School is out and the fun has started. The kids are taking turns staying with me for a few days at a time (well it was more like a week for Ari LOL). The goal of these short stints is to give each one individual attention and to do things that are special and fun with them.

The most important thing in any kids life is love! I don't think we need a scientific study to tell us that love is very important for a child to grow up to be a loveing nuturing adult. This means there needs to be loving nurturing adults in the kid's life. But lots of kids have that in their life so what makes a homestead kid different than kids that don't grow up on a homestead? Wide open spaces and the ability to touch, learn and live experiences.

Love! What's love got to do with it? Everything. It is for love that we do the things we do. We keep our grandkids for love. We dog sit the kid's dogs for love. We help our grandkids with homework and pick them up from school and all kinds of other things. All out of Love. So when the kids said "Hey Mom, Can you watch the kids while we run away to Hawaii for a week?" It was out of love that I said, "Yes". Of course, about halfway through the week I was questioning my sanity LOL.

Anyone who has been dehydrating for a while will tell you that you need something to cover your dehydrator trays when you are drying fruit leathers, liquids or anything else that could fall or ooze between the holes of the mess sheets. 

There are options out there.  There are disposable options and reusable options.

There are many types and breeds of livestock guardians out there and which is used is dependent upon individual hoestead needs. 

Every experienced homesteader knows that this time of year is one of the busiest times on

the  homestead but for new homesteaders this can often be an overwhelming time of year.

Have you ever come across a great sale on produce but thought you couldn't buy it becuase you have not place to store all those carrots in the frig or more jars on your shelves?  I know we all hate to admit it but there does come a time when there is just no more space for storage.  If you tried to store another 40 pounds of carrots your shelves might fall in. 

At times like that it's time to dehydrate and take it even one step further and powder your dehydrated produce.  It works really great on foods like sweet potatoes and carrots.  Because we all know there are hundreds of things to do with carrots and sweet potatoes.

Powdered carrots are great to keep in storage becuase it turns that 40 pounds of carrots into literally ounces.  They are great to use as baby food, sneak veggies into your kids food and even just mix them up and eat them plain.  They are just yummy.

Recently I dehydrated about 20 pounds of apples.  I peel and core my apples before dehydrating them so that made for a lot peels and cores.  They would never go to waste because we have the goats and chickens that love to have them as a treat but I just couldn't help thinking there had to be a way to use them to make a tastey treat that we could eat.  Especially since much of the vitamins are in the peels and core of the apple.  I decided to start experimenting and this is a tastey little treat that I came up with.  Yes, it uses the entire peel and core, seeds and all.  If you like you can remove the seeds but I leave them in.