Things have been busy, busy, busy on the farm these days. The dogs are all doing well; Ruger has almost given up the bad habits he learned while he was a runaway lol and Colt continues to cling to my side no matter where I'm going or what I'm doing. Smith has good days and bad but hey, he's old, he's allowed to. He gets around in his own way and still gets excited to see us when we're outside. Which is a lot lately!
That brings me to the weather...it's absolutely wonderful! Highs in the low 80s, lows in the high 50-60 degree range. Mornings are chilly enough to warrant the heater in my car even if only for a few minutes. Afternoons are nice enough to roll down the windows and let the air blow through the car. It's such a welcome relief after the heat of the summer when it seemed never to end.
The grass is green again after a few rain showers. The trees have begun their transition from green to gold with any measure of orange and red in between the stages. A few in the front yard are completely gold and along the driveway, lots of leaves have turned red. It appears to me the sumac is the first to begin changing. It's also kind of strange how the same tree in our yard will still be green while out on the paved road, it's red. Quite the mystery going on there, huh?
My goal this weekend will be to get pictures of these changes although really they aren't in full swing as I write this. I've been told the time to plant bulbs is now. I bought three bags of them at Fred's the other day and I planted them in the garden that Dizzy built and down by the split in the driveway. Keep your fingers crossed that they'll do better this year and no puppies will dig them up... lol!!
I planted red tulips, yellow daffodils (aka buttercups) and blue hyacinths (pictures on the flickr site). I also transplanted the 4 o'clocks that I had in pots on the front porch. They were getting leggy so I figured I better do it before it gets too cold. Of course they are expected to die back in the winter but being a perennial, they'll come back in the spring. The seeds were mixed so I should have all different colors :) 'thank you Sydna!'
We took a trip to Cane Creek Market over the weekend and boy was that ever a treat! Just getting there kept my eyes peeled to the scenery. There are no traffic lights for miles and miles. There were only a few vehicles. As we came around a corner, we saw a horse and buggy with a family of about 8 riding down the road.
The women had bonnets on their heads and all were wearing homemade dresses with very little design. The men had straw hats and wore shirts and pants that were obviously homemade but also obviously well made. The kids were similarly dressed and looked at us like we were the strangers. I guess we were out there.
All along the road there were signs posted for things you could buy. Fresh eggs, raw milk, goat's milk soap, firewood and hay. These folks are like the Amish in Pennsylvania but here they are called Mennonites. They live under the same circumstances - without electricity or running water other than a well. They manage well enough and their places are very neat and tidy. Nothing is fancy but everything is sturdy and constructed with a knowledge and care you just don't see in the modern world. I was fascinated and could have spent all day but alas we needed to get to the market.
The market held all kinds of treasures and for me it could have meant a good hour going up and down the aisles. Wally wasn't quite as enthusiastic as I was so he was done in short order. They do have electricity in the market but that's because it's for public use. Here is where you could find hard or soft, red winter wheat, ground or whole. They keep barley and rolled oats in 5 lb bags. They have local honey, local soaps, local candles and a beautiful display of stock pots and kitchen accessory - most are hand made.
They have homemade butter with the ingredients listed as cream and salt. They have cheese curds, both white and yellow. All manner of cheeses line the refrigerator and all are made by the Mennonite ladies. Those bonnets and hats the family was wearing are also on sale here. Whoever sewed them, definitely knew what she was doing.
They have hard candy treats for kids and adults alike. They have every type of flour and sugar you could imagine and so many spices they fill a cabinet on one wall. They have offerings of jellies, jams and preserves in as many flavors as you can think of. There is a bookshelf full of cookbooks - please someone pull me out of this place!!!!!! LOL
My haul went like this: a 4 lb bag of birdseed, a bag of okra chips (more on these), a bag of yellow cheese curds, a quart jar of honey, a container of dried cilantro, a bag of beef jerky and a block of pepper jack cheese. All I can say is it's a good thing this market isn't any closer to home. Shopping here was delightful and I could go every day to see what's new. I'm pretty sure it wasn't quite so enjoyable for Wally but he did enjoy the ride there and back. We took the camaro and rolled down the windows and just rode peacefully for hours.
