Pure Lazy

Posted on October 28, 2015 by farm2011

If you would look up the word Lazy tonight in the dictionary I swear that you would see a picture of me! And honestly I would be the first one to submit the picture.

I know that sometimes you just need to step away and zone out. But tonight after 6:30 I did absolutely nothing. And I mean Nothing! It’s not like I don’t have things to do. Seriously I should be working on some Christmas stuff, some Thanksgiving stuff, making soap, working on some cards, laundry baskets are full …. well I’m sure that you get the picture.

But for tonight? I laid sprawled out on the couch in my pink reindeer winter flannel jammies covered up with a fuzzy blanket. And what show was I watching? I was watching how Egyptians made millions of mummies out of dogs and cats. And how they can tell that some of the Egyptians made mummies out of sacred bulls and birds.  Yup, pure Lazy!

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Guess what I did tonight?

Posted on October 27, 2015 by farm2011

Well if you guessed that I worked on tomatoes again – well you are the winner!!

It seems like these tomatoes just keep multiplying and multiplying lately. DSCN8338And the worst part about this is that I am kinda getting sick of them but I know that in about a month I’ll be buying them at the grocery store. But seriously they do look pretty good, don’t you agree?

Tonight I just roasted them and plan on freezing them for the winter. I tried to give William some when he was home this past weekend, but of course I couldn’t pawn them on him. I think he’s getting tired of my tomatoes also!

I also had a chance to make some Halloween cards. I kinda like how they turned out. DSCN8342

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Fall cleanup in the garden

Posted on October 26, 2015 by farm2011

The wind just keeps blowing and blowing… It’s probably not so bad for the people who don’t mind wind, but for the 99.9999 % of the population who can’t stand it – it’s bad!

So what else to do on this windy night other than work in the garden right? I want to get the frozen tomato plants pulled out and hopefully a bunch of the weeds that started to grow also pulled out of the dirt to get it ready for winter.

But first things first. Where are the chore gloves? Honestly this shouldn’t be that hard. I mean this summer I swear I put about 25 dozen (OK, that’s maybe an exaggeration) but I did put away a whole lot of the black and brown farm gloves that would be perfect for this job. And for tonight? Well I did find one lonely glove and of course it was the left hand! Well I was about to give up when I finally did find a right handed black glove but it was one of those stretchy gloves that you get from the discount stores. You know the kind. The ones that once you wash them and after they are dried they still do cover your fingers, but seem to have shrunk and now only cover about only half cover your palms of your hands. Yea, those gloves. Well it was better than nothing, and I put it on and outside I go. It was getting pretty dark outside and I almost went back in to get my head flashlight like the mining people wear. But once the yard light kicked on I could see better and got everything pulled out and raked together. It’s supposed to rain the next couple of days and then I’ll get back into the garden and clean it up a little bit better. For tonight it was a good job done!

So for now, I’m heading back into the house and looking at my glove situation. The left glove? It was looking dirty but not bad at all. The right glove? It only half covered my palm of my hand and had a big rip between the thumb and the next finger along with having the one middle finger tore completely off! Now I know that I should have thrown this glove away and be done with it. But after I took it off I put it into the laundry. Who knows, I might need it again. 🙂

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Pictures from this weekend

Posted on October 25, 2015 by farm2011

Not only was the weather perfect this weekend, but we sure got a lot done! 

Daryl spent some time in the field disking down the corn stalks and then put the rest of the machinery away for the year. You disk the corn down to help break down the stalks and so they deteriorate over the winter. He’ll probably disk again in the spring to break them up even more. DSC_0267Even though we don’t have that many acres,  it’s always nice to have everything in the shed in case the ‘s’ word happens. (snow!) 

