Christina's Blog

We are picking Daniel (Dan's son) up in Springfield today.  We can always find things to do while we are in town, so it may be 65 miles to get there but we can get some things done while we wait for the plane.  Penney’s, Holly Hobby, Panera Bread, Jessica’s Nails, Hemmingway’s restaurant and Price Cutter are a few places we don’t have in Mountain Grove.  We may give Sam’s Club another look to see if we think the membership is worth the price.  Daniel will be flying out of St. Louis this Friday, anybody know something good to visit while we are there?  Hate to waste a 3 ½ hour drive – well it’s not wasted to take Daniel to the airport but I hate to just drive home without seeing something we have never seen before.  These Farm folks hardly ever get out of town.

This morning on my way to the compost pile, something bit me on the face.  I actually got a spasm in my right cheek below my eye.  It felt weird but I just thought it was one of those things we get when we are over 60.  Then I came inside and looked in the mirror, that was a mistake!  The whole right side of my face is beet red and still has spasms.  It almost matches the color of the left side that got sun burnt while I was mowing yesterday, and yes, I was wearing a nice big hat.  Whatever bit me must have gotten right into a nerve.  Great way to look when you pick someone up at the airport after not seeing him for 6+ years – I look kind of scary!

I have this new camera but don't seem to be able to take the pictures off it or get them into the computor software made for it.  I am thinking that I must have changed the factory settings on the software but can't find the disk to reload the factory settings.  Bare with me while I figure this out, then we will have lots of new pictures.

We are very happy with the new patio cover.  Not only did Keith allow us to work for half of our deductible, he is also letting us make monthly payments for most of the other half of the deductible.  He put a real nice vinyl ceiling on the underside and vinyl on the outside edges, that will never have to be painted.  While he was finishing up (all except the gutter work) he came in and framed the window and doorframe in the laundry room with some pieces of wood he had left over from another job.  He just threw that in for nothing but good will.  It has been undone for over a year since we had the sheetrock put in there to finish the mess from the electrical box and generator work.  I will recommend him and his work to anyone who asks.  Keith Koehn who lives in Mountain Grove and he is in the telephone book.

Dan and I went to Poplar Bluff, on Wednesday, where the VA Hospital is.  While we were gone, it rained cats and dogs at our farm – 2 ½ inches!  Some of that rain caught us on the way to Poplar Bluff and I had a very hard time seeing the lines in the road.  Some areas around us received more than 9 inches of rain in one day and were hit again in the next 2 days.  Unfortunately we get nothing or everything at once with lots of flooding going on in those areas.  We are blessed to live on a slight rise in the topography and don’t have a problem with the flooding.

We have sold all 10 of our alpacas to a farm in Houston, which is about 25 miles from us.  We did not have anything to send up fire works about as we basically lost almost every thing we had invested in the initial purchase as well as all the expenses for the last 6 years.  It was something we had to do quickly because Dan cannot go through another winter going to the barn twice a day in the ice and snow to get water, feed and scoop poop out of the barn.  A broken hip or any broken bone in a slip and fall is something neither of us would want to happen and Dan’s health is not getting any better.  We had to do it and we are OK with the loss, it is better than what could have happened if he or I fell.

Yep, we are doing it.............   That's all I can say right now.

They are sold!   Will be picked up on Saturday.

Sometimes I am utterly amazed at how God takes such good care of his kids.  Dan & I did loose our patio roof (20 by 10) to the high winds I spoke about earlier.  It was temporarily pieced up so the insurance adjuster could see the damage and make a decision about replacement costs.  We had 4 contractors make bids, the highest bid being from a company we could not trust to do the job after the estimator tried to get us to lie to the insurance company about the work being done.  I told the young man that it was dishonest and immoral to do that and the conversation went downhill from there on.  The man we did choose to do the job seemed very trustworthy to me and even though his price was more than two other companies, we felt confident that he would do the best job.  While speaking with him about when he could start the job, he suggested that Dan & I could do the demolition of the roof and save $500.00 on our deductible (our deductible was $1000.00).  We said “YES” to that!  I called the next day to see if he had any tools that we could use to remove the shingles and tar paper from the roof.  He said after he finished up on his other job, he would bring something by.  Dan had already cleaned all the furniture and misc. off the porch and set a large tarp on the grass behind the porch.  I helped Dan remove the gutters and then he was on the roof peeling the shingles off and I was trying to keep the removed shingles on the tarp and make sure Dan didn’t get too far onto the unstable roof.  I also was in charge of keeping him hydrated.  When I would go into the house to refresh his water he would be in the middle of the roof when I came back out.  I have to admit that I was afraid the roof would become detached from the house and fall down on the patio with Dan on top of it all.  When the winds blew the roof up, it twisted the whole thing and dropped it back down on 2 out of three supports and one of the supports was on the lawn digging into the mud.  The other support was totally off and on the ground, which made the roof sag down about three feet on the left side.  The one support that remained on the concrete was just barely hanging on to the edge of the slab.  Eventually that support broke through the roof and hung down on the right side too.  I truly did not trust the roof to stay up while Dan was on it removing shingles.  Of course he had a battalion of angels watching over him, so some of you folks out there were without your own angels for that time.  When we stopped long enough to eat dinner, our contractor called (his name is Keith) to ask if he and his wife could come over and help us take that thing down – no charge!  That was an answer to prayer!!!   They came over and it was done in a little over an hour – DONE!  He did most of the work and we got the $500.00 reduction off the whole cost to go toward our deductible.  AWESOME!  His wife is a sweetheart and I will tell you more later.

Next Day:

Have you ever met someone and immediately took a shine to him or her?   I did!  Keith's wife is a sweetie.  She asked about a hundred intelligent questions and was interested in most everything we are doing here.  She is an absolute doll with her husband Keith and I enjoy seeing good marriages thriving.  I believe it is a testimony to moral fiber and character at work in a relationship.  While we were sitting at the table and I was writing down a recipe for Dolmathes, I asked her what made Keith decide to come help us remove the roof.    She said that when he got home he told her something like “ I would like to go help the Ledfords take that roof down after dinner, would you come with me?”  She said “Are they old?”  He said, “No, not really, but the man is a little wobbly on his feet”.   Now that tells me that we made the right decision when we chose him to do the rebuilding of the patio roof.  Consideration, kindness, compassion and selflessness are all words that come to mind.  God is blessing us with knowing these people and Dan and I are thinking of ways that we might be able to bless them back. 

We just had some contractors come over to give us an estimate on replacing our patio roof and to try to re-support the roof long enough to get us through another possible storm until they can take the damaged roof down and build another one.  Yesterday afternoon a huge storm came through and left 2 inches of rain while the winds lifted our patio roof off the supports and left one end hanging precariously without any support, while the other two wrought iron supports broke through the roof structure.  It took less than ten minutes for this storm to do it's damage.  Dan and I sat at the table and watched as debris came flying by the sliding patio door going west, then south and finally everything that flew by going west was coming back when the wind changed direction again and is now going east. I could see the roof shuddering and buckling before it came off the supports.  If I had hackles, they would have been standing straight up at that point.  Dan went out before the storm was even over and used his shoulder to lift the one end partially back onto its support just so it wasn't hanging there ready to come down on the house.  Most of the furniture that was on the back porch blew onto the lawn.  Heavy cedar rockers were rolled end over end off the patio.  The hummingbird feeder, the bird feeder bowl that I made from concrete and the wind chimes flew off the holders and crashed onto the patio.  All kinds of large and small branches were strewn around the yard.  Part of the barn wood was lying around the barnyard and the alpacas were wet through-and-through.  The door was open to the barn but they stood on the west side of the barn to stay out of the wind and rain and then moved to the south side when the wind changed directions.  By the time the wind changed direction again, coming from the west, they were totally exposed to it all.  I actually tried to stick my hear out of the sliding door to see where the alpacas were and could not look in that direction with my eyes open because of the wind and rain slamming through the patio.  The storm had to have the last word and ended with hail the size of a dime.  Wow!  Dan and I are very thankful to have an awesome caring God to protect us – it could have been worse.

Just got finished with a new batch of pickles.  These are called "Ever Crisp Lime Pickles" and the recipe is over 100 years old according to the Internet information.  This recipe is very similar to the one my neighbor, Janet, gave me about 5 years ago and it is a fantastic recipe.  When I ran out of the last jar of these pickles there was an obvious hole in the pantry that needed to be filled.  So maybe we will be good for a year with what I canned yesterday.

We have a huge bunch of tomatoes to can and I am trying to wait till the biggest part of the tomatoes ripen without the already picked ones getting too old.  I think we will do a stewed tomato recipe this time.  I use a lot of tomatoes in the recipes that get cooked in our kitchen and what could be better than reaching for a jar of homegrown canned tomatoes?

