It's Just the Beginning...

The Brothers' mini-mill arrived today, and Mr. Brothers is busy assembling it right now. He's probably thinking about what he would be doing if the rain wasn't supposed to come in tomorrow.

When the UPS driver delivered the mill, he asked Kyle something about his mother-in-law (Grammy)! Kyle just answered "Um, that's my grandmother."

Lily might just be good for something! She treed a groundhog, and Kyle made his first kill (just one shot too!). Mr. Groundhog was eight and a half pounds, and exactly like those stuffed animals in the store!

We had to look up groundhog season (always open season, no limit) before I could publish this post.

Still No Calf

Clarabelle's udder gets bigger everyday, but she hasn't dropped yet. We are all waiting uneasily for her calf. Clarabelle got into the feed barrel last night, and we're afraid she rather gorged herself. Lily was having quite a time running her too, but we chained her up a few days ago.

Today we have been busy working in our new garden spot up by the berry patch. The Brothers' instigated it, of course. They moved the pigs, and got a couple of tillers out. We worked out there all afternoon! It was not unusual to hear lines of bluegrass songs talking about rocks or stones burst into suddenly! Once we finished, that garden spot looked better, on the top, than any other first-year garden spots I can remember (not too many, but some). We won't go into what was about 5 inches below the top.

Unusual, Unexpected, and Unprepared!

Clarabelle's going to calve soon! Any day now! Apparently the Ridings' thought that she had miscarried this past summer, but it seems now that she didn't. We are going to be working hard tomorrow to try to get the barn ready with stalls and do some of the other necessary preparations. This was quite a surprise to us because we didn't think she would calve until sometime this summer! We have to get the Lingo's up soon! Tricia Ann has to help us get started with this milking thing. We don't have a milking machine, a stall to milk her in, or even a trough to feed her in! Somehow we will make do and have things ready by the time. We will have to be ready!

Thursday

We are trying to start a new schedule that we will be able to keep once Clarabelle calves. Daddy has us waking up at 5:30 am now, and this morning it actually worked. We had breakfast on the table by 6:15 am! No, that was not scheduled, just happened. We were home from Wal-mart by 9:00 am. Not bad at all! If this Thursday had been like the past few Thursday's I would have gone directly to the stove and started the pudding for Pickn' Parlor. However, this was not like those Thursdays! Our first week off the job! I found that I really don't miss working the Pickn' Parlor as much as I thought I would. I still think it will be difficult going back as customers rather than making sure everybody's satisfied, bussing the tables, or washing dishes. It's going to be nice to have our weekends back though.

Reading back over that shows me that I didn't make my thoughts very clear, but I can't really. They aren't that clear to me right now! I think my last sentence pretty much sums up my feelings about the Pickn' Parlor though.

Around the Farm

The Lone Rooster!

Who knew trash can lids could be so handy!

Farm boys.

Clarabelle

We picked up our Jersey dairy heifer this morning, and made good time bringing her home. Here are some long-promised pictures.

---

This is Clarabelle

She didn't really want to get up in the trailer, but she was still way easier to load than our Angus cattle!

She was pretty skiddish when we got her home, but the others were very curious about her. She was immediately popular with the bulls!

Feel Free to Express Your Opinion Here

In my last post I said that there is a debate on what to call our pastures. By pastures I mean the two large sections not the four sections in each. Now, we are right now being very creative and calling them "Front Field (or pasture- whichever one slips out)" and "Back Field." These even have some controversy. For example, if Mama and Daddy use the term "Front Field" they mean different pastures. My question: What would you call the field closest to the road, and what would you call the field closest to the house? That is how I have to talk about the pastures now, because we can't say "the one with the pond" any more. So, we can keep speaking in "the-field-closest-to-the-house" phrases, or y'all can come up with something better (PLEASE!).

I don't think I worded this post very well, but I don't really have a lot of time to go back over and fix it all.