I had a chance to spend some time with the girls on Saturday and we had the best day. We went to the river to do a little shopping and we also went out for a later dinner. It was nice to hang out with them and hopefully at our next outing even more of the gang can go. 20151024_125602

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We had hard frost these past nights and it sure made the trees turn red. When we were at the river yesterday it was a little cloudy, but with the frost last night and the bright sunshine today, the reds in the leaves really came out. Remember this tree from a couple of days ago? DSCN8329Check it out now – DSC_0274I laughed when I was trying to take some pictures of the one tree in our back yard because Checkers just was sitting so nice right beside me and I think she looked like she was wondering just what in the world I was doingDSC_0277 and then she went kamikaze! Poor Smoochie didn’t know what to do.DSC_0285She kept picking on everyone all afternoon and I wasn’t sure if she was crabby or just wanting to play.Then later in the day everyone settled in and was nice and calm. Even though they picked their new sitting place on the table on the front porch. DSC_0320

The reason they are looking for a new spot is because the porch got washed today and all the furniture is tucked away for the next couple of months. They had taken over the porch furniture from the dogs this summer but now it’s gone. Hopefully for not too long and we’ll have an early Spring and it’ll come out again. 

More tomatoes got roasted and frozen for the winter DSC_0273and we also have a new window in our Old Milk House. Now this might not seem like a big deal, but for over 30 years there hasn’t been one in it DSC_0289and just like that now there is one. DSC_0322 Shazam! I need to get the building painted and it’ll look really good. For now it just needs a little love.  

And finally late Sunday night we had a chance to Skype with the kids. Yup, what a great weekend it was!

 

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And the winner is….

Posted on October 23, 2015 by farm2011

Well I finally did it. I have named my soap business. Now there was a lot of really good ideas and Thank You for sending suggestions to help me out. 

My name is going to be : SQUEAKY WINDMILL   soaps and more

It’s been a real struggle to try to figure this out and it was almost as hard as naming one of the kids. OK, maybe that’s a little bit drama queen, but it really was hard. I mean I talked about it a lot and poor Daryl was probably getting pretty sick of hearing about it. 

So today I found myself standing in front of the County Courthouse to register the name.20151023_150427 I thought well it’s too late to turn back now and I took a deep breath and went in. Everyone was really nice and I’m sure they knew that I was nervous. The reason that you register it is so that no one can use this name now in our county. I just wasn’t sure how much of a rush there would be to use this name – but heck I’m legal now! 

Then I had contacted the IRS to visit about what is needed for taxes. I wasn’t so nervous about this call but I think I might have had a lot more questions that he was expecting. So I’m pretty sure what type of tax ID number that I’ll need, now I just need to register for it on line. 

The last thing that I’ll have to check out is the CPSC. This is the Consumer Protection Safety Commission agency and I’ll call them tomorrow after work. There sure is a lot of work setting this up but hopefully once it’s set up then that’s all I’ll have to do 

So with all that said and done, I decided to make a couple of batches of soap also today 🙂 I made New Chicks (yellow and white with Lemon fragrance) and also Morning Buzz (thanks William for helping with this name). Morning Buzz is a brown and white soap bar that has some coffee grains in the white top part. The fragrance is a Chocolate Expresso and it smells really pretty good.

I feel like I’m probably at the crossroads where it’s either move forward or call it quits. Well I’ve got too much soap in the house to call it quits so I guess I’ll just keep plugging away. Here’s to the new business SQUEAKY WINDMILL   Soaps and more ! Whooo Hooo!!

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Herding cats – Thursday’s job

Posted on October 22, 2015 by farm2011

Our two fuzzy kitties seemed to have picked up a virus in their eyes lately and tonight I had plans to take them to the Vet to have them checked out.

Little did I know that this whole job wasn’t going to be as easy as I was thinking it was going to be. When I set up the appointment I didn’t think that much of the time that we agreed on. I mean it gave me 30 minutes to get home grab the kitties and then come back to town again for the appointment. Making the appointment so close to when I get off work was probably mistake number one. Well I got out of work tonight only 5 minutes late but that really was going to cut my timing short. I beat it home and I know that the kitties are always waiting for me in the afternoon, so all I have to do is grab them and get back on the road. As I pull into the yard – no cats! Don’t panic right, I’ll get some food and soon they’ll all come running.