Back to the bag of okra chips...these were strange. It looked like regular okra but when I bit into a pod, it was salty and hollow and crunchy just like a potato chip! I have no idea how they did that. They somehow got all the slimy stuff out of it and it was great! It tasted like okra but it was airy in the middle - those people are pretty amazing!
Sunday Darryl came over to work on his dad's truck. Before they got started they put a whole pork shoulder on the smoker so it could cook all day while they worked. There wasn't an inch on the farm where you couldn't smell that pork cooking in the smoker! It made me so hungry I didn't think I'd make it to supper. To go with it, I took the butternut squash that I had roasted earlier in the week and scooped out the pulp. I added some milk and butter and used the immersion blender to smooth it out. I spooned the filling into a pie shell and baked it for about 45 minutes. Holy cow!!! It had the texture of sweat potato pie but it was different being as it was squash. It was good though :) wish you could have tried it!
Darryl gave me a bag of purple hull peas that had already been shelled so I cooked those too. Rebecca has got to try these. As much as she likes boiled peanuts, she'll love purple hull peas. They taste so much alike!
I had the laundry out on the line, the smoker was smoking up the farm, the dogs were playing in the yard and I couldn't help but think what a fine day it was in my little world. If any day was a good one for a hammock, that would have been it :) :)
I filled my bird feeders with the seed from the market and filled the hummingbird feeders one last time before they leave me. Soon the little blue birds will be back at the feeders filling their bellies instead. The roosters have started coming back up to the house now that the dogs stay mostly on the line. They slept in the tree off the front porch one night but have since moved back to the trees down the hill. I'm hoping they'll come back when it starts to get cold because they need to be sleeping up under the porch like they did last year. I don't want rooster pops in the trees when winter comes hahahahahaha!
We're down to just two of them now. They will still follow me over to Dizzy's apartment where we keep their scratch feed but once they've eaten their fill, they waddle off down the hill or into the woods. I'm hoping we can get more soon. They are very entertaining when dogs aren't chasing them all over the place :) although my guests sleeping in the room below them may not agree... lol!
The deer are everywhere now and the hunters have started their target practice. I hear the gun shots going over morning, noon and night. There are 4 deer that come up every day and eat the grass down by the split in the driveway. This has been their routine for a couple weeks now up until yesterday. They came as close as the fire pit. I know you don't know where that is unless you've been here but it's about 25 yards from the outdoor kitchen. The outdoor kitchen is about 30 feet from the house (?) give or take. The deer are so close I don't need binoculars to see them! woo hoo!!! There are two grown females and two young babies. One of the babies still has spots but they'll soon be gone as it doesn't take long for them to be fully grown.
Hunting season starts September 24th and I called my eye doctor just the other day to see about getting the long distance contact lens for my right eye. This year I hope to be able to see a deer well enough to, uh, well, harvest it... :) That's as nice as I can put it for Kat, Kris, and those others of you who are anti-hunting.
The turkeys tend to stay down in the horse pasture and all those babies have grown up too. It's now hard to tell the young ones from the older ones except they still follow their mommas around instead of venturing out on their own lol!!
My farmer took a couple weeks off in between tilling the summer gardens and picking the beginning of the fall gardens so this week was the first delivery in two weeks. She loaded us up! We have two big sweet potatoes, two eggplants (one purple, one white!), a big handful of hot peppers, three sweet peppers, a little basket of tomatoes, a bunch of mint, a spaghetti squash, a bag of potatoes and a bag of purple okra. WOW!! I'm thinking maybe a stuffed eggplant kind of recipe... I hear there's a good one in the Justin Wilson cookbook so I'll have to check it out. If only I knew how the Mennonites made those okra chips! So much to learn up here even after a year and a half!
You're welcome to come see the leaves changing and enjoy some homemade foods. We'll be happy to show you the back roads and the little Cane Creek Market. In case you can't make it up, I'm learning how to can my soup so winter will have us all warm and full bellied together :) In the meantime, plant something in your garden or pick a flower to bring inside. Surely it won't be long before your weather cools some too??
"The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain." ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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