Braided Rug

Some of you may remember the rug I started back in 2008 (June 11th post). I got sidetracked for a couple of years, but I finally finished it! I've been helping a sick neighbor a few days a week. There's not a whole lot to do there, so I dug this project out. It is now in front of my kitchen sink and boy does it feel nice! Not the best rug in the world, it has a few puckers and the stitching isn't terribly uniform, but for a first try, I'm pleased. Thought you'd like to see it.

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Cherokee Purple Tomatoes

Cherokee Purple Tomatoes

  

Possibly the best tomato on the planet! At least the best one I've tasted so far. We've grown Brandywines for years and just love them, but this year Grampa got adventurous and decided to branch out into more heritage tomatoes. This one doesn't even look like it is ripe, but ohhhh! What a flavor! Heritage tomatoes tend to split and develop spots easier, so most commercial growers stick with the hybrids, but what they lack in looks is made up for in taste!  

Kinda like people ... those who aren't the prettiest outside often are the sweetest inside!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Back!

Wow! I'm finally back! Got really busy doing another round of Census work and then my satellite internet got hit by lightening again. My cell phone company finally has internet, so I decided to switch. Now I have internet on a cool new Android phone and I can attach it to my other computers and get internet anywhere I go. To some of you city dwellers that may seem like an expensive route to go, but it is actually $5 a month cheaper than what I had before. Not many choices out here in the boonies for internet. It took me awhile to figure out how to use it, but I'm getting there! 

Remember the little geese? They've all got feathers now. Had some predator problems a few weeks ago so we've only got 5 of the babies left, but they are coming in the chicken pen at night now. We close the lot gate at night and let them out in the morning so they should be safe now.

We are getting melons now. Not as many on the vines as we had hoped for, but everyone else seems to be having the same problem so it is probably not a problem with our beds.

We had a little volunteer plant that looked like some kind of a squash come up in my garlic bed so we decided to let it grow. It has turned into a monster that is trying to take over everything!

No kidding, this is ONE vine! 

We finally found out what it was, it's a goosenecked gourd. Hopefully it puts on more than one of these!

Our thorn-less blackberries did really well this year. Decided to plant some more, so I am using some of the containers that Grampa finds so useless to root them in. Good thing I wouldn't let him burn this stuff!

The chickens have gone on strike with this hot weather. We were getting 130-150 eggs a day, but now we are down to around 70 most days. The little chicks are starting to lay some. We had over a dozen pullet eggs yesterday. If you are looking for our eggs in the stores or at the markets and their aren't any, please be patient! We'll be back up to full production and more in a few weeks. This is a problem with not stockpiling, but when you can get our eggs, you know they are fresh! 

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Practicing Medicine Without a License

When Grampa brought these two little ones in yesterday morning they were almost dead. They had gotten separated from their parents during a bad rain storm and were covered with mud and cold. I put them in a warm water bath till they warmed up a bit. Then we blow dried them and put them in this box on top of a heating pad. Within a few hours they were just fine and back with their parents.

Growing up a city girl, I had the impression that farmers weren't real smart people. Nothing could be further from the truth. A good farmer must have and extensive knowledge of medicine as well as genetics, accounting, mechanics, construction, nutrition and a host of other subjects. Grampa may not read Shakespeare, but he is one of the smartest people I know!

God Bless You all!


~Grama Sue 

What I Did on the 4th of July

After sleeping in to a luxurious 7:30am, I headed for the computer and worked on my latest spiritual endeavor: inserting the meanings of the names in the Bible into the text. This project will probably take the rest of my life unless other people step up to help, but it has been a desire of mine for several years and this week, I decided I'd better get busy with it. If you'd like to check it out, I'm blogging it. http://thenametranslationbible.blogspot.com/

Around 9:30 or so I cooked a big breakfast for Grampa and I as we watched a John Wayne movie. I washed the dishes  and made up some noodle dough.  I had some dried herbs I needed to put in jars, so I did that. Then Grampa brought me a bucket of eggs to wash. I was just about to start working on the noodles when Grampa came in to ask if I could help him a mulch and put cages on all of the tomatoes.

By the time we were done, it was time to gather and wash eggs again, so I did that and packed 24 dozen eggs to take to Quincy tomorrow. I'm doing a promotion at the Broadway Hy-Vee from 10am -2pm. Come see me!

Finally I was able to get busy with noodles. I rolled noodles for about 3 hours, filling every available screen, cookie sheet and tray in the house and I still had to leave some on the counter! I'm going back to work for the Census this week so I'm trying to stock up.

We just got done with supper. It's almost 10pm, 'bout par for this time of year! I'm gonna go jump in the shower and lay my head down real soon!

We've decided our garden needs a rest and so do we, so we aren't going to open up on the farm tomorrow night. I'll probably wind up spending the evening making noodles anyway! Hope you had a good 4th! I did. I spent it doing all the things I love to do! It's an awesome way to live!



God Bless You All!


~Grama Sue

On the Farm Mondays!

Make your Mondays a little brighter. Pick up the kids (or the kid in you) after work and head out to the farm to visit with us! We'll show you our gardens, how eggs are candled, the chickens, the baby geese and pick fresh veggies and herbs for you while you visit!

Today we still have some tomatoes and sweet corn from our friends up river, and of course we always have eggs, muffins, cookies and noodles! Grandma Whitson says she'll have some fresh pies (probably still to hot) and we have peas, beets, kohlrabi, lettuce, zucchini, dill, basil, cilantro, oregano, sage, parsley, thyme, garlic, and turnips ready to pick!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue

Economic Realities

We probably lost a customer this week. A lady had seen a movie in which a large hatchery disposed of baby roosters in a gruesome way. She asked if we hatched our own chicks. We don't. We order from a hatchery and we order female chicks, probably contributing to this gruesome problem.

We would love to hatch our own chicks and grow all the roosters up to edible size … but there's this big problem … OUR GOVERNMENT WON'T LET US! In order to sell chicken in stores across state lines, we have to have them processed at a USDA plant. The closest one is more than 200 miles away. To sell chicken in state, we have to have a set up comparable to a USDA plant minus the full-time USDA inspector.

This would be no problem if we knew we had the capacity to sell enough birds to make the trip or build our own set up, but 1000 birds at a time would be about the break even point. That's not including our labor. We are a small farm. We don't have the capacity to run that many birds and even if we did, it would take time to build up enough of a market to get them sold.

We need 300 new hens a year. We would have to hatch a minimum of 650 birds a year to ensure that we have enough hens. That would leave us with at least 300 roosters in our freezer a year. We like chicken, but not that much! We need to be able to sell at least 150-200 birds every year to be able to hatch our own.

I've been researching how to set up a USDA plant here because I hear so many people requesting free-range chicken. So far, I just haven't been able to come up with a feasible plan. The really sad thing is that it is OK for a “good” poultry processing plant to sell contaminated poultry. See: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-05-11-safechicken11_ST_N.htm

I've seen how chicken's are processed in those plants and although I've never tested the chickens I process, I'd bet they'd beat any plant processed bird hands down. A small farmer who is doing his own processing is far more likely to care enough about his end product to do a good job than someone employed by a large company. Everything the small farmer owns and has worked for is at stake. At worst, the employee might loose his job and get unemployment for a while till he finds another job.

OK! Rant over. Talk to your representatives about this!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue