Computer Down Again!

This time I got a blue screen of death. It may get fixed this week, I'm so hoping!
Se ya soon,
Beth

Morning Glories!

The other day I was on the computer and heard some turkey clucking and purring noises, (I guess that's how you describe their sounds). I looked out because they should not be close enough to the house for me to hear them.

They walked over the fence again. These turkeys are not capable of flight so they must have walked, no other way to get out.

I tried to get them off of the deck with a broom but meat turkeys are so friendly that they weren't even scared. They just kept spreading in different directions.

Finally, my morning glories are blooming.

Aren't they the most beautiful thing in the world! I love blue flowers.




Plus, there are a few that are really stunning. They have streaky stripes and faded colors.





I'm not sure if this is normal but it's beautiful. I wonder if I can save the seed? That would be cool.

A cute little honey bee.

So pretty!

I planted them on the garden fence along the driveway, I'm not sure how long they will bloom but I'm happy for these.

Til next time,

Beth

September Happenings

I just downloaded 181 pictures but I have so much to do today that I only have time for a quickie update. I started this at about 7:00 am and just finishing it at 7:00 pm.

Here is a garbage can full of beets to can today. (UPDATE AT 7:00 pm-DONE)

That's a bunch of beets. A guy I work with has pears, jelly and a bunch of other stuff he canned but he has no beets so some of these beets will be traded for pears and jelly!


I spent 30 minutes scrubbing these jars, they were a freebie from a friend but only because they were so dirty nobody wanted to buy them from her garage sale.

A bushel of apples to make into apple sauce, apple butter, pie filling tomorrow plus we need to make salsa and I don't even know how I will because of the beets I am tired.

One of the reasons is because I have to walk around her all day when I try to work in the kitchen. Either she lays right there or along one of the cupboards. I try to make her move but she just lays down in another spot. Always on the alert for a falling piece of whatever, today she was eating beet scraps.

The Thanksgiving turkeys getting big. See how the fence is leaning? Sometimes they take a notion and the walk over the fence, en masse, pushing it until it leans over and they can walk through.

Beans, still more on the bushes to do but I don't care right now but I'm sure I will do them or I will be mad next winter.

My new processor, I burnt up the old one grating crap loads of zucchini.

Picked peppers, still more to do but ya know?

Here is why I am tired. They look yummy though.

I took this picture a few weeks ago, it is a bushel gourd flower, one of the prettiest flowers I've ever seen, looks like fine lace doesn't it?

Til next time, Beth

Spooky Flowers and a busy August!

And a whole bunch of other stuff.

I've spent the last half hour (maybe even an hour) pouring over a really great blog, here's a link if any one's interested:

http://marmitetoasty.blogspot.com/

Completely hilarious, serious, funny, sad, crazy, confusing, funny, did I say funny? She writes about her very young son getting hit by a car, her other sons that she raised by herself, there are snippets of her childhood (which were sad), pictures of her surgery and all other sorts of things. It's quite the roller coaster ride.

Anyway, back to what I should have been doing.......

The month of August flew by and here are bits and pieces of what I have been up to.

The new oven was installed! Thank you Tom and Husband. Tom (BIL) was at a friends house and his friend had a black, 30" (which is exactly what we were looking for) gas oven in his garage that they had bought but they decided not to use and it had been sitting there for months.

It costs, brand new about $1200, they paid $820 at a scratch and dent place but it was immaculate with maybe a little scratch on the handle. So, Kevin wired their closet and we got the stove for free, minus a couple hours labor. It has a super large burner that will bring the canner to a boil in record time, our old stove would barely boil water.

We painted the front of the bottom cupboards.

And the bar.

And this morning I painted a drawer front. Last night I broke the handle tips off of the old, hated handles, sanded the edges, painted them with a nice brown, rough-textured paint (matches our lights) and installed a new drawer slide and screwed on the drawer front.

