A beautiful Morning!

Woo hoo! The kidney stone is gone! Poof! hasta la vista, baby!


And 4 days after the surgery, I've finally woke up! Thank goodness for darling men folk who are capable of taking care of themselves, the house and the farm, as well as the zombie wife/mom. Flat out on the couch I was vaguely aware of dishes being washed, a hot water bottle under my feet, "sit up and take your pill", the smell of pine sol, Ken mopping the bathroom floor and singing, the washing machine running, the chimney being swept, wood being chopped, Joshua bringing the dog in and out and relaying a list of all the chores that were done, and what he was going to do next, cups of tea, hot soup, bacon sandwiches and chocolate truffles! "You're spoiled, girl! you're spoiled rotten!"

But, today, I woke up early and felt so good, I went outside for a wander around with the camera. Ken was at work and Josh was still asleep. The sun was just coming up over the ridge and casting long beams down into our hollow. It was beautiful. We're having amazingly warm weather for late November. Almost 70 F this afternoon! I didn't feel up to crawling around on the floor to finish up the painting so just messed around with a llama fleece that the farrier gave me. I went on line and learned how to wash it, pick it and card it ready for spinning. Hoping to have enough spun to knit up a scarf or something for her in time for Christmas.

Anyway, here are the pictures from this morning.

Looking down the valley and our dirt road. The neighbor's house is visible now that the leaves are gone.

The horses waiting for the sun to move around the mountain a bit. The pond was like glass. Frost still on the back pasture.

The old woods road. This was actually a state road a hundred years ago! It comes right under our front window, through the barn yard, across the creek and follows the creek up around the mountain past a 30 ft waterfall, and on up through another farm to the road on the other side of the ridge. This was a very busy place back then. People used to come down here to trade for goods at the old general store and to bring their corn to be ground at the water powered grist mill that used to be in our front pasture.

Goats enjoying the sun.

Pride comes before a -wall- fall

Thank you Cheyenne and Judy for the kind comments on my wall. I was feeling pretty smug about it. Alas, a major malfunction this morning. When I tentatively kicked a stone that looked a bit "off", it promptly fell out! Leaving a big hole. Of course it had to be one of the lower level ones too. I hadn't set it with it's length into the wall, and it was kind of wedge shaped, so the weight of the other rocks above it squeezed it out. I'll have to do some dismantling and build it back up again if possible. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

One of those days today. It was raining, so, since Ken had chopped a bunch of wood and kindling for me I decided to fire up the wood cook stove and put a roast in the oven. It wasn't a very cold day, but I thought I'd just keep a small fire in there and cook it slow all afternoon. Boy, locust wood puts out a lot of heat! I managed to keep the oven at about 300 F but Josh and I were sweltering. We had all the windows open. The kitten thought he was on the Costa del Sol. Instead of tearing up the couch cushions and curtains he spent the whole day spread out on the rug, stretching and rolling around on his back with his little paws in the air, blinking and yawning. The beef came out tough as old boots. Ken thought it was great and had two helpings but I couldn't eat it. Joshua cooked himself a store bought pizza.

We're going to have a slew of doctor bills this month.

Ken had to go to the doctor this evening after being bitten by a tick. It left a really nasty bite mark and he felt tired and weak along with a sore throat. No bull's eye rash, but the doctor put him on 15 days of antibiotics just in case of Lyme Desease. Sure hope he doesn't have that. Considering we live in the woods, we really don't see very many ticks.

Joshua's also on antibiotics for an ear abscess, that suddenly came up, and I will be going in the hospital on Thursday to get a kidney stone zapped!

Maybe we'll all be in fine fettle for Christmas.

We treated the cats for fleas tonight. The drops are supposed to go between the  shoulder blades, but Dexter was squirming so much that some of the medicine got on his fur where he could lick it.  Yikes! That's not good. We had to come up with a way to prevent his licking at it.  Here he is in his little catsuit. The leg off a pair of old stirrup leggings ( you can see the stirrup at the back of his neck.) I cut little arm holes in the under side. I'll cut that stirrup off before we go to bed so there's no chance of him getting hung up on something during the night.