Religious Satire and Work

I have a sort of strange liking of this stuff, but through all the satire I am learning more definitely what it is I am a part of and believe in. Recently, Susan posted about another satirical site, and this one is better than The Sacred Sandwich (I think) because his posts are relatively short, nice and simple, and fairly frequent.

Okay, the title says: Religious Satire and Work. I have to write something of the work that got accomplished today. No, I didn't even touch the sewing machine (I did want to though)! This morning I made a batch of bread which we later ate with lunch (I also did a pan of sweet rolls so I could pop them in the oven for breakfast tomorrow morning). Soon after I got the loaves out of the oven Kyle came in and said that Elijah would appreciate my help with the fencing effort. Mama and I went out, and I helped Elijah fence until lunchtime (around 1:30pm). After lunch, Kyle, Elijah, and I went back out to finish fencing around the pond. Once that was done, we decided to go to the pasture closest to the house (there is a debate about what to call that, but I'll post that another time) and get one strand of barbed wire up and drive the t-posts. After that was done we were all tired and getting a little touchy so we decided it was time to quit for the day.

I cannot close this without mentioning that while we were fencing Mr. and Mrs. Brothers were cleaning up the barn and the chicken house/shed! Daddy was so happy with all that had been done while he was away! Another thing I must not (for fear of chastisement) leave out is that Mama cooked lunch and dinner for the whole bunch of us, and Elizabeth and Catherine did a wonderful job watching out for the little ones!

Irony

I was just quickly skimming over some of Mama and Daddy's old blog posts when I came across this one and I noticed that Mama said that Heritage was just too far away for us to worship with regularly. This is no longer the case! Just a few months after the barn raising we started making a church three and a half hours away our church home. We have been regularly going ever since not regretting the long drive in the least! We still are amazed to think "Not a rotten apple in the bunch!" The fellowship just gets sweeter! The family that wasn't able to make it for the barn raising is now living on our land (they got back today, by the way!). It has been really neat getting to know the Heritage folks; it makes me feel now like we're not the only oddly-shaped apples in the basket! Some things never change though. Even though we usually see our church family every week, the end of the day is always the same: we still hate to leave. However, the pain of separation is much abated because the parting is not indefinite!

It would be really neat to have a barn raising reunion now! Maybe we'll just have to have everybody up for a hog killin' and bar-b-cue! I don't know anything about pigs, or at least not much, so maybe you can't eat a pig soon after you kill it. Well, we can at least have beef of some sort. There's always the chili/soup fall-back too, or maybe we'll all just sit around eating pop corn. Heritage church family, I (and I think I can safely say so for the rest of the family too) can't thank y'all enough for allowing us to be apart of it all (I can't really describe it, it's every aspect of your lives I think)!

We miss you, Lingo's!

SPBGMA Awards

Well, I don't think my opinions about who should win what swayed the officials at all. Not very many of "my winners" won. Oh, well, there's always next year so long as you don't go country or pop!

Pictures

Well, here is a picture of our four pigs piled into the doghouse. They have already rooted up the "ICU" so much that Daddy says that we'll have to rake it and re-seed it once they're out! The white spots in the picture are snowflakes; we've gotten quite a bit today!

---

The pigs are out and rooting!

We Arrived Safely Home

With several new bags of feed, tons of fabric, and four good-sized pigs. It is dark now so I can't get any pictures, but I will try hard to get some tomorrow. The pigs are going in the "ICU" for now, but they will probably move out to the barn soon.

Mama, Claire, and I had quite a time in Fayetteville today. After a couple of hours of shopping we had an overflowing cart (the fabric is not all for us though...), and we decided to go across the square to O'Houllihans (I doubt that's spelled right, oh well) for lunch. We split a couple of sandwiches and had a white chocolate chip macadamia Cristy Cookie! After that we went back to Sir's for a while. Daddy came and picked us and our bags up after about another hour.

We stopped at the Wiggin's to drop off their two pigs, and we ate dinner with them. Unfortunately, we couldn't fellowship with them for very long (seeing as how we had four other pigs in a trailer).

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow we are getting pigs from the Sanders' farm, and (what is even better) we ladies are going to be dropped off at Sir's! They are having a $1.00 a yard sale! Think of all that money we are saving... :)

I might have pictures of the pigs tomorrow.

CARNAGE!!!

No public details.

Who would you be?

Do you ever wonder who you would be, or who you would like to be, from the books that you've read? I do. I have imagined myself all the Jane Austin heroines and Edith (from The Inheritance, by Louisa May Alcott) and Polly (from An Old-Fashioned Girl, again by Alcott). I have caught myself being like Caroline Bingly in the scene where Mr. Bingly keeps trying to give his opinion and she keeps interrupting him. I have sometimes (thankfully not often) felt like Marianne from Sense and Sensibility, and I have often wanted to be like Fanny in Mansfield Park, all long-suffering and patient. One thing I recently noticed was that I don't think I have ever thought of myself as a Brontë novel heroine! I may have imagined myself as Shirley, while I read it, other than that I don't think I have. That is very odd for me not to even try to think of myself in the heroine's position, however, I find their books rather dark and depressing. I have recently been reading some Greek and Roman literature, but they are so different from what I normally read I can't even begin to place myself in the book or play!

We got a couple of pictures of Clarabelle, our future Jersey; I may be able to post them later.

A Few Little Things

Not a whole lot going on around here, although we are preparing for some BIG changes! Well, they seem big to me anyway. We are getting a two-year-old bred Jersey, four pigs from Top of the World Farm, we're looking at more chickens (eggs and meat), and possibly some geese. There's the changes for around the farm.

I just finished the Sense and Sensibility 1910's Tea Gown. At least, I finished the instruction booklet, but I may have to add an insert thing at the neck. My "experience" was thoroughly put to use on this dress, but other than the fitting the pattern (had I been able to follow it word for word) wasn't all that difficult. The back of the dress went WAY too low for my taste so I had to put an insert in there, but I think that was the only "major" alteration I made.

Claire and I continue to take lessons from Mr. Brantley, and we are enjoying them immensely even though I (Claire doesn't really) have to work hard to be ready each week. He has started teaching us together, we do the same songs sometimes we do harmonies too. This past week we worked on "Mississippi Sawyer" and harmony and melody on "Harvest Home Hornpipe". This week we are to work on "O'Keefe's Slide" and "Drowsy Maggie". Both are Irish fiddle tunes, and both are very different from bluegrass (which makes them a little more difficult for me). "Drowsy Maggie" is especially difficult.

It Snowed!!!

There was snow on the ground when I woke up this morning! However, by lunch there was nothing left. That leaves us cold, wet, and miserable! Okay, not miserable, but I can easily think of other situations I would rather be in! I will not let this weather get me down though!Just think spring will be here before too long! With it will come all the garden work, but I love that.

How Forgetful I Am!!!

I can't believe I forgot to mention Saturday night in my last post! Yet it seems so long ago. Oh well! We actually met Roland White!!! He is an awesome mandolin picker, and he's played with some REALLY BIG names! He came with the band Richard Starkey and Friends. Unfortunately there were enough sandwich orders to keep me in the kitchen almost the whole time, but I did speak to him a minute when we bought one of his Cd's! It was really exciting to see a famous man come into the restaurant when you've only seen him on the front of your lesson book and on the internet!

