Tuesday, October 11, 2011

busy times

It's been a busy month of October for me. Actually since the middle to end of August it's been busy for me. With the garden produce, the canning, home school, and well life, it's been busy. I'm almost done canning for the year and am very pleased and thankful for what got done. It will be nice when I'm all done, I still have some apple jelly and apples to go. I'm gonna try to can some apples that are cut up and see how they taste. Just something different. And freeze some for pies this winter!
Both our gardens are fully harvested and resting for the winter. The fences are down and the lawn is mowed.  Matthew put some manure on one of them and the hens have been out there eating the worms and doing a great job of spreading it around for me! I'd like to get some garlic, (since, someone, ahem, who shall remain nameless tilled it up last fall) planted. We shall see.
We ended up getting 217 bales of second crop hay in this past weekend! The whole field didn't get hayed either! The weather was perfect for it, hot and sunny during the day with no humidity, a slight breeze, and cool nights without the dampness that usually comes this time of year. A bit of an Indian Summer! It's been so nice, I've even just gone out and sat in the sun for a while, just to enjoy it. We had a neighboring farmer come and mow it, we just didn't have time, Matthew has been very busy at the mill. Last year we didn't have extra hay and had to buy it this spring. We had a bit of a wet spring. Now this year we have gotten almost 1000 bales from the field we lease. The chicken manure we put on it last year really improved it! We are thankful for that!
My SIL and her kiddos came over today and we canned the last of the carrots. Just gotta tell you that we got 3 bushels of carrots from our garden this year! NEVER had that many carrots! EVER! So I thought that was cool. I split the last bushel with her, and will give some to a friend of mine. We decided to try with the last 6 quarts to cook them with honey water. We'll see how they turn out. I like to put honey on the carrots once in a while, and thought if they were canned with honey water that maybe that would give it more of a honey taste.
Maggie's due date is tomorrow. So we'll have to wait and see if she calves. I'm tempted to go sit on her. I don't think she'd like that though, and I'm not into cow riding. I'll leave that to the pros! I should get a picture of her to show you how big she is. I'll do that tomorrow if she doesn't drop that calf tonight! Would be nice to see a picture of the ole cow on the blog. Been a while. It's been nice having the last 60 or so days off from milking. I have a feeling when I start milking her again, when Matthew can't, my hands are gonna burn! I'm looking forward to it though! Ha! Now how many women look forward to hand milking a cow and having their hands burn!? She seems to like the broilers that we have and often sleeps near their tractor. Speaking of the broilers, we didn't harvest them. They were too small on Saturday, so we'll see how they do this week. I think because of the heat we've had they have grown. They tend to grow slower in the fall due to the cooler weather. But these guys sure do love to eat the fresh grass we put them on every morning. Maybe I'll snap a picture and stick them on here too! Ugly looking things that they are!
 Here are a few pictures of the haying that took place this weekend. I mean check out that sky! So beautiful!




A couple kiddos running along behind the baler. I'm so pleased at how good it looks. I told Matthew it looks good enough to eat!
Have a good night all!

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