He's coping with this undignified contraption amazingly well, for a cat.

My first drystone wall

Well, I finally started my first, free-standing, drystone wall. It's just about 8 feet long and will be about 4 or 4 1/2 feet high. The horses tend to stand over by the side of the barn when the weather is bad so I thought a wall here would make a good windbreak , and it would be an ideal practice wall. Nothing too challenging to begin with. It wouldn't win any prizes but I'm quite happy with the way it's coming together. It's very time consuming as I have to go hunting for the rocks and bring them 4 or 5 at a time in the wheelbarrow, plus all the rubble for the center "heartings".

When not working on the wall, I've been finishing up the floor painting and getting the doors back on the cabinets. Will take pictures when the kitchen is cleaned up a bit. I also started knitting a sweater for Joshua, and that's what I'm going to get back to right now!

A give away!

No not here yet. But I do plan to have one soon.

If you would like to win some really cute baby stuff , head on over to Cheyenne's blog,  Little Prairie Baby  and leave a comment. The deadline is 19 November.

And while you're there check out her shop. She has lots of other lovely baby things for sale. Makes me broody!

Pigeons on the roof

Thought I'd post this picture of some of our pigeons. I like the way the branches of the Sumac tree form that little circle just above them.

My original intention for the pigeons, was to train them to home, then start a little wedding bird release business. The first few years they were plagued by blacksnakes that would get into the loft and kill the young fledglings, so I never had more than a handful of birds. But this year we didn't lose one baby to snakes. Right now I think we have about 16 birds, and what a beautiful sight it is when they are all flying in unison! They make huge circuits around the valley, swoop low over the pond and then all land on top of the hay barn.

I no longer plan to do wedding releases, but I can't imagine our farm without the pigeons.

Painted Floor Inspiration

This is just for you Cheyenne!

Painted floor pictures I 've found around the web. I keep them in my inspiration file. I always forget to make a note of where I found them though.

I heard that with a few coats of polyurethane, painted floors hold up very well as long as they're swept and kept clean of sand or grit. Love that bright blue kitchen one!

Liver and Onions

On Sunday afternoon Ken went over to a friend's farm to help them with their fall butchering. He came home with two nice lamb's livers! So, Monday we had liver and onions for supper.

                  First I soaked the liver in milk over night. Here it is after draining the milk off it.

                                                 Next, I sauteed an onion in butter.

While the onions were cooking, I put the liver in a bowl of seasoned flour ( just salt and pepper) and covered both sides. Then, remove the onions from the skillet and set them aside. Put the liver in the skillet and fry slowly in butter for about 4 minutes on each side. Try to only turn the liver once, or twice at the most. Once no blood comes out of it when poked with a knife, return the onions to the pan with the liver. Add a little water and cook it all for about 10 minutes longer.

We had ours with mashed potatoes ( seasoned with with a bit of rosemary) along with carrots and tomatoes from the garden. The liver was cooked well but very tender and tasty. Another mostly home-grown dinner!

The Unthanks Here's The Tender Coming Live Later Jools Holland Oct 2009

Just discovered the Unthank sisters, from North East England. They sing in their wonderful Geoordie accent. This song is about the press gangs coming to recruit men for the English navy. It's living in my head right now.
Lyrics:
Here's the tender coming, pressing all the men;
Oh dear hinny, what shall we do then?
Here's the tender coming, off at Shield's Bar,Here's the tender coming, full of men of war.
Hide thee, canny Geordie, hide thyself away;Hide thee till the tender makes for Druridge Bay.
If they take thee, Geordie, who's to win our bread?
Me and little Jackie better off be dead.

Here's the tender coming, stealing off my dear;
Oh dear hinny, they'll ship you out of here.
They will ship you foreign, that is what it means;
Here's the tender coming, full of red marines.
Hey, bonny lassie. let's go to the Lawe,See the tender lying, off at Shield's Bar,
With her colours flying, anchor at her bow.
They took my bonny laddie, best of all the crew.