We had rain yesterday and I was so excited when I heard the thunder, I went out on the patio to watch the lightning.  Before the rain started I noticed that Boris was on the lead by the barn gate (Dan was doing the barn chores) so I went to undo the lead and bring him back to the patio with me.  On our way back the rain started to come down a little.  Boris and I were sitting on the steps under the patio roof watching the rain increase.  It was coming from the east and it is unusual to see it coming from that direction.  After a few more minutes we had to go inside because the rain was coming in under the roof clear to the other side, getting everything wet.  I turned on the weather radio to hear what was going on because this looked like tornado weather.  Couldn't get much from the radio so I turned on the TV and saw that Texas County was the only county getting any rain and we were under a severe thunderstorm warning.  Dan called and said he would stay at the barn until it slowed a bit.  Boris sat in the den while I continued to read the book I was engrossed in. Boris jumped up and ran into the kitchen and was barking and growling up a storm.  I went in the kitchen and opened the door to the garage because someone was knocking on it.  Dan was standing there with a feedbag on his head and shoulders that he had poked holes in for his arms, eyes and mouth.  Boris ran over and in that position that a careful dog will get in (neck stretched out and crouching down just in case it was something bad) sniffed him real good to make sure it really was him.  Only Dan would come to that door wearing his new fangled rain gear! Right now it is almost 11pm and Boris is asleep in his cubby, dreaming of something terrifying - it is probably about what happened this afternoon with Dan that has him whimpering now!

Friday

Well today was fun! I picked vegetables, figs and blackberries early this morning and then we had breakfast. Our friend Danny B came by to help Dan get the winter hay hauled back to the barn and stacked. Then we went to the senior center for lunch, picked up my zip-drive from the newspaper office and grabbed a newspaper too. The article I wrote about the Tri County Fair and pictures of the rosette winners was in it. We came back home and decided to take a timeout. I read till I napped and Dan did too.

For the second day in a row Caterpillars working on our neighbor’s property awakened me from my nap. I asked Dan if he wanted to go outside with me to see what was left of the trees on the 27 acre place to the west of us. Dan, Boris and I walked on down to the place where the wet weather stream enters our property and flows into our pond. We were able to see a lot of topography of the property now, because there were no groupings of trees to interfere with our line of sight. Two Caterpillars were working on the dam of our neighbor’s pond and at the moment we came down there one of the huge machines had dug out a hole to the pond to let the water out. We stood there watching the water hurling down what was left of the stream bed toward the fence that separated us from them. In no time, we had a torrent of water flowing down our streambed and into our somewhat low pond. The fence held but was stretched and bowed by the huge amount of water, debris and small fish flowing through it. Boris was trying to catch floating debris and fish as they passed by him, so he was a very wet and happy dog. Dan went to the house to plug in his dead phone and bring back a net to catch some of the larger fish that didn’t make it through the fence so we could put them in our pond. I watched as one of the two drivers scooped up some water from the pond with his Caterpillar and put it in the scoop of the other Caterpillar, while the other man was scooping up large fish by hand and throwing them into the water in the other scoop. I know that when we go out tomorrow to look at what has happened to our pond, we will see some dead fish. What a waste, but then again, we have birds and every kind of predator our place might need to take care of dead fish. The pond came up by at least a foot, maybe more before we went back in to do the evening chores. I will finish this tomorrow with more information.

Saturday – 6:35am

Boris and I went down to the creek bottom and found 65 dead fish. There were many more than that but I stopped counting. They were small to medium sized fish that could fit through the 2-inch by 4-inch holes in the fence. On the other side of the fence there were large fish that couldn’t go through the holes and died from lack of water. All the mud that hasn’t settled and tons of silt and debris from the erosion of the stream bed that was worked on by the Caterpillars dirty the pond. We are sad and don’t know how this will affect the precarious balance of the pond's ecosystem. The alpacas continue to use the water to cool themselves down in this stifling heat.