I decided to get the cat carrier out of the garage first and with all the dry weather that we’ve been having lately when I got the carrier out in the sunlight, holy cow was it dirty. OK, mistake number two – clean the carrier when you have much more time to do it. Like an hour or so! So I literally ran to the house and I noticed that the kitties came up to the porch and now maybe this won’t be so bad to coral them after all. I went tearing through the house and grabbed the broom and when I stepped outside on the porch with the broom all the cats scattered! Seriously? They must be as terrified as the dogs of the broom. I’ll deal with that in a little bit. So I took the broom and started to frantically sweeping and beating this carrier to get it looking halfway clean. And honestly it didn’t look too bad but I’m thinking I might have looked a little scary doing it. This look might be why both the dogs and the cats run when I have a broom in my hand? Just guessing…..

Next thing was to catch the kitties. I ran back into the house again and grabbed some hot dogs. All kitties like hot dogs right? Well I could see the kitties not too far away and when I threw down some of the broken hot dogs they did come up to the house – but then they grabbed their pieces and ran away to the garage! Urrrghh. OK, I had to think smarter than these cats because time was a ticking away. So back into the house I go and grab some more hot dogs and the plan was to try this again. I stood by our house and when I called the kitties you would never had guessed that the little kitties came but then also about 20 chickens! For some crazy reasons lately, when the chickens hear me call the kitties they know that I’m feeding them something that they might like and they come running across the yard like they are in the Olympics or something. Have you ever seen chickens run? Not a good sight at all! And if you ask me, I’d say that something is very wrong with them if they come running to ‘here kitty kitty’ don’t you agree? So of course the kitties grab the hot dog pieces and dart to the garage again because the chickens are chasing them to get the food. So it’s me chasing the chickens – chasing the kitties.

Let’s just say this whole experience on catching these two kittens was like herding cats and that is never an easy job. Well, after finally catching the white kitty and fooling the other calico kitty, I did end up getting them into the cat carrier. But as I’m putting it into the car the carrier looked terrible! I thought it looked so much better when I had swept it off, but it must have been the lighting or something. Because now it looked really bad. So I take off running into the house and grab a wet cloth to wash it down. And finally I was finding myself sitting in the driver seat of the Pacifica. As I turn the key something catches my eye on the dash and what it was is that the gas tank on the car showed it was on the red line and almost empty. Seriously? I really wanted to take this car because sometimes when we take our animals to the vet they get scared so much that they can mess themselves. Gross! And if they did have an accident I thought that the Pacifica had a lot more room in it and could absorb the smell more. OK, not the best logic but it was what I was thinking. So at this point I took a chance and thought that I just needed to go and would just roll the dice.

At the end of this appointment I never did run out of gas, the kitties didn’t have any accidents in the car, and I even was 5 minutes early to the appointment. Yup one more project checked off this weeks To Do List. 🙂

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Results of the Farm Mystery Photo 10-14-15

Posted on October 21, 2015 by farm2011

Awesome job Gene!

Here was the clueDSC_0251

And the answer was the valve on the gas barrel. I laughed more times that I can count when I looked at this gas barrel. When we were first married I painted it white. It looked clean and well… pretty white. My father in law literally stopped in his tracks when he was saw it when he walking in the farm yard and said that no one should ever paint a gas barrel white. Well I wasn’t sure just why not, but I thought I better paint it again a different color. So the next day it was painted bright red. I didn’t see my father in law that day, but my guess is that he had a pretty big grin on his face when he saw the new color. Daryl keeps saying he wants to get rid of it, OK so it hasn’t had anything it in for over 30 years but it still is pretty cool. And just look how nice it looks painted red 🙂DSC_0252

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more soap….

