Mud, Mud, Mud

The National Weather Service stated this morning that last night we received between four to six inches (INCHES) of rain.  The thunder and lightening were almost non-stop, the rain torrential, and the wind howled away, truly spectacular. This morning we awoke to calm, cooler temperatures, sunshine and mud.

Today we decided it was time to move the new chicks from their home in the basement, they were getting super pongy and the basement smelled like a barn, out to the chicken house.  I moved the birds one by one with a large fishing net, it is easy to swoop up the bird and relocate it this way. Initially Henry and Patrick were quite interested in catching and transporting the chicks, but after the third one they lost interest, there were still nine to go.  The boys discovered a large mud hole in the back yard, to begin with it was just a little stomping and splashing and shrieks of joy, and then a mudastrophy! I came out of the basement with yet another chick only to discover Patrick the mud monster, how he managed to fall and get so totally soaked I don't know, but he was very pleased with the results.  I finished transporting chicks, we walked out to feed the steer and take a look at the gardens and by then the boys had somewhat dried out. A quick strip off by the basement door, dirty clothes popped into the washer, a sponge off in the kitchen sink and everyone was back to normal and ready for cheese toasties for lunch.

Oh what fun a mud hole is

Patrick the mud monster!

A Chore Day with a Fun Diversion

Well today is Monday, and this is generally the day of the week that I get my heavy duty chores done, like cleaning floors and bathrooms, laundry, changing beds, dusting and vacuuming and whatever else takes my fancy.
I go into work for two hours on Monday morning and usually get home no later than eleven. Today I was barely in the front door when my neighbor called to see what I was doing, I told her house cleaning, she said it was such a nice day we should do something, I agreed but couldn't think of too much to do. So I asked Nancy if she wanted to come down and have a piece of pie and a cup of coffee, she of course said yes. Fifteen minutes later, Nancy, Emily, and myself were enjoying the last of the  Razzle Dazzle Berry pie (Marie Callenders, and absolutely fabulous) left over from Mother's day.  While we were talking Nancy got a phone call, someone needed their mare transported for breeding. Nancy keeps her stud stallion, Diamond, at a local Amish farm and the mare that needed bred was at another Amish place about eight miles away.  The mare had had an ultrasound and it was determined that she should be bred this evening and tomorrow for the best chance of getting her with foal. Boy, the things I learn some days :)
Nancy's horse trailer was back by our steer pen, in readiness for taking Beef the steer in for processing next week, we decided we were up for the challenge and could transport the mare.
We walked back to Nancy's place, got in her jeep, drove out to our field, hooked up the horse trailer, went to get gas (decided next time, if there is a next time, we will get gas before hooking up the horse trailer), then drove to Netta's place to pick up her mare.  What a superbly well behaved mare, she just trotted out and walked right into the trailer and within five minutes we were on our way to Wilmer's place to drop the young lady off so she could spend a happy day or two with Diamond the stud stallion!!
With our fun diversion over I arrived back home and still had my list of chores to work through.. And, I wish that I had taken my camera, as today it is simply beautiful out, puffy white clouds and abundant sunshine. Nancy and I decided we would haul horses any day of the week, but only if the weather is beautiful and the drive scenic :)

Another thing I wanted to do today, and have accomplished, was to switch out the table and four chairs in our kitchen with the table and six chairs in the basement.  Taking apart the kitchen table and getting it downstairs was easy, I did not put it back together I simply stored it, I then removed the legs from the large table in the basement, transporting the legs and the six chairs upstairs wasn't bad. Next the table top had to come up, well I wrestled with it, and wrestled with it, and decided that I was never, ever going to get the thing up stairs by myself.  What to do, what to do, so thinking cap on, maybe I could pull the van around back and load the table top in, we have a walk out basement, and drive it around front, but I was not sure that I would be able to lift the heavy top into the van. Keep thinking, keep thinking, what to do, and I finally decided I could roll the table top, a large oval, out of the basement door, and around the house to the front door. Wow this worked really well, it is not wet outside, the table rolled surprisingly easy, and due to it's size each roll around  moved it a good distance. An hour later the table was reassembled and then it, and the chairs, washed down and now I have a lot more room to seat everyone when we have dinner. Yea!!

After all of this, I had to clean the basement. Last month we purchased 12, day oldish chicks, they have lived in the basement since. The 4' by 6' crate they live in at the moment needed cleaned out, it was getting just a tad pongy, and I needed to clean up all the DUST the chicks generate. Chickens naturally create a fine white powdery dust, it drifts over everything, I have to stay on top of it or pretty soon we would ankle deep in the stuff.  So I cleaned out their coop, this always sends them into a tizzy, then swept and vacuumed up all of the dust they created and all the fluffy little downy feathers that seem to get everywhere.  One thing with the chicken dust is as it drifts everywhere it lands on cobwebs, basements seem to have a bazillion cobwebs no matter how often they are swept and vacuumed away, the coating of dust makes the webs extremely noticeable, which isn't a bad thing as it has made me much more vigilant about clearing them away.
So two major chores are accomplished, I still need to dust and vacuum, and the bathrooms are awaiting my attention, but all in all it has been a productive day.

Random Thoughts While Walking and Veggies, Veggies, Veggies

The other day as I was walking I was thinking about the Emerald Ash Borer and the devastating effects it has had on the woodlands in our area. Almost all ash trees are dead, or almost dead. Everywhere I walk there are dead ash trees, some homeowners have three or four in their front yards, all dead, others are seen in the woods all dead, it is sad.  As I walked I started to wonder about the Emerald Ash Borer, not a native of North America, it arrived from Asia probably in a shipment of wood and started affecting trees in the NE and quickly spread westward.  My thoughts were along this line, what happens to the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) when there are no more ash trees? Does the EAB die off? Can Ash trees be reintroduced? Does the EAB adapt to destroying a different tree variety? After I puzzled about the EAB I started thinking about Dutch Elm Disease (DED).  Growing up in England in the seventies we heard a lot about DED, it destroyed pretty much all of the elm trees, again I am not sure if once it ran its course elm trees could be reintroduced, or if the disease was in fact part of the trees DNA?  I don't know much about DED except it destroyed a lot trees just as the EAB is doing right now.  

Well after my rather gloomy thoughts about the destruction of trees I was amused by the "LOST BLACK COW" signs that appeared over night and were stapled to telegraph poles every half mile or so, they brought a smile to my face.

This morning we had a new Farmers Market open in Fort Wayne. The market is indoors and will occur monthly on the first Saturday, October through March, it is hosted at our local Minor League Baseball Park, a nice use of a facility that perhaps doesn't get much use through the winter. I purchased some nice veggies, a couple different varieties of eggplant (aubergine), an acorn squash, my new most favorite vegetable KALE, spinach, an "asian" blend of green leafy stuff for stir fry, and some dried mint for tea. My only non-veggie purchase was an amazingly aromatic bar of lavender soap - boy does it smell truly wonderful. I enjoyed the market, the produce was super-duper fresh, priced reasonably and the vendors were very friendly and willing to share their story and their excitement about organic farming!!

When we returned from the farmers market it was time to head out and bring in the last of our garden produce as tonight we have a "FREEZE WARNING"!  I had the boys pop on their mud boots, and found each of them a woolly hat to wear and we headed off to the gardens.  We picked tomatoes, peppers, onions, and salvaged some cabbage.  The boys helped pick a lot of peppers and then started digging for treasure and there was great excitement when a large rock was found.  Next we took some ruined cabbages to the chicken run for the hens to enjoy.  It was chilly outside, about forty-eight degrees, but fun to be out and about and we enjoyed watching our grandsons enjoy the great outdoors.

Henry finds some "treasure"

The last of the watermelons and cantaloupe (YUMMY - I have eaten a lot of melon lately) 

Patrick struggling with an over grown cabbage, he was on his way to feed it to the  hens.

An abundance of peppers.

More tomatoes. Nothing quite like a fresh picked tomato - heavenly!

Look what we found in the cabbage patch - Baby Charlie!!

Beets, Carrots, Corn, Morning Coffee and The Day of the Triffids!!

Today has been very productive. I was up early with Dave and saw him off to work, I then left the house to drive to Grabill to meet another blogger at the Grabill Country Store for coffee. I pulled into the parking lot and there was only one other car parked, Rebecca got out of her car and walked towards mine and voila we had met in person.  We spent an enjoyable hour chatting about our lives, our children, our grandchildren, and our faith, I am sure we will get together again.  You can meet Rebecca in blog land by visiting her blog, she  maintains seven blogs!!, http://lifeandgodliness-rebecca.blogspot.com/ .  Funnily enough I found Rebecca's blog because she commented on Embers blog, http://kindredofthequietway.blogspot.com/ one day a few weeks ago, Ember lives in Hastings, England, and because of her blog I have now met someone who lives perhaps five miles away from me in NE Indiana!  Isn't that cool?!?!?!?

