Snow, Travel and Christmas

I have gained 40 pounds since becoming a nurse 11 years ago.

Last night we went to the local homeschool association's Christmas presentation. We weren't going to go, but one or more mothers asked my daughter to perform dances she learned with other teens for a Pride and Prejudice book study. Most, if not all the girls made their dresses or dresses were made for them. And it was the mothers who ran this show. My husband, our 2 y/o, my mother and a friend of my mother's went. My mother made the dress, and it was the fanciest of them all. Parents weren't allowed at the dinner of the book study, so this was our big and wonderful opportunity to see the kids dance in full 18th century garb.

I'm sort of the odd one out in that group. Now granted, all the homeschooling parents are a little odd, and each from the rest in their own ways. But I WORK. I have the utmost regard for women who stay home; but none of these homeschooling mothers carry such a demanding job ALSO. And I am divorced and remarried; have kept my maiden name, different from the names of my first 3 children, and both different from my husband and 4th child. And I am the primary income earner. We live on a farm. Compared to those women, I am very odd.

Lately I am tired all the time. The manager of our nursing unit told me recently that I look sad all the time. She doesn't know me very well. I'm just tired. Working full-time as a nurse on a unit where patients require some relatively intense care is draining. Driving to North Carolina 3 times in 1 1/2 months for 18 hour round trips on the few days I had off adds to the draining. Looking after in a weak sort of way, a 16 y/o's homeschooling, and helping care for a 2 y/o on top of all of this is draining even more. And topping off a weekend of bringing home 2 of my college son's friends for a week of Christmas break, with working a day shift, and ending the day with such a Christmas program, (and stopping at the store in between for a gift for the charity box at the door, and at the bank to find out why my ATM card didn't work at the gas station the day before - was a fluke I guess, cause it worked at the bank), was just, well, I went straight to bed when I got home, finally, after the program.

The 2 y/o went dressed in blue jeans, because somehow I forgot to do her laundry, and she ran out of dress clothes. (Did I mention I made pancakes and somehow got 7 teenagers up and off to Quaker Meeting the Sunday before the Monday of interest?...no I didn't mention that).

Yesterday, 3 of the 4 patients in my pod were VERY needy - feeding tubes, confusion, doting families with lots of questions,...and to watch a raised eyebrow or two at my 2 y/o's jeans just made me feel like, well, that was just too bad for them.

Several people commented that they were glad to see that I got back from NC alive. And I remembered, oh yes, there was snow. The program was cancelled last Thursday because of a terrible snow, and rescheduled for Monday. I took advantage of this and made an early start to NC, and got along south before the worst of the storm. Apparently this added to my oddity and was of central concern to many people!

Of all things for people to worry about me regarding. I think it is the chocholate. My feet hurt. I'd like some chocholate right now, in fact.

Goats in the September Garden

I have a confession to make. My goats obliterated my beautiful garden. Out of all that work, I got not one brussel sprout or kolarabi; not one green pepper. The squash bugs ate the rotting pumpkins. The ducks ate the tomatoes - I finally beat them to one that was changing color. The Jobs Tears fought for survival, but never got very tall before they were grazed again, and again.

There were some successes despite the goats. We got some tomatillos, cilantro and blessed thistle. We had a bumper crop of beets, and harvested a few carrots. We beat the goats to a few beans and some black Aztec corn. So it wasn't a total loss.

Next year, we hope to have a fence around the garden. This isn't a very good picture, but it gives the general idea. I gave up. It may be that Karma caught up with me for assuming I could go public with my garden. Things like that tend to happen to me - it is why I am sometimes afraid to succeed or brag about succeeding. Someone will find it bragging, and get me for it, somehow. This time, it was the goats!

Vermont Castings Dutchwest wood cookstove

Bruce is loading our new stove for the first time.
Eilidh (EYE lee) (age 27 months) is clapping the morning it is all finally installed. Note the flat cook-top. This stove has been in about 2 weeks now. We've fried steak and eggs on it during a 3-day power outage when Ike came through Ohio. We also have pasteurized milk on it in an enamel pan, and made homