Birth Announcement Deux

The last foal for the year has arrived. I've named her Willow and she's a little cutie.

Birth Announcement

It's a boy!

Heeeez back

Meet Duster

Tragedy in the Blackberrys

Sugi, will you put some berries in my basket?

Blackberry picking is coming to an end. We picked 8 gallons of blackberries this year (not including the ones we ate or the dogs & child stole from our baskets) to make lots of blackberry brandy. Nomnoms! We picked on the road, on the driveway and even went to the back 40. That was our last berry picking sojourn and the scene of Deara's horrible tragedy.

Not a future doctor

Nobody makes me bleed my own blood

These pictures were taken under duress. The more blood she saw the more hysterical she got. We made it back to the house and administered the life saving band-aid. I don't even know how she got stuck, it's not like she actually picks any berries. It's so much easier to take some out of our baskets. The dogs liked eating blackberries too. Along with stealing from us they did pick their own, sometimes.

Picking necessities (suit of armor not included)

Lexie eating berries

Homer, gingerly extracting himself from the meanest parts of the plant

Nice plummers crack!  Face hidden = eating berries

It's feeling and acting like Fall around here. Leaves are falling off the maples, it was 39* when I got up at 6:30 this AM, rain probably coming tomorrow. My garden was late this year. There are bunches of green tomatoes but I have a recipe for that. The zucchini hasn't given up yet and the buttercup squash is all over the place. I had mystery plants that I thought were cantaloupe, (way too long a story) have turned out to be watermelon...check it out:

my watermelon

Well, if you can't laugh at your own gardening....






I think it's funny...






It's my Barbie watermelon:

Isn't it adorable?

Kyle says it's even smaller in person...thanks Kyle. However, all the other veggies did just fine. There were peas earlier in the season. Like I said, the zucchini and  squash is all over the place. The tomatoes are lovely yet tasty, a hard combination to achieve sometimes. Store tomatoes are usually lovely but never have the taste of a ripened-on-the-vine tomato. My tomatoes always taste vine ripened but usually have lots of uglies. Not this year!

Hurry, it's September

Fair worthy

Buttercup squash

Peppers love strawberries

Most people don't think about their plants being racists, but they are. Some plants just don't like other plants. I found this out by planting tomatoes next to gourds one year. They hated each other so much that the plants nearest each other actually died. I still didn't know wtf until I found a book about companion planting. So now when I notice a couple of plants not playing well together, they get separated, lest all should perish. All the varieties of peppers I planted this year really like the company of the strawberries. It was a very good pepper & strawberry year:

Bells

Anaheims

                                   Sorry no pictures of strawberries. We ate
                                                      all of them.

As the garden of 2010 comes to an end, I will have lots of frozen and canned veggies/fruit to get us through the winter. Noms!

Rural Wakeup Calls and Buckboard Groupies

From the freakin' bedroom window.  circa 2008

That crop duster guy is back! Nothing like being rudely awakened at 8 AM by the sound of an old plane flying past your bedroom window. This is the third year. The first year the mustangs and I thought the the end was nigh. We all freaked out. The horses were all running down the field, I was all running down the stairs for my life and camera while having a heart attack. I was sure some plane of death, engulfed in flames, was hurtling towards me until I looked out the window and saw he was hurtling towards me but he wasn't on fire. So that's okay.

2010

Don't know why but I take pictures of him every year. Since I'm up anyway (grumble, grumble), might as well see the show. I begrudgingly admit the pilot is amazing. Bobbing and weaving around trees, sideways turns just two or three hundred feet above the ground. My own private little airshow then back to reality...he's probably spraying pesticides and I'm trying to be organic here! Better not be any drift!!! Then I flipped him the universal sign for "Hey, organic farming over here" and went in and made him his own folder entitled: Cropduster. That'll show him.

I became a bonafide buckboard enthusiast yesterday. Went to the State fair with the Chambers clan. It was rocky to start, the womenfolk were pissy:

But Sugi, I want to wear a dress

It's so tough being almost 4 and trying to have a mind of your own.

