so you think YOU have volatile weather

 These last two weeks have been wild with summer abundance. Canning, harvesting, riding, fencing (not as awesome, but still largely a summer project). It's been hot, I've been sweating and turning brown. Overall just happy to spend my days in my favorite weather, where the days are hot enough to play in sprinklers, but the evenings are crisp with the promise of orange pumpkins and yellow leaves.

Okay, I'll admit, it wasn't perfect. There was (and is) quite a bit of frustration with the fence and rogue ponies. But it's easier to look back and see only that golden sunlight on the apple trees.

(juvenile mountain bluebird)

Beautiful puffy summer clouds. Fair weather fo'ever, right?........

right.

This is what I woke up to Thursday morning. Overnight the soft rainy drizzle that fell the day before turned into this muck. (sorry, I'm a little bitter. Last year we had eight months of snow, and I've never much cared for the stuff ANYWAY.)

 I mean, what the heck. Technically it's still summer! The henpecked weatherman assures us that by this time next week we'll be back in the 80*s, but the damage is done. My tomatoes and squash and cucumbers and beans are all dead. *sigh*
  I'm glad we got the fence done. Now the hurry to winterize the farm will really get going:
     Wood to be chopped
 (so much wood... I love fire),
        ducks to cull (we can't have two piggy males),
 hay to stack,
      chicken houses to clean, and heatlamps to install.
 I kinda hate having to prepare for the bleak months ahead in September...
 I love where I live, but there has got to be a better climate for me - like the equator :)

what to do with the harvest (when you're semi-incompetent)

This year has been amazing for produce. Like cucumbers/peppers/beans/tomatoes-coming-out-the-ears kind of amazing. For once my gardens, the hay, and all the wild fruits & flowers have all done well in the same year.

But the questions arises, usually after an overly-enthusiastic raid on the kitchen boxes, what the devil to do with all the produce? And until this year, I have had no answer. Which looks a lot like growing things just to pick the fruits later and watch it rot so you can have a hay-day catapulting squishy veg and giant squash over the cliff. Not exactly ideal if your goal is to learn the basics of self-sufficiency.

 My family gamely endeavours to eat the harvests fresh, but inevitably, when you're hauling in a basket of bounty every other day, they're going to dig their heels in and cry 'uncle!' over a pea pod. We're not really a family of ruffage-eaters, anyway.  

So this year I'm attempting to be more eating-the-garden savvy. And this it what I've done so far....

Peas! I planted one pack of new and two packs of old peas this spring because I thought the majority of the old ones would not grow. I was wrong. oh so wrong. So how am I coping with pea-overload? *wat.

(Let's try that again...)

So what am I to do with results of my miscalculation? Freeze them! The freezer is a marvelous and mysterious thing, allowing us to store our wonderful bounty for months on end and sparing us from the dismal frozen foods section at the grocery store, where culinary aspirations go to die.

Preparing Peas for Freezing

- de-pod all peas and rinse.

- bring saucepan of water to a rolling boil

- pour in peas & blanch for 90 seconds to kill bacteria

- drain and rinse with cold water

 allow to air dry before freezing to prevent frost.

Next the peppers & jalapeños. This time of year I never know why we bought so many pepper plants in the spring. Probably with some vague and hopeful thought of homemade salsa, but I think we must reexamine this annual impulse and perhaps expel it. I have yet to find a salsa recipe that doesn't taste sweet. I hate sweet salsa.

I brought in a large haul of peppers and jalapeños and was determined to dispatch them immediately while they were still crisp.

It took but a moment to think of the family favorite recipe for Cheddar Pepper Cream Cheese. With the garden peppers it was A LOT hotter than usual, and the texture was more chunky, but on the whole it went down very well on a freshly toasted bagel. I think I had it for lunch for three consecutive days (then the bagels ran out). 

Cheddar Pepper Cream Cheese

2 bricks of cream cheese

1 c. shredded cheddar cheese

about 6 medium sized jalapeños 

- allow cream cheese to soften at room temperature; dice jalapeños.

- in medium bowl, blend all ingredients together with an electric mixer.  

Voila, mon ami! Bon, non? Oui!

