Autumn Splendor

Autumn bring a bit of mixed emotions for me.  In some ways the beauty of the changing leaves and that special smell that comes in the air along with the promise of the holidays makes it a very special time of year, and yet, the end of gardening season, the looming long, cold winter months and short days make it a time I dread also.  But I was able to get out and take some pictures of some of the beauty of Autumn that lays all around me.

This year seems to be hitting me a little hard with depression coming a little early and it was wonderful to get out in the warmth and sunshine and take some pictures and enjoy myself away from the house and away from the kids for a little while.  It was a wonderful day that day.

Autumn Flowers from Elk County, KS

Adventures as a would be garlic farmer

I had decided to put in an herb garden this year.  I’ve never had one, but I’ve always wanted one.  Anyway, I was looking for things that I wanted to plant, one of them being garlic.  Well, in my quest for suitable seed stock I ran across a site of a family that grows garlic in Wisconsin.  Gourmet garlic.  I went to their site and they had a wealth of information regarding growing garlic.  After describing their farm, their soil sounded just like ours, which isn’t known for growing much.  So, I decided I would give a whirl.  At first I only ordered 50 bulbils of garlic off a chat board I frequent and then some onion sets too.  My idea was, in a few years, to be able to take garlic and garlic products to the farmers markets to make a few dollars here and there.  Well, with the encouragement of my husband and a good friend of mine, I ended up buying 14 pounds of gourmet garlics to plant.  Let me tell you, 14 pounds doesn’t sound like much, but when you have to break them apart and plant every single little clove….14 pounds might as well be 1,000’s of pounds as there’s no fast way to plant them but to get on your hands and knees and start poking holes and then making sure every clove is right side up lest we get funny looking garlic.  So, after 4 days of hoeing rows, planting garlic and hauling hay to bed them under for the winter, I am seriously sore and thinking if we get much bigger we may seriously need to hire workers or something.   But it’s all planted now and sleeping peacefully for the winter.  We planted 6 kinds this year.  We planted an heirloom variety called “Martin’s Garlic” and another heirloom called “German Purple Striped” a little hot garlic called “Wild fire” and then 3 gourmet garlics consisting of “Red Toch”, “Inchellium Red”, and “Chenok Red”.  I’ve been praying for God’s blessing on this project of mine.  Hoping it does well for me.

Cow Problems

Back this past winter my husband bought me a dairy cow.  The sweetest Jersey cow that’s a joy to milk, but she has also been a handful!!  She is bound and determined to go on, what we affectionately call, “unathorized field trips”.  She jumps almost every fence man ever invented.  Every barbed wire fence that girl jumps she manages to cut a teat in the process.  About the time I think we have every spot fixed she finds a new one.  The only thing that keeps her in is a hot wire and she tests that frequently.  Earlier in the summer she jumped the fence and cut her teat severely.  It healed up without incidence and I thought we were doing well, but then last night when I milked the milk looked more like strawberry ice cream than anything else.  Sigh  And wouldn’t you know it was coming from that teat.

We have never had an animal with mastitis.  Not even a goat.  Now all of a sudden I am dealing with something that I’ve never dealt with before.  The vets recommendation?  Penicillin shots every day for AT LEAST 5 days.  Now this cow, who is a very large cow, who is normally so sweet (LOL) decided she wanted to have nothing to do with any needles.  (Not that I blame her).  She ended up bending two needles and trying to squish Steve between herself and the wall.  Smart cow.  (If I can’t kick him, I’ll squish him to death)  Well, that was only the first shot.  We have 4 more looming ahead of us.    With no squeeze chute, no head gate, no real sturdy fences, nothing really to hold something that large, how in the world do we convince this cow that these shots are good for her?

Sometimes goats do have their advantages.  LOL  Oh the joy of farm life…….NOT.

