Easy Crockpot Pork Loin

One of my family's favorite things to eat is pork, so one of my favorite things to cook is this easy crock pot pork loin. It takes all of 5 minutes to get it going.

Here is what you need. 

A pork loin

This is my favorite. This one is just over 5 lbs. I have used 2 of the smaller ones. I have also just cooked 1 small one for about half the time. The only problem is my family ate it all in one night. 

You also need the following

BBQ sauce - I like Sweet Baby Rays, but really any high quality, thick BBQ sauce will work. I use about half of this 40oz bottle. 

A 12 oz can of soda of your choice. Today I used coke, because I didn't have any at home and I had to stop at the gas station to get one. Coke is my soda of choice to drink, this was an excuse to get one for myself. This weeks bible study is about self control - 2 days in and I am failing!

You can also use 2 bullion cubes, or just salt and pepper. 

Just start putting it in the crock pot. 

I add a little bit of water to almost cover the pork. 

Cook for 8 hours on low. 

Today I actually cooked it for about 3 hours on high and 3 hours on low. 

This is what it looks like when it is done! Yummy

My family likes the gravy to be a bit thicker so I make a rue with about 3 tablespoons of butter 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, and 3 tablespoons of flour. I didn't get pictures. My family was ready to eat. 

Finishing my Cow Working

Thursday I needed to finish up the cow moving! It was a funny day. First, we penned a cow that needed A.I. later in the afternoon. When I got back to the barn this is what I found

My first question was How? Then Why?

I am not even sure where she was planning to go, but I undid a couple of chains and got her out. No harm, no foul. 

Latter in the afternoon I had to make this gap go away. It's a pretty big hole under a gate that baby calves can fit through. The baby calves that we were weaning!

On the way home from school with Cooper, I thought that there would be a pretty sunset and I LOVE sunsets. My plan was to take my DLSR with me to drop the cows at the lease place. It's is a perfect place to take sunset pictures. Well as with most things my plans get changed. Andy decided to haul the cows for me, which made me happy until I looked up and saw an amazing sunset!!

This was a beautiful sunset and I captured it with my phone. I was a little disappointed that I did not have my DLSR for that one. 

After I fixed the gate, I needed to move some water hoses to be able to water the baby calves. The old hose had several holes in it. This is what happened when I moved the water hose

Ugh.....what a day!!

Wednesday on the Farm

Early this week while we were experiencing the wonderful January thaw, I decided I needed to move a few cows around. So I decided I would do it Wednesday morning. I discussed with the guys, decided to add a few more things to my project and planned to get an early start Wednesday morning. 

Well....... The early start didn't happen. I was supposed to trap the cows before i left to take Cooper to speech, but for some reason I didn't make it out before we had to leave. 

After we got home from speech, I needed to make a few phone calls, so by the time I got to the cows it was mid morning. They cows were also pretty scattered, so it took a bit to get them all penned. 

Most of cows are trained pretty well. Usually all I have to do is tie a feed trough to the back of the 4-wheeler and pour some feed in it and drive around. The cows will start following. 

Most of the cows did just that. They followed me right in to the trap. However there were a few holdouts. There always is. Plus baby calves are just pretty uncooperative. 

So, it took two try's to get everyone in the trap. Well almost everyone. The were a couple of young calves that refused. Also I figured out later a big calf and a cow I needed didn't make it in the trap. Hubby came to the rescue when he got home from work. He is the best. 

Then only about half of the cows would fit in the lot at a time. It went like this, pack the lot with cows and calves. Sort out the ones I need, turn out the ones I didn't need, put the rest on the lot, sort, and finally get the rest of the baby calves in the lot. The lot was really muddy. So this was a slow process. 

I kept all (most) of the calves in the pen to give them some shots. I also sorted some cows to take to another pasture. As well as kept some cows to artificially inseminate.  

At one time I had cow in every pen in the lot. I finally got all them together in one place

I vaccinated all the calves. I weaned some calves that their momas were looking a little thin. 

I finally finished (mostly) around 8. 

Not Another Pioneer Woman

I have struggled with this blog for a long time now. I was encourage to write it by my sweet friend Terrie. She said, "You are just like The Pioneer Woman." 

Well, I love The Pioneer Woman. I own all three of her cook books. My kids love the Charlie the Ranch Dog stories. I enjoy watching her cooking show, it has giving me wonderful ideas in my own kitchen.  And, I do make cinnamon rolls to all my friends at Christmas!!

I also enjoy writing and photography. But that is pretty much where the similarities end.  

I don't homeschool my children, I know I am not organized enough for that. Plus my daughter really loves school. 

I DO NOT ever get up at 4 am to cook breakfast for my family for anything. In fact I don't believe in getting up at anytime that starts with a 4 unless it's from my Sunday afternoon nap. If we have to go some where early, my family better hope there is a Whataburger or gas station on the way. 

