Cheese Day and Rain

A whooping 5" of rain in 3 days, yay rah. A little thunder from time to time, a good time to just nap and relax. Oh no, what do I do? Do I flop on the couch? Of course not! I made me some cheese and pastries, LOL. Of course, I got some net cruising time in too, I like looking at pictures of other peoples gardens. I might get some ideas to try!

So, a big ball of mozzarella got made. I had forgotten how hot the water to process it needs to be. My fingers are still tingling a little bit, LOL. The stirred curd cheddar smells great and is drying. I also made a wheel of farmers cheddar, half the press time and a moister, softer cheddar type cheese. While the curd was cooking down, I used a couple of the apples I got from the farmer up the blacktop and made an apple tart. Pie crust with butter, cheese, an egg and a tbsp of flour for the filling and those yummy apples on top. Some of the butter leaked out of the crust and now I have a mess in the oven to clean. Oh well, it was worth it!

Today I'm thinking about some rabbit and dumplings with french bread.......

Happy milk day

Yep, the calf is weaned! Well, more or less she is, LOL. Daisy calf is still a little bit upset with me but Goober cow is milking nicely. 5 gallons of milk in the fridge and one batch of mozzarella cheese done with a batch of cheddar on the stove. I am one happy farmer!

Quiet Week

It's been a bit of a quiet week with me feeling a bit under the weather. I did work a small bit on the chicken house, I'm one piece of plywood short of having it all covered and then the paint and attaching the run to it and it will have chickens in it. It poured rain all night into this morning so it's gonna be a while before i get back out there.

I'm afraid i'm losing another tooth from the chicken smashing in the face thing. I havent felt much like eating so the boys have all been on their own for supper. You know Momma doesnt feel good if she won't cook!

I'm into week number 2 waiting on hubster to get the tractor tire off. Done waiting, the boys did it for me this morning. Now all I need is for the tire man to be on duty so I can get it fixed!

Maybe in a day or 2 this tooth will just fall out and i can get back to being myself....

Just Too Funny

I know, shame on me for laughing at my Lucky goat. I even teased him just a little by calling his name. He called back and was trying to find me. I couldn't take it, I had to pull the bag off for him. He was happy to see me and didn't care that I laughed! He just can't help being a curious goat since he's never seen a feed sack before...

Really??

Come on now, really? Did this just happen? yep, I just can NOT win this year. Had to run to town for gear oil to put in the truck differential (hubs said it was full even tho I KNOW one of the seals is leaking) and on the way back, as we passed the county jail facility, I spotted an American flag laying on the ground. of course, that instantly chapped my ass so I had to turn around and go pick it up, prepared to walk all up and down somebody for their blatant disrespect etc. Turns out, it's a closed down office for the federal housing (welfare). So, here I am with this flag that has apparently been cut off the pole and thrown on the ground. The city police were glad to take my complaint and promised to follow the flag rules with my perfectly folded flag ( officer was impressed, LOL). So, I jump back in the truck and am at the city limits when I can hear something funny from the truck and the battery light comes on. I already have a sneaking suspicion of what's wrong so I put the hammer down headed for home. Diesels are hard to turn and have no brakes to speak of without that belt. I made it home tho, safe and sound. Now I need a new belt. ARG, I just can't have a good day....

Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Yep, It's another installment of Lessons learned the hard way.... last year I tried peanuts for the first time. I just planted a couple of nuts in a car tire. A sort of raised bed experiment thing. It worked well and with the pictures from around the internet I'd looked at, I decided to go ahead and plant some in the big garden. Here comes the lesson learned... peanuts don't like hard, compact soil and they despise clay. 8 plants and that's all I got. The roots grew down to the clay and quit. I really thought they were doing good, the tops all looked great! Guess I need to build some garden boxes for the peanuts! LOL At least I have a good crop of seed nuts for next years planting!

Side note, small disaster today.... I've been looking for a mystery water leak that showed up on the water bill this month. couldn't figure out where it was and I had resigned myself to crawling under the trailer in the sloppy mess and cutting the plastic that holds the floor insulation off to locate it when I found it from inside the house. The wash machine has finally flew apart. I don't know why I never heard it leaking until today but there it is, leaking from underneath it and the water was just seeping down thru the wall in the corner behind the washer. I turned the water spigot off and it quit leaking. Yep, something inside the washer is broken. It's 11 years old and has been repaired a half dozen times already, Sears just doesn't make em like they used to. I just can not catch a break this year.

Dismal Day

The last few days have just been "ho-hum" days, piddling around the farm. I finally got a little bit of cash to pick up a couple pieces of plywood for the chicken coop and it starts to rain. It's one of those all day misting rains, no real precipitation but wet enough to ruin your outside plans.

There's been a few emotional drains happen this week. hubster ended up back in the ER and that young ER doc figured out his digestive problem in about 5 minutes. which of course, makes me madder than a wet hen. 7 weeks of no paycheck, 100 different tests, the 3 doc appts a week, the 2 procedures and $17,000.00 to a specialist (harvard grad) who apparently missed the week they taught the gall bladder and gall stones.

The next emotional blow was hearing about a couple old friends of mine having a motorcycle crash. Father/daughter pair and both were seriously injured. It took me a little driving to make a visit to another old friend to find out what happened and the daughter is going to eventually be okay but my friend is in very critical condition and it's not looking good.

I am getting some support from my loving and caring goat pal, Lucky. He ensures my good spirits by amusing me every chance he gets. I've been giving him horse cookies and he really gets excited over them. When I run out, he has to make sure I'm not holding out on him by chewing the hoodie pocket just to make sure it's really empty! Johnboy is in full rut and no one is safe from his unbelievable stink. Billy goats can get really rank. You can smell him all over the farm. The worst part of it he's spoiled and you can't hardly get away from him outside and he begs for attention. Am I ever glad I snipped and clipped Lucky goat!

I watched part of the republican debate the other night. Geez, we've got some real winners in the race, don't we? There is no way on this green earth that I could ever support Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann. My "weasel meter" is just pegged every time either one opens their mouth.

I've turned my thoughts toward next years crops already. Since this year was so dismal, I'm working out some things to possibly prevent a repeat of this years disasters. We'll just have to wait and see how those ideas turn out. I still haven't learned how to grow patience, LOL.

I think today is a good day to just flop on the couch with a good book......

Waiting on Rain

There's my Sia, letting me know he still loves me.

Since I've had some serious trauma to my life and big plans in the past few days, I've been thinking about where the farm is now, where it was, the things that have happened to us the last couple of years, how I've dealt with different things, what my attitude used to be like and what my attitude is now. Wow, lots to ponder, eh?

There's a few things I don't have to think on very hard to remember exactly when they changed. Some other things tho, those seem to have changed more subtly over a period of time.

So, with that in mind, I'm already working on another brilliant (or stupid) plan to supplement our winter food supply. Since Mother Nature showed us her more cruel side this year, I will see a winter menu that is lacking some of the items I have become accustomed to having. I will have to adapt and overcome and wipe the cobwebs off my creative side. Since we have taken some serious blows to our already pitiful financial situation, I didn't even come close to building the greenhouse, killing my big plan to have a 3 season harvest(again, LOL). I refuse to admit defeat and have worked up a plan to once again do some indoor growing. I can't just have buckets of plants laying around when the cold weather comes (lousy windows and serious drafts) so once the plants get to that point, I will create an indoor greenhouse from simple materials that would never withstand life outdoors but will work out just fine inside. Now all I need is for the seeds to germinate!

Okay, Where's The Rainbow??

ROFL! Lucky the Unicorn goat!

That's a corn stalk stuck in his collar, apparently he's been rolling around in the pile....