There are so many old timey things that people just don't do anymore, and they're really terrific! Each fall, we harvest three or four big heavy solid heads of cabbage and cut them up into sauerkraut.
It's really easy, just slice it thin, and layer it in a sterilized heavy crock, or even a plastic bucket, with handfulls of kosher salt mixed in. We bought a clean plastic 5 gallon bucket and use it for nothing else but this project each year. When we've filled the bucket about 3/4 full of the cabbage and salt, we use our fist to pack it down solidly, put a clean china plate on top, and on top of that, a big flat rock, that we save and boil each year. The rock is to hold the plate down on the top of the cabbage.
Then we set it aside to work. After about two months, we lift out the rock, carefully lift off the mold and stuff that grows in the water above the plate, and only then, do we lift off the plate to see the clean white, wonderfully tart and crisp kraut underneath it.
We bag it up into 3 cup servings, and store those in the drawers in the bottom of the refrigerator for just the right day to savor that special treat. Today was one of those days, and we picked up a pound of the marvelous polish sausage that a local butcher makes and simmered it with some of our kraut for dinner.
With it, we boil some potatoes from our root cellars, and on the side, some crunchy fresh veggies. Cucumbers, radishes, and sausage were the only part we had to buy fresh, the rest we "laid by" during those productive warm days of summer and fall.
While enjoying this terrific meal, we took time to think about how many of the old timey things we enjoy doing that seem to be lost to most people these days. We really enjoy harvesting the food off of our own land and preserving it for later, storing it in our own buried root cellars, or otherwise preserving it to enjoy later.
Any day now, we'll head out into our woods to tap the maple trees for syrup. That's another thing that really isn't nearly as hard work as most people think, and sure does yield a delicious dividend. More about that later.
For now, it's cold and snowey outside, and I've got a full stomach of healthy food, and a good book. My only decision now is whether to recline on the comfy couch, or light a fire and sit in the rocker to read. What a life!
So this morning, I dressed up warm, took the camera and went out to shake off the winter blues-and I found the blues! But a different kind than I expected.
Even Jim's Owl's Haven totem pole, standing out in front of our garage was wearing a snowey cap this morning. It was a beautiful cold crisp, 21 degree, clean sunny winter morning out there, with the sun sparkling off that beautiful white snow, and blue shadows adding depth to everything. 
I tromped around out there for a while, feeding the cats, filling the birdfeeders, and making a start on pruning the blueberries-and there's another blue! 
Even the icicles hanging down from the eave of the house are blue with the siding behind them, and the smoke from the chimney looks blue against the sky. 
This picture is how Jim felt about the water under our house. There's not quite this much, and we're slowly pumping it out, as it seeps in each day.
What an amazing tree we camped under one night on the way home! It dwarfed our camper, and listening to the wind in this tree was like an all night lullaby.
We crossed into Georgia and spent the night at the campground of Skidaway Island State Park. It was cold outside, but we were warm and cozy inside wrapped in our sleeping bags with the electric blanket on top. We took some time in the morning for a beautiful walk through the trails of this neat barrier island. The salt water areas are mingled with small fresh water ponds, and palms, Spanish moss and palmettos everywhere. Very cold though, and Karren wimped out and went back to the motorhome, while Jim walked on to the long trail to see the earthworks left over from the Revolutionary war, and the whiskey stills.
One of our favorite stops is at a local seafood market, where we buy a whole bunch of fresh, never frozen shrimp. So delicious! Jim buys a half dozen oysters, and ceremoniously shucks them out, then sits down to eat them raw, accompanied by a bottle of dark beer. This year he had a special bottle of dark beer from Vermont, a birthday present from our favorite Vermonters. It's a treat he alone loves, and the rest of us just watch. 
We left early Christmas Morning and drove the motorhome south. It was great to see the mountains again, even though they were cold and snowey. We spend Christmas night in a motel in Tennessee, where I used the microwave to warm a pre-packed dinner for my favorite birthday guy. A cornish hen roasted with rosemary and garlic butter, baked potatoes and a delicious salad made up our dinner, served with a nice bottle of chardonney. Cakes are out for me, and he's kind enough to go along with the wheat-free lifestyle too, so his birthday cake was a warmed dish of rice pudding, topped with coffee creamer and birthday candles. 
There was a change of hotels from our original plan, when they closed our original hotel for repairs, so Kim talked the management into finding us another, newer, nicer hotel, where we had a set of rooms so new they still smelled of fresh paint. We're on the 19th floor and the view is just beautiful. We keep seeing flocks of pelicans flying along the beach, BELOW our balcony. What a view!
Just a couple hours after we checked in, we saw two dolphins cruising by off the beach. They looked like they were just slowly rolling along, out for a stroll in the evening. Just gorgeous. We had a great seafood dinner last night at the restaurant next door.
So today, we drove up to the nearby State Park to walk the beach to see what had washed up onto the beach. It was fun to watch the shore birds running through the surf. We found lots of broken shells, one shark's tooth, and a sea anemone. 
Jim got stuck on a pier support when a big wave came in. Funny picture.