I made up a new recipe today and it was especially good. It was pretty simple because I needed to use up some of the extra vegetables we had just picked.  I had 10 yellow squash and three large tomatoes from the garden, 8 eggs just collected from the coop, extra sharp cheddar cheese, milk, garlic, Shitake Mushroom sauce, salt and pepper. I sliced the squash and put it in the bottom of the casserole dish that I covered with parchment paper. I covered the squash with about 9 ounces of grated cheese. I mixed up the eggs with the milk, mushroom sauce, salt and pepper and poured it on the squash. I sliced the tomatoes and laid them on top of the casserole. Then I mixed some butter with garlic and salt and brushed that on the tomatoes. I found some Pepperidge Farm breadcrumbs and sprinkled them on top of the tomatoes and shook some garlic salt over it all.  I then put the casserole into a 400-degree oven for 55 minutes. The rest of the butter mixture was brushed on sourdough bread and I broiled it in the oven just long enough to turn it golden brown. I have promised myself not to leave the kitchen while broiling anything, so this time we had the garlic bread toasted just right!

I finally finished the Sweet Icicle Pickles this morning.  I didn't realize that the recipe would take 13 days to complete.  Now I really do need a new  recipe for the accumulating cucumbers. I have heard of frying them in batter but that just doesn't even sound right.  Frying cucumbers?

The tomato sauce is done - for now. I made it ready to put in spaghetti sauce or pasta dishes.

I have many cucumbers on the vines and in the fridge.  I need a great, wonderful & different recipe to save me trying to pawn these cucumbers off on my friends.  No relish or sweet pickle recipes because I have plenty.  Anybody want a quart of pickle relish?  Come and get it!

Hi Phyllis, LaNelle and Joe!  How is the weather in Arkansas?  We have to plan something memorable for when you come to visit.  How about making something out of fleece?  Yes, I am putting it in a blog because I figured you all would read it and since I was too lazy to write an email this was quicker.

The garden is kind of disappointing this year.  I have lost many winter squash plants and all 6 varieties of eggplant (if I wrote about this previously, please disregard the next few lines).  I put the eggplant starts out in a prepared raised bed.  I knew I would need to spray for flea beetles because they do live in my garden.  That evening I went back out to see if they needed any more water.  All 18 plants were covered with flea beetles.  I knocked them all off and went back into the house to make my concoction.  I forgot what I was going to do the minute I was inside.  The next morning I remembered to fix my special flea beetle deterrent before I went out to pick vegetables.  I could not find anything left of the plants except a little bit of stem and some real nice lacy leaves.  I sprayed knowing it was too late; I just wanted to kill the little suckers!  I was so desperate to find some plants that I went to Wal-Mart and several other stores but no one had any eggplant left to buy.

OK, now we can get to the canning.  In the last five days I have made Blackberry Jelly (no seeds), Sweet Pickled Vegetables and Beans (so good), Feisty Salsa (great flavor) and the Sweet Icicle Pickles have four more days of preparation before I can get them finished.  Thursday will be for putting up more tomatoes in a simple sauce.  I have to find or think of a new recipe for the cucumbers that are piling up in the refrigerator.  I have plenty of relish and sweet pickles so maybe dill pickles would be in order.  Any ideas?

Tomato sauce soon!  The tomatoes are in a strainer, on the windowsill, in a wooden bowl and laying on the cutting board.  Every time I walk into the kitchen they taunt me with their growing numbers.   

Since planting out several of the new varieties of vegetables that we started from seed in the greenhouse, some of them have just up and died.  It is so heartbreaking to have things die at your hands, yes - even vegetables.  The hope for new varieties is shattered until we can try again next year.  However, that is not the end of this story.  When I was planting seed this early spring, I planted those same seeds for a few friends to try in their gardens.  The ones that died in our garden made it in theirs.  We are being blessed with getting vegetables from the plants we started for our friends.  Is that cool or what!  Thank you Lord!

I have been making copies of the old blogs all the way back to 2007 when I first started to write them.  I have been putting them into Microsoft Word to check the spelling and the grammar.  That is why I am apologizing.  I have misspelled words that any middle school child knows how to spell and the punctuation is no better.  From now on, I am going to do everything in Word first, then copy it into the blog and then you all won't have to cringe when you read them.  The blogs will be slowly copied back onto the website – hopefully fully corrected – but it will take some time.  Please have patience with me because when I printed all the blogs out they added up to 129 pages.  One thing I have found out is that I love to put commas where they are not needed.  I do realize that some errors are just keyboard misses.  Bless my family for not saying a word to me about this.  I am sure there were times when their heads tilted at some of the simple mistakes I was making.  From now on though, I would like to know if anything is out of order with my writing and would appreciate having someone tell me where I have gone wrong so I can correct it.  Really!