Hillery before the horsies

When I saw her mom I wasn't sure I wanted to go anymore with double pouting going on and all...but as soon as we got to the fair and let Hillery see the horsies she was all better.








Kira ended up really enjoying the funnel cake and dancing to the horses music at the Draft Horse Freestyle judging. They had dancing music going on while the horses did whatever they wanted in the big arena. When she started coming down from her sugar rush around 5:30 we took her and her dad home.  

There was not enough funnel cake

Free-stylin' the big boyz

I'm a dancin' machine

Hillery and I went back to watch the evenings horse events. We were treated to the buckboard teams being judged. You can feel the power of that team when they trot past you. The guy we were rooting for came in second in both classes: 4 horse, then 2 horse. Some guy from Nevada beat out all four Oregon teams, both classes. We're betting the judge was from Nevada too.

God Bless America!

Our guy

We had front row seats

Blue wagon = Stupid guy from Nevada

We had a blast and bookmarked this event for next year. Do Over!

Ode to the Old Greenhouse

      These are the morning greeters. Lilu is ready to start the day, Denver is not done being a chihuahua bed yet this morning. Lilu and I are up and out early because it's supposed to be hot and we have to finish cleaning up the carcass of the old greenhouse. It was old when we moved here and of dubious construction.


I've nursed it along for 6 years now...time for a new and improved model which I won't be able to start until Fall due to indiscriminate planting of tomatoes and beans last May. I'm afraid sure the old greenhouse isn't going to make it through another winter.  

    


The week before demolition.
    

The outside last April. 

This morning...no more greenhouse. The beans and tomatoes came through the demolition in pretty good shape. I expected a bit more damage but my son-in-law did a great job. The pile of wood and plastic was all gone by 11 AM. Farewell old greenhouse...I have lots of pictures of you and the plants you started or sheltered over the years. 


After watering the garden and flower beds it was time to go check on a cow due to calve any day now...but first you have to get past these guys...
 

Fallon & Zippy

Gwen, Mia, Fallon & Zippy

No calf yet. Later it got up to 94*. I found the rest of the herd & a couple of hot rams in the sprinklers.

 Too numerous to mention

We raise Shetland ponies. Downsizing has come to our farm because I like itty-bitty first off (see 1/2 of morning greeters above) and they are easier to deal with.  We have Lowline cows (basically Angus the Aussies downsized) and a Scottish Highland bull. There are also Icelandic sheep, Boer and Fainting goats and the 2 pet llamas. They are all for another day as I'm off to turn the apples that fell on the ground today into yummy Christmas applebutter gifts.

Grass-fed Beef Info

     I've decided to blog about the farm and the spoiled rotten animals that are raised here as a kind of diary mostly for myself. Hopefully others will enjoy the stories and see the work it takes to operate even a small farm. It's not all hard work, animals bring great joy and laughter too. PETA & HSUS would have you believe that all farms treat their animals miserably. This is just not true. Livestock needs to be in optimum health and condition to reproduce healthy offspring. We raise meat animals and our own produce. The only way to know for sure what the animal was fed is by raising them ourselves. You are what you eat. We don't want hormones or grains in our meat. Bovine growth hormones are going to be in the meat and milk when you eat/drink it. No corn is fed to the cattle, sheep, or goats. All it does is fatten the animal which transfers to more saturated fat and cholesterol in the meat. Clemson University did a study and this is what they came up with:

11 Reasons Grass-fed Beef is Better for You

*Lower fat, cholesterol and calories

*Higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA)

*Higher levels of Omega 3 fatty acids

*Healthier ratio of Omega 3's to Omega 6 fats (1.65 vs 4.85)

*Higher levels of beta carotene (Vitamin A)

*Higher levels of CLA's (conjugated linoleic acid)

*Higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium and potassium

*Higher in alphatecopherol (Vitamin E)

*Higher in B-vitamins and riboflavin

*Lower saturated fats linked with heart disease

*No corn, soy or wheat.  Good ingredients for donuts but bovine do better without them.