Really Corny

No seriously - this post is all about corn! When Logan got home this afternoon we picked as much corn that was ready from the garden. There are still some ears that aren't ready yet but we had a ton that we picked!


After picking, we went ahead and sat down to shuck it all - if I don't do stuff when I am thinking about it, I tend to forget to do it - or I have to be on a roll and want to do a lot at once.


Doesn't Logan look like a regular farmer in this picture?

The horses love when we shuck corn because they get all of the shucks and silks and will about eat until they are sick! By the way - those are fly masks on their faces and yes they can see through them - we laugh that they look like Robo-horses.


Logan found this 'double ear' while shucking.


We ended up getting 35 ears this go-around and there is still some on the stalks! Now comes the fun part (not really) of cutting it off the ears to freeze. We have found that it freezes better than it cans - it stays crisp. Speaking of, I am being summoned to help wash and cut!

"V" for Victory!

Finally, today I finished all of the knitting on the Brea Bag! I am getting to the point where I am exhausted with it and just want it to be a purse already, dang it! I finished the gusset earlier - that piece took the longest by far - not because it was difficult - it was just moss stitch - but because it was so repetitive and ended up being over 2 feet long all measured out! Yikes! I then tackled the awful task of the reverse-single crochet along the top which I have ripped out and done over and over and over - never to my liking. Finally instead of using the recommended 2 strands of yarn held together, I used one and ended up being semi-satisfied with it - enough to LET IT GO anyway! All that I have left to do is (1) sew pieces together, (2) wait for handle to come in the mail* and attach (3) find a button and fabric for the lining (4) attach said lining and button

*Sidenote on the handle - I am not usually one to follow a pattern exactly but this one just seemed right. The pattern gave the website for the handle they used and I ended up ordering the same one. I couldn't find anything I liked around here or in fabric/craft stores so I went for this one - I neat braided leather. I can't wait for it to come in!

Oh - another side note on fabric. I probably would have picked out fabric by now but WALMART STOPPED SELLING FABRIC! I knew a lot of them were stopping a year or so ago and I figured ours was safe because it was still there. Low-and-behold I came back from the beach last week and they were WIPED OUT. I am majorly miffed about this - now I have to drive about 30 minutes to find fabric. Not saying I am a hardcore sewer but some of my projects need fabric. Grr!

Enough ranting - it's dinner time and I am hungry, so here's a sneak-peak at the finished pieces of the Brea.

Monday Already?

Wow - where did my weekend go? It flies when you stay busy I guess! My weekend was packed full but I had so much fun! My high school friend Kim came up from Tennessee to visit (you might remember her from my visit to R-ville and the knitting class) and we definitely didn't sit still very long!

She got here Friday afternoon and when Logan got home from work, we all packed up our things and went camping at Comer's Rock/Hale Lake campground not too far from us in the Jefferson Nat'l Forest. It was soooo nice and peaceful until a group of I would say about 15 people all stuffed themselves into one campground above us and decided that the whole campground wanted to listen to them blare country music from their mini-van and listen to their psycho kids scream all night. You could definitely tell the next morning it was a campground full of grumpy campers...all except for the rowdy group of course who woke up at about 6:00 with their howler-monkey-sounding kid. Can you tell I am still a bit grumpy about the whole situation? A rant for a minute - people that are totally oblivious to other people around them.

Saturday after hiking around that morning and then coming home, we ate lunch and changed into bathing suits and headed down to the river. Our goal was for Logan to drop us off and Kim and I float down the river in our inner-tubes and Logan and his dad were going to canoe up the river and meet us then float back down to where they started with the canoe...Let's just say it didn't exactly work out that way. First, our drop off was way farther away from the canoe put-in than we though. Second, the river was NOT moving - we floated and floated and didn't get very far! After 3 hour of floating Logan finally tracked us down and helped us out about 5 minutes before it started to storm! What luck!