(aaand that is nearly the extent of my French)

Forget 'a hill of beans' - I have a mountain. Nothing for it but to give them the same treatment as the peas! Except this time they must boil for a good 3 - 5 minutes, depending on the size of your batch, because beans are bigger than peas and have many more hidey-holes for bacteria & such.

My cucumber vines have gone mad. They're acting more like zucchini with the amount of bats they're churning out. 

I was brave and told Momma I'd like to attempt making pickles. A brave thing indeed for the last batch we made many, many years ago yielded such badly tasting results that the memory was still burned into our consciouses even as I begged for a way to get rid of the million cucumbers in the sink.

She said yes and even helped me with the scary pressure cooker/canner (which ended up burning my wrist like you wouldn't believe). But I chickened out of trying a recipe for homemade brine and bought a Dill Pickles for Idiots packet at the store.

In the end, I think I made a good call going store-bought. For though fairly strong and assertively dill in taste, they are quite edible. I wish I had bought several more packets, because below is one batch, and I have enough cucumbers for about eight!

 The end of July through mid-August is chokecherry season. These bush/tree/things grow wild in patches all over our farm. When I was little chokecherry picking felt akin to being sent out in the desert with a bucket & spade to build a sandcastle. It's hot and there's just so much and you've been abandoned in the wilderness.
Nowadays I kinda like going berry picking. It's a chance to be outdoors in the morning (and baby nephew get's to spend some quality time with Grammy back at the house).

Speaking of Grammy/my Momma, she makes the best chokecherry jellies & syrup in the county, no lie.

Nothing quite says toast-for-breakfast like this stuff.

So that's the stats so far in my preserving & gardening experience. I must say adieu! now, 'cause I've got a horse who's waiting for me at the hitching post. Life is still good.

first fruits | actually finishing something wk 2

 Something's different this year... something has made all our fruit trees want to behave like fruit trees...
As a High Plains dweller, this is quite novel to me. Getting anything besides weeds to grow here is exciting, but having it produce? First there's shock and then elation - somewhere on the feelings scale between Christmas morning and rescuing a meadow lark chick. :-)

Week Two Questions

1) How time flies! Did you reach your weekly goal?
meh, yes and no. I was hoping to check off several boxes on my events-that-have-to-happen list, but didn't really think that through. There turns out to be many, many more details between the events that took up most my time.

2) Is this challenge pushing and encouraging you to write more often?
I think so! I've also started another 30 days of writing no matter what challenge, which also helps. But this has encouraged me to write more than just a scape-goat sentence at midnight the times I'm worn out after a long day.

3) Did you accomplish most of your writing in the morning, afternoon, evening, or at random intervals during your busy day?
At night. Always at night. My weekdays go like this, without fail: 7am wake up. 7:30 - 5:30 I have the baby. During his naps (when he chooses to take them) I try to do either school- or housework. After he goes home it's supper, then maybe I'll ride or garden or otherwise revel in my freedom. After dark Momma, Little Brother, and I might play a card game, or (more likely at the moment) gather in the living-room to watch an episode of Merlin (we're working our way to the last season) :-) Then it's prayer and then bed for everyone else, and writing for me. I write usually until the end of an idea/scene or until I start spelling 'of' o-v and wondering why the heck it looks wrong (hint: sounding it out doesn't help).

4) Any particular musical tracks inspiring your prose?
Nothing new. But there's always Esca's Freedom [click here] to help inspire me with visions of an archaic world when I sometimes would rather write modern. It usually always cures me.

5) Share a snippet (or two!) of your writing!
Mm. I don't feel entirely comfortable sharing, since it's all very first draft and written close to midnight. but here it goes...

Tyrel took a bite of the stuff and the girls watched closely. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment. Then, "Fish," he announced.

 "Ah," said Cilla, and took a slice of bread instead.

~*~

[Cilla] knelt on the planks and dipped her fingers into the cold tide to press them against her still stinging cheek. Salt water ran down her face to speckle the front of her tunic. Not all the drops came from the sea.

 "Save us," she pleaded to a God who seemed as cold and indifferent as the stars overhead.

6) Share your three favorite bits of dialogue.

"Are you sure it's all right?" Emy hesitated, her fingers on the window ledge.

"It's fine." Cilla said with exasperation. "Just so long as we don't get caught." she added when Emy dropped down inside.

~*~

"Isn't he gorgeous?"

"He looks bored out of his mind."

~*~

"It's not white."

 "So?"

"Fairytale horses are aways white. The good ones anyway. Don't black one's like him usually represent death or plagues or something?"

"Oh, Emy! Why can't you like horses?" 

"You make it sound like a fault,"

"Emy, you are full blooded Ithrealian and you don't worship horses. It is a fault."

"Well maybe if I had a chance to like one. A sweet one. And not ever, ever have to deal with Brogdan's wretched beast ever again. Then I might like them."

7) How are you going to move forward in this challenge? Are you changing your word-count goal, or other such battle plans this week?
Same battle plans as last week: Whenever + Whatever. I might try and get ahead this weekend.

time marches with the vegetables

Our first fruits! Two bright and cheery little cherry tomatoes.

beans

the corn so tall and the beans so... bush-like.

baby cucumber

I really am not one for eating veg; I like carrots and occasionally the odd leaf of lettuce. But I must say that fresh cucumber and lemon and lime slices in ice water is the best thing since someone decided to put frosting on a cake.

it's hard to believe that our squash plants were just seeds a month and a half ago. Now they're great, spidery monsters taking over half the garden and churning out foot long summer squash like a machine. I do believe we'll have to get creative in the kitchen if we're to keep up. Or we can do what (I think it was) my grandma did and leave the mountains of extra squash and zucchini on the surrounding neighborhood's door steps in the dead of night.

On the weekend LB and I headed to the park with a bunch of my friends for the first annual event of 'Chalk in the Park'. I was actually surprised by how many people turned out, for as small as town is. There were two hotdog vendors and everything! 

Anyway, we requested two sidewalk blocks (128 square feet gah!) because we had a Plan.

 Complete and entire landscape in fine detail. Above is a small part of my contribution - Llyod's Llama Farm. I was in charge of all the farms (I also did an Al's Alpacas later on) and animals, and I had a lot of fun with me llamas and alpacas.

little brother chalked us an awesome mount rushmore under some equally awesome fireworks.

 i never got a photo of the whole thing completed - kicking myself - but we ended up winning in our category, so six and a half hours baking on the pavement were not for naught.

-Gwyn

Do you take crazy in your tea?

"One lump or two?" asks the Voice Inside My Head.
"Ooh you know me, I'll take all the crazy you've got!" says Brain. "And I know I really shouldn't, but I think I can squeeze in one more slice of loony pie."

 Heaven's to Betsy, it's been a long time! I shan't bore you with the usual rot: 'I apologize for leaving you without notice! I've been so[insert a thousand more o's] busy!'
 First of all, I am quite sure you all can cope a week or two without hearing from yours truly {it might even be good for your health}. If you've found that you can't, however, and that you find yourself wondering why you even bother to go on in my absence, all unkempt hair and yesterday's tea cups; here is what I say: Get a life.
All that being said, we shall move on.

Oh what things have happened while Eldest Sister is here! So many things. Like shopping...
 Summer clothes for me. I cannot believe how hard it is to find decent jeans anymore. They're either all mangled with holes or they make your legs feel like Polish sausage. Thinking of this analogy I start to snicker at myself in that tiny little dressing room. Then I catch the reflection in the mirror of myself not-laughing while struggling to extricate myself from the ridiculous things and suddenly Getting Out of These Jeans Alive has gone to level Two. Feeling fit to burst {not helping my escape any}, I give up trying to hold the chuckles in and try and focus on getting out of these...dratted...pants! By this time I'm laughing pretty hard and not all that silently when my fingers decide they think this is funny too so they'll just take the day off and go all wobbly and useless. I imagine what my neighbors must be thinking which doesn't help my situation at all. Just when I'm beginning to think I'm going to die in this little corner of Kohl's; that they'll one day find me, my body wasted away but the skinny jeans a-size-too-small remaining, when there's a sinister knock on the door. "Are you alright, ma'am?"
 That sobers me up, right quick.
After assuring the kindly matron of the store that I am just trying to kick these wretched pants off and not in fact having a seizure, {aaaand declining her offer to help}, the pants, as though feeling they've had me suffer enough, release their hold.
 It is with triumph that I march out of the dressing rooms and fling the too-smalls on the To Put Back {aka Everyone Hated Themselves In These Things} counter.
 "There you are!" calls Mum. "Did those not work?" No, Mum, no they did not. "Well then, try these," She hands me a stack several feet high of blue. And it is in this moment that I realized something profound: I hate shopping.