More Kitchen Progress

Ken got the cupboards back up on the wall above the stove last evening. Here he was around midnight! He'd been asleep on the couch for most of the afternoon and was full of energy by this time.

We even sat and watched a short movie on the computer afterwards. It was a BBC production called End Day, sort of 5 "doomer" movies in one. The last one being about a particle accelerator that blows up. I found reference to this movie after researching strangelets. It was about 2.30 this morning when we crawled into bed. Here's a link if anyone else likes end of the world type stuff: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5949786189867707783#

Anyway, nice to see the kitchen coming together again. But there's still a long way to go.

The Dry Stone Walls of Home

After my last post,I went on a web search for drystone walls of Lancashire, England., and found this site filled with the most wonderful photographs of the stone walls I'm used to seeing. This is the landscape I grew up in, in north west England. These are WALLS! Miles and miles of them.

Here's a link to more:

http://www.one-foot.com/Fountains%20Fell%20from%20Stainforth%202009.html

I hope the owner of the site doesn't mind my including one of his pictures here.

And now I have to go grab a tissue, because just looking at all that rugged, wildness makes me SO homesick!

Dry Stacked Stone Wall

It's been raining quite a bit, so I've been putting a bit of time into my dry stacked retaining wall, down near the barn. It's easier to dig the rocks out of the ground after a rain storm. All of these rocks came out of the bank right there where I'm working. I find it really amazing that the right rock just happens to come up at the right time. Very little debating, or hunting around for one that fits. And what's even more amazing, I've manage to build most of this without bending down and lifting the rocks! You can maneuver even large boulders quite easily and precisely with a long-handled pointed hoe. -Sorry, forgot to take a picture of the hoe.

A wall like this is pretty easy, because the rocks are always higher than the top of the wall. Gravity is always on my side, but the next challenge is to build a real, free-standing wall. After my back let go a couple of years ago, I thought I'd never be able to do anything like this again. But now, well, I think I can, I think I can...

Seventeen Years of Married Bliss

We were both in the US Army, and met at Ft. Lewis, in Washington State. He was just an E5 SGT back then. He'd just transferred there from Germany. I was an E4 medical specialist, and had recently transferred from the 43rd MASH at Camp Humphries, Korea. ( yes, the original 4077th of the TV show fame!) Now decommissioned, sadly.

This was our first home! An amazing little cabin on 5 acres, in the woods, about 20 miles from post. We saw it in the paper for rent. It had brick floors and was fully furnished with wonderful antiques. The only heat, however, was the tiniest wood stove you can imagine. We may as well have been living in a tent for what use it was. But we were both well accustomed to living in tents so it didn't much matter. We loved that little house.

Just this for today. We had a nice fried chicken supper and a cake!

The John Deere M

A few more pictures of "Betsy", the 1948 John Deere M, a friend had for sale. She's been sitting in his barn for ten years! Before that she belonged to a Christmas tree farmer, who used her for mowing between the trees. A belly mower was included.

Ken and Josh set to work on her almost right away. They're going to strip her down completely and clean all the lines out. The engine runs, but with lots of popping and banging due to all the gunk in the valves and lines and carburetor. The noise echoed and reverberated off the mountains! Ken's going to take the gas tank to work and steam it out.

It's going to be an enjoyable project for the two of  them. I can't wait to see the end result.

English Potato Cakes

While the guys were gone to get the tractor, I made some potato cakes. They're very easy. Just add flour to left over mashed potatoes, season with salt, and make patties. Fry in butter

They're good served with sliced ham and Branston pickles! There's a supermarket about 40 miles from here that sells some English food items. Ken happened to be over there last week and bought me the pickles.

The Painted Floor

 Here's a picture of the floor design I started painting. As you can see, we did end up painting the rest of the floor too. The brown stuff is that thick contractors paper. Ken wants to put a sealer over it all when it's done, so, for now we are walking on the paper.