Our goal after that was to head to the New River Valley Fair and watch the bull riding and barrel racing but it didn't work out that way. Kim and I were exhausted from paddling down the river and being out in the sun so long plus it was raining pretty hard so we stayed in and Kim and I knit and watched movies.

It was a super fun visit and I wish I had pictures but we were so busy I didn't have any time to take any!!

Catching up to today, I got to wake up early this morning to meet our farrier to have Daisy reshod. While we were at the beach, she threw a shoe so it was time to get her a new set! Other than that, I have been working on laundry and searching for new knitting patterns to start on after I finish my Brea Bag - which I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel! The gusset is over halfway done and hopefully will be finished this week!

To leave everyone today, I was searching online for knitting patterns and can't believe how many *weird* things there are to knit out there! I found most of these on www.knittingpatterncentral.com. Let's just say some people have WAY too much time on their hands and must really be hard up for knitting! Here are just a few that I found that made me laugh -

A knit digestive track

A fu-Manchu mustache

And knit toilet paper - hope it doesn't get confused with the regular t.p.!

Too Funny!

I have laughed over this literally all day. I LOVE the Muppets and hope you enjoy this as much as I have. Tomorrow's Friday!

Cookin' with Cables!

I had all of the intentions of finishing my Brea Bag I had started knitting. I finished the front (back?) while at the beach and started on the gusset that connects the 2 parts together. The front and back went really fast but now the gusset is pretty repetitive which after all of the fun cables, has become a little boring. Hopefully I will finish most of it tonight - I am getting together with a friend to do a little knitting and chatting. After I finish that, all I have to do is trim the top with crochet (blech!) and add a button, handle, and lining. HOPEFULLY that will go fast once I get to that point!

So just for fun yesterday, I cast on a neat coffee mug cozie/hand warmer (I think it looks like a coffee mug sweater) and it was such a fun knit that I just about finished it all yesterday and did finish it this morning! I have fallen in love with knitting cables! I used to think they were really difficult and too much trouble but I can't explain enough how easy it is once you figure out which stitches to slip and hold them - not at all hard!

Anyway, here's the mug cozie - the first picture is darker - doesn't show the yarn colors accurately - to show the cabling. The last 2 are the cozie on the mug. The only hard part about it was finding a mug to fit it - it takes a pretty big and tall mug to make it fit right and the handle has to be wide enough for your had to fit due to it being the handwarmer part. If I make any of these for gifts, I will definitely take them to the store to fit them on mugs!




If you are interested in the pattern, it's free and you can find it here:
http://aproudusafwife.blogspot.com/2007/11/cabled-coffee-and-hand-warmer.html

Hopefully tomorrow I will be a little closer to finishing my handbag!

Waiting

I took this picture about an hour ago while the first storm was blowing in. It's a bit hard to see but if you look carefully in the sky, you can see the rainbow. That storm missed us - went completely around. I am listening to the rumbling thunder right now with a very heavy Cleo sitting on my lap (wondering if I should even BE on the computer) waiting to see if this storm hits us. As much as I would really like to be outside and had planned on going for a quick ride on the horses, it looks like we are finally going to get some rain. Although not as bad as last summer, our fields are in desperate need of rain. The horses are eating the grass down faster than it can grow! We have been keeping them down at the barn about every other week and supplementing grain but it sure would be nice to have the horses do what horses do best and eat grass all summer. We had our fields sprayed at the beginning of summer to rid it of the over-taking weeds and fertilized after that. In the fall we are - money willing - reseed so maybe, just maybe the horses can have a grass-filled summer!

So, ok, I just saw a bolt of lightning out of the window - that's my cue that I am done with this post although I have quite a few knitting notes to add - that will give me something to do tomorrow! I'm off to do a rain dance!

Back to the Mountains

We had a wonderful but FAST trip to the beach and I am sad to be home - but happy to be home at the same time. For me being a fair-skinned mountain girl, I LOVE the beach. I spend a majority of my time huddled under a beach umbrella but I so enjoy digging my toes into the sand, playing in the waves of the ocean, and everything 'beachy'. A week never feels like enough! I definitely could have spent another week there but Logan would have left with or without me to come home. He is definitely the mountain man!