We also did other things. Big things. Like planting all our gardens. This is the first year I finally got to use my kitchen garden boxes -- or raised beds might be a better term. They're 4'x12'. So that's a lot of dirt to shift to fill them, too. With a shovel. Just so you know, my arms and back survived. In fact they did more than that -- they conquered! *tribal whoop*
 I planted my boxes with cherry tomatoes, lots strawberries, peas, carrots, radishes, lettuce and other leafy roughage.
 The big garden on the hill got much of the same treatment with tomatoes, a huge patch of squashes {squashi?}, cucumbers, beans, and four rows of corn. We also got herbs and things for pots, and a lovely flower arrangement for the new barrel-halves planter things for our deck.
 Little Brother got his pumpkin patch again this year, and is already making plans for a giant pumpkin fest this Fall.

{This is LB robing up to acolyte {light the candles} at church, by the way.}

So those are some of the highlights of this month. Not so glam is that Double Stuff {the little black & white pony} foundered last week. On a scale of one to ten I'm not sure how bad he rated, but the poor little bugger could barely stump around the first few days, and his feet were on fire. Because Da was leaving for a few days...aaaand because I wanted to play vet, Stuffy became my patient. We put him on Bute right away. Bute is a NSAID, a pain killer/blood thinner. Basically Ibuprofen for horses. And that's all I really have to do: Once a day give him a bit of mash of apples and karo syrup to hide the taste of the Bute powder. And make sure he doesn't get any worse, which, as of yesterday he's doing great. He even ran around for a while.

 I did learn more about founder, though, thanks to my awesome book The Horse Doctor Is In by Brent Kelly [DVM], I highly recommend it to all you horse peoples. I love it to pieces.

 For example, geldings are much more likely to founder than mares or stallions, and ponies more than horses. So if you have a gelding pony {like ol' Stuffy} they have a saying, "There are two kinds: those that have foundered, and those that will."

 Founder is an ailment of the feet caused by too much rich pasture or feed. In fact, if your horses get into the grain barn and gorge themselves, vets say you should be more worried about founder than colic. In any case, call your vet as both can be and often are serious.

You've probably noticed by now that none of these photos follow any sort of theme either with each other or the post itself. Well, let me say this: I love my camera. I love my Jack. And we have been snapping pictures and just having the best times. I take my little Rebel everywhere.
 I've been looking for projects to do {A Day In the World: check} but so far haven't found any to my liking. Most are competitions, which are okay, but I take better pictures when I know they aren't going to be judged. So I've been turning over in my mind to just have weekly project on this blog. A theme. Something to give me direction. Anyone want to join me? I suppose I could add a link tool and it could be like a blog hop for all us camera-crazies. Si? Well, comment if you're interested and we'll see where it goes from there.

-Gwyn

Sunshine and summertime

Remember me? The girl who used to post at least twice a week?

 Yes, well, needless to say I have been up to my eyeballs with lists of things to do. Have I accomplished any? Yes, in fact.

 my feet in the new turned soil

First of all, we got the garden planted last Saturday. I do hope everything has time to grow in our Northern climate, but our late planting was inevitable because of heavy rains that caused much flooding and strife in lower areas of the country side.
 I was very eager to plant this year, and to plant lots and lots so that hopefully we'll have a surplus this year that I can sell. However, with our late start and baby grasshoppers already starting to emerge, hopeful is all I can be for now.

 Here's some early lettuce that cropped up. Besides lettuce, Mum and I also planted sweet corn, green and wax beans, five rows of tomatoes, three or four rows of peppers, several kinds of squashes, carrots, cucumbers, and little brother finely got his wish and planted a big row of pumpkins and watermelons in the low lawn. I have yet to build 'teepees' for the peas, and, alas, my kitchen garden boxes that I've been talking about since last fall have yet to materialize. But that's next on my list.