SPBGMA

I was just checking out the nominees for this year's national SPBGMA event in Nashville. Rhonda Vincent has so many nominations she can't help but walk away with several awards! She's got: songwriter, album, female vocalist (in the contemporary category), and the list goes on! Sometimes I wonder if bluegrass is so small that there really wasn't anybody else to nominate, but I know that can't be true. I am not a big Rhonda Vincent fan; I'm just not. You know how you can like or dislike something for no apparent reason; that is kind of how it is. I guess I have learned to appreciate a more traditional sound. Looking at the vocal group of the year I don't know all of them, but I see that Cherryholmes is still big (I have not heard enough of their stuff to form an opinion), predominately female groups (or groups with women leaders) are popular. Of course I would be the odd one, but I like the two that are all men (I think). Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver are GREAT! I have a CD of Mountain Heart and I like their sound, REALLY FAST! Anyway I would like to see: The Gibson Brothers "Red Letter Day" win the album of the year, gotta hope for Ronnie McCoury in the mandolin category, female vocalist-contemporary is difficult (don't listen to that stuff much) nope not gonna do it I'm not educated enough to form an opinion on this one, I'm not too sure of myself on the female-traditional either, I don't know about the male-contemporary maybe Ronnie Bowman maybe Terry Eldredge, Del McCoury or Larry Sparks for male-traditional, Gospel-contemporary I don't know any but the Isaacs and Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver so I'm hoping for the latter, Gospel-traditional again I just know Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver but BlueRidge has a good name, I'm hoping Mountain Heart will win vocal group, instrumental group would be the Grascals although Ricky Scaggs and Kentucky Thunder is good too, song of the year is again "Red Letter Day" by the Gibson Brothers, and I have no clue as to the last two categories. There. I've had my say.

On the Road to Recovery

We hope! Luke's been well for days now, and bouncing off the walls! Kyle is well off and on. Mama is pretty much well, but trying to shake a headache. Claire seems to have gotten this thing worse than the rest of us, and she is pretty laid up, but better I think. I am doing way better! Unfortunately, Daddy is down with it now.

Yesterday is the perfect example of those days when everything you planned goes out the window. At first Kyle wasn't going to go to the birthday party, but then Mama and Daddy decided he could go, since he is practically well. So Mama took Kyle, Luke, and the desserts for the Pickn' Parlor. She dropped Kyle off at the party, and took Luke and the desserts to the Pickn' Parlor. Claire and I were at home. Claire was resting and I was working on putting in an invisible zipper, still haven't got that thing in. Daddy came home looking awful! He went directly to bed, but only stayed there for about an hour. Then our plan to stay home tonight, and not work blew up. Daddy said we were leaving in twenty minutes with Elijah and Mrs. Brothers. Uncle Craig was unable to be there so we had to pick up the slack. Thankfully we had a lady who worked as head chef kind of. She was GREAT! One couple who were not going to work any more came in ready to help. We had a rather hectic kitchen, but it was a happy one. Kaliste and Mr. Lovett came in too! Kaliste discovered our delightful sink! Thank you so much; we can always use another dishwasher! The night was thankfully slower than a normal Friday night, but I think we filled up close to our usual amount. We were beat when we got home, but it was a good night.

Everytime We Think We Get Better...

We get worse! How much worse can it get?!?

MORE!!!

Daddy is coughing a bit now, but he said he doesn't have the fever. Wednesday night Claire's fever came back up, and now she has some sort of stomach thing.

Yesterday we watched "Lord of the Rings", but (I'm rather afraid of the comments this will bring) we skipped through most of the scenes with Frodo and Sam after they left the Fellowship. After viewing it again, I hold to my original favorite part: The Battle of Pelennor Fields after Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli arrive with the Dwimorberg-ians (I am not a LOTR "scholar", and I only know all this because the little booklet is in front of me. I usually just call it the battle of the dead).

And It Keeps Going...

I've got it now. However, Claire is well enough to go to lessons today; Mama is over it now too, I think. Who knows about Daddy! Being in an office all day may keep this away from him. The Brothers have moved back out to their camp, and the house is very quiet. Luke is still not back to normal, so that makes the house just that much more quiet. He, we found out yesterday, has a bad ear infection. We are all hoping and praying it doesn't spread to the rest of us.

Sickness in the house!

This week the inhabitants of Allelon Farm have been sick. Not many of us have managed to escape the persistent fever, chesty cough, and congestion; probably fewer of us will. Right now everyone is sick except: Daddy, Mr. Brothers, Mrs. Brothers, Benjamin, Lydia, Elizabeth, and me. That is half of us, but we thought the babies were sick yesterday. We would really appreciate your prayers as we try to get everyone well again.