I decided to try some new recipes yesterday and today. Yesterday I tried Thai Pad Noodles, which I had at Tong’s in Springfield last week and enjoyed tremendously. It is a tasty hot sauce with Thai noodles, shrimp, crab, squid and scallops. It was delicious! I didn’t have the fish so substituted some ground buffalo, plus I added squash, yard-long green beans, onions and garlic. That was a little different but very good. Today I decided to make Rigatoni. I substituted large shells for the Rigatoni pasta (I had the right stuff but it had gotten broken up in the box) and turnip greens for the spinach. All greens are similar to me and I haven’t found one that I didn’t like. We are getting ready to have the pasta dish right now. Back later with the critique!

I don’t think I would make it again. It was O.K………….but not worth the trouble.

This morning at about 7am, I took the 2-gallon sprayer out to attack the flea beetles that found the eggplants within one hour of getting them into the garden. The sprayer worked about two minutes and then quit. It was long enough to get the flea beetles but not long enough to get the squash bugs. I actually thought about beating them with the sprayer wand because I forgot to bring the shears that I use to cut them in half. I just re-read this and I may sound a little crazy to most folks but these are the thoughts of a woman who won’t use typical non-organic sprays to get rid of the problems. The bugs will have to die later tonight when Dan helps me figure out what is wrong with the sprayer. Squash bugs, flea beetles and grasshoppers are the most damaging to our flower and vegetable gardens. I found a natural formula that contains soy oil, dish soap, garlic juice and pepper juice. I tried the first three ingredients on the flowers in the front yard where a stripped beetle and grasshoppers were gorging themselves. Some of the plants were heavily involved and their leaves were riddled with holes to the point of looking like very fine lace. It worked for one day, then the next day they were at it again. I hope that adding the Habanera juice will do the trick. It is most likely too late for some of their favorite flowers because they are barely surviving and look very sad and unhealthy. This is an age-old battle of wits and ingenuity for a sustainable gardener. I admit that I have thought about purchasing the deadly pesticides from Wal-Mart and bringing them home in a brown paper sack but I would not fool anyone and would have bad dreams about the damage to the water table and the world we would be leaving to our grand kids. I just need to be smarter than a bug! Who knew it would be so hard?

We have made it for 30 years with more to come as long as we remain here on this earth.  Since our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren are all on the West Coast, we spent a very quiet day together.  We went to West Plains to have lunch at one of Dan's favorite places.  He really enjoyed it and so did I.  We came home and one of our good friends came over to deliver an anniversary card for us. It was an unexpected pleasure.  Then we got a call from my son-in-law to tell me how proud he was of his wife (my daughter Erica).  She was instrumental in bringing about a healing to a dear Pastor (and friend) of ours and healing to many people (including Dan and I) from the congregation that he shepherded for over 20 years.  God is faithful!

As we were coming home from West Plains, we came across an area that had just received a cloud full of rain.  I kept looking and hoping to see water puddles all the way home.  It wasn't to be though and about 10 miles from home the rain had quit.  I sure was eager to have the garden watered before we got home because it was pretty hot today and I imagined limp and lifeless vegetables baking in the sun.  It did finally rain but we had to wait until 9:30pm for it to happen.  I took Boris out around 10pm and saw the wonderful gentle rain coming down.  Boris and I walked around to the back yard just to see how much we had gotten.  It was so quiet; we could not hear it from inside the house.  I am very thankful for the rain every time it comes, even if it is inconvenient at times.

Since bringing Piangee home from the veterinarian on Wednesday, he has been a model male (OK, not totally) alpaca.  We can actually go out to the barn and not have to look over our shoulder to see if he is coming to "play".  He healed very nicely and seems to have no ill affects from the surgery.  We have another little boy who will need to visit the vet too.  He will get to the age of bothering the females and we don’t want any breeding accidents.  He is not a bother to us like Piangee was, because he was raised by his mom, Azalea, but he will be a pain to the girls and will probably wear many green spit marks about his head and face.

