Cows are Pregnant!

The heat continues.  We did get a 1/4 inch shower Tuesday evening.

The garden is pretty much history.  I finished canning tomatoes yesterday morning before the vet came to preg check the two milk cows.  My total is now 46 pints of canned tomatoes.  I am happy with that; it is the best from the current garden so far.

There may be a few more tomatoes but basically the garden is finished.  I am too!

I froze almost a bushel of sweet peppers.

These were not all flat like the cheese peppers I have grown before.  Don't know why.  I just washed, dried and bagged most of them.

Cows

The vet came to check Willow and Jewel.  He didn't even bother with Willow since she has started bagging up almost overnight.  He says around the first of October.  Time will tell.

Jewell is 75 days bred.  If I go from when I saw her in heat on June l, she should calve between March l and ll.  That is based on a 283 day gestation table.  Smaller breed can deliver l0 days earlier.

Farm

We  had a short power outage after the shower yesterday evening and the generator did not kick on!  I have a call for a serviceman this morning.  Somehow we must squeeze in a trip to town to see MIL who is moving this Friday.  I know she will need something done.  Friday will be reserved for overseeing the move.

House

We finally got the new shelving unit  put together and up.  It is the Swedish shelving sold by Williams Sonoma and was just as I expected.  I had intended to put it on the back porch but that required unloading and removing two very heavy pieces and we had MIL's situation to deal with, so "line of least resistance" and here is where I put it:

From House

Here is a close up: 

I could use another one of these....on the back porch this time (and I may have to move this one when my daughter gets a look at it in the kitchen!)  Between her and my "older" sis in Iowa, they don't let me get away with much........

I have already moved things around once and will probably do it a few more times before I get it the way I want it:

From House

A New Day

It is  5:42 AM.  We are in the middle of our hottest weather so far and won't get a break for several days.  Still very dry. 

Our granddaughter left yesterday evening amidst tears from several of us.  Three neighborhood boys were here to see her off (and, thankfully, to load her car).  She will be back  September 14 for the PBR rodeo with her local  BF and there are the college breaks..............

I will spend today getting the house back to normal.  I  also need to put another coat of floor finish on the kitchen floor.  My work areas at the cabinet are down to bare wood  in a place or two.  I dread that because  it means more "down on my knees" time.

I have badly neglected the yard and garden the last few weeks and need to do some trimming with the  weedeater.  I have managed to respray with herbicide some regrowth where the yard crew did their cutting but that is all.  The heat doesn't encourage me to  do much outside.

Random Pictures:

Probably last daylily of the season with a visitor:

What DH enjoys on cool mornings:

and what he does when he is working:

This is a recently brush-hogged field (the dump field).

 

Sunday on the Farm

We are having nice, cool nights but the days are still very warm and humid....still no rain.

I spent yesterday trying to get the house straightened once again.  Dear MIL keeps sending us home with stuff....and I was crowded to begin.

I did want and accept gladly her area rug for the dining room.  We had one before we refinished the hardwood floors but it was getting  very worn so we opted to leave it off. Now we have one once again.  I ordered a pad  for  it and it came yesterday.  It was not the exact  size of the rug so that meant I had to crawl along the floor trimming it with my utility knife.  It was easy to trim but crawling on my knees is not a favorite exercise!

 

We hadn't added all the chairs back when I took this photo.  I hope this comes through; I am using Blogger's photo embedding feature instead of my usual cut and paste from Picasa.

 

Then we carried all the canning supplies from the back porch back out  to the milk parlor.  You could barely walk through the porch with the supplies sitting on the floor. 

 

By late afternoon, I was done!  I still have to trim the pad for the smaller rug I put in GD's bedroom.  Took advantage of the cleaning spree to get my non-working  fluorescent fixture from the plant light stand from under the bed to relocate to the milk barn where  I can work on it in comfort on a table.

I don't like storing things under beds....we have a spider problem now and then and this makes a  great place  for them to hide.

 

These rugs were the strangest sizes. Nothing was  exact like an 8x10 or a 4x6 which of course, the pads were, thus the required trimming.

 

I found out  yesterday our GD will be moving home this Monday!  She has training  for the mentoring and the research work.  I think I mentioned she will be mentoring freshmen at MU in St. Louis and also got a research assistant thing in the psychology department.  The first is paid and the second will  count  as l credit hour.  She will actually be a Junior by the winter semester because of her hours, but she is in her second year of college with a 3.93 grade average.  We are very proud of her!

 

Random Cow Pictures

 

This is Willow's first calf,Annabelle, with her interesting  colored calf.  She is full blood milking shorthorn and the father is out of one of our Angus bulls who probably have a trace of Holstein blood.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Different View here

I should take a new header picture because things have changed!  We are down several inches in rain and grass is getting very brown, the garden is slowly dying (and I don't care!).  The big worry is pasture.  We have plenty of hay but hate to start feeding before fall.

Update:

Granddaughter just has one more week with us. (where did the summer go?) I bet I  will be lonely for a few days, I know I won't be as busy inside.

Garden is over except for a few tomatoes and peppers.  I  had one of my best sweet corn crops in several years.  We finally beat the varmints to it. DH trapped two raccoons, one possum and shot a groundhog before I was able to harvest.  Last year they got it all. We still have a groundhog in the orchard that stripped the trees there.  I hope to have my first harvest of pears in the backyard garden if I can defeat the groundhog. This is the Seckel pear:

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From 2014-08-09

https://picasaweb.google.com/gldno1/20140809?authuser=0&feat=embedwebsite">2014-08-09

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Corn

I have grown the variety Bodacious for several years; it is hard to beat.  We harvest into the garden cart with me walking the rows with a smaller container and passing it to DH to dump into the cart.
I clean it under a huge Silver Maple in the west yard and toss the husks into the garden cart.  I had very little waste and very little worm damage.  I never spray or use anything for the worms.  The chickens were happy to get the tips:
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By the way, these are the ugliest chickens, but the best layers we have ever had!  Very tame and one or two will  squat down and you can pick them up.

I made one batch of catsup and have canned 22 pints of tomatoes.  I would like to make a batch of salsa but the tomatoes may die before I get enough.

Cooking
Baking is still my favorite thing to do.  I have a new routine now.  DH just loves white bread so I make a batch for him and I think whole wheat is the better  choice for me so I have evolved a wheat berry or whole oat whole wheat for me.
I stretch the 3 loaf recipe of white into 4  loaves which means he is eating less bread (his idea).

We are in the midst of getting DH's mother (the best MIL one could ever have) moved to an assisted living place.  It was all her idea.  She is trying to give me everything that isn't nailed down.....and I am crowded as it is.  We are having an auction for everything including the house.  Be interesting to see how all that goes.

She is almost giddy with excitement over the move; she has two friends from church already living there which helps.

It is cloudy we are hoping for rain!