Instead of rambling on and on about how much I miss being there, I will share some good pics of my week!

Logan and I on our first night there - out to eat at The Giggling Mackerel

My favorite picture from the whole week! That is Logan fishing at the point where the sound and ocean meet at sunset. He caught a sheephead (a fish - hahaha - not an actual sheep's head!)

Logan and I had a 'date night' by ourselves at Medieval Times in Myrtle Beach. It was so much fun and really neat to see the horses and work the horsemen did!

We rented a sea kayak midway through the week. Here are Logan and his dad paddling around the sound. I did go out later - still need to get pics from Logan's parents. Maybe there will be a Beach Post part 2? Logan and his dad got brave and took the kayak out to the ocean and paddled all the way around to our house in the sound.

My flounder! I caught this!! We ended up eating Mr. Flounder and he was YUMMY! (Note: we were honestly going to let him go but he swallowed the hook and died by the time we got everything situated although he wasn't out of the water for very long. We ate him instead of wasting him by throwing him back)

Playing in the ocean. I think I could have spent all day out there if I didn't have to eat!

All in all we had a wonderful time although the week flew by way too fast! The dogs and kitties are all glad we're home! Hope everyone had a great week last week and now I have to get back into a routine and do a million loads of beach laundry!

Beach Bound

We are headed to the beach tomorrow - hope everyone has a great week! Hopefully I will have an almost complete knitted purse with 'car knitting time'. See you next Saturday with lots of stories to tell!!

Feelin' Domestic

Gabby decided she was going to replace the vacuum and do the cleaning herself. Didn't work QUITE as well as really vacuuming though - haha. Yesterday I had a DELIGHTFUL day of cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. For anyone who is wondering - which I doubt but you never know - that is from a Rainbow vacuum from maybe the 80's? "Borrowed" from my mother-in-law (holding it hostage, she might not get it back) since ours is currently out of commission for a bit - I am in LOVE with the vacuum! Look them up! I mean, any vacuum that has lasted more than 20 years has gotta say something!

I am trying to get the house in an acceptable state for us to leave for the beach on Saturday. It is soooooo much nicer coming home to a squeaky-clean house after being gone for a long period of time! Today I am tackling the bedroom and trying to pack and scrub down the bathrooms so tomorrow I can focus on getting everything laid out, packed, ready and some pre-beach shopping also (sunblock-spf 50, junk food galore, etc...) I am so glad we got all of the chicks outside now so our house-sitter doesn't have to deal with indoor-chickens. Yuck!

On a couple of garden/canning notes - all of the 'jam' I canned didn't set up that well...Could have been my AWESOME estimating skills (have NONE) instead of going back to measuring out fruit vs. sugar & pectin...We had some with dinner last night however and it tastes AMAZING! It turned out to be more of a compote than jam which was super yummy on biscuits last night. I will make some *small* batches after we get back from the beach to make sure it sets up properly so we will have some thicker jam - heck we still have 4 gallons left so it's not like I don't have enough!

After dinner Logan and I spent some time finally shelling peas (which we will get to do again today or tomorrow because the plants are STILL cranking them out. They love all of this rain and not-so-hot summer weather). Thanks to the 'Mr. Pea Sheller' borrowed from the in-laws, we shelled a whole quart of peas in about 30 minutes. Not so bad. And YES that is a drill attached - the directions actually encourage you to use a drill or hand-mixer instead of the hand-crank.


See - who said farm-life isn't exciting. That's bonding right there - shelling peas with your husband. We get work done, have non-canned organic peas for the winter AND spend quality time together - and he gets to use power-tools at the same time!

Well, it's time to start on cup of coffee #2 (yes Mom - a rarity!), do some pre-beach laundry, clean, and possibly head to town in a bit to give blood at the Red Cross blood drive. (I have B- blood which is the 2nd rarest type so I always try to give when I can) Whew - exciting day!

No More!!

Six gallons of cherries was very high expectations...Way too high...I got 2 gallons done and made jam and canned this afternoon. That was a lot. 3 hours all told and I still have to clean up. I could crawl into bed right now. Logan and I were talking about what the pressure must have been like if this was the ONLY way you were going to have fresh food in the winter. I can't even imagine - picking, processing, canning, cleaning - and most people had a mess of kids to deal with too! I just have myself and Logan! I could not do this all day long like some people do - maybe with help I could but not by myself as it so often is!

I got 13 pints of jam out of the 2 gallons of cherries I pitted (hmm...my math skills are failing - last time I checked there were 8 pints in a gallon, so what happened to those other 3 pints? I guess I should have 3 pints of pits in my garbage?)


I am not 100% sure what I am going to do with the remaining 4 gallons of cherries...I might make one more small batch of jam to give away to friends (and family!) but the other might just be pitted and put away for pies, cobblers, etc? The jury is still out on that. For now, I am soooooooo looking forward to going to the beach on Saturday! I need it!

Kicked Out

Finally! All of the chicks are out of the house and living like REAL chickens instead of house pets! Don't get me wrong, I really like the chicks, however I really don't like them as 'indoor chickens'. The guineas have had to be relocated in a sense also. The guineas were in the pen first so I think they were kind of 'defending' their territory but they were also terrorizing the chicks. They weren't attacking them or anything, just kind of chasing them from place to place, herding them, and scaring the bejeebus out of them. So, until the chicks get 'chicken sized' they are living in their own little guinea cottage with-in the chicken coop. It is only temporary but it has really helped make everyone a little happier and easier to adjust.

Some of the girls are exploring and the guinea cottage is in the background

Checking out their new digs

These little girls were brave - they moseyed right up to me when I was in the pen taking pictures.

I still think the white chicks look like 'peeps' but the older chicks - who are 2 weeks older than the Brahmas, actually look like real chickens - just mini versions - but getting bigger each day. Here are some pics of the 'older' chicks -

This one - which if you remember, was the little yellow chick from the original 5 - is definitely the ring-leader of the older ones (who by the way, hang out in their little group of 4 and the others hang out in their group. Remember, we had to put one of the originals in with the younger ones because he (she?) was a 'late bloomer'.) She is probably the smartest of the older ones and the most friendly. She lets Logan pick her up and carry her around!

Strutting their stuff!

Now I must move on to my task of the night - pitting 6 gallons of cherries. I got my fancy-smancy pitter in today so hopefully that will make my life easier! Updates tomorrow!

The Pits!

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July and hopefully you got to have a long weekend to go along with it! As for us, it has rained nearly every day BUT I am not complaining after the desert-like conditions we had last year! Our garden is definitely in over-drive because of all of the rain. We have 2 more huge bowls of peas that are waiting to be shelled and I am sure there are wax beans up there waiting for us also.

Today, however, was dedicated to cherries. Not the 6 gallons I brought home from my parents' house - these are black cherries we found while we were riding the horses in our favorite field. We picked close to a gallon of cherries so today I made jam! Yum! Unfortunately it was quite an ordeal and this had BETTER be good jam!! The cherries were most likely wild cherries so they were a lot smaller than the other cherries we pick. They were too small for my hand-held pitter which works like a syringe - they would poke all the way through the bottom. My super-de-duper cherry pitter hasn't come in yet that I ordered last week so we resorted to some interesting methods today to de-pit these suckers!

Here is my canning day in pictures and captions:

Aren't they pretty? Here are the cherries after picking.