After coffee I returned home to can beets, carrots, prepare corn for freezing, and I had two loads of wash to hang out.  I hung the wash on the line, and then headed to the garden to pull up beets and carrots. I hauled the bounty back to the picnic table and sitting in the early morning shade of the locust tree I cut the tops and bottoms off of the beets and carrots and then hauled all of the waste to the chicken run, the girls were very excited to have goodies to scrounge around in.  Next stop the garden hose to spray down the veggies and remove as much dirt as possible and then off to the kitchen. My Dad loaned me a CD version of The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, I had listened to the first two disks and they were very good so I was anxious to listen to the rest of the story, and really enjoyed the story as I worked my day away in the kitchen. (Another book I really like by John Wyndham is Chocky). I put the beets on to boil and started to peel and slice carrots.  The carrots were soon in jars and ready for the pressure canner. While the carrots processed I drained the cooked beets and peeled them in readiness for canning. We like pickled beets, so I prepared a mixture of vinegar, sugar, water, cinnamon sticks, mustard seed, whole cloves and whole allspice, the beets were were brought to boil in the liquid and then put in jars to be hot water canned.  I ended up with 8 pints of carrots and 14 pints of pickled beets.
After a tidy up of the kitchen I headed outside to pick the rest of the corn in the first patch, the second patch will be ready in a week or so. Once the corn was picked and shucked I brought it into the kitchen to process.  Freezing corn is easy, blanch, cool, cut off the corn, bag up and freeze.
Our tomatoes are starting to ripen and I know that I will canning many jars of them in the next few weeks, our green beans are running late, but hopefully I will have some to can soon.
Here are some pictures from this morning.

Beets tipped and topped.

My Handy Dandy "Cart", I use this old stroller to haul all kinds of things around!

Just the carrots were left to pick in this garden

Close up of a Zinnia

More Zinnia

Yummy, carrots, I wish I could put the aroma of them on  my blog, they smell so wonderfully good!

A deformed carrot, the size of  my fist, I left it outside.

The deformed carrot top was starting to flower, I had never seen a carrot flower before, it reminds me a little of Queen Anne's Lace.

A pile of beets and carrots ready for a quick hose off!

The girls eyeing their bounty!

A wonderful day to hang clothes out.

All clean and ready to go to the kitchen.

8 pints of carrots.

Corn getting a quick wash before blanching.

14 cans of pickled beets to add to the carrots.

Corn all ready for bagging and then off to the freezer.

Gardening

Well it is that time of year again, time to plant the garden.  We keep several very large vegetable gardens and grow a lot of our food. We work hard in the springtime preparing and planting the gardens. We work throughout the summer weeding and keeping things tidy.  We work hard in August and September harvesting and storing all of the food grown.  We can tomatoes, green beans, beets, jalapenos, and sauerkraut, and we freeze corn, peppers, some strawberries, and peas. Onions and potatoes are stored in the basement. Strawberries, black raspberries, and concord grapes are used to make jams and jellies and my husband uses some for wine making.  Cucumber and lettuce are eaten fresh from the garden along with some of the wonderful tomatoes and peppers. I planted carrots this year, a first for our garden, I imagine if they grow nicely we will simply eat them freshly picked.  I love the smell of fresh carrots, and I love the smell of tomato plants as I brush against them in the garden.
Each year we put in around 50 tomato and this year is no exception.  We can the tomatoes mainly in quart size jars and we do many, many quarts, I do up about a dozen pint jars.  I like to can the tomatoes as is, then I can use them for whatever I want throughout the year.  We like canned tomatoes with fried eggs and toast, this is why I can up the pint jars.  The quarts are used for many, many meals throughout the year, a jar dumped in the food processor with an onion, some jalapeno pepper and cilantro, a little cumin and lime juice and voila you have a wonderful salsa..  Two jars with a bit of oil, onion, basil, sugar, salt, and tomato paste and spaghetti sauce is made. Chili, a couple quart jars of tomatoes really make the chili.  The tomatoes are fabulous when added to stews and soups.  I feel that when I can tomatoes I am also canning summertime, because when I open a jar in the middle of winter the aroma is amazing, the tomatoes simply smell of summertime in the garden!
We still have a few items to plant, beet seeds to be planted, tomato, pepper, and cucumber plants to put out, they are currently hanging out on the front porch adjusting in a sheltered place to the great outdoors.  I have planted a few rows of flowers around the garden, marigolds and zinnia, I think I will get some cosmos seeds too.
Last year we planted asparagus, it has come back this year, we were told to leave it be for the first two years and then harvest some for eating, so next spring we will enjoy!
Dave pruned all of our fruit trees and took out a sucker cherry tree and a peach tree that had died then grew many suckers and looked like a giant peach bush, it did not produce good fruit.  We will purchase replacement trees to fill in the gaps.
Last spring Dave built a small raised garden for me to use as an herb garden, the mint and oregano are flourishing, the chives returned along with the cilantro.  This spring I added dill and lavender, and I plan to add rosemary and sage.  I like weeding the herb garden because everything I disturb while weeding smells so good.
Our chickens enjoy the fact that we keep a garden, they benefit greatly as they get to eat all kinds of good things, like lettuce that has bolted, tips and tops of green beans and strawberries, the tops of beet plants, wormy ears of corn, and many other things.  The chickens are used to many scraps from the house and whenever I walk out to them they come running to the fence in the hopes that I may have something yummy for them to eat.
This weekend the weather is going to be pleasant which will allow us to finish up planting.
If you are doing a garden this year what are you planting?

A prayer request and happenings around the homestead

Well first off I want to ask for prayer for my son Matt and his wife Traci, they will be driving home from Cheyenne Wyoming in two weeks - please pray that they have a safe trip home. It is about a 16 hour drive and as they are moving home for good they will have a U-Haul truck containing all their worldly possessions, and their own truck. Hopefully Matt's good friend Jay will be able to fly out to help them load up and drive home. Matt has served in the USAF for the past four years.

LORD HEAR OUR PRAYER

We are so excited that they will be home permanently in two weeks time!! Did I mention we are really, really excited!!

Yesterday we finally were able to take our steer, Jersey, into C & C Meats for processing, we had hoped to do it a few months ago, but due to all of the rain it was just too wet and muddy to drive a truck and trailer back to his paddock area. Jersey took some encouragement to get into the trailer, in fact our neighbor ending up picking up her Amish friend, Joe, and his son Jeremy to come and assist, once Dave, Joe, Jeremy, and our neighbors son Brian, were making the point that Jersey needed to get moving he took the hint and compliantly walked in.

The hard thing about raising a steer is that you do get attached to them, Jersey was such a friendly guy, everyday when I went out to feed him he would come over to the fence and let me scratch his nose and he liked to lick my hand, he would always come over if I called him, and if I ran alongside the fence he liked to race with me to the end of the field.

Most of our garden is now planted, just a few more things and we will be done. Sunday evening I spent about an hour to weeding in the blackberry patch, I have the wounds to show for my efforts, blackberry brambles are so spiteful! I have some herbs to plant out and some rhubarb, they are currently in pots on my front porch. We have potato bugs, YUK!I had to breakdown and purchase some Sevin, we are not organic, but we try to avoid pesticides unless absolutely necessary. Potato bugs are relentless and if left unchecked will eat all of the foliage on the potato plant resulting in a very, very low yield.

Good news on the chicken front, The Great Eight, have decided that they do like to go outside, they are still very cautious about food scraps, hopefully this will change, as all other chickens that we have had always loved to eat bread crusts, leftover pancakes, vegetable/fruit peels etc.

Thank you again for keeping Matt and Traci in prayer.

This and That

We are attempting to get our garden planted, all of the potatoes, onions, cabbage and some corn are now planted, and we were able to plant out 100 strawberry starts to renew our aged strawberry patch. There is much more to plant, we will plant peas, green beans and beets and finish the corn. On Memorial Day weekend we will put in about forty eight tomato plants and a variety of peppers, broccoli, (my new favorite food is steamed broccoli!), and plant some melon and squash. Other chores that need to be taken care of in the garden, prune out the dead brambles in the raspberry patch, they are very prickly and I always look as if I got into a fight with a cat when I am done, gloves are an absolute necessity, we need to pick a spot to plant some asparagus root and we want to make a built up box area to plant some new rhubarb and transplant some old rhubarb into.

Our steer, Jersey, who should have gone to butcher in February, has had a pleasant extension to his comfortable life because of all of the rain, it has just been too muddy to get a truck and trailer back to his home, so I know for sure Jersey is very happy about all of the rain :)

The new chickens, we started with a dozen chicks, we now have eight, at one month we moved them out of their brooder in the basement, they get kind of stinky, and out to the chicken coop, once they were two months we started opening the door so they could venture outside, the first time they went out a hawk got one of them, and now, and who can blame them, they are rather leery about the great outdoors. Anyway, I am pleased to report that the Great Eight, are all doing well, and in another couple of months should be producing a bountiful supply of brown eggs.

Today I am baking bread, I have a dozen loaves rising on the kitchen table, the grandsons are coming over later so they will be pleased to have warm bread and honey as an afternoon snack, and come to think of it, so will I.

