Looking Around

I had a chance to drive along the River Road that runs along the Flambeau River in  Park Falls and thought I'd take some pictures for you.

I just love this old log house and stone corn crib. I wonder when they were built; I know they are very old.  I've been told that in the pioneer days of Wisconsin,  Bohemian immigrants were considered very good stone masons because while they didn't have much wood in the old country, there were plenty of stones to work with.  I don't know if that is true, but it's what I've been told.  Now every time I see some old stone building I wonder if it was built by some old Bohemian. I've seen many remnants of forgotten farms where all that remains are a solid stone foundation, a chimney, corn crib, or perhaps an old bridge's footings sticking up out of the grass to bear witness to the presence of life in a time long past.

I want one of these!  This one looks like it sends water from the well to a cow barn. Wonder how deep that well is.

Almost home when you see these signs:

(We actually live in the town of Mercer but our mail comes out of Butternut).

Steely gray clouds are dropping rain here and there.  I caught this pretty site while watching it rain to the east of us.

Have a wonderful day!

Last Days of Summer

Honestly, I just don't know where the time goes.  I can hardly believe we are in the latter part of September already.

My version of Buffalo Bird Woman's garden yielded mixed results:

The Jerusalem Artichokes row (rear in photo) are tall and lush, and the allium row in front of them where I had the onions, Egyptian Walking onions, and Musselburg leeks did well despite the heat, but most everything else was a bust.  I did manage to harvest enough sunflower heads to get next year's seed, and for some reason, it was a great year for Blue Hubbard squash and New England Pie Pumpkins.  Otherwise, nothing grew but weeds.  I liked growing the squashes on the inside perimeter because they did (for the most part) keep the deer out.  The critters seemed to be content munching on sunflowers and whatever grew on vines that ran outside of the garden area.  In the potato patch where I grew the Red Cloud potatoes, I managed to harvest enough small potatoes to use for next year's seed.  Those are such good potatoes that I am confident I'll be able to keep them through the winter.  But there will be only store bought potatoes to eat this winter.  Ugh! Anyway, I picked the squashes and pumpkins, and  I am satisfied with that much of a harvest.

We had company!  Lara's friend, Carrie, and her parents (Pat and Mel) came to visit.  We had a great time.   Lara and Carried had a lot of fun together.

 Pat helped me bring some pumpkins and squashes and the girls to the farmers market in Park Falls.  We gave Carrie her own sunflower farmers market apron so she matched with Lara.  It rained quite a bit, but we managed a few sales.  We even had a few people that knew what the Blue Hubbards were -- that made me happy!

We had an early morning phone call on the day that Carrie was to leave to go back to Illinois.  She went with me to the Post Office in Butternut and then very carefully held the box the Postmaster gave us while we drove back to the house.   Carrie was very excited and couldn't wait to open that noisy little box . . .

Yep.  They came.

And after everyone had enough of holding baby Dominiques, we put them in the brooder with food and water and heat lamps to keep them warm.  I lost two of them to chilling before I got the lamps adjusted correctly, but they are doing just fine now.

Until next time, Blessings Be to you all!

Work and More Work

Now that the temperatures are not so bad, Tom and I have been busy, busy, busy trying to make up for lost work time.  Tom's garden has produced enough for me to get at least mustard greens, some green beans, and collards canned. His rutabegas are looking good, and so is his winter squash.  No beets or carrots though from either of our gardens.  I will be making the trek out to my garden in a day or so to take stock of things.  Sooner or later I'll have to brave checking out my potato patch. The hot peppers and tomatoes grew well in the greenhouse despite my having to put up a shade screen to keep everything from getting sunscald; this was probably the only year we didn't need to have a greenhouse!  Anyway, we gobbled up all the tomatoes as they came in so I am looking for a bushel of tomatoes, carrots, and beets to can.

We've also started working with my sister and her husband to get Dad's firewood cut, split, and stacked.  Making firewood is a job!  I keep the DMSO and arnica handy for when we creak back home.

And yesterday and today we made the sauerkraut.  This year we got about 12 1/2 gallons.  The temperatures are on the warm side so I expect the kraut will finish in about a month.  This year I'm using one of my reader's recommendations of using a filled water bag as a weight to seal the kraut below the brine.  I'm really looking forward to seeing how that works.  Tom thinks we should get another 5 gallon crock.

He also wants me to make some horseradish so maybe that would be a good blog entry.

I'm down to 10 chickens so I went ahead and ordered another 15 pullets and 2 roosters.  They should be feathered out by the time the cold settles in and they can all work out the pecking order on their own.  The exercise should keep them warm enough, at least until I get the solar window heater built for the coop.  That project should only take me a day to finish.  I'm worried about the cost of feed so I plan to buy some bags of various whole grains and mix and coarsely grind the feed as I need it.  Since I don't have that many chickens I figure this is something I can do.

Fence work is ongoing and coming along.  Well, you do what you can do when you can do it, right?  

I'll try to get some pictures for you soon. Until later then, Be Safe and Blessings to you all!