Posted on October 20, 2015 by farm2011

I made a batch of ‘Squeaky Windmill’ and I’m kinda digging how it turned out. It’s really pretty and I’m anxious to see how it soaps up. I keep forgetting to add sugar to my concoctions though. I think my problem is that the sugar gets added before the rest of the ingredients and since it’s a new thing for me to do, well I just seem to brush over that one. The sugar is added for extra bubbles or so they say and it would be nice to see if that’s really true or not. I mean the Web says it does- so it really must be true right?DSC_0262

In the picture you can also see my first batch of ‘Dirty Paws’. This batch won’t be for sale and if I like the walnuts in it, I’ll have to see about buying some more from my soap distributor. I’ll have to wait a week or so before I can test it and that will be just in time before I put in my next supply order.

But for now my soap inventory of the others ones continue to grow and grow 🙂

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Cabbage Recipe

Posted on October 19, 2015 by farm2011

Here is the Cabbage Recipe that I made and really like! I call it:

Laura’s Cabbage Supreme

Dressing
½ c vegetable oil
¼ c sugar
2 T vinegar
1 tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper

Combine all ingredients and blend thoroughly

Salad
1 (2 ¼ oz) pkg sliced almonds, roasted
1 (16 oz) pkg coleslaw mix
½ c chopped green pepper and ½ chopped red pepper
5 green onions chopped
1 (8 oz) can sliced water chestnuts
2 c chow mein noodles

Just before serving, combine almonds, vegetables, noodles and dressing; toss to mix

 

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Kitchen Time

Posted on October 18, 2015 by farm2011

I decided to find my ambition late today which was better than not finding it at all right? So around 2:00 I was heading to town to get some groceries for the upcoming week. It was so windy and dusty outside that I had to laugh because when I was backing out of the garage to leave I turned on the windshield wipers to get the thick layer of dust off of it! Hopefully either the wind will slow down or we get a good shower – either one would be a blessing!

So like I said I went to get groceries which in itself is uneventful. What I wasn’t predicting though was to have a full cart by the time I got to the cashier. While I was walking up and down all the aisles I thought that maybe I should get everything organized for food for the next couple of weeks so I wasn’t doing the staring in the fridge every night. Yup, that was my plan. Hence the reason for a full cart also! I think honestly I only had half of a plan. The full plan was to decide what I was going to make before I was in the store.

When I got home and everything unloaded my real work started. I had made an Angel Food cake on Saturday (which never turns out as good as Ma’s!) so I put a pan of cookies in the oven. And since I had the oven on, when the cookies were done I put a pan of bacon in it to cook. I wanted the bacon for the pork and beans that I had cooking and also for quick breakfast sandwiches in the morning. Now on to browning a lb of hamburger for some taco meat for taco’s this week, and I also browned a pound of breakfast sausage that was thawing in the refrigerator. I had toasted the remainder of the bread that I bought at the farmers market and used both the sausage and the toasted bread and made a breakfast bake for the week. I’m not sure how it’s going to taste, but heck it was worth a shot. With the oven still on, I put in a green bean casserole that will taste good later this week with some of the fish that I had bought today. I also made a coleslaw salad that is really good and since it’s getting pretty late tonight – I’ll post the recipe for that tomorrow. And to round out my kitchen escapade I wanted to make some fried rice. Of course I only had some long grain brown rice in the cupboard, but it was something to use so I put a pan of water on the stove and then hoped for the best. I had thrown away the original box that it came in and the rice was in a mason jar in the cupboard. But how hard can this be? Well it wasn’t hard, but holy cow it sure takes a long time to get all that water soaked up. No wonder I like Minute Rice! But after the rice was done I scrambled some eggs and cut up some chicken that was in the refrigerator and with a few more things added – Bam! That was also done. I’m planning on using that with some shrimp that I had in the freezer. Well once everything was done and it was supper time can you guess what we had? We had some pizza warmed up that we got on Friday from town 🙂

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