A hungry calf from the wrong side of the fence…
So it’s been 2 weeks since I last really posted. I’ve been collecting photos as I could. It’s been very busy here, with a turn of events for the good, and gardens needing lots of attention, plus all the other farm chores.
The calf was doing well until a couple days ago. She was often found on the wrong side of the interior fencing after she was born on August 31st. She’s more or less figured out how to stay with the herd now.
A couple days ago my husband noticed she had swelling near her umbilicus. Hopefully it’s just a small hernia and she will be fine. We are watching her closely.
Bryde supervising the photography
This is our old house cat. She’s 17½ years old now. I’d gone out to get photos of the start of cleaning out the Big garden and of course, she followed me.
The Hungarian paprika plants have done very well, once they got started. Every few days I get enough for a tray or 2 of thin sliced peppers to dehydrate with whatever else is going in. I’ve got ¾ of a pint jar of the pieces. At some point soon, I will have to powder them up, as my stock from last year is nearly gone.
Harvest on a Wednesday 2 weeks ago
One of the events of the last couple weeks is I have an intern on Wednesday mornings. She’s very interested in what I do out here and wants to learn. She’s a homeschooled kid so is free in the mornings.
Oregano, dill, marigolds, eggs, peppers, tomatoes
I’d harvested tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce that day. While it was cooking, I’d planned to load the dehydrator with marigolds, dill, and oregano.
We were able to get the pressure washer running, so I could finally wash small rugs. I spent this last Thursday doing that. I’d scrub them with soapy water on the picnic table, and then drape them on the slide of the fort/swingset. The pressure washer works great for getting the soap and dirt out.
L – R: Garlic dill pickles, dehydrated kale, garlic pickles, bread and butter pickles, pickled beets, ketchup, spaghetti sauce, and two ½ gallons of vinegar left
I have more canning in the root cellar this year than I’ve had for quite a while. As the pickled stuff grows on the left, the vinegar reduces on the right. We didn’t get apples on the tree this year, so I must find apples and make vinegar.
I had to move the Cortland storage onions out of the woodshed 2 nights ago. Seems yellowjackets decided to build a nest in the rafters in the back, and we couldn’t stack wood in the shed, for all their “help”. So I got the onions out without getting stung and they went down into the root cellar. The nest was dispatched and wood has been stacked.
These onions are HUGE and VERY heavy, even after curing for some weeks. Quite the best crop I’ve had in a long time.
There’s been a lot of events that I didn’t get photos of: packaging chicken, moving the pasture pen, the little girls started laying and finally figured out the nestboxes, and myriad other things I can’t remember.