I really like to sew, but have a hard time finding a pattern that I like, I recently visited a blog, clevsea.blogspot.com, Clevsea is an avid seamstress and she has pictures of completed garments along with the pattern she used, I particularly liked the jumpers she had made using an old McCalls pattern, I googled the pattern number, and amazingly found one copy for sale in my size for $4.65, so I ordered it, I am looking forward to its arrival. Clevsea's site then led me on to another site, Sense and Sensibilty at sensibility.com , this site has patterns for historical dresses from the Georgian, Regency, Edwardian, and Romantic era's, they are delightful. My daughter Emily's best friend Katy really likes Jane Austen, this morning on the ride to school I told the girls about the dress patterns, and suggested we make some and have a Jane Austen party, I think it would be a hoot!! Another site that has beautiful fabric at a reasonable price, and unique, handmade patterns, is Candle on the Hill, http://www.candleonthehill.net/store/catalog.php? item=265, this link takes you to their site, specifically to a pattern that I think I will order. If you do not sew you can order ready made items from Candle on the Hill.

Ben, our almost twenty year old son, purchased a new unicycle last week, it has a 36" diameter wheel and a brake. He is a little wonky on it, but is improving, it is a big change from his first unicycle.

Emily, who will be eighteen next month, is off to the prom this Saturday, she is getting very excited, they are going out for dinner, then to prom, then the afterprom party at the bowling alley which is supervised by parents, then home for a brief sleep and then a bus is taking the tired prom goers to Cedar Point for fun on Sunday - we will have a quiet weekend and an extremely tired daughter returned to us on Sunday evening.

Matt and Traci will be moving home from Wyoming in late June, early July, as Matt will have completed his time with the Air Force, it will be wonderful to have the two of them home for good.

Amber and Brad are busy with their new house, they had to purchase their very first lawn mower this spring, and they just love having a yard of their own to take care of, they dug a garden, Amber calls it her Salsa Garden, as she plans to plant tomatoes, peppers and onions, so she can make salsa. Henry and Patrick are just delightful little boys, growing up too quickly, but so much fun. Henry is two and half, last week he was playing in the front yard and noticed that when he yelled he could the yell come back, he was absolutely fascinated by his echo and much yelling ensued and he kept saying, "Henry talk to me", it was really neat. Patrick is now thirteen and half months, he has been walking for about two months now, he is a bundle of energy and a boy who knows what he wants!

2010 Chicken Massacre

On October 19th of this year we became the owners of fifty broiler chicks, after seven weeks of non-stop eating the cute little broiler chicks were not so cute and were well ready for butchering. For seven weeks I prayed that we would be blessed with good weather for butchering day, and we were, Saturday warmed up to a balmy thirty-eight degrees, the sun shone for most of the morning and conditions were perfect for the task at hand. Dave had a couple of friends come over to help, Johnny and Clayton arrived at ten in the morning, and the 2010 chicken massacre began.

Milk jugs make okay killing cones, they held up through most of the flock, but the last ten or so chickens we held upside down by their feet and Clayton would walk by and cut off their heads, as the milk jug killing cones pretty much were done. A few of the roosters were too big to go head first into the cones so they had to go to the chopping block.

We rented a contraption called the Whizbang Chicken Plucker - an amazing machine, it plucks the chicken clean in about 1 minute, and with forty plus chickens to pluck it saves a huge amount of time.

I really enjoyed my Saturday, we were busy for about four hours, the weather was nice, we all had a good time and all ended up with a nice lot of chicken for our freezers.

October 19, the day old chicks arrive

December 11th, into the killing cones

Headless chickens ready to head :) over to the scalder.

Into the scalder for forty five seconds at 150 degrees.

THE WHIZBANG CHICKEN PLUCKER

an amazing contraption!

Whirling around in the Whizbang!

Removing all the nasty bits!

Washed, bagged, and ready for the freezer!

Here Chicky Chicky, Here

Sometime during the night on April 10th our chickens had an intruder visit and wreak carnage on the flock. Whatever came in, dug underneath the fence, then proceeded to kill 5 chickens out right, two completely disappeared and are presumed dead, and two managed to survive. The two survivors were so traumatized that they did not leave the chicken house at all, and stopped laying altogether - and who can blame them??

Well fast forward two weeks, the chicken house is completely cleaned out, repairs made, and the new flock all settled and moved in. Fortunately my brother-in-law and wife also keep chickens, they had more than they needed and were willing to sell us 10 new hens. We went to pick up the hens, popped them into some large cardboard boxes and transported them back home, none the worse for wear, the hens moved into their new home and promptly started laying eggs. We now have 4 barred rock, 3 rhode island reds, and 3 black star chickens, a mighty fine looking flock if I do say so myself. There is nothing as lovely as a fresh brown egg!!