Bring on the holidays!

Peach preserves, apple butter, applesauce, spiced applesauce, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, green beans and now mincemeat are all canned and sitting on the shelves ready for eating, gifts or Thanksgiving pie!! Bring on the holidays I am ready to enjoy and be thankful for all the blessings we have received this year!!  Unfortunately Thanksgiving may have to be rescheduled at home due to Michael being asked to fly to Kauai as his buddy Scott's trainer (he fights in the MMA rings)....I feel so sorry for my husband who has to fly to Kauai!!  Not....it was our favorite island on our honeymoon, I am so jealous!!  It is just as well as we will be busy putting on the dinner at the church, and I so love that day!!  By far one of my favorite of the year, and a little rescheduling is not unusual for this farm/EMS family after all these years.   Life always works out for the best as in the last few days I have been fighting a head cold so I have been poking around the kitchen cleaning and finishing up the canning chores looking forward to having more energy right when it cools down on Monday and enjoying every minute of planting dill, cilantro, lettuce, bok choy, radishes and more kale!!  Tomorrow I am picking up a couple of straw bales and finishing off a larger compost pile, and I think I will just plant my Fall potatoes right into it and see what happens.  I have some sliding glass doors to throw over it for the winter.  My favorite part of gardening is waiting to see "what will happen next"....there is always something new to learn and look forward to!!  Moonstruck signing out. 

Quiet coming soon

As I was filling orders I felt the sense of peace that I love so much about my farm life...not that it always feels that way, but I cherish it when it happens.  I had just come in from feeding and collecting squash, which is now producing since the weather has been a little more even in temperature, but they are still very small.  I had filled all the little Cornish chicks watererers and feeders and they are so cute at this stage to say the least, and while I was doing that the turkeys in the pen adjacent were walking up and eating all the bugs off of the waterers...turkeys are very social and love to peck at bugs that are invisible to the naked eye.  I then filled the feeders for the larger Cornish (who are running like I have a blow torch in my hand from me...not social) who will be ready for harvest in four weeks and I marveled at their growth.  Molly during all this is throwing her body against the pens reminding everyone who is boss!! (Yes, this is our morning routine).  We then went down and gave the pigs the scrap bowl and checked on them.  Two are about ready, but two are quite small so it will be a while yet.  During this Molly is running around barking at the heels of all the cows to remind them who boss is once again!  (Sorry, she loves the pigs, if she has time she just comes over and gives them kisses....and then I give her a bath!!).  Then over to feed the cows who race me to the feeder and make it almost impossible to put the leaves in as they are trying to eat as I push it into the corrrals.  I then make a second trip where "girl" comes over to eat by herself.  She is the smallest and we have developed a routine where she saunters over (I might have told you already) to eat by herself, but the last week or so "Spot" has been joining her....romance in bloom maybe??  I think part of my sense of peace comes from the break from the heat yesterday and the feeling of Fall in the air and winter soon.  I am a Fall and Winter person...they are my favorite seasons!  I can't wait to have my first fire, put some chicken carcasses on the wood stove and make heartwarming chicken soup!  My kids actually ate some canned soup this week and said it was horrible....hopefully they will appreciate Mom a little bit more, but I doubt it, they are teenagers afterall!!  See ya all soon!