The Eighth of January

Several things of note happened on this date. In 1815, Major General Andrew Jackson led a small army to victory against the British in New Orleans (I think it was the day after peace papers were signed). In 1935, Elvis Presley and his stillborn twin brother were born in a two-room house in Mississippi. In 1993, Claire was born. The Eighth of January is also an old fiddle tune that Johnny Horton put the words of "The Battle of new Orleans" to.

Obviously, Major General Andrew Jackson.

In case you couldn't guess Elvis is the one in the center.

Claire.

Barber Claire.

Working Claire.

A portrait trial.

Claire dancing with Kyle, her partner.

Just a Note

How on earth do you write a truly thankful, perfectly honest thank you note to someone who has given you something you don't particularly like? I find it one of the most difficult things.

Sorry!

Will post soon.

Just In Time For Christmas

Mama, Claire, and I worked on a couple of dresses for some girls at church, and we gave the dresses to them this morning. I hope we surprised them! Thank you for the picture, Mrs. Stouffer! You look lovely as usual, Camille!








Merry Christmas, Y'all!

Guess What, Kaliste!

I finished them! I'll bring them tomorrow! I didn't think I'd get them done before New Year's Day!

"I Can't Believe It's Christmas..."

Busy! That is the only word that can possibly describe the time we are going through! The amazing thing is that not very much of it is at all related to Christmas as it would have been in years past! This Christmas is so different that it hardly even feels like Christmas! However, that may have something to do with the 60 and 70 degree weather we have been having lately. Never thought I'd miss the 40 degree, drippy weather, but there's nothing like that to get you in the mood! We've done the traditional things such as: watching every Christmas movie in the house, listening to all our Christmas CDs (Mama has finally proclaimed our holiday music selection lousy; maybe now we'll get some good Christmas music.), and decorating the Christmas tree with a finger food dinner that night. Still, it is like we're in "A Charlie Brown Christmas"! Isn't it still October? Guess I'll have to get used to this hectic, non-stop feeling, but now at least we don't have the Pick'n Parlor this week end and Mr. Brantley has let us off for a couple of weeks for Christmas break. He gave me quite a bit to work on between now and the next lesson though.

Funny... mostly

Much of this website is funny, but some of it is too real.

Don't you hate it when...

You didn't get to bed until 1:30 am, and you have to get up in the morning.

Siblings loose your things.

You can't remember what you were about to say.

You get the brunt of a parent's anger even when you did nothing wrong.

It's bathroom cleaning day.

It's your week to fix breakfast/lunch/dinner and you can't come up with any ideas.

You've just sewn up three out of the four seams wrong.

It's portrait time.

You don't get anything done although it seems like you've been busy all day.

You have to dance with another girl even though there are perfectly capable boys standing around.

Your music teacher forces a smile and says "Well, that was... nice." or "Good try."

Your father automatically asks if we're having spaghetti because he knows it's your week to fix dinner.

Your room is an absolute wreck.

You have great aspirations for the coming year but rather low expectations as to how those aspirations will turn out.

Good friends pass up your road.

People don't blog for months on end.

Someone makes a list like this.

---

I could go on, but I don't think I will right now.

Blogger Beta?

Yeah. I changed to it when it asked me to, but why? I had just over 50 posts when it asked me if I wanted to change. Is Blogger Beta able to handle larger blogs better? What really is a large blog? What am I doing here!?! I've got way too many things to do!

