OATS!! BEE-YOU-TEE-FUL OATS !!

I LOVE the sound of oats racing up the pipe and filling the oat room in the barn.I love the feel of oats ,its'silkiness flowing through your fingers in an 80 lb bag.My sheep, horses & goats love the feel of it flowing over their teeth !
Harvest is not in November at Thanksgiving time.That's the tail end of harvest when brussel spouts and the last of the potatoes are gathered in.November is the meat harvest.Deer,pigs,beef and the tail end of chicken & turkey.
This has been a good year for crops, so far. Enough rain and enough hot sunshine.In over abundance, plan for years of under abundance.Canned food lasts for several years. Frozen stuff does not. Pork will turn rancid, even if frozen too long.If you raise your own pigs or beef,this is the time of year to inventory old cuts of meat. Wacky cuts that you don't know what to do with??~ cut the meat off the bones, grind it into sausage or hambuger. Cook up the bones for the dogs & cats.Save the broth for beef broth & can or freeze it. Even better, cook up outdated cuts in the oven, give the meat to the dogs,use the beef broth water to swish up the brownings for richer beef broth in the baking pan & CAN it! SO MUCH WASTE that can be used for average needs. Now, for you canners,lids are CHEAP at the FAmily Dollar. Just tipping you off.You know how it is.Every year it's more expensive.I know where you can get cheaper lids. ALSO~~~~ RUBBER GASKETS !!!
Oats fill the Oat Storage room with a 'HISSSSSS' as it races through the pipe and fills the storage space to the top.Happy horses. Happy sheep & goats! Thank You, LORD, for this years oat harvest (:>, (ahead of time).Why wait until November to thank HIM ?

Fishers

Sweet little things ! Cute little nose. Cuddly and warm (:> I have 1 or 2 of these fishers on my property.They will kill my chickens with lightening speed (they already got one chicken, my bandy hen plus all her peeps.) They will return to my coop every day until a vacancy sign is posted.My son interuppted the demise of one bloody barred rock chicken . The Fisher took off running. We checked out on line info about these critters.They were almost extinct due to massive killing off these predators.Then they were "re-introduced". I wondered "WHY?" Well, it appears they are the ONLY natural predator of porcupines (!!) I have determined to trap these guys and present them to my Pastor and church. They will be so happy!! A porcupine is eating away the porch at the main entrance to the church.So far they have had no luck at trapping the porcupine.(:> Maybe I can help.

Onion Time

Now that raspberry & strawberry season is over, it's time to dig up the onions.You can braid the long green stems together and hang them to air dry, or you can freeze them. I don't waste the green stems. They are scrumptious and fried in olive oil with chopped carrots makes GREAT fried rice!First, fry your chopped onion greens & some purple onion and chopped carrots in olive oil.Add cold (preferably) cooked rice, well drained, and add a handful of light brown sugar. Sprinkle a little soy sauce and toss and cook until nice and hot. But not too long.It will mush up.Too much soy sauce will also make it mushy.

They are also wonderful and colorful in salads.

Chop them up and spoon them into ziplock plastic bags in meal size portions and drop them into the freezer.

Boulders , creeks and boys are synonomous. But they are incomplete entities without dogs! Swimming in a creek WITHOUT YOUR DOG is a FELONY!! It is TREACHERY!! It is almost as bad as Stepping on a Crack (in the sidewalk) and Breaking Your Mother's BACK !!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Good Ol' Gus!! My chocolate brown Boykin Spaniel.As phlegmatic a personality as you will ever meet. Roll over, scratch my belly, and drag me to where you want me to go. I will not obey your directions.Well, maybe I'll walk along the shoreline in the creek.But I'm cuddly and warm as any pillow or comforter you'll ever cuddle up to and I'm a great sleeping companion as any stuffed teddy bear.
Now Buddy is a horse of a different color! He LOVES to go fast, that's why he loves to ride in the car & watch out the window. He also loves to travel fast down river!!He is indefatigueable and will swim for hours, with only brief stops.

Swimming holes and 'criks'.