I woke up slightly disoriented this morning sometime before 6am.  Boris was gently tapping my arm with his hot hairy chin.  I literally rolled out of the wrong side of the bed and eventually figured out what the problem was.  I was sleeping on the twin bed in the den because the chicks started to hatch late last night.  My bedroom is the chick hatchery and incubation egg collection station.  They began to hatch in the wee hours of the morning and I know from past experience that sleep is impossible during the 36 to 48 hour hatch time - because of the noise they make.  So I got up, dragged my two favorite pillows with me and went to the den for some peace and rest.  This morning before I took Boris outside, I checked to see the progress.  Four of the 16 were out of their shell in various stages of dryness.  I just now went to check on them again.  There are six out of the shell and 8 more in various stages of pip.  I find that the hardest thing for me, when chicks are hatching, is to keep from helping the ones that seem to be having trouble getting out of the egg.  I know that the lid needs to remain in place so the humidity stays high during a hatch.   So, I try to stay busy elsewhere on the farm, so I won't be tempted to "HELP".

I took Boris out to the front yard where I have a beautiful view to gaze at while my body tries to wake up.  It is a good time of the morning, hardly any traffic and still cool enough to enjoy the scenery.  I have been making it a morning habit to stroll around the property to where the three Mulberry trees are.  I pick the Mulberries to share with Boris and eat myself.  I also check the wild plum trees, cherry tree, figs, blackberries, grapes and peach tree to see if I need to do anything with them.  I usually water the greenhouse plants, front porch plants and flowerbeds in the front yard.  Then I wander to the vegetable garden in the back yard and see what is going on there.  Weeding is the usual job that needs to be done and I hardly ever remember to bring my gloves.  That doesn’t stop me though.  Again, while in the garden, Piangee always comes to the fence to beg and I am unable to keep from feeding him some delicacy from the raised beds.  His absolute favorite treat is sugar snap peas, then asparagus, dill or lambsquarter. 

Dan has been using the small power mower to mow the grass in the garden.  There will always be grass and we have to get used to dealing with it, so we try to think of ways to make it easy to grow and mow. He also weeded around the arches and it looks so nice and clean around them.  There is a new fast growing Maple tree (a nice big volunteer) that I recently transplanted for shade, which is completely hidden in some tall weeds in the corner of the garden.  The other day, I made a path by using my feet to lay down the tall weeds to where I thought the tree was.  It was still alive and growing and still had the orange flag I put next to it to keep us from mowing it down by mistake.  Someday it will make a nice shade tree for the alpacas and I can plant some shade loving salad vegetables near it.

Yesterday I was supposed to get one of the re-orders (pullets to replace the cockerels sent by mistake) out by 2:30pm.  I had prepared the Bio-Secure box in the morning, gluing the fabric over the holes and making a divider.  It was lunchtime and the weather radio went off with a flash flood warning for our county, so I decided to try to mow as much of the front and back yard as I could before the rain came.  It is about an acre and a half and a rough mow job takes a little over an hour.  When I was coming back into the house to clean up I noticed the time was 2:10pm.  No way could I catch the two pullets, cut up the apple for them to eat on the two-day trip, make the label, fill out the NPIP form and get it to the P.O. in town before 2:30pm.  So my customer had to wait another day for her pullets.  She was very patient and understanding about forgetfulness.

Today, I am telling on myself (and probably venting too).  They (whoever they are) say it is good for a person to get things off their chest.  So, here goes.  I am absolutely atrocious at sexing Barnevelders this year.  Not the first five years that I have been doing this very same thing – but the 6^th year.  There, I’ve said it.  Strangely, I don’t feel as if a weight has been lifted.  Maybe I didn’t clarify well enough.  I sent 5 cockerels to three customers who live on the East and West coast and somewhere in between.  I will be paying for shipping and the bio-secure boxes to send 5 pullets to these very patient people.  These pullets are coming from an incubation that I did to renew my laying stock for next year.  I don’t feel very confident about picking 5 more pullets (I thought that’s what I did in the first place).  So, there will be a long waiting game going on until I am absolutely sure they are indeed pullets before I send them out.  This will cost more than the original erroneous shipments, because they will weigh more.  These errors are all from the same batch of hatched chicks.  The bad thing (if it could get any worse than it already is) is that I don’t know why the mistakes occurred in the first place other than the fact that I was sick at the time.  I am asking for prayer and I would like to have wisdom, understanding and patience – lots of patience!

P.S. - I have taken the page for "Started Birds" off the website - for now.