The Pick'n Parlor

Last night was opening night for this new enterprise we're working on. We had a packed house too! The Pick'n Parlor is an experiment really. We are leasing the building and things from the previous operators so we didn't really have to start from scratch. Uncle Craig is head manager and chef; Daddy is another head manager chef; Uncle Craig hired four waiters who were absolute lifesavers last night; I mainly did dishes (I've never done so many dishes in my life- okay, maybe my whole life's-worth combined); Mama and Claire helped do the dishes some too. After about an hour of dish washing I started wondering how many times I had washed this fork or that bowl, etc. I am still wondering. The major crisis of the night was that we nearly ran out of utensils (we actually may have I'm not sure). Uncle Craig decided that a meat-n-three place uses more utensils than a soup and sandwich place. I have already learned to appreciate the people in the back more through just last night's work.

I am going to start taking mandolin lessons from Claire's fiddle teacher and the national fiddle champion, Tom Brantley!

Today Claire, Kyle, and I are going to go dancing at this event, in full costume! We are going from there to the Pick'n Parlor for another night of work.

A New Farm Experience

I finally got that farm experience I have wondered about ever since we have had cows. I helped Kyle and Daddy pull a calf this morning! Okay, so that normally is not a good thing, but I think it was very educational. Made all the more so by the 15 degree weather! We should have tagged the little thing when we were able to catch it, but Daddy was afraid that it would not even live. Now the calf is very much alive and sort of even bouncing around a little. Perhaps we will still be able to catch it; I think we will if it turns out to be as friendly as its mother (we are all hoping it will be)! Our 47 is going to be a good mother I think, though perhaps not as protective as our other cows. I have already been able to go up and touch 47 as well as her calf without any opposition! With our others you could not even go near the calf without the cow coming after you.

YIKES! It's Already December?!!

Thanksgiving Festivities

We did puzzles, and games, we ate a ton of food this Thanksgiving. Here is "Pin the Turkey on the Hat", named by Luke.









Abigail, my cousin, playing charades.










Forehead! A game much more down my alley! I'm not too fond of those others, however I contributed to all the puzzles we did.

Several Little Things of No Consequence

The first thing of no consequence will be the cut of meat contest winner announcement.

All who participated lost. Sorry. Cold, hard fact. Thank you for participating anyhow.

The meat goes from this...

---

To this!

---

The second thing now would be a little poll for my information:

What do you use? Internet Explorer or Firefox?

---

The last thing is just a quick note to say that the best part of Thanksgiving has arrived! Turkey pot-pie!

Happy Thanksgivin' Y'all!

Happy---

–adjective, -pi‧er, -pi‧est.

1. delighted, pleased, or glad, as over a particular thing: to be happy to see a person.
2. characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy: a happy mood; a happy frame of mind.
3. apt or felicitous, as actions, utterances, or ideas.

---

—Synonyms:
1. joyous, joyful, blithe, cheerful, merry, contented, gay, blissful, satisfied.
2. favorable, propitious; successful, prosperous.
3. appropriate, fitting, opportune, pertinent.
—Antonyms:
1. sad

---

Thanksgiving---

–noun
1. the act of giving thanks; grateful acknowledgment of benefits or favors, esp. to God.
2. an expression of thanks, esp. to God.
3. a public celebration in acknowledgment of divine favor or kindness.
4. a day set apart for giving thanks to God.
5. (initial capital letter) Thanksgiving Day.

---

Y'all---

Pronounced, YAWL. pron. Chiefly Southern U.S. You. Used in addressing two or more people or referring to two or more people, one of whom is addressed.

---

Regional Note:

The single most famous feature of Southern United States dialects is the pronoun y'all, sometimes heard in its variant you-all. You-all functions with perfect grammatical regularity as a second person plural pronoun, taking its own possessive you-all's (or less frequently, your-all's, where both parts of the word are inflected for possession): You-all's voices sound alike. Southerners do not, as is sometimes believed, use you-all or y'all for both singular and plural you. A single person may only be addressed as you-all if the speaker implies in the reference other persons not present: Did you-all [you and others] have dinner yet? You and you-all preserve the singular/plural distinction that English used to have in thou and ye, the subject forms of singular and plural you, respectively (thee and you were the singular and plural object forms). The distinction between singular thou/thee and plural ye/you began to blur as early as the 13th century, when the plural form was often used for the singular in formal contexts or to indicate politeness, much as the French use tu for singular and familiar “you,” and vous for both plural and polite singular “you.” In English, the object form you gradually came to be used in subject position as well, so that the four forms thou, thee, ye, and you collapsed into one form, you. Thou and thee were quite rare in educated speech in the 16th century, and they disappeared completely from standard English in the 18th. However, the distinction between singular and plural you is just as useful as that between other singular and plural pronoun forms, such as I and we. In addition to y'all, other forms for plural you include you-uns, youse, and you guys or youse guys. Youse is common in vernacular varieties in the Northeast, particularly in large cities such as New York and Boston, and is also common in Irish English. You-uns is found in western Pennsylvania and in the Appalachians and probably reflects the Scotch-Irish roots of many European settlers to these regions. You guys and youse guys appear to be newer innovations than the other dialectal forms of plural you. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.)

---

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

Beef Processing and Meat I.D. Contest

Well, here it is. Another post. Here's what we've done lately, Kaliste!

First of all, this is a decidedly agrarian process. As is quite obvious.

Introducing...Ribeye!

Well, a quarter of him.

Looks like he's still putting up a good fight!

He's becoming more manageable.

The meat saw was great.

Hungry anyone?

The tallow, which we saved for some reason other than to spoil in our freezer (though I am still uncertain as to what that reason is).








What would you call this?
















I call this a meat tenderizer.
Grinding beef.












Finished products.
















---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Contest Time!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sorry. Bradshaws and Wiggins are disqualified for having already done it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is this?













---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As for today, 11-20-2006, we had some good flurries! Exciting!

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."

We WORKED!

See, we actually did get something done today!

We mulched around the house, the shrubs near the basement, in the asparagus, and around the shrubs near the tool shed.

We also, umm... fenced. No, really, we did! We got three whole strands of barbed wire up and all the rest of the t-posts in the pasture farthest from the house.

This Just In

An albino deer has been seen near hear! I repeat: an albino deer has been seen near here.

A rare occurence; besides, it was something to blog about.

<>EDIT<>
It was a piebald deer, not albino. Don't know if they're any more common or not.

Nothin' much goin' on

I don't have to much to blog about right now. It drives me crazy when there are long pauses between posts, and I try not to do it, but what do you do when you don't have anything to post about?!!

Let's see. It's been raining a lot lately, and it is kinda hard to remember to be thankful for it. I have to think back to this summer when rain was scarce and desparately needed.

The leaves are falling. It is just about past the real pretty time with all the colors. It's hard to realize that it is near the end of the year already! The year has gone by so fast! Getting to know new friends better; doing practically everything under the sun, and changing our world view almost completely from what it was four years ago! Those four years have been whirlwinds!

Okay, I posted. It's no good, but it's there.

Early Autumn in the "Suburbs of Viola"

Early fall is probably my favorite time of year. I just love to run up the mountain and watch the leaves falling all around me. The only thing I am not particularly fond of is the endless raking. Last year we raked nearly every day, but by the next you couldn't tell we had done a thing!

I guess I am just going to have to get over that though, and do my best to enjoy raking the leaves day after day after day.



Good news! Kyle could have been heard playing his banjo this morning! The very fact that he thought his thumb was up to the task is a good sign, I think. I just hope he doesn't over do it.

Update on Kyle

Good thing! He only sprained his thumb; it's not broken. It took nearly a whole day in town to figure that out though. We are all very thankful, but, at the same time, rather disappointed that he won't be able to play his banjo for a while.

The Making of Christmas Jam

This stuff is good! We NEVER have enough to last the year, but then again, we've never made this much either. Yesterday we made four batches, and did that again this morning. I think that's all we're planning to do this year. Last year we only made four batches.

The berries and sugar, all combined, starting to cook down.








Claire was our dipper person. I love the sweet smell of this jam.

All finished........ with one batch!

Pretty and delicious! Great gifts or (my personal favorite) just to be selfish and eat all yourself!