(p.s. Amy, call me and let me know how it looks, is the handle too curvy?)

What do you think?

Yesterday I looked out and saw Flipper messing around the apple tree. They go out most days to the front yard to eat the apples that have fallen. He was trying and trying to get one off of the tree, they had eaten all the ones on the ground.

Pretty funny to see a goose trying to pick an apple off of a tree. I felt so sorry for him. He worked and worked but couldn't get ahold of one so went out and picked a couple and dropped them on the ground. A browsing goose!

The kids snapped green beans for two hours all the while watching Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure. When the Tequila dance came on I told them to stop and watch this part because it was a classic. I think they thought I was nuts.

Amy (sister) works at a Ford dealership and she said that the Tequila song came on the radio and one of the mechanics jumped up on the bed of the pickup truck he was working on and started to do the dance. She said all the customers that were in the waiting lounge could see him and they were all cracking up.

This is the second, later batch of corn. Much bigger but I don't think quite as sweet.

Beans to snap. My pictures are out of order but it takes too long to sort them once you get them in the post. Blogger should fix that.

Amy and I put these up while watching Pee Wee with the kids and we did a little of the dance when the song came on.

Here is the early corn, smaller but like I said, it was a little sewwtwe (this is why it takes me so long to blog and my posts are so far between, that is what it looked like when I tried to type sweeter). We only froze a little because we ate all the rest.


Side by side - early and later. I think I will only plant the yellow corn next year, corn should be yellow.

Tom (BIL) and Kevin had fun shooting their guns last weekend. Puppy didn't like it, she hid in the house the whole time.


We have a kinda cool shooting bench, no credit to us, it came with the house. You see, when you buy a dilapidated house in red-neck country they all come with a shooting bench. Maybe no indoor plumbing but always a shooting bench.


If we get invaded we will be ready, can't afford the bullets but we have the arsenal. The shells for the bigger guns cost over a dollar each. Bang, a dollar, bang, another dollar, $$$, they had fun though.



Paper plates hung on a piece of plywood with a mound of dirt behind. (There were funny things drawn on the plates that I won't describe.)

Have to go and check the plates.

Trying out the .454.

Always happiest when they have holsters on. The bigger the better!

And.....

We had a party at my mom's house. This is where I grew up. My BIL, Tom built a Tiki Hut (of sorts, actually bigger and better) at the beach and we have had all kinds of fun this summer. Tomorrow is the end of the year party.

See that big tub out on the dock? They have been playing a new game this year. Somebody, usually a good golfer, will stand on the beach and hit golf balls, aiming for the tub. Hopefully not hitting bystanders or swimmers. That is where the part about a GOOD golfer comes in!

They usually stand a little to the left from where I took this picture, but you can see the distance. The object of the game is for the people on the dock to retrieve the balls before they sink. (Also why we need a good golfer.)

The balls sink kinda slowly so if they land close to the dock you can't dive in because you will overshoot them and end up under them and lose them.

So you kinda have to do a really shallow, monkey kinda dive. They also try to catch them which is even better than having to dive for them. But, the best thing is for the golfer to try and hit the bucket.

This had not happened until the last party. I had been watching my cousin Dave hitting balls all day and then all of a sudden one went right into the tub!

It was awesome.

The cheers went up all over the beach! (There were only about 25 people but you would have thought it was a hundred from all the noise.)

Here he is!

The best Water Wedge player at Stewart Lake! He's also on a golf league and really good.

This picture is what happens when you see a beautiful rainbow, run to get you camera and then it's gone. It was beautiful but I guess you had to be there.

Then..........

The son and I enjoy our zucchini bread so much that we spent one evening after work grating craploads of it with my food processor to the tune of 19 bags. I'm a little sick of zucchini now but I still have a bunch more to grate. The only problem is that when I went to chop up some tomatoes for salsa the other evening I loaded up the processor, pressed the button and nothing, zippo, naughta! My processor was dead. Yikes, the thought of grating 10 giant zucchinis by hand....blah! I am on the hunt for a processor.

