we are home. I have been looking at everything with a critical eye for keeping and how many uses do items have. I have been working on being prepared for emergency reasons right now. I prepare for so much more than that, but my focus has been on family emergency preparedness right now along with food storage.

I am looking forward to picking up the half of beef I ordered today. I can’t wait to have all that deliciousness in my freezer! I will end up paying roughly $2.44 a pound for all of it. Compared to what the prices are in the store and quality of the beef in the sore, this is a good price!

On the gardening end, the garlic I planted in December is up! Yeah! I also started seeds for onions and bell peppers. I am still thinking about starting seeds for tomato plants, but I am still weighing the pros and cons of this. If all goes well, I will have 36 onion plants, 10 bell pepper plants, and, if I do tomatoes, 10 tomato plants. The onions have sprouted so I feel good about that. The peppers look as though they will be sprouting soon.

I also noticed my potatoes that I set aside for this years garden are sprouting. I have decided yet if I will plant those on Good Friday. Does anyone else do this?

Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

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