 

I am going to change things. When I started this we still had the long set of kitchen drawers in the dining room. I stupidly centered the design as if they would always be there. Now they are out, and back in the kitchen ( temporarily, we're going to put a door in that other wall) the design is way too far over to the left. Today I began extending it with another row of diamonds on the right side. It will be rectangular, rather than square. I'm also thinking of making that wide border black, and filling in the narrow, inner border with the reddish/brown color.

What a difference the paint has made! It's much lighter in the dining room now. That was the paint we originally bought to paint the cabinets with. I thought it might be too much green, but it really doesn't feel overpowering at all, and I'm glad we could find a use for it.

Not sure how long this will hold up. Hopefully, after it's sealed it will at least see us through to next year. The plank floor will be just painted pine boards. This has given us a good idea of how a painted floor will look in there.

Oh, and Ken's brother and his wife had to cancel their visit after all, so I'm no longer feeling so pressured to rush things.

Need to put all that food that's stacked on the wood stove, back in the pantry tomorrow.

And here's Betsy the tractor!

Kitchen re-do progress

The only progress noticable here is that we painted the wall. But a lot has gone on in the background. I have all the cupboard doors painted now. Ken decided it would be easier to take down the wall cabinets, in order to paint their frames. They're almost done. I'm hoping we can start putting them back up later today, but, Ken and Josh have gone to pick up an old, antique tractor that a friend was selling, and I have a feeling they'll be working on it for a while when they get it home.

It's a beautiful day out there, except for the clouds of Japanese Ladybugs! They're late this year.

When guys decide to hem their own pants...

This is what you get!

The sewing machine is put up, due to the kitchen/diningroom dismantlization and all.

Me:: "What on earth are you doing?!"

Him: "Girl, it's called 'Redneck Hemming!"

Our Old House

While there's a lot going on here on the old farmstead, the camera batteries are dead and horror of horrors, we don't have one good battery in the whole house! The last picture I managed to squeeze out, was this one, two days ago. All the fall colors were at their brightest. Since the sun was temporarily covered by a cloud, the picture isn't as colorful as I'd hoped, but still nice. Some day I'll have to upload a video taken from this spot, down on the dirt road we live on. Three creeks converge there, and the sound of all the water is just wonderful! Especially after a good storm. I'm ready for a good storm!

What was I thinking!

Brother and sister-in-law are coming up to visit next week and I was bemoaning the fact that the house is in such a state of upheaval, and, not only that, the dining room floor is just awfull! The other day I was looking at a website featuring beautiful hand painted floor cloths. I love floor cloths, and thought one would look nice under the dining room table, but can't afford to buy one. I bought some cotton canvas a while ago, with the intention of making my own, but never got around to it. "Well!" I thought, "why not just paint the design right onto the floor!" I also thought: " I can have it done before Ken gets home from work."

The linoleum in the dining room is so beat up, and horrible, it couldn't possibly look any worse, and, we are going to put down a plank floor in there anyway, as soon as we're done with the kitchen cabinets... This would be a quick fix for just while the in-laws are here. So I dragged out all the cans of paint from out of the workshop and under the stairs, and set to work. ( I can't walk past the discounted paint shelf at the hardware store, which means we have more paint than you can shake a stick at!)

It most definately wasn't finished when Ken got home! I had to collar him as he got out of the truck and break it to him gently, that there was "a little project going on" and "don't worry, it'll look nice when it's finished" He groaned his usual "Giiirl!" But much to my surprise, after looking at the mess, his only comment was "how come you didn't just paint the whole floor?"

It's going to have black diamonds on a cream background, with a design in the center of each cream diamond. At the moment, it's still looking lake a big cream splodge in the middle of the grungy kitchen floor! In fact, it makes the rest of the floor look even more ugly, I may do as Ken suggested and roll a solid color over the rest of the floor to tie it all together. All I know, is that it's evolving into something way more complicated than originally planned. Well, it wasn't exactly planned, but I have a week to make it look like it was!