Mules and Veggies

Eddie and Megan brought me veggies from their garden! How lucky can a mom get? I got these wild colored carrots along with Swiss Chard and garlic! Oh...YUM!

Today I blanched the carrots and froze some and put a variety of them in the little dehydrator along with another tomato and an apple. 

My thought is...I won't run the little dehydrator with just one tray of anything. I like dried apples while hiking so I chopped one up and tossed it in along with the tomato that needed to be processed. The carrots will become strange twisted colorful shapes as they dry.

I'll put some onions, carrots, tomatoes, and green beans together in a packet for dumping in a stew or soup later this fall or winter.

My morning was fun. I did the grocery thing at 7AM then chores, and this afternoon I'll be introducing my neighbor Olive to our mules. She is a master Chef and also a mom who works for MOSA with is an acronym for Midwest Organic Services Association. I think she can work from home. 

She and my ex neighbor Terri work together. 

Any...way.... 

Olive spent time cooking and doing the Master Chef thing all over Europe and I imagine .... everywhere? I don't know much as we haven't had time to talk about all of that. However, she used to be a groom and rode/exercised horses in Europe. 
I'm thinking this could be a really great friendship in the making.

She is my neighbor on the ridge. She likes foraging, hiking [night hiking or day hiking], riding, and cooking. 

Could I learn something from her? Oh yeah.

