Harvest, To do lists

I guess that I had to wait for the harvest moon to write down my thoughts...Fall is finally here-our weather has plummeted from the 90's to the 70-80's. Last night we were 42degrees for a low. We are still sleeping with the bedroom window open-unwilling yet to let go of summer, not yet having our furnace on.
We have been in a drought the past few months, rain measured only in the hundredths.Wild prairie fires are the norm here. But we have been safe so far. The pastures are all brown and parched, yet the grass hoppers are flourishing, despite my crew of hungry birds. Here is a picture of my 8 Bourbon Red turkeys posing for the camera. Two of the turkeys are hens. Can you pick them out, a clue is, they are standing next to each other.



Projects are many for us here however. I start a lot of projects as my "wheels" are always turning. Dennis says we should finish some of them, before we move onto another. I have to take full advantage of his strength, since he turns 60 his next birthday, I need to get while the "getting is good" so to speak.
A recap of of some of our finished projects
The Wishing well, finally finished.

some of my canning accomplishments this past summer, our garden was not the best this first year, but with the adding of compost from the animal barns, our garden should be getting better every year. Also the drought did not help any either. We did have a bumper cucumber crop, so I put up about 32 quarts of pickles, yes, there is going to be a lot of pickle giving come Christmas this year. I also canned beets, wild plumbs, sauerkraut, and am in the process of doing tomatoes as we speak.

I did get the deck stained, and my 6 deck chairs sanded and painted also.

I am getting my two Katahdin ewe lambs next week, and we got our isolation quarters all set up for them.Note the little Quonset hut for the sheep. These are so useful for small livestock and so easy to move around.

I always practice bio-security when I bring any new animals onto the property. I check for parasites, any blood tests that I see that they need, before putting them on our pastures. Good animal husbandry to practice. I am getting my ewes from Dave Andrus, a near genius in the picture taking department. Here is one of the pictures that he sent me. The colored ewe is named Marble. This picture almaost looks like it could be painted on the ceiling of a church.

The electrician is finally done with our wiring of the barns, chicken coop and my sewing room(he started in July). I had a large light put up above my work area. Last night I started painting my basement floor. Battleship grey, and the inside side of the squares will be a dark maroon color.I had a hard time sleeping last night, as I want to get this project done!


I finally started my sweater. It is from Coopworth sheep fleece. I did all the processing myself. Washed the full fleece, carded, spun, dyed and finally am knitting my first sweater. I am making this for all those 20below winter days, hoping that I won't have to wear 4 layers, and be bundled up in a blanket all day in front of the fireplace. 100% wool sweater should definitely help. This sweater is knit from the neck down, and no seams. Yippee. I have to finish the sleeves yet on this.This is a close up of the colors, it was actually a dye job gone wrong, but the results are nice.

One of the highlights of this summer was getting together with my red hat friends and going to Terry Buffalo Ranch in Wyoming. We started off our tour with the restaurant, I had the 1/3# buffalo burger, very tasty, but not greasy like beef tends to be. Then we jumped aboard their train and toured their property. They had various types of animals, wild mustangs, llamas, camels, goats, cattle, and even a trout pond on the premises. But the one animal that impressed me the most was a beefalo they had. It was a buffalo crossed with a Texas Longhorn. The thing was huge with a white stripe down its back, also a kind of brindle hair coloring on the back. The guide said that it is not a good cross however as they tend to develop arthritis in a few years of age, and start falling apart. I could see the swollen knees on this fellow. But the smaller buffalo sure stayed away from him.

I just finished chores, still in the 40's, cloudy, and somewhat misty this AM. No outside work for me today! I love days like this, a lot of girlie stuff to get done!



More later..........