Since we didn't have the pitter, we had to figure out a way to get the pits out before I could do anything. I simmered them for a little while to cook them down just a bit thinking that would be easier to squeeze the pits out. We tried putting them through the Squeezo - NOPE - very bad idea...Next we got a strainer and stirred and stirred and stirred trying to break them down through the strainer. That worked some but the 'meat' of the cherries wasn't going through much. Finally in a last desperate attempt to finish them (and NOT kill my husband who wanted to bore bigger holes into my strainer) I broke out the salad spinner hoping to 'spin' the cherries off of the pits. YES! It worked - mostly. Better than the other methods and we were able to get most of the good part of the cherries off and into the pot to cook! I don't have any pictures of those steps because my nerves were becoming a little shot at this point and if I was holding a heavy object in my hand it might have been heaved at a certain someone...

Here we're cooking the jam down and adding all of it's jam-stuff...It smelled soooooo good!

The jars are waiting ever-so-patiently to be filled. We ended up getting 4 pints of jam out of the cherries.

After filling, they process for 10 minutes. This time is used to clean the 3/4 of my kitchen that is covered in cherry juice, skins, and pits including myself...

And last but not least (eating would technically be last though I guess) WE...HAVE...JAM! My favorite part is hovering near the kitchen to hear them 'pop' to make sure they seal. I always count my 'pops' to make sure they all sealed and they did! I am not sure I have ever NOT had something seal - knock on wood. Now they are sitting and cooling until tomorrow and will be stored in the pantry until it's cherry time!

Whew - I am exhausted! So that was my day. OH - before I forget, Logan and I had a wonderful lunch with my 'City Mouse' friend Becca and her husband Blake and little boy Trent. They were on their way back home and stopped by for an awesome lunch. I miss you guys and wish you were closer!!


Have a good Monday and 'Farm Girl Fun' will no doubt continue all of this week while we work to get everything put away before we head to the beach on Saturday! I'll keep everyone updated...hopefully I can sneak some knitting in while I am at it!

Little Bit O' This, Little Bit O' That

I have a lot to make up for from a week of not blogging! Last week, I was in Rogersville, TN visiting with my parents, brother, and friends. It's nice to go home from time to time but it's really nice coming back home too! I went by myself without Logan so I would like to imagine it made him appreciate when I came home on Tuesday!

One of the first things I did was go to knitting class that my mom helps organize and teach. I knew a lot of people there, met some new ones, and even encouraged my friend Kim to come along and learn to knit! She did really well and I was really glad to get to spend some time with her - she is one of my best friends from high school and we don't get a lot of chances to hang out much anymore! Here are some pics "borrowed" from the knitting group's website - http://knittingsoulstogether.blogspot.com/

We are happily knitting away (actually I think I talked more than I knit!)

Here I am helping Kim get started with my Mom peeking in on us in the background.

I was even put on the spot at the knitting group - I got to 'teach' how to cable. It's hard to convince beginning knitters that it's not hard and actually really easy! Speaking of, I finished side 1 of my Brea Bag and am totally in LOVE with the way it turned out. I am having a slight difficulty figuring out the crochet around the top but I can wait and figure it out once I have both pieces finished. So, here is side 1 of the bag -


I am so impressed with how easy it knit up (once I decided on color/yarn!). I was even impressed with my cables! (BTW - Becca this is for you - and anyone else who isn't knitting term familiar - cables are the parts of this that look like they twist around each other)

I have started side 2 and hopefully it won't take too long once I have a bit of time to sit and knit!

Why haven't I had time you ask? Well I get home on Tuesday and our garden has exploded!! I have spent the past 2 days picking, shelling, and freezing peas and picking and snapping wax beans. So far I have frozen 5 cups of peas (which let me tell you is a LOT of peas!) and don't even know about the wax beans yet...


I also came home with 6 gallons (!!) of cherries and our neighbors have invited us to pick more so soon it's going to be cherry canning time. I just ordered a cherry stoner that's more effective than the ones that work like a syringe and it will hopefully make my life much easier. Once that comes in, my life will be pit, cook, can for awhile until I get those done. Mmmmm - I can't wait to have cherry preserves!

Like I said, this was a little bit of everything to catch me back up! Depending on when the stoner comes in next week's posts will probably revolve around canning! Hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July tomorrow! (Where did June go??)