Life for a kid wouldn't be complete without summer afternoon treks to the swimming hole where creek water is crystal clear, snuggled between mountain ranges and shaded by trees . We hike only a short distance through the forest with our lunches,carrying jugs of lemonade and iced tea , towells slung over our shoulders.I settle my folding chair at the creek's edge , feet cooling in the flowing water and spend the afternoon reading my book. The kids swim out to boulders and do 'cannonballs' into deeper basined out spots
The kids are worn out,exhausted by the end of the day.Thunder rolled softly as the sun slipped behind storm clouds.We reached the car just as rain started to pelt the windshield in large droplets.I expect a fairly quiet ride home down the mountain.Then I remembered~ my grandsons had not taken a shower recently! Well, I warned them. I opened the windows & sunroof while the wind drove the rain in! It was like wash, rinse, spin & blow dry by the time they got home! HAH!!

Bankbarns

By May,the hay supply has dwindled to nil. Barely enough bales are left of the previous year's store to keep horse, goats & sheep bellies full until the first cutting of the new year and fresh in ~gathering in June .The upper 'street' floor is where hay is stored and is empty and echoes. The wind and drafts are felt through the open spaces in the boards of the barn walls.Not so by mid summer when every nook & cranny will be filled with a haybale somewhere !

Haybarn

Mama cats find secret hidden tunnels between hay bales to have their little ones.Warm, cozy and hidden from drafts and mean ferril tom cats.Crafty hens hide their eggs from me where they find an empty spot between stacked bales and the mama duck loves to plant her nest up in the penthouse sweet.Newly hatched baby ducks just seem to parachute down to the floor unharmed.They weigh about as much as a snowflake so I guess they pretty much just 'flutter' down.I love to find a cozy hidden spot too and read a couple of chapters of whatever book is inspiring my thoughts at the time.

I told Brandon, my grandson, that I lost my sewing needle somewhere in the barn. He's searching for it.

Raspberry Ice Cream

What to do with fresh picked raspberries? Well, after treating your wounds from the tiny thorns you drag your wrist though with each raspberry bush, you might consider ice cream. Sugar your berries and let stand in the refrig overnight.It will become syrupy.The Waring ice cream maker is my favorite. It's no longer manufactured but can still be bought online on Ebay.It's simple,uncomplicated and instructions are still available online. I have raspberries growing everywhere, including in front of my front door.I would have torn them out except there were a ton of berries on the vines....SOOOOO, my front door looks like an abandoned homestead site. But I have Raspberry Ice Cream to show for it!! I need to dig these vines out and move them elsewhere.

Picking raspberries is no easy matter. A large crop was growing in the back of my pond down a steep slope. Of coarse I wanted those berries that were glaring at me that were just beyond my reach. Rather than tumble down the hill head first, I sat down and scooted toward the edge where the slope took a deep plunge.A family of fire ants also thought to locate their address there and proceeded to march at top speed up the hem of my shorts and set up a protest march,nipping inflammatory remarks into my skin.The following day impending cellulitis raged on the back of my thigh.My concentration at work was brought to a screetching halt until my mind was pacified with a Keflex prescription .However, ice cream pacifeies all ills. It makes EVERYTHING 'ALL BETTER'.

Hay Day !

I have uploaded this picture before. Why not? Nothing much changes with hay gathering.Every year it looks the same.I have a very pretty, very large hay barn.The kind that makes you want to climb up near the rafters, find a cozy spot and read a book.Load after load was trekked down the road .I remarked to my neighbor, who farms the hay, "Wow! You sure got a lot of hay this time around!" He shook his head and said, "Never had so much". We've had a LOT of rain.This past week we've had a lot of sunshine.Farmers like the second cutting of hay. It produces nicer hay than June.My horses are not picky. We all know that June gets the rain. July & August can be plagued by drought. I'll take June hay anytime. I'm not a gambler.This years June hay was coarser than last years. I don't know why. My horses eat every morsal and have nice fat rumps. (:> Today was 97F in certain nearby areas. I only wanted to be near the beach.