I DO NOT cook lunch and take it to my working family at the cow pens. There are several reasons for this the 2 main ones are, first the cow pens are like 150 yards from my house and second I am usually working right beside my family. 

Now, please don't miss understand me. The Pioneer Woman is amazing and I love her. I am just not her and not ever going to be her. We truly live different lives. 

So if you want to read about some of the crazy things that happen here at Gardner Farms stick around and see what crazy things I get my self into!

I will also post a few recipes from time to time!

Now I am going to wrap this post and go put out hay. 

New Puppies

If you have ever read the post A girl and her dog, you know that we had three sweet dogs.

Lady – the dog the post is about and Micky and Buck the dogs Andy and I each had when we got married.  Well almost a year and a half ago we lost our sweet Micky. I could not talk about it here when it happened. It was pretty sad around here for several days. But we had Lady and she did soften the blow of losing Micky some.

Sometime last summer Lady took up with Papa. She started riding the Kubota with him and she started staying at their house. When it got cold Nana started letting her sleep inside. The long and short – Lady moved out and moved in with Nana and Papa. She still comes to visit sometimes and will sleep on the porch. Well after she moved out, Andi Beth started asking for a puppy again. To make matters worse her cousin M adopted a sweet little dog named Daisy.

We spent part of mother’s day weekend with my sister-in-law, B and M and the new dog. All the way home Andi Beth asked for a puppy, and finally I gave in. I had seen a picture of some cute shelter puppies on Facebook, and decided to call about them. Those puppies were gone, but they had some Chorkie puppies. Part Yorkie, part Chihuahua.

After Andi Beth left for school Cooper and I, along with my mom, went to the shelter to look at the puppies. The mistake I made was to take Cooper with me. We ended up bringing two puppies home. We named them Addie Rose and Sassy.

As luck would have it Sassy got sick and did not make it, so I went back to the shelter and got the last puppy from the litter. A boy, we named Rocky.

Addie Rose and Rocky had made themselves part of this family. I am not sure what we would do without them.  They go with us whenever they can. The kids love playing with them!

Here are a few pictures of them

Cooper is trying to get to Rocky to ride in the back of his truck

Sister is trying to tell him how to do it!

He gave up on the back and decide Rocky should ride in his lap.

The puppies really want to cuddle with Buck, but he is not happy about it.

This is the two of them in the car going to the 4th of July party.

All of these pictures were taken with my iphone. Not something I usually post, but it was all I had

What I Would have Missed

Normally I get up about 5am four (or three) morning a week to go to my boot camp class at Genesis Fitness. Sometimes, when I don’t feel like getting up, I will go to the evening class. Yesterday when my alarm went off, I did not want to go work out. I told Andy I would just go to the evening class, and I rolled over to go back to sleep. About 60 seconds later I heard the puppies start to move around and knew they needed to go out. At that point I knew I might as well get up, get dressed, and go because taking the puppies out would take a few minutes then it would be about 40 minutes until it was time for Andy to get up. So, getting any extra sleep was really out of the question.

So, I got dressed, let the puppies go potty and put them back to bed, and got in the car. All this time I was telling myself that the only workout I ever regretted was the one I did not go to.

I made it to the gym only about 2 minutes late, which really is normal. We had a great workout. Joseph is amazing. It was great to see the ladies I work out with as well. As I was heading home, I was thinking, “I am so glad I did not miss that workout!”

Then I looked out my window, the sun was coming over the trees and I saw the most beautiful sunrise.  I see the sunrise most mornings, but somehow this morning seemed different. It was like God was saying, “See what you would have missed.” No I did not manage to snap a picture; I was too busy enjoying the sunrise

I continued my drive home. When I turned on the county road I saw the two doe deer that I see most mornings, and with a closer look I saw their fawns.  We see fawns from time to time, but this morning I got to see this pair pretty close up. I love seeing fawns, I have seen deer all my life and they are really common here on the farm, but I was grown before I ever saw a fawn in the wild. Just another thing I would have missed if I would have slept late.

When Andy got home yesterday afternoon and asked if I wanted to go check the cows at the lease pasture. Of course, I said yes! Andy asked if I was sure I didn’t need to go work out, and I told him I was glad I had gone this morning. I had also done my endurance workout earlier in the day, thanks to the energy I had from going to boot camp.

Cooper decided he would ride with us. So we all loaded up and headed to check the cows. We had lots of fun. I enjoyed watching Cooper and Andy together. Cooper loves the cows.

It was good family time. All family time I would have missed if I would have waited until this afternoon to work out!

And it was inspiration to get up this morning and go.

I love the way working out makes me feel. I love that I have a trainer that offers a class so that I can work out and stay fit and not interfere with my wonderful family time!

PlayTri Race Recap

I am about a month late writing this……Wasn’t going to write a race recap, but changed my mind.

Left home to meet my taveling partners at Kroger in Nacgdoches about 9:45, I was running a bit late. It was storming pretty bad at home and Andy had gone to Timpson for a few minutes. I wanted to make sure he was on his way home before I left, in case the power went out. We had 42 day old chickens and Steve was fishing, the reasons why Andy was not going with me.

I had agreed to ride with some other girls that train with NET, this was a chance for me to work on not being completely in control all the time. (I don’t do well not having my car.)

Left for Los Colinas (Dallas) about 10:20 or so. Robyn was a great driver, but I still go a little car sick – so not her fault. She very sweetly stopped in Canton for a potty break and a snack. I also took some medicine then felt a little better. The only reason I noted that I got car sick was this should have told me that I was going to need to take medicine before the swim the next morning.

We got to the hotel, finally. There was tons of road construction plus the professional race, so we got a tour of Los Colinas. We checked in to the hotel and went to eat a late lunch. I was starving, so I ate probably more than I should, but it was good. We walked back to the hotel, picked up packets and I went to the room to rest until supper. I feel asleep and almost missed supper, partly because I was tired and partly from the medicine for motion sickness. We went to Jason’s Deli. I could not eat much because of the late lunch, but I took my left overs with me. We went to target to get a few last minute things. We returned to the hotel about 7:30. I walked down to transition to check it out. The race staff told me where they thought my rack would be. I went back to my room, ate a few more bites of my supper. I checked on the kids and Andy. Made sure all of my stuff was ready. Put on my tattoo numbers.  I laid down, turned the tv on and fell asleep pretty quickly.

At a little before 12 the chicken houses started calling, and calling, and calling. I tried to call Andy, text Andy, nothing. Finally after about 30 minutes, I acknowledged the alarm and went back to sleep. At 2 am Andy decided to respond to the text, I think. I ignored it and went back to sleep. Transition opened at 5:30, so I got up at 5:25 through on a shirt and went to rack my bike. It took me a while to find my spot because I wasn’t were I was told it would be. I was able to get an end spot on the rack. I set my stuff out, picked up my timer and went back to my room. I was still pretty tired from the lack of sleep so I sent an alarm on my phone and laid back down. My start time wasn’t until 8:15 so I did not need to eat just yet. I got back up about 6:30. I ran down to catch the last of the Olympic athlete meeting, check my transition stuff and watched our Olympic athletes start the swim. I was about 7:15 so I went to the room and ate my bagel with peanut butter, drank some water and took my 0₂ gold. (Should have taken motion sickness meds, but did not). Kind of chilled out, but I could not call anyone because I had left my phone in transition. I went down about 7:45 for the sprint athlete meeting. Sat with some of the other NET girls, watched the Olympic athletes finish. Finally it was time for our start.

For the sprint waves you line up by assigned cap color. I was in the 3^rd to last group, I think. I got in the water when it was my time; the water was a little cool right at first but not bad. I moved to the front left of the start group. You had to tread water a minute or two. I started my watch at about 20 seconds to start. When I started the swim I was determined to swim, not breast stroke or something like that. About ½ to the first buoy I started to feel dizzy and like I could not breathe well. Not as bad as last year, but I was still struggling. I still had to breast stroke more than I wanted to, but I never felt like I was drowning. The swim was also longer than it was last year.  I was out of the water in 13 minutes and on the bike by 17 minutes. Transition took a little longer than I wanted. I am really not sure what slowed me down.

When I got on the bike and looked at my watch and saw 17 minutes I was pretty bummed. I was on the bike in 12 minutes last year. So…. I really wanted to make up some time. The bike was a two look course and basically the same as last year. I was feeling pretty good, drinking my electrolyte drink. My nutrition plan was electrolytes in my water on the bike and a gel every 30 minutes or so. I made the first loop of the bike in little less 30 minutes. I was very happy! All the riding on the hills and bad roads at home was paying off!! I wanted to pick up the pace on the 2^nd loop, but somewhere about halfway in to the second loop I could tell I was slowing some. I finally hit the big downhill stretch and tried to push hard. I pushed hard back into transition ready to get off the bike and go pee. I racked my bike, changed my shoes, and grabbed my belt. Last year they had portapottys on the run out. This year, they had two turned the wrong way and they were full, so I figured I was just push through. Ugh big mistake. This made the run miserable, and I started trying to not drink as much - ?? bad plan. The run was hard. It was an out and back twice, there was a little bit of an uphill, and NO shade. Any way I kept pushing. Tried my best to run/walk. After the line to divide those that were looping and those that were finishing I found a little more energy and did my best sprint to the finish!!

I was little disappointed in my time overall, but was very pleased with my bike time. After I thought about the race some and talked to Becky I felt better. I feel that the swim was probably longer than the 500 meters as compared to the swim last year that was likely short. Also the run last year was very short. So, overall I have decided to be happy with my time!