This may be the last of it.


And.................

Of course you gotta have a Brats cake for an 11 year girl's birthday. Especially a Dairy Queen ice cream cake! When I went to pick it up and pay the cashier said "That will be $30.00 please." I practically fell down! It did not taste $30 dollars good but the 11 year old was beaming so what can you do.

This is the spooky flowers part.

During the work week I get up at about 4:00 am. I make husbands breakfast, pack his lunch and see him out the door at about 4:30. I don't have to go to work until 7:00 so now it's time to relax, get on the computer, do laundry and whatever. I'm usually in a daze and unfuntional cause I hate getting up at 4:00 a.m. Five is fine but something happens to my internal clock at four.

A weeks ago after he left I went out to sit on the back deck to escape from the the heat of the house, itwas still hot from the 90 degrees the day before. I think it was already really warm outside, like 70.

It was kinda misty and foggy when I sat down on the step with my cup of tea. Puppy was with me, ever the shadow. I went back in to get my camera because all the mist made it look really cool. My camera is not an expensive one so I couldn't catch exactly the mood but it was close.

The moon flowers that I have bloom only at night so they really stood out in the dark and the trees in the back looked really cool. There were shadowy figures moving in the background, visible only because they were stark white.

Not ghosts, only big, fat white Thanksgiving turkeys.

There's Puppy and my cup of tea. (plus the towel I was sitting on because the deck was wet)

To give you an idea of how foggy it was check out the next picture.

This is what happened when tried to take a few pictures with my flash on. I guess the flash bounced off of all of the dew drops in the air. Odd huh?

Here is the same scene a little later as the sun started to come up, still really foggy though.

Next on the agenda here:

Paint the back of the house, install a few windows, pickle beets, can carrots, finish drawers, paint cupboard doors, clean freezers and move the small one indoors, can excess meat in freezers, drywall living room, paint kids rooms, finish trim in bathroom, completely remodel our bathroom and on and on etc, etc.

It took me forever to finish this post and there were so many more August activities that I could have included. I'm kinda glad Fall is coming. It would be time to slow down but that is when the inside remodeling work will begin.

Til next time,

Beth

Sweet Corn Trials and Tribulations

I remember being so excited as our neighbor tilled our new garden in the spring.

And then we planted our sweet corn. I've always bought corn to freeze but this year it we decided to grow our own.


It was so fun watching it grow!

Finally the early corn was almost ready to pick.

This is the later variety. Getting really big and kinda heavy.

As you can see from this picture it was so heavy that it started to fall from the wind. Two days later we had a really bad storm and it was ALL BLOWN DOWN. All of it, laying flat on the ground. (sniffle, sob!)

Well.... let me tell ya something. Pick a bad emotion and I felt it. What could we do?? We had no twine or anything to tie it up with and Kevin thought it was hopeless. How in the world do you tie up 40 feet by 40 feet of corn?

Well, I was desperate and desperate times call for desperate measures.

Luckily we had our cucumbers growing next to the corn and we had put up a fence for them to climb up. (They didn't.) But it proved useful in the corn dilemma.

I grabbed the only item in our house that was long, really really, long. Strapping tape!

Kevin told me that I was crazy but I had to try it. I taped up a little of the corn and it seemed like maybe it would work! It was getting late so he said we could try something the next day.

We took a couple rolls of tape out and strapped and strapped. We wove it all along the length and then wove it side to side all along the corn, from one fence to the other, sticking it to itself along the rows in between the stalks.

It may have been a little unorthodox but it worked!

Our neighbors must think that we're crazy.

That tape has held through weeks of rain and wind.

We even had a really blowy thunderstorm a few days ago and I really held my breath, watching out the window for signs of falling cornstalks but nothing.

And yesterday we had our first homegrown corn.

