Garden in still life...

  

 Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes. 

~Author Unknown

Tally on cows...

 Trailing cows past an old homestead.
You can tell it's there by the trees.

Tally:  We pregnancy tested 450 cows today.

Only 27 open cows.

These are better results than we hoped for in a drought situation.

After testing, we turned cows out to fresh pastures.  They aren't the greatest, but they have better grass than the pastures they just left.

Hubby and I took out one bunch of cows and I was enjoying the scenery and the wildflowers along the way.  I captured this photo of Rubber Rabbitbrush.  Isn't that a funny name for a plant?

 This silvery sage-looking plant is called Winterfat.  The cows are absolutely crazy for it right now.  Everywhere they find it, they munch it right off.  I think it has a salty flavor that they crave plus it's high in protein.

The sage brush was "in bloom."  It is particularly strong-scented right now, perhaps because it's blooming.  I  like the aromatic, woodsy smell of sage brush.  Cattle don't eat it much, but the Sage Grouse eat the berries and have their young in it.  Sage brush is great cover for prairie animals.

A big day of work is done.  We'll be moving livestock out again tomorrow.

It sounds like rain might be in the forecast!

I hope so.

Know well the condition of your flocks....

 A skillet of pullet eggs frying for breakfast.

Two of the eggs were double-yolkers!

I'm getting 17 pullet eggs each day now and collecting 27-29 eggs a day.

Really.  Too many.  It's give-away season.

 A fall prairie bouquet.  Grasses, sunflowers and Queen Anne's Lace.

I made my favorite Gingerbread Cake today.

It feels like fall when I make it.  

It is deep brown, and rich, with earthy-warm spices.

Very good with hot coffee or tea.

 We brought the ewes closer to home.

It's time to turn in the bucks.

 

 I love this photo of the sheep going through the gate.

We turned in ten bucks today.

In five months we will have lambies.

 ..............................

Today was one of those Indian Summer Days.

Hot.  90 degrees.

This evening after shutting the chicken coop, 

I took the dogs for a walk 

and the wind came up all of a sudden -- strong and cold.

The cold front is moving in.

Tomorrow's high is said to be around 50 degrees.

We will be working cows outdoors

all week and pregnancy testing. 

We welcome the cooler weather for working livestock.

 ...................................

23 Know well the condition of your flocks,
And pay attention to your herds;
²⁴ For riches are not forever,
Nor does a crown endure to all generations.
²⁵ When the grass disappears, the new growth is seen,
And the herbs of the mountains are gathered in,
²⁶ The lambs will be for your clothing,
And the goats will bring the price of a field,
²⁷ And there will be goats’ milk enough for your food,
For the food of your household,
And sustenance for your maidens.

Proverbs 27:23-27

In the garden...

 

Even though we've been struggling through a drought in our area, my garden has been fairly good at producing.  Some things have done better than others, but that's to be expected.  We've had a full summer of daily salads, and we're still nibbling like bunnies at the greens.  I planted a little bit of lettuce every two weeks or so and we've been "eating green" all summer from the garden.  Finally the cucumbers and tomatoes are ripening.  So late.  So late.  But still, we're eating from the garden and I'm thankful for what we have.  The onions are small, and they are real tear-jerkers -- producing tears in the cook's eyes when she peels and dices them.  The garlic is beautiful -- my first crop of it.  I'm going to be planting some of my bulbs this fall for next year's crop.  It's a Siberian hard-neck variety -- a great variety for us northern growers.  As you can see, the pumpkin patch has trailed down the bank and there are gobs and gobs of orange and white varieties on the vine.  The frustrating part is that none of my butternut squash produced.  At least I haven't found any amongst the vines.  The grand-littles are going to love picking jack-o-lantern prospects from the pumpkin patch.

One fun experiment I did this year were the poblano peppers.  I always buy them at the grocery store for chile rellenos  and stuffed, roasted peppers.  They are so mild that we really enjoy them so this  spring I decided to keep a few seeds and started them in little paper pots.  I set them out when they were quite small, not sure they would make it, but they did, and they are really beautiful!  I can't wait to eat, them filled with cream cheese and roasted.  Mmmm.

I've been robbing a few spuds from the potato patch now and then.  I don't pull the plants, but leave them growing while I pluck a few of the potatoes that are close to the surface underneath the straw.  There is just something extra-good about homegrown potatoes.  We had some spuds pan roasted with a little olive oil, butter and Parmesan tonight.  Similar to this recipe, but in the skillet.  Mmmmm!