We had an early breakfast and Dan beat me in a game of Yahtzee, so I wandered out to the garden to weed and plant more goodies from the greenhouse.  For me to go outside, I can't abandon my long sleeves, even in the heat!  Besides the mosquitoes eating me alive, the sun causes my skin to burn real fast - about 5 minutes is all it takes to get a nasty burn.  So, it's like getting ready to go outside in the snow or ice, it takes time.  My usual short-sleeved top and pants are covered with a long sleeved shirt that buttons up my cuffs and neck.  Then I don the apron (which has pockets for all the important stuff, like shears, cell phone, plastic ties for subduing vineing plants), hat, garden shoes and gloves.  This all has to be done before the sun is all the way up and we are usually wandering (exhausted) back inside the house by 10 am. This morning I finished weeding the raised bed that would be home to the early bush summer squash this year.  By that time, Dan was through doing the barn chores and came to help me as I continued to weed another bed that was full of reseeded Dill and potatoes.  I love it when plants decide to come back on their own.  I had 5 or 6 volunteer tomatoes this year, but only kept 2 of them because I could not tell what kind the others were.  I planted some Green-Eyed Cowpeas and Collective Farm Woman (melon) on the arches.  I am hoping that the melons will hang from the arches in a way that does not say “Here we are, come and get it”.  I was sorely disagreeable every time I came out of the garden with a hollowed out melon.  I envisioned myself on the back porch, waiting for whatever it was that was outsmarting me every time I thought I was going to pick a nice ripe melon.  In this vision, I had a rifle across my lap, putting notches in it for every little creature I shot that came near the melons.  Unfortunately, the reality was that the garden was so lush with foliage, one could not even see if some small animal was roaming the garden sampling the one thing you were patiently waiting to ripen.  I’ll tell you what; the arches will allow me to see what it is, because they will have to climb the metal to get to the fruit, unless it’s a rabbit – they don’t climb well………..

I sent a quad of Barnevelders to Montana on Tuesday and they arrived, hungry and thirsty, today.  I sent them each with a quarter of a Fugi apple, for food and moisture, and the owner said they didn't seem to touch them in the two days of shipping.  I have used corn-on-the-cob before and I believe they like that better.  I ran out of the corn that I put up last year just about a month ago.  I am not sure about this year's crop of corn but I am beginning to think that corn-on-the-cob would be more enticing than apples to a stressed out pullet or cockerel during shipping.

 We had a big storm come through early this morning - lots of rain, lightening and thunder, but I was too tired to get up with Boris to watch it.   Earlier in the evening, Dan and I sat outside on the back porch for a short time.   We were watching an unbelievably beautiful display of quiet lightening, while in the background I could hear the weather radio tell us about quarter sized hail and high winds coming to our county.  I couldn't stay out there with the seriously hungry mosquitoes since they were determined to make me their main course! 

Speaking of main course, my mom used to make us Beef Tongue Soup when we were growing up and I felt like it was a special treat to eat.  I really liked it then and I still do.  After being married to Dan for several years, I developed a hankering for it.  A long time was spent searching the stores for the tongue until I found one and it wasn't a very inexpensive cut of meat.  I knew my kids would balk at eating it if they knew what it was, so I cooked it when they were at school.  I peeled it and got rid of the skin, and then I sliced it up into serving sized pieces (hoping to disguise it somewhat) and put it back into the soup.  Onions, celery, potatoes, carrots, sea salt, fresh ground pepper and a bay leaf made up the soup.  Everyone liked it, although Michelle was very suspicious of it and reserved her opinion till I told them all what it was.  Everyone else liked it and there were lots of funny comments about eating cow tongue.  Michelle never got past the feeling of something tasting her while she tasted it.  Just today, I made some Buffalo Tongue Soup and instead of potatoes, I used noodles.  It sure did bring back some good memories of mom and dad and our family dinners.  Unfortunately, this is one meal that you can't just invite everyone to share with you, I'm still looking for that person or persons that will say that they like it.  Anyone out there?

Dan and I were out again this morning real early to build mounds and plant vegetables.  Dan built five mounds and I planted Golden Hubbard, Butternut and Sweet Dumpling Squash.  Blue Hubbard and Shishigatami squash will go in the other two mounds.  Then I planted some cucumbers ( Lemon cucumbers, Blond and Chinese Long) on one of the arches, Chinese Vineing Okra on another arch and Japanese Long Beans, Yard Long Beans and Henderson Tomatoes on the other side.  While I moved on to weed the raised bed with three volunteer tomatoes from last year, it started to rain.  It threatened to be a downpour but, as long as it didn't come a real gusher, it felt good to be out there working in the light rain.  I still have many more vegetables in the greenhouse to get out in the garden.