Til next time,

Beth

Hatching Guineas and Eating Locally

And by eating locally I mean very locally, from our own garden. So finally, last week we were able to have a dinner made entirely from our own farm.


First we had a cucumber salad with onions. Kind of a sweet and sour salad with vinegar and a little sugar. Of course we didn't grow the vinegar or the sugar, we just grew the large items.


I picked the biggest beets, boiled them and added real butter, no, I didn't make the butter either.


So, speaking of real butter...a couple of weeks ago the son called and asked me to get milk and butter from the store. Well, I knew that I had butter because I had started buying real butter and had stopped using the cheap tub stuff after I was called back to work.



I am determined to use only real butter because I know thatit is actually a real substance and not chemically "created". For the past month or two I have kept a couple of sticks on a plate, usually on top of the toaster (the cat can't find it there). If it gets left on the other counter it ends up with "lick" marks on it.




Lick Marks





Anyhoo, when I went home, after picking up some milk, I noticed that we did indeed have some butter, soft, on top of the toaster and more boxes in the fridge. So, the next day he calls again and asks me to get some butter.


I'm a little perplexed so when I get home I pointed out to him that we do have butter and showed it to him. It slowly dawned on me (when he looked at the butter with a blank look on his face) that he did not know that there was such a thing as real butter and he did not know that butter comes in stick form.


I have been remiss.



Do not try to take a picture of steaming hot broccoli right over top of it, the steam will fog the lens (and hopefully not cause permanent damage to your camera).




Hold your camera a little to the side of it.



And for the main dish, a little butter fried venison. (It counts as home grown.) We paid a lot of money to fill our deer feeder with corn last year.




On to the Guinea Hatching.

A friend at work has guinea fowl. He wanted to hatch some of the eggs and he did not think his hens would sit so about a month ago he brought me nine eggs. At first I told him they should hatch in three weeks but after some checking into it I was very surprised to find out that guineas eggs take four weeks to incubate.

The eggs are so much smaller than the chicken eggs that I am used to that I was really surprised. It just seemed so strange that a turkey egg, which is at least twice as big as a guinea egg, will take the same amount of time in the incubator.

So finally, after the four week wait they started to hatch.

The first one after I moved to the brooder.

I put the shell in with the brooder and took a picture to give to my friend at work. He's not picking them up for a few days and I knew he was ecxited to see what they look like.

The first one hatched really quick but a second one was pipped but getting nowhere. It had pipped that morning so I waited all day but nothing had happened even the next morning, the keet's little beak was still moving around when I checked it so I knew it was still ok.

I figured that when I got home from work if it was still not hatched that I would take matters into my own hands. So, when I got home about 4:00 and there was still no progress, I picked off a little of the shell, bit by bit to check the membrane for blood in the vessels. They seemed dry so I picked a little more, still dry so I decided to remove the top of the egg and get the little guy out. As I was removing the shell the keet was peeping loudly so I knew it was strong still.

I finally got the end removed and popped it's little head out and it went into action. It kicked and kicked and flopped it's way out of the shell. The yolk sac was retracted and there was no blood at all so obviously it was really ready. I think for some reason it was stuck and couldn't turn in the shell to get itself out.

It scrambled all over the incubator, it didn't even rest for a minute, but couldn't stand up yet. One of it's feet was a little turned in. I held it up every couple of minutes so it could get it's legs under itself a little. I put it in the brooder, after only about an hour, with the other one because it kept peeping, I think it was lonely.

By the next morning the one's foot was normal and they were both doing fine, making little guinea noises and pecking around the brooder. I don't think I can even tell them apart. They were acting a little mean though. One kept pecking the other one's foot and making him cry.

Sadly, none of the other eggs hatched but at least my friend has two to grow up together.

I can see now why they need 28 days to incubate. They are crazy strong and fast as soon as they pop out of that shell. They make poults and chicks look as dumb and slow as turtles.

One does seem to be a little different in color though. Maybe slightly browner and the other one a little grayer. Cute, huh?