Missing in Action

It’s been a long time since I’ve written.  First I got pregnant with Ember and it was a long and trying pregnancy not feeling well through most of it and developing toxemia toward the end and ending up being bed ridden for the last two months and then losing sweet Ember when she was 3 months old.  2009 has not been a blessing to us by any stretch of the imagination, but though I cannot trace God’s hand in all of this, not being able to understand why He put me through that difficult pregnancy only to take that sweet precious little girl from me at 3 months old, I do trust His heart and I know that He would not send me through any valley that He did not also supply the grace for.  And I know that I shall see her again some day soon.

After losing Ember my husband bought me a most precious little registered female Pit Bull puppy as a baby to love on.   She’s no replacement for Ember, but she is precious and I do love her.  She has been a special blessing to my husband as my husband was having nightmares after Ember died and holding and petting Brandy, our puppy, at night has relieved his bad dreams.

Also the guys bought 4 nucs full of bees this past spring.  They have big dreams about them.  I pray that their dreams to succeed.  Things haven’t gone all that well this year and I hope, for everyone’s sake, that this goes right.

Louis and our little Brandy

Was that a goat I just saw?

What we hardcore animal raisers will do to get an animal home!  Dear hubby decided that we needed milk as well as meat around here and so the decision was made to sell the Boer goats and go on the hunt for dairy goats.  We found some about 2 hours from us and with great anticipation we made ready the pen that our new girls would occupy.

The day came to make our trip, but one thing wasn’t considered….Where are we going to put them??  We had 10″ of snow just 2 days before this and while the snow was quickly melting, the stock trailer was buried in snow and mud and the truck had somehow lost it’s plug in for the lights when someone didn’t remember to tie the cord up to the bumper and so the truck and stock trailer were not an option.  So, there I stood staring at my 2005 Ford Freestar wondering how many goats I could fit in that van.

I know the lady we got them from, while being very polite about the whole thing, had to think we were nuts for putting goats in our van.  Such is life.  It’s not the first time we’ve had people think us a tad odd.  And so our journey resumed with 2 adults, 4 kids of the non hairy type and 3 kids of the other kind in tow. 

We made it home safe and sound and nothing too exciting to report and the girls settled in well.  Now we wait for the next exciting day when babies arrive! 

Winter Reflections

Well, Christmas is over and the year is quickly coming to an end.  I found myself yesterday unburying myself from a mountain of empty boxes, wrapping paper and new toys that were strewn from one end of the house to the other. 

Today I recaptured my living room from the Christmas tree, took down the wreath off the door, took down the lights and reflected over the past year.  My how this year has flown!  2007 has been a year of intense challenges, trials and changes, but it has also been a year of blessings, new friends and excitement.  And so as I sit here looking at the snow falling and watching the horses pick away at a bale of hay, I wonder what next year will bring?  I look forward to buying seeds for the garden, to setting up pens for kidding season and a new season of rabbit shows plus working on soap and lotion this winter. 

And it is with this that I wish each and every one of you a very happy and successful new year!

New additions

I haven’t written in awhile. Things have been so hectic and so much going on that I don’t think I could have settled my thoughts down long enough to write if I wanted to. On August 4th we met with Steve in MO to pick up our Angora goat does. They had quite a trip coming all the way from the humid mountains of northern GA to the dry windy plains of KS.
The trip was filled with happiness, excitement, and sadness as Steve had a tragedy on the way in Tenn. A semi came to close to his truck catching the cage in the back of his truck that held the goats killing one doe. But all the others made it safe and sound and they have now been here for 3 weeks and are doing well! I couldn’t be happier with them. They are beautiful and Steve did a wonderful job picking them out for me. He felt soo bad about what happened to the one doe, but life goes on and we have two of her daughters to replace her.
I was soo excited to meet Steve. We had been close friends for so long and to see him in MO was an awesome opportunity. I grieved when I had to tell him good bye, but not before we had some good laughs in Wal-Mart parking lot while DH tried to fix the tail lights on the truck. We ended up having to drive home with the hazards on.
Everyone made it back home safe and sound, but boy were we whipped when we got home on Sunday! We put the girls into their new home, waited for the others to introduce themselves, and then we went and passed out in the bed for about 4 or 5 hours that day. It had been a 16 hour drive non-stop.
And so becomes our venture in Angora goats. We’ll be excited to see what our buck Awesome throws with these new girls. We also have plans on perhaps getting a Pygmy buck to cross with young does to size down their kids and to have some cutsie Pygoras for people for pets.

Breather

Well, the 4th of July is officially over.  My parents came over and that was nice since we very rarely ever get visitors since we’re so far out, but by evening I was worn out and ready for bed. 

We had a thunderstorm roll in about 5:00 and my parents left early rather than be stuck here behind flood waters that have been trying to receed.  That was welcome news since I made my way back to the bedroom and collapsed for a few hours.  By the time I woke up it was dark and the storm was over.  We had a nice evening setting off fireworks.  Thankfully DH and I have retired from lighting and now just sit back and enjoy, but this year the wind was just right that it turned 4th of July into a contact sport and so I ran for the safety of the porch.  LOL

Now we settle into the long dog days of summer.  Hot humid days without a cloud in the sky.  Days for relaxing on the porch swing, watching the hummingbirds and butterflys along with the mud dobbers.  We have one week of quiet before things pick up again.  Next week my spinning classes start that I am very much looking forward to and the following week is IBLP.  Then on the 22nd we pick up our new Boer buckling and then the first of August we drive to Missouri to pick up our herd of Angora goat does and 3 Boer doelings. 

Enjoy the summer.  It passes by so quickly! 

A little time off

Even farmers and ranchers need a day off and so we decided to visit the Sedgwick County zoo.  I hadn’t been there for years and I must say that it has GROWN!  It’s almost too big to cover in 1 day especially on a 95 degree day with no wind and with a 3 year old with18″ legs.  LOL

They had a new penguin exhibit which we just had to see and you would think that no one in Kansas had ever seen penguins before.

 Kids check out penguins

It was a fun day even though it was so hot.  By the time we got back to the van our backs and feet were thoroughly sore and I was most grateful for getting back into airconditioning.  But had to share a couple of photos of our fun trip to the zoo!

Gardening

 Squash plants

Spring is one of my favorite times of years because it is then that I get to watch my husband with anticipation as he runs our rear tine tiller through the garden, breaking the dirt that the winter snows and rains have worked so hard to compact.

We don’t have the ideal soil here.  It’s a clay soil, what some would call gumbo.  When it gets wet it’s sticky and sticks to the soles of your shoes and when it’s dry you could swear that it’s part concrete. 

The last few years we’ve been here our garden has met with tragedy for one reason or another.  Where we live there is no water under ground and so we have to haul water.  This makes it extremely difficult to water the garden and so we are at God’s mercy and when He decides to send rain.

Last year was a cool wet spring and we lost all of our tomato plants to blight.  The year before there wasn’t enough rain and everything died from a lack of water.

This year we had high hopes for our garden.  With a new location, renewed energy and excitement I watched with anticipation as hubby worked the soil.  This year we decided to plant all heirloom tomatoes.  I started our seeds indoors in February.  This is the very first time I have started seeds indoors and it was a new adventure, but by the grace of God we didn’t lose not a single plant and we had probably a 97% germination rate.  Almost every single seed germinated and we only lost 2 plants later on. 

When it came time to plant I sunk my hands down in the warm moist soil and dug out a hole.  Carefully pulling off all the lower branches and burying my plants half way up the stalk.  With each passing day I have watched these little plants thrive in our new garden spot.  It’s almost been like watching my children grow. 

 One of my heirloom plants growing tall & strong.

The plants have done more wonderful than we ever thought possible and we praise God that our garden has done so well so far.   It’s a joy to go out and see the work of your hands flourishing in the sunshine.  All the labor that began last winter now starting to pay off with every little tomato that sets. 

Our children too have been enjoying the garden, but for very different reasons.  Little travelers that come to rest in the shade of the tomatoes.  I guess our plants are a blessing to more than just our family and hopefully they will continue to be so if we have a large crop of tomatoes that we can share.

And so it is with this that I wish everyone happy gardening this season and may all your crops be bumper ones.  )