Category Archive: food
Ram and new quilts
This hole was put into this new piece of plywood by this
ram head. He managed to get the hole large enough by ramming it to fit that whole head including the horns through it. The neighbors asked what the sound coming from our barn in the middle of the night was and we didn’t know. They said it sounded like firecrackers or a gun and repetitively sounded 4 times. It was across the driveway from the barn, but this is what all that noise was about. It certainly seems like he should have a large headache. This is the reason one never turns a back on a ram. He simply doesn’t need a reason. He was head butting the cedar trees later in the day.The other news is that I cut out the fabric 2 new quilts.
These are the fabrics for the Sherlock Holmes New Year Mystery
And these are for the Bonnie Hunter mystery “On Ringo Lake” She just put out the 4th step, so I’m a bit behind, but now the pieces are cut for these steps, and I just have to find time to catch up.
Though the garden is not growing very much or fast, we did get a sink full of kale today.Bowl cozies, scraps, and puppy
The bowls are now ready to top stitch. However, I’m have to get the light above the sewing machine replaced first. It seems the ballast is bad.
The cotton scraps are all finished though I will admit that the “large” pieces that went into the color buckets were getting smaller as the day grew longer.
Daisy is and will be a puppy for another year. We are lucky she found an egg carton to destroy. Even though she has bones, she still loves to shred anything she can find. We know that and we are the adults(?) here, so if it gets chewed, we have ourselves to blame.
Yes, I did big damage at Costco and will not be going again this year. But we have dog food and dog treats and sheep treats, and even some people food. You didn’t know Costco sold sheep food? That’s because you might not know how much they love the little animal cookies.
Hoop house remnants
I haven’t shown you the end of the garden yet. Well, that might be because the hoop house remnants aren’t finished yet.
These are the only two pumpkins/squash that survived this year, though other produce did very well.
After all the stems were removed, there were 2 gallon sized bags of parsley to be dehydrated.
I brought in a few beets, greens, carrots, and onions.
Standing at the door, this is what is still growing.
Here the small stuff is corn salad, along with a few carrots and other greens on this side.
a few volunteer potato plants which I’m hoping will give spring potatoes,
Swiss chard which was picked Friday and onions, both of which will continue throughout the winter.
Winter broccoli or cauliflower, now I’m not sure which, but won’t be ready until early spring.
Kale that badly needs picking.
And my very own Tonka Truck – well, not really mine, but he has really been chewing away at the blackberries and cleaning the place up.
Apples and bowls
Black Friday and I no longer have dates, so I moved on to other things. Did you brave weather and crowds for a special priced item or two? If you did, I’d love to know about it.
100# of apples are now all sauced and about half of that is now finished apple butter. It seems to take longer than I remember it taking a few years ago. Then there was a major cleaning job in the kitchen as I made some of the sauce each of several days without totally cleaning each time. But now all is finished except the applesauce becoming apple butter in the slow cooker.
I was able to move on into the sewing realm. These bowls are coming together one seam at a time. Today I finished half the darts and then moved on 
to getting this quilt on the machine. My goal is to get it quilted and maybe finished before the end of the month which is this coming Thursday all ready. Hard to believe isn’t it?
applesauce and barn work
Today, I finished processing the first 60 of 100 pounds of apples. This afternoon, I did rearranging in the barn to get ready for a load of hay, which is supposed to be delivered in the morning. This is not too exciting for most of you. However, having enough hay to get through the winter will be exciting for me.
Sewing with Mary
The morning started with a trip to the grocery. We use a lot of bananas in this house and we were out.
After lunch Mary came over and we had a great time choosing fabrics for these bowl cozies
I think we have enough 10″ squares cut now. We need one for the top and another for the bottom of the bowl. And we sewed a piece of the batting to each square.
Next time, I will cut the darts out and sew them closed.
Another 6 little (Lazy Girl pattern) Sweetpea pods are now in the gift basket. Little by little, we get the sewing done.
This fellow wanted to show you the latest style in garlands.
And here you can see what I saw this morning. The moles have invaded the pasture
Work: Dump, Broccoli Soup, Kiwi
Work: We managed to get two loads to the dump today even though it snowed. Construction seems to leave extra unusable pieces around as well as the fact that we don’t have garbage service here. So a load of each was removed today.
And the tanks are now in the ground, waiting for the lids to get finished and the dirt to be put back over the top of them. Progress is progress, even when slow.
And because it snowed, it seemed appropriate to have a thick broccoli soup
Kiwi, the parrot, is enjoying extra special attention, of which he never seems to get enough.
This quilt with the hummingbirds was a 90th birthday gift made for a neighbor, who never had the opportunity to use it. She went into the hospital on her birthday and sadly did not recover. So I took the original label off and now it can go to someone in need.
So this weekend included a bit of this and that which is now done. However removing the quilt label is the only one that was on my check list.
Autumn, are you tired of sheep?
Autumn: These lovely ears of corn are turning into these kernels. I had thought they might be popcorn, but they are not. So they will be ground as needed in recipes. Aren’t they pretty?
We woke up to piles and piles of dead leaves. They are so crunchy as we walk through them.
Are you tired of sheep yet? I hope not.
He’s beautiful! In fact, they both are, but here is why they are called rams.
They quit fighting each other just long enough to do some barn damage. They were inside this stall, and the girls were outside. What is the fastest way to get to the girls? Right through the wall! Ram! Ram! Ram! and he almost made it. I called the neighbor who has an electric cattle prod which did get their attention. They are now across the driveway from the ewes and still contending to see who is the dominant ram. The prod only gives them a bit of shock to get their attention and to keep the person behind it safe. If it really hurt them, they wouldn’t need it several times in the space of a few minutes.
Here come the mellow ladies for dinner. We only had two get stuck in the electronet today. I’m hoping tomorrow to get the power back up, so they will stay away from it.
I’m not tired of sheep talk yet and I hope you aren’t either. Oh, there is another beautiful thing about sheep. They keep me going fast enough, that I don’t have time to get older, which is another wonderful reason to love them?
Home again!
We are home again! and I won’t bore you with tons of photos, but maybe just a couple will be okay.
We missed her mother in this photo as she was in the kitchen serving more food. I think daughter, Jen, took this photo.
There was so much food everywhere. Her family (direct from Armenia) was delighted to meet us and fixed us a dinner feast. Then the next night they put on this marvelous engagement party. They prepared an incredible amount of various foods, as celebrating with food is extremely important. And of course we had to try Armenia food (which was delicious) as well as American food prepared just for us.
Yes, I dropped those two stitches, but decided just to leave them until tomorrow when I was better rested. Sometimes doing something when tired just makes a bigger mess. But I wanted to show you that I really did some knitting on my travels. And when rested, this will be an easy fix.
Grapes and shopping
Mid-morning it was off to Whole Foods shopping for items unique to Whole Foods. This is a half day trip for us as we spend an hour getting there and then a couple hours looking at everything and another hour getting home (usually). Today we stopped unsuccessfully at a shoe store.