County Fair

The county fair started off with bull riding last night. That is one dangerous profession! I noticed that many of them kneel after a safe ride and give thanks. That was very good to see.
Our granddaughter won a fiddle contest again recently. She did so well! She had to wait two years to be in this one because of other commitments, but this is the one that kind of started the whole thing. She is getting ready for the State Fair contest right now so she and the young man who is accompaning her brought their instruments to the fair last night and practiced. That was a highlight for me! I could never tire of hearing her play. This young man won the banjo contest at the same gathering the other day and is self-taught. He plays the guitar when accompaning her.
I read that the garlic seeds are like miniature cloves (you can tell when you take a close look) and take two years to make a regular clove when planted. I have lots of them and want to try it. They were very easy to take off of the flower. We'll see what happens!
Hope you're enjoying summer!
Nancy

Green Beans And Garlic For The Pickin'

Put 8 quart bags of green beans in the freezer last night and picked that many more again tonight. I also dug the garlic. I always get SO excited about the garlic! It is such a blessing. I love smelling it when I'm digging it. I'll clean it up and then hang it in the laundry room to dry. There were some cloves left in the ground last year and they went to seed so I'm trying to find information on saving it. Does anybody have experience with this? I don't knoww if you can grow garlic from seed or not.
I apologize for the lack of pictures. I have tried to tranfer them from my camera and for some reason it's not working. I won't give up, though!
Hope you're finding joy in your work today!
Nancy

Unusual Sighting On The Homestead

I looked out the livingroom window and saw the dog chasing a very large white bird full speed ahead up the road. It was a peacock! There are two of them and we don't know where they came from. I gave Duke a good scolding and told him to leave it alone, so we'll see if they come back. :-)
You just never know, do you?
Nancy

Journey To Simplify-Part Six

Our plan was to do a major cleaning on the house in the country and some painting and drywall repair. Instead, we had to replace walls, floors, and ceilings, completely renovate the bathroom, and move some doors, walls, and windows. Everything but the foundation was rotted. It was a tremendous amount of work, but our young sons learned how to do a lot! It seemed like we would never get to the end, we finally did, and moved in. We had some of the very best times of our lives there.
It was so exciting to raise our own meat and eggs! I can't even describe to you the feeling that we had when we picked up our first homegrown meat.
We watched a mother hen hatch and raise her little ones. (She was a very good mother. Jack built a little house in the back yard and fenced it in so that we could watch the whole process. It is one of the most amazing things that I have ever seen.)
Our daughter, who was against moving to the country, laid on the grass the first day to read a book, and felt the peace wash over her. Our sons built a blind in the pasture to watch and film wildlife, cooking their breakfast over an open fire. Our oldest son would climb up to the top of the windmill and gaze around at the countryside and ponder. (That was his thinking spot). We bought a young colt for them to raise. A friend named him General and people would stop on the road to look at him because he was so beautiful.
And, all the time, our hearts were turning closer and closer to home.
To be continued....
Nancy

Journey To Simplify-Part Five

I had heard about homeschooling on the radio a few years before when Dr. Raymond Moore was being interviewed by Dr. James Dobson on Focus on the Family. I knew that what he was saying was true. I inquired about it and was told that it wasn't possible(not true) and that I would go to jail (also not true, although there were people going to jail in other states). I then found a very small parochial school in the city that we eventually moved to, and enrolled my children. They went there for two years and, unfortunately, there wasn't much difference between it and the public schools. I met a woman who was homeschooling at the same time that I was trying to remember what our dreams had been, and God moved in a mighty way for us, and we began homeschooling. The vision that we had had for our family in the beginning was coming back.
At the same time, the electric power plant that Jack had worked at for over ten years announced that it was going to close. It would take a while to shut it down, but their hours would be shortened right away. We heard from a relative about someone that had a house in the country that we could fix up for rent-with-an- option-to-buy and we decided to go for it.
Nancy

Latest News From The Farm

We were blessed with some great weather last week and were able, with the help of wonderful neighbors and family members, to put up over three hundred bales of hay. That's about a fourth of it. The temps were in the 80's (I know. Who ever heard of doing hay in anything other than high 90's or up?) with much lower humidity and no rain in the forecast. A wonderful blessing. If you're new to doing hay you might not realize that the weather has everything to do with it. You go through and cut it (we have grass and red clover), then you let it dry. When it is dry enough, you rake it and then bale it. The worst thing that can happen is to have it rain. High humidity can be a challenge, also. If it rains and gets it wet you could lose all of it. Now you know where the saying "you have to make hay while the sun shines" came from. If you don't have any hay your animals won't have anything to eat in the winter when the grass is dormant. If you bale wet hay it will start to decompose and compost and catch on fire. If your hay is in a barn you lose your barn as well as the stacked hay and anything else in there! That's part of the science of doing hay.
If you scroll down you'll see the two pictures of garage sale finds that I tried to post the other day. A cute painted box to plant flowers in and the jar for fresh flowers. Some other treasures were two pairs of bib overalls in good shape for a dollar a pair, a handmade old-fashioned full-length dress for fifty cents, a set of blue enamelware dishes still in the package for two dollars, a cast iron bell, and something I was very excited about; a box of square nails for twenty-five cents. We don't go garage-saling very often but the small town we live near was having a community-wide garage sale weekend. We had fun and found some great stuff!
There are many treasures in life if we will take the time to notice them. I hope you're finding lots of them!
Nancy