After we came in out of the rain, we had lunch.  I finished reading a book and Dan watched TV.  Dan got a call to go see a friend, so I decided to start a couple of hats.  The first one was a black with white spots on it (like a Holstein cow) and the other was beige with a multi-color band that was felted into it.  They are sitting outside in the sun right now – drying.

I enjoy going into the greenhouse early (most days it is before the sun is up) to re pot vegetables that I started from seed.  I look for roots coming out of the bottom of the pot and if they do, I re pot them into a larger pot.  I start all my seeds in a 4" pot and move up in size as they grow out.  Sometimes nothing will come up out of the several seeds planted in one pot, but usually several seeds will come up in each pot as long as they are viable.  When I get a bunch of seeds coming up in one pot, they will need more room for their roots so they will be repotted.  I split the plants out into several 4" pots.  Once they are starting to look like they may become root bound, they go in a larger pot.  There is a time, just before I feel it is safe to plant outside, that the greenhouse becomes packed with plants.  They all want to be in the sun and room for them is becoming less and less.  A lot of time is used moving the plants around into a better place.  Another factor is that some vegetables like more sun than others.   That is why I put a 4 foot by 24 foot long covered roof on the greenhouse to provide a shaded area during the summer.  In the winter the whole south side of the house has a short brick wall that is heated by the sun, making it a passive solar (heat) collector. 

Dan came out to see what I was up to and I put him to work.  He said that he would clean off the tool bench in the west end of the greenhouse that is used for storage of garden utensils and empty pots.   After he got all the tools cleared up and put away I asked him to help me take some of the perennial flower outdoors by the front porch.  I found a stockpile of slugs on the bottom of every pot we took out and they were in the center of the artichoke just chowing down on a baby artichoke not even all the way out of the center of the plant.  I had seen one too many slugs, so I headed into the house to get my saltshaker.  The hunt was on!

First, you Come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses....

FOR THE GARDEN OF YOUR DAILY LIVING,

PLANT THREE ROWS OF PEAS:

1. Peace of mind

2. Peace of heart

3. Peace of soul

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF SQUASH:

1. Squash gossip

2. Squash indifference

3. Squash grumbling

4. Squash selfishness

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF LETTUCE:

1. Lettuce be faithful

2. Lettuce be kind

3. Lettuce be patient

4. Lettuce really love one another

NO GARDEN IS WITHOUT TURNIPS:

1. Turnip for meetings

2. Turnip for service

3. Turnip to help one another

TO CONCLUDE OUR GARDEN WE MUST HAVE THYME:

1. Thyme for God

2..Thyme for family

3. Thyme for friends

WATER FREELY WITH PATIENCE AND CULTIVATE WITH LOVE. THERE IS MUCH FRUIT IN YOUR GARDEN BECAUSE YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW. 

It is finished for a year!  The alpaca’s are back to their skinny graceful selves – sans fleece!  Well, the guys did leave a nice trimmed topknot & tail and some leg fleece.  I did notice though, that the alpacas came in out of the sun today and stayed in the barn during high sun, maybe sunburn might have been a factor?  Paladin and Sweet Pea got their teeth trimmed too and they all got a pedicure.  Things did not work out as scheduled, but you can’t always determine how everything will fall into place, even with our carefully laid out plans – life happens!  Cars break down, GPS signals aren’t guaranteed to work everywhere and some people get bent out of shape when things don’t go their way.  The guys looked tired and demoralized when they got to our place after 10pm last night, but they had spaghetti & garlic bread dinner with walnut fudge topped with real vanilla home made ice cream for dessert, showers, laundry privileges and 3 out of four of them slept in a bed.  Breakfast was eggs rancheros, English muffins & butter, organic milk and apple dumplings w/raisins.  They sheared 9 spoiled alpacas, trimmed toenails and trimmed teeth all in about 1 hour and 25 minutes.  Not bad!  They were a pleasure to have and their moms and dads should be proud of them and know that they were perfect gentlemen. I especially appreciated them asking the blessing before they ate.

I have been trying to get this into a blog on our website and the Wild Blue network is not allowing me to get online.  I have turned off, turned back on many times, unplugged and plugged, watched the lights while willing them to go on, muttered stupid things to it as if it were an animate object and waited for long enough to try my patience.  I think I need a nap and then I will try again………………