I don't know why exactly, but suddenly I really love to garden. There's just something about digging in the dirt and harvesting the fruits {or vegetables} of your labors in the autumn. There's also something incredibly rewarding about working with horses, too. But you knew that, right?

My Roanie has become fat and sleek on the rich pasture grass -- and a three week leave of duty did not help. I couldn't ride her for three weeks because she developed bad sores from a rubber cinch my Da used when he rode her once. I forgot she had such sensitive skin. Plus with her new, thinner summer coat, it was probably at its weakest. Shyanne also caught something that had her coughing and gave her a runny nose. We're still not sure what it was -- maybe an allergy of sorts? But all that's in the past now, and I had a wonderful and eventful ride last night.

can i just say i love how this one turned out? thank you.

First, I taught Little Brother {from now on LB} the importance of positive enforcement. With his piggy pony you do have to have a firm hand, but people would not believe the difference a little encouragement and praise can do to for a horse's attitude. On the topic, look for a new Horse Logic coming soon! Now that I've said it, I'll have to find time to finish it.

Roanie was an {almost} angel last night. Her break seems to have refreshed her outlook on working somewhat and she was excellent at obeying the more acute commands { side-stepping, backing, pivoting...}, and her lope{or canter} was divine. I never felt like I was fighting her to stay in control. A first. However, when we decided to go up to our neighbor's big pasture, all the scaries came out to get us. In her mind at least.
 There are several big hills in that pasture, most of them dotted with rocks and badger holes so you have to go carefully if you're going to go any faster that a trot up them. Well, we got separated from Da and his horse and LB and his pony.... I've never galloped up that steep hill, nor have I ever been on a galloping horse going up hill when it jumped a large rock. I think I'll try to avoid it from now on.

Also in the news: My sister's friend is terrified of snakes. A pity. Because I happen to love chasing people with snakes. It all started with a campfire and then on the way back LB pointed out a two foot garter snake laying in the grass. I of course did the natural thing and scooped it up. I turned to show my sister and her friend, but her friend was no where to be seen. I couldn't believe it. In the maybe five seconds it took me to grab the snake he was already half way to his pickup {some meters away}. It has to be a land speed record.
 Oh, the above it not the horrifying snake. It is not even a snake. It is an estimated{by me} to be a two month old painted turtle. With all this rain we've had our creek its once again flowing well, and our pond is close to overflowing again, like it did back in March. So we've also been getting a variety of aquatic creatures: mallard and wood ducks, a heron, millions of noisy frogs and toads, and of course, turtles. I love turtles. They make me happy. Can't get enough of this little guy? Click here.

My fro chickens now really have their fros coming in. And it's hilarious. Especially since they seem to be the fighters, even though they're the smallest in the coop. I was cleaning the coop today with LB, and one chicken refused to leave so I had to pick it up. I was then bombarded repeatedly by one of these crazy kamikaze birds, the little rat. Its brethren seem to have the same disposition toward humanity as well, attacking our shoes a boots if we get to near. You can see the malice in their eyes.

I got my hair cut early this morning at my favorite hair shoppe. Privacy denies a before/after photo, but I shall do my best to describe it. I've begun a sort of exploit by refusing to have my hair cut the same way twice. For as long as I have good ideas, anyway. I see life as too short to be going around with the same hair style all the time. Last year I radically hewed off ten inches and enjoyed a light summery, jaw length cut. This year I'm going long. My hair has already grown to past my shoulders since last time, so I just had the stylist leave it as long as posable and add lotsalotsa layers so its not... blah anymore. And I love it.

I'm also involved in my church's VBS this week as assistant teacher to 13 wild little Pre - Ks. I've got to tell you, 8  to 11:30am is the longest period of the day. Whew, they keep you busy.

Well, as I see it, I've had a good day, about to get better with a viewing of one of my favorite movies, Sherlock Holmes, perhaps a quick drawing or painting, and a new read from the library.

Ní bené, friends!

-Gwyn