Til next time,

Beth

Garden and Chicks and Pickles

Our first batch of pickles. I'm putting up more today so that's why I'm trying to get this post written at 4:30 a.m. I uploaded most of the pictures for the post days ago but have been unable to find time to sit and type.

The garden is coming along. Carrots look great. It is the first year for the garden in this spot so I hope the little guys can find room to grow in between all the dirt clods.




I am trying Romain lettuce this year. I'm not crazy about most leaf lettuce, it's too hard to get the dirt off so I have high hopes for this type. It's a little thicker leafed so hopefully easier to wash.



I have a little cantaloupe started. I hope the bugs don't get it!


I think this is a watermelon. We planted the sugar baby type. I hope I can tell when they are ready.


We have lots of little yellow squash coming. Yummy.

I took this picture more than a couple days ago, I better go and pick it today, it's probably huge now.

Our early sweet corn has tasseled. The garden ended up being larger than we planned so this area in the right of the picture did not get manure spread on it. It's amazing how small some of the corn is compared to the left side, really great proof of the power of poop.

It seems so early for the corn, I can't wait to boil some up for dinner.

See the little ear?

It's been really rainy and grey lately, it was like 60 degrees yesterday (I just heard the weatherman say that on the morning news) and today it's supposed to be warm and sunny so the garden should burst.

Here's the later maturing corn. It's way taller and heaver than the early corn. The wind blew it around a little yesterday. I need to try and hoe around it to help it stay up.

Tomatoes thriving. No bad bugs or worms yet.

We really need to get to tying them up, maybe today. I took the day off to spend some time with the kids. I'm taking the youngest for a horseback riding lesson at one o'clock and I have about 100 other things to get done too. Laundry, pickles, brush dog, if it's ready- freeze borccoli, clean, vacuume, dishes, (Uh oh... I just remembered...I need to hurry and let the young turkeys out of their pen this morning, I'll be right back) and a million other things. I want to work on getting the rest of the cupboards painted this weekend.

I am so looking foward to pickled beets. I need to find a tried and true recipe. Anybody have one?

Onions and garlic.

I wish we had planted more dill. I am going to have to use dried dill today for my pickles.

We had our first broccolli out of the garden. Next year we are going to plant much, much more.

I just love Cleome.

We plan to sell our boat. We were going to fix it up but we hardly ever want to leave the farm. We had someone come and look at it but when we got it out and cleaned it off we realized that we did not want to sell it. Kevin is going to go and get the plates and license and I think we are going boating next weekend. We have a tow behind tube that the kids will love!

We planted these daylilies last year and forgot about them. It was a real treat when they bloomed.

The moon flowers are beautiful but not as beautiful as Puppy!

These two hens fought over a nest box full of eggs and finally got some to hatch. Since they both were squeezing into one box they squished most of the babies but this one lived. I finally moved them to a bigger area. This little chick has two very good moms.

You can't see the chick very well in this picture but it's there.

(When I went out to let out the turkeys one of the hens was out of the pen. The lighter colored hen had gotten out so I had to let the baby and the other mom out in the pen with the big chickens and turkeys. I hope they will be all right and the big turkeys don't hurt the baby.)

UPDATE: I went out and put them back into their pen, was too worried.

This hen hatched out three babies. I moved her to a different spot.

See 'em. How cute

I have this awesome weather thing. It gets readings from a satillite so it's mostly accurate. On this day though there was a problem. The high for the day was supposed to be 80 and the low was supposed to be 60 but the current temp was -100. Whatever.

I took a video when I let the turkeys out. I'll try to upload it. It's taking forever, like over an hour now and I can't post this until it's done. I am trying to upload it to youtube instead. It might be too large or something. Youtube says it will take an hour and a half to upload? We'll see...

UPDATE: It worked through youtube ...sorry about the quality. Should have used my Flip instead of my camera.

Til next time,

Beth