Face it. Being a Caregiver for a very difficult spouse is tough. So I'll forge friendships. Those friendships KEEP me sane.

~~~~~ 
2pm rolled around and Olive came trotting into the yard. I had gotten my two gals, Sunshine and Siera out and had saddled them. 

It is that time of the year that they somehow find burdock and manage to get it in their tails. So I was finishing that.

Olive fit in my Simco saddle just fine and we went over the 'how' to operate Siera. She's easy. She is very lazy, so a whoa works well.

I got up on my little red mule and we headed towards the hay and oat fields to ride in between the strips of corn. 

Siera did her normal thing like turning towards home when she thought Olive wasn't paying attention. I let the two of them work it out. Siera won't bolt or run off, it isn't in her nature. She'd rather stay with the other mule.

Anyway we circled the fields and then I asked if Olive would like to try some hill work. We went down into the neighbor's woods and rode down the steep trail and into a dry run. We sat on the girls and chatted down in the deep woods for a bit, then returned home.

We were so busy chatting and talking Mule/Horse Talk and getting to know each other...that I only took one photo.

I think this sums up everything.

Olive asked if we can do this every Tuesday. I'm like....um, yeah! Of course, with weather and schedules permitting.

It will be nice to exercise The Fat Bottom Girls together with another enthusiastic person.

Summer Daze

 

It is that time of year that I go for early morning walks and bike rides or whatever tickles my fancy when I wake up just before dawn.

I do like summer just for that reason. My days start when the glow starts outside. I don't like to sit inside and just wait for late morning to occur. I usually have walked the fence and checked the stock tanks by 6ish and visited with the mules.

The peonies have started to blossom like crazy and I do love them for those days that they offer sweet smells and vibrant colors. I have only pink. My husband thinks peonies are icky flowers and would mow them all down if he could. 

What can I say?
Yarrow, Peonies, Irisis, and Verbena are my choices for right now.

In the summer I love to have every flower I can cut and stick in a jar or vase all around the house. That is just me. The more, the merrier.

That brings me to the veggie garden. To tell you the truth, I'd like a much smaller garden than I've had for years. For whatever the reason, I just am not into the huge garden this year.

I know a woman and her husband who have been doing the Farmer's Market in town for 20 years. I decided this year to let her do the gardening and I'd come on the weekends and pick my produce from her display.

I'm even going to trade some new jars for some produce next week.

I bought some Giardiniera from her Saturday and put it in my Italian cold salad. Wow!

I came away with some real goodies from the market. It included a wonderfully fresh picked package of spinach. Even the other half enjoyed a spinach in his salad.

I came home with a raspberry/rhubarb pie to boot from the Mennonite Bakery. 

I was done with my busy morning by 9am.

Everyone who has hayfields has their hay down to be baled. First crop looks a bit thin and we need rain. 

I had to haul water out to the 'Forest Garden' with the 4 wheeler. 

Hmmm. Looks like I had visitors!

A gift that arrived in the mail the other day was two bags of toys.

I could not resist messing around with them. They were kind of cute in that I could bend their arms and legs!

During the hottest part of the day, I read a book on the porch and watched birds. Not productive at all but pleasant.

If the weather people are correct, Sunday will be much nicer and chances for rain will be the topic for the week.

We do need the rain on for the hay fields. 

My lavender is getting ready to blossom. This is my first year of overwintering one lavender plant and growing a second one. 

The Sage I planted last year somehow survived the winter and came back in a huge mound and is ready to blossom too.

Today? 
More dry winds and heat.

Almost Done

It is that time of year again when the garden bursts forth with all the vegetables I'd planted.

The sweet corn is done. I picked the last of it and started to chop down the stalks to toss to the cattle or the mules. The mules make sort work of it and the cattle seem to be a bit pickier about it.

Since my freezer is now stuffed with beef from the 'old' bull, I thought I'd dehydrate beans, carrots, and corn. I have a device that hooks up to my vacuum sealer that allows me to seal the goodies in pint jars.

The jar on the upper right has a mix of carrots and corn in it. In the winter I pop a pint of mixed veggies open and drop it into broth in the crock pot. By the end of the day, the vegetables have re-hydrated and taste wonderful.

The old bull. I think we made a mistake there. His meat is very lean which is good, but then it is more difficult to cook with flavor. I should have just shipped him to market and bought some farm raised beef.
Well, we will see how the roasts do in the crock pot. I had a TBone steak that was slightly okay. I need to see if there is anything I can do to make it more tender.
It is like eating lean venison.

Well hey, I'll deal with it!

The small garden really got ignored this year. Usually I pride myself with being able to demolish weeds with my handy hoe. I guess all the drives for appointments and picking up all the other farm jobs for me, put the garden on the back burner.

So. Rich has been home for about a week. He caught a nasty head cold and ... well, his mood is better. However last night was the first time I got him outside of the house.

His new routine of late has been to sit in front of the laptop and browse endlessly through programs. If he finds something, he sits and watches and doesn't seem to hear or see anything else going on around him.

He went to turn on the laptop to watch Netflix. I had unplugged everything and pulled the old laptop off the desk to work on it.

He looked confused and asked me to take care of it. I said "No, not until we are done with chores and supper."

I handed him his chore boots and he sat a long time on the porch bench before he put them on.
I waited.
He followed me to the shed reluctantly and I grabbed the little garden cart to carry hay to the last bull that we were shipping soon. I pointed over to the hay stack and told him the donkeys needed feeding.
He looked lost.
He stared at me.
I pointed again and he grimaced.
I walked away with the cart.

He did feed the donkeys and when I got back he was standing there quietly staring down at Little Richard's tie out rope that I'd asked him to help me fix. It seemed as though it was too much for him to think about and he murmured that he was heading to the porch.

I checked the donkeys. They were fed, but not watered.
So the infusion treatments had worked for the depression I am happy to say, but the other issues are there and well, frankly, ... I guess I am prepared for that. The old Rich would have noticed the near empty tubs of water.
This new Rich didn't. Or it didn't matter to him.

So last night while Netflix played in the other room, I made and canned beet pickles.

The man I used to know is still fading away bit by bit. It is odd to see him so disconnected with anything outside the house.
He says he has more energy and motivation.

In his head he does. But the doctors had told me, they could perhaps help the severe depression [they did] but not the damage from the strokes.

So the garden work is done except for collecting seeds.
The rest of the cattle will be shipped next week.

The donkeys will leave by the end of September.
It could be an interesting Winter.

Summer is almost done.

Ariel is coming to stay and spend some time on the farm this coming Monday. It will be nice and we are both looking forward to it.