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Rhubarb: Flavor your spring!

If you are not familiar with Rhubarb, it is a giant leafed perennial with red and green stems.  The stems have many uses but the leaves contain chemicals that make them poisoness to eat. The way the stems look and cut makes them almost identical to celery stalks.  The stems are used for cooking, wine, and medicinal purposes.  If you haven't checked out the mouth watering post about Strawberry-Rhubarb topping yet, click here!

Some fun facts!

• Harvesting time is early spring, before it turns into a flower.
• When you pick it, pull it up by the root.
• There are over 20 types of rhubarb all over the world.
• It can produce for over a decade!

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Rhubarb & Strawberries: Sweet as Spring can be!

As your Spring garden starts to grow the first thing you can harvest are those sweet strawberries and tart rhubarb.  These two often pair together to make a tasty treat.  Whether it is Strawberry-Rhubarb Cobbler or Strawberry-Rhubarb jam, your senses will be delighted! 

So, bring out the ice cream and the fancy dishes.  The secret to this springtime treat is out of the bag!  If you think the springs love affair is only with strawberries try this Strawberry-Rhubarb treat!

Sauce Recipe:

1 cup or 3 stalks of rhubarb cut into 1 inch pieces

2 cups of sliced strawberries

2/3 cup of sugar (Or to taste)

Directions: 

1. Cook the Rhubarb in ½ cup water for 5 to 7 minutes.   
2. Add strawberries, cook another 2-3 minutes and add sugar.  
3. Let cool.

Uses: 

There are endless uses, but here are some of my favs!

Top ice cream for an elegant dessert
OR
Layer with yogurt to make a fancy looking dish!

And lastly, pour over hot buttery biscuit for brunch.

If you would like to know a little bit more about Rhubarb, don't miss our Rhubarb post in Home & Gardening.

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Rhododendron Temperature Forecasting

Many Old Timers have weather predictions in the Appalachians. Some use the wooly warms, others use old sayings such as "Rain before 7, it will quit before 11(AM)".  However most will agree that the Rhododendron is the most reliable indicator for freezing temperatures.

Above freezing, Rhododendron leaves are up and lively.

Around freezing they droop and begin to curl.

In the 20's their leaves have a tighter curl.

As you get close to 0 the tight curled leaves look blue.

As winter draws near, have fun sharing your winter predicting skills with your friends!

Keep warm!

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Money Maker #2!

Making money is on everyone's mind.  We ALL need it.  Towards the end of October this year we tried to "make money from nothing" gathering things that are free and doing something creative with it.  We created a post about this and shared it with the world...or more realistically, we shared it with the people who cared to read it... :)  Click here to read that post.  Well now, we've started a fire in our heart, we want to give people all the ideas we can on how to make some free money.  All it will require is time.  

This month we decided to look around us to see what was needed and what was available.  With Christmas on the way our goal was to make door decorations.  What better things to use than our surroundings!  We gathered all kinds of pine, a variety of different pine cones, ivy, holly, and evergreen.  We already had some wire & ribbon.

One night I created the bows and the next night I tied up the bough's.  The real challenge was finding the buyers!

I did find a Christmas Tree market and sold them to a salesman there for $7 each.  We made $50+ and we are waiting on more, if they sell.

Any money maker ideas you would like us to try?   

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