The last photo boasts of cucumbers.  Actually, my dad gave me some ginormous cukes from his garden.  I really didn't know what I was going to do with them, but decided to dice them up and make bread 'n' butter relish.  I also sliced some of them into spears and make a few jars of dills.  Another experiment I am doing is on pickles.  I have noticed that the Vlasic variety of pickles that are so crisp and delicious have an ingredient that most of us don't use in our pickle recipes -- calcium chloride.  I bought a small jar of Ball Pickle Crisp to try out in my pickles this year to see if I can get the same crunch as Vlasic.  I'll let you know if it works.

We had a very busy week last week.  The men removed old shingles and put all new shingles on our roof and NumberOneSon's roof.  What a TON of work that was!  Everything looks great and it's nice to have that project done before winter.  We also had friends from So. Cal. come visit for a couple days.  It was so nice to catch up with them and have some wonderful heart to heart talks.

Autumn is in the air!  The mornings are cool and crisp.  We wake up and put on jeans and long sleeves and by noon we are into our short-sleeves and I put on shorts.  By evening, we are back to pants and long sleeves again.  Such is fall here.  We've had a few showers of rain which has been good.  At least we know it can rain.  We are hopeful that there might be more rain on the way for us this fall.  It would be nice to put the trees and grasses to bed with a good amount of wetness at the roots.  God knows.  How is your fall going so far?

Retro Cosco high chair refurb #2...

 

Do you remember my first high chair refurb?  If not, click here.  It was a garage sale find that OnlyDaughter grabbed for me a few years ago, back when we were getting several grandbabies who could use high chairs.  I needed one for my house when the littles came to visit.

I just got another high chair to do a couple weeks ago.  I kinda like these projects.  JJo bought this high chair from Salvation Army Thrift Store for $2.  This one is a fold-up style, not nearly as heavy and sturdy as my first high chair project.  The seat and back of this one were covered in a black plastic table cloth.  I tossed the covering back on the seat so you could see how really UGLY it was.  I tore the chair down and stripped off the foam, but I could not remove the legs because they were riveted on.  That meant I had to tape everything before I painted the metal seat.  I repainted the chair back and tray too.  First I had to sand and strip the rust from the chair's seat and back.  The chrome legs and arms were in pretty good shape, but I used Bar Keeper's Friend on a damp rag to remove any rust or dirty spots.  I was thrilled at how well it removed rust and cleaned it up.  I used Bar Keeper's Friend on the rusty metal seat after I sanded it, and it worked very well on that too.  Good stuff!


For painting I used Rustoleum enamel metal primer and white enamel spray paints.  I finished the metal parts off with two coats of clear enamel spray paint to preserve the paint underneath.

I ordered Marine Vinyl from Amazon for just $11 per yard (including shipping).  This is the stuff you want if you ever want to replace vinyl seats on retro-style furniture or chairs like this.  I found that heating it with a blow dryer or heating it in the hot sun, gave it a nice smooth finish while applying it.  One thing I learned with this project since I didn't have anything to staple the vinyl to is to use Loctite Permanent Spray Adhesive (professional).  This was a life saver for me.  Since I knew the original high chair didn't probably have any cushy foam on the seat and back, I decided to use foam board.  I traced the seat and back onto the foam board, cut it, checked it, then used a lightweight quilt batting to put on the top of the foam board.  Then I laid my chunk of vinyl on top of that, flipped it over, and used the spray adhesive to glue the edges down on the backside.  It took plenty of fiddling and readjusting to get it just right, but it was SO much easier than using E6000 which I tried first.  I discovered you need the quick drying time of the spray adhesive to make this trick work!  Since there was nothing to attach the seat to, I used the same permanent spray adhesive to glue it down to the metal.  I stacked a bunch of encyclopedias on top of it while it dried so I was assured of good contact.  And it worked.

So, there you have it!  Number 2 High Chair Refurb!

Recycled denim skirt...

  

I made a skirt!

I snatched a pair of Bee's jeans that had huge holes in the knees.

I chopped off the jeans just above the knees and

used the good part of the legs to made the insert

in the back and front.

Here's a good tutorial how to do that.

I really liked the simple A-line skirt that she made in the tutorial,

but I knew Bee would like ruffles more.

I found some cute ruffle skirts here and here!

 I ended up hemming this and putting two rows of ruffles

right over the top of it, overlapping one row over the other.

It worked like a dream.

I added a matching fabric belt.

This was so fun that I want to go on a holey jeans snatching mission!

I think all of my grandgirls would enjoy one!

Today I've been finishing up another project.

I'll show you soon!

Corn!

Sweet Corn is ripe and being picked daily at one of the the local farms near our HomeTown.  This is the best sweet corn -- tender, white and yellow corn that is juicy and sweet as can be!  The farmers have a roadside stand where they sell it out of the back of a pick-up truck by the dozen.  Today JJo went to town and called to say that they were still selling corn and how many dozen ears did we want for freezing?  JLynn wanted 7 dozen and JJo and I each wanted 4 dozen. 

I went about shucking the corn outside in the sunshine, and then moved my work indoors.  I use my German grandma's recipe where I cut all the raw corn off the cob first and then boil it with salt, a little sugar and water.  I cool it and then measure it into freezer bags.  It's so simple!  And it's so wonderful to enjoy the taste of delicious, fresh sweet corn when winter rolls around.  I sacked up 29 cups of corn today into 2 cup and 3 cup bags.  There's still time to freeze more corn and still time to eat more corn-on-the-cob until it runs out! 

On another note, I'm happy to report that I'm now getting 6 pullet eggs as of today!  They're kicking it in gear!!  Yay for new laying hens!  They also enjoyed nibbling on the discarded cobs today.

35 Years....

We're celebrating!
(Thank you God)

35 years married.

Best friends and lovers.
You Take Me The Way I Am.
...............................
 

We went for a Canyon Drive,

ate at our favorite place, 

and went to the movie, Ben-Hur.

You should go see Ben-Hur.

Canning peaches...

It's that time of year again when the Colorado Peaches show up in big trucks.  OnlyDaughter, JLynn, and I bought a case each of beautiful peaches.  We eat as many fresh as possible, make pie, and the rest we can for the winter months.  Today was the day that we decided the peaches were soft enough to process and preserve.  The girls came to my house for the canning bee.  We got all our stuff organized:  Ball Blue Book (1987 version), clean jars, rings, lids, hot water, wash tubs, sugar, pots and pressure canner, magnetic lid grabber, jar funnel, chopstick (for removing air bubbles) and knives. Between the three of us ladies along with eight children scampering here and there, we got the job accomplished.  Three cases of peaches and 26 quart jars later, we were done!  With time to go outside and play!

To quote my dear mother-in-law, 

"Many hands make light work,"  

And a good day was had by all.

Amen.

The first pullet egg is laid!

 I don't know who did it.

It could be this lovely pullet hen...

 ...or one of these white beauties.

One thing is sure, it was a perfect, tiny, white egg 

that could only be laid by a Pearl White Leghorn.

All the other hens are either brown or green egg layers.

My dear mother-in-law used to ONLY ever buy Pearl White Leghorn chicks.  She knew their reliability and egg-laying efficiency.   I think she was very frustrated with me when I brought home brown egg-laying chicks after she retired from taking care of the chickens.  I remember one time in particular when I asked her to gather the eggs for me while I was gone, and do you know what she did?  She brought in only the white eggs and left all the brown eggs in the nests.

Isn't that hilarious?

It is noted on the Murray McMurray Hatchery website that the Pearl White Leghorn is hands-down the best egg layer.  They start laying earlier than other breeds -- around 4 to 4.5 months of age -- and they lay eggs longer than the other breeds do.  My mother-in-law knew that they were high-powered egg layers and that they performed well in harsh, cold climates as well as hot climates which is what we have here in The Land of Extremes. They also eat less feed than heavier breeds which makes the feed to egg ratio a little more economical.  I'm excited to have the Leghorns back in production this year and the evidence of their productivity is already showing itself since our first egg came at about  4 months of age!

Last year I bought several different varieties of hens:  Buff Orpington, Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, and White Rocks.  I had a American Auracana left over from the year before.  I have to say that this year was our worst year ever for egg production.  It seemed that they were poor, erratic layers.  For a few weeks we would get lots of eggs and then the next week we'd get half that amount.  It's  very frustrating when you are trying to feed three and sometimes four families with the eggs!  This year I have 22 Pearl White Leghorns and I anticipate 22 eggs per day when they all start laying which should be very soon!  

Have you ever noticed when buying "organic" or "free-range" eggs that they are always brown?  It is a misconception that the "healthier" eggs are always brown.  My white eggs will be every bit as "country fresh" and "free-range" as any other egg that has ever been produced here. 

Do you eat free-range eggs or farm-raised eggs?  What do you think of the comparison between eating a farm-raised egg verses a factory-raised egg?

One more thing to share and then I'll let you go.  Last week I learned about the best way to  hard-boil farm fresh eggs.  First off, I have never been able to make pretty deviled eggs using my home-raised eggs.  My wise mother-in-law always said to let them age a week or more before hard-boiling them for an easier peel. Well, who has a week to wait for that?  So I did a little looking around on Pinterest for a method to make the best hard-boiled egg with ease-of-peeling qualities.  And the verdict I came to was to steam the eggs.  Here's the link from Fresh Eggs Daily.  It worked for me beautifully!  I hope you'll give it a try, particularly if you use very fresh eggs.  OK, that's it.  May your eggs be perfectly cooked, however you like them!  By the way, how do you like your eggs?