NEW INVENTORY!

The best place for the most origional cool hats for the season!



We have tons of new spice mixes. This chili is awesome just for the fun story on the packaging! Award winning Caldwell County Chili can keep you warm this winter!

I LOVE these spices packaged in the shape of a carrot! Lots of flavors to add to our mix! Marc's Salsa, Boursen cheese blend, Onion Dill dip, Dill & friends, Herb Garden, Mulling spice and also a sweet pumpkin dip!

Quick and easy dinners in handsome packaging :) Beans and rice how nice!

These spice packs are shaped as Christmas tree ornaments! Mulling spices and a variety of dips and salsas! YUM!

The Hungry Yankee Moose mixes are back! Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix, Double Chocolate Brownie mix, Chocolate Chip Pancake mix, Chocolate Crinkle Cookie mix, Wheat Beer Bread mix, and Blond Brownie mix!

Lots of new hot sauces and jams and chutneys! Howlin' Hollar Hot Sauce with Pumpkin, Papa Jack's Buffalo Hot Sauce, Hot Sauce Creepin' Quag, Spittin Fire Hot Sause regular and XXX! Jams include Jalepano Raspberry (my favorite to make at home) and Blueberry Rhubarb! We also have all the regulars including Sweet Pepper Relish, Triple Berry, Strawberry Rhubarb, and Apple Cider Jam!

New soaps for your dog including Repellant, Moisturizing, and Deodorizing! New Soaps for your kids made of organic honey, natural yellow clay, and baby powder!

New fun earings!

Great baskets for the dog lover!

Individually wrapped dog treats in Peanut Butter and Parmeson!  YUM!

We have restocked on the Peppermint Bark from Peppermint Bark Company of Bolton, CT - Delicious!

We've restocked on our alpaca survival socks from Valpaca!  These are THE BEST and I wear mine all winter!

Holiday scented goat soaps and candles including tea lights!  We've restocked on felted soaps in holiday scents!  These make great stocking stuffers or additions to gift baskets!

We have tons of origional, affordable, fun, perfect stocking stuffers for everyone in the family!

Lovely Mondays!

Mondays used to be hard to take, but now it is our day 'off' and its wonderful.  We get all the cleaning, errands, shopping, catchingup stuff done on Mondays.  Tonight I went to a cookie exchange which is the greatest idea!  How else can you get a variety of cookies for your parties without cooking a variety?  You save time and money and you get the greatest new treats and recipes!

Also, in the happy new category - My niece Kaylah brought a flashlight over so we could 'candle' the incubated eggs and we have LIFE!  Our first chick is due on the 23rd and I'm sure much will go wrong, but we are getting very excited!  Of course, people don't usually hatch chicks in winter in New England so we will have to keep them indoors and under heat lamps, but it will be an exciting project to have fun with while we have time to deal with new chicks and we have a super set up in the basement.

My sister came over yesterday and helped me make more lotion bars - we made Lavender X which is a stronger lavender for women and natural honey with no scent for men.  I LOVE these bars.  I have the type of skin that suffers in the dry winter and I use the bars regularly all day.  I keep one large bar in my purse and I have a backup tin at work.  And I love the smell of lavender, so soothing.

John has fallen asleep with a book in front of the fire and I should put this crochet project away for the night and get some sleep myself.  Be well!

PS - Gift of the day is Lunastix.  Get the kids off the video games and into life!

Cookstove!

This is my first bread with the cookstove and it is perfect! I made the white bread recipe (you can see it on my channel on youtube - look up 'Connecticut Country Store' or goto our website http://www.connecticutcountrystore.com/ or goto the bottom of this blog) using King Arthur flour with about 4 tbsp of dried rosemary. So far we've made fried eggs, chicken, corn muffins, pancakes, pasta, and now bread on the cookstove AND the house is around 70 degrees all the time! I love this thing!

Cookstove adventures

John and I kept the house at 60 degrees in the winter to save money on oil for our first few years in the house.  Last year we got a woodstove for the basement which helped us save money and keep it at 62-65 degrees.  This year we put a cookstove in the living room.  The house was 76 degrees last night, we had to open a window to cool it back down!  It was like a summer night!  We definately have to get used to this new heating tool, it is too efficient!  We also have cooked dinner, fried eggs, heated water, and last night John made cornbread muffins in the oven while we watched a redbox movie!  Tomorrow I'm going to attempt a white bread (you can get the recipe on youtube, search "Connecticut Country Store" or you can find links on this blog or the website http://www.connecticutcountrystore.com/!)

The new building is here!!!!

Craft night making wreaths :)

We all had a great time making wreaths and we had so many people we had to work in shifts!  We also had Pam's delicious lemon cake and I made one of our new hungry moose double chocolate brownie mixes - it tastes homemade, but is soooo easy!  If you want to join our group, check out our schedule on our websites 'upcoming events' page (http://www.connecticutcountrystore.com/).  It is fun you don't want to miss!  Next week is open craft night and the week after is ornament making night!

A busy day at the store!

We are cleaning up and moving around items to prepare for the new building, John will be preparing the outside tomorrow!  This is really exciting and we've gotten some great new products to share!

We also got an egg incubator today to start attempting to hatch Harriet's eggs :)  I haven't been able to master the temp and humidity yet but I'm hoping to have it down by Friday when she gives me another egg.  Usually at 9:30am on the dot!

The goats were still in a fuss this morning but settled down by this evening.  This is VERY good because they were making all the birds go wild with their yelling and beating the fence!  We are thinking maybe Cricket will wait another year to be a momma, she just isn't interested at all.  We do have a good mate for her if she changes her mind.  We will have to wait and see.

Stay warm and be well!

Babies due April 28th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These 2 angels were hooting and holloring this morning for some goat love (I guess Lamancha did not get pregnant the first trip!) so we packed them in and headed to the farm.  Lamancha (Buttercup) was bread with a black and white Lamancha and the sannen/alpine (Cupcake) was bread with a colorful alpine buck yearling.  The due date give or take a week is April 28th.  We are very excited for our grand'kids'.  I'm thinking a baby shower around April Fools would be perfect!

Yeah! We have our cookstove set up!

John and I waited a year to save up the money to buy this and change the chimney to accept a woodstove!  We are so thrilled!  Now we just have to wait for it to get cold again.....

Turkey day

This morning was the last for the turkeys.  I cared for them as best I could and tried to give them what they needed with comfort and plenty of food.  I cried while setting up for the day and then left before the processing started.  I feel bad about this but I just wasn't ready to help, I loved those turkeys.  Luckily, I have a lot of great friends and family who processed 10 turkeys - the smallest weighing 34 pounds fully dressed.  I honestly don't know how we are going to fit the big ones in the oven (the biggest was 43 pounds). 

Their size alone demonstrates my need to learn more about what I am doing in raising these birds.  I obviously fed them too much.  They seemed happy, though, and that was my main objective - to raise happy healthy birds.  I guess I just raised them a little too happy on the food!

This afternoon I went to another farm to spruce up my decorative flock for the spring.  I got 2 white silkies and 2 cochins - 1 black, 1 blue.  The silkies might be carrying fertilized eggs of colored silkies and that is what I am hoping for, too.  The cochins are only 3 months old.  The silkies are 6 months old.  Right now everyone is happy about the additions except Harriet who is feeling a little cramped in her very large and nice housing.  My mother always said, "you can't please everyone all of the time!"

I am hoping to post nice pictures of the additions tomorrow.  Be well!

Easy homemade FREE nesting beds for your Bantams!

This is our Bantam chicken house with my new FREE nesting boxes made from scraps in the basement.  Let me tell you how they are made:



First you have to search your basement or garage for a board, 9 screws and washers, a thin piece of wood like some left over trim, and 5 large plant containers - we used some from trees we planted.  If you are local to us, I would be happy to give you some of our left-overs.



This is the set up of how it works.  screw planters to board using washers.  screw thin trim to the front with washers.  This is to hold in the shavings and/or straw when the bird exits the box.

This is a picture of how I screwed the planter to the wood using an old washer.  I brought the planter right up to the board's edge.

Here you can see what it looks like.  I had the board on a stand but that is unneccessary for sucess, its just an add on.

Here is a front view.  You can see the middle container has holes.  This should have no effect.  I like this design because I can powerwash the beds when they get dirty - and THEY WILL!

I hope this is helpful to you!  Be well!

November 2011 on the farm

Time is flying by over here in our little quiet corner of Connecticut.  Our farm is growing, our store is growing, our lives are growing.  It amazes me as I write this how much our lives have changed the past few years.  Noone who has known me over the years would expect that I'd spend this morning feeding farm animals, mucking stalls, collecting eggs, and opening the doors of our own store - especially me.  And it is all done with a smile on my face because those are the moments, the times when I am so comfortable with where I am and what I am doing.  I am so blessed to have a partner that wants to share this crazy adventure with me.  A partner willing to work hard, embrace the conservative living, skip the Dunkin Donuts (most days), and live a life the is so full we could never be considered 'poor'.  This is the life.  Be well.

Fun Turkey Film

Enjoy!
Turkeys destroying treats!

New Body Balm Bars and Tins!

I am so excited to be able to offer these body balms in the store!  We had a farm we bought different scents from last year but they stopped providing them.  I was so sad because I loved them and they were so good for my hands and feet and they smelled so good!  This year with  more time to think and plan I decided to make my own with the beeswax from out hard working hives - and it is better than I imagined.  The natural scent from the beeswax is so nice and with a touch of lavender it is heavenly!  The small tins are a great way to keep your skin protected on the go, not to mention a nice way to relax with a nice scent in the middle of a stress filled day.  The body bars come in the shape of a flower, a 'joy' stone, a 'smile' stone, and a 'love' stone.  I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!  Be Well!

September 24, 2010

A few years ago 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle' inspired me to eat more thoughtfully. To eat the foods here that are fresh and delicious and made by our nieghbors and friends. Tonight I had chicken that was raised across the street with raspberry/jalepano jelly from my garden and rice with butter from a local farm and my own banana bread for dessert and a homebrew nut brown ale and it was awesome. And for those who know me all too well - yes I did fry my banana bread in butter - there is no other way :)


I've read lots and lots of books and magazines and articles (my dad is very good about stocking my shelves) about sustainable living and the foods we eat. When we began this adventure into sustainable living and making better choices it seem insurmountable. What I have learned these past few years is that you take it one step at a time, one day at a time, even one moment at a time.  I have also learned that there a lot of things words on paper cannot describe or teach you, and for those things you can rely on friends and family to show you the way.

One of our main objectives in this adventure was to teach others sustainable living practices.  Although we have done a little, we have so much more to do!  In 2011 I will make one of my main objectives in the store to reach out to others and encourage the small changes that can make a difference.

Beeeeeeezzzz

Mom and I fed the bees, fed the goats, picked 2 pints of strawberries and enough rhubarb for a pie, and worked on mom's facebook page!  We had a great time, well, I did- haha!  Not sure how thrilled mom was to feed bees.  She didn't flinch, though, didn't look scared in the least!

John and I are working on a plan for our next Family Day which will be in June! I will post as soon as we verify the date! We will have the petting zoo again and might even have a face painter :) So many fun plans for the summer! I can't wait to share them all. My favorite thing about running the Connecticut Country Store is meeting all the neighbors and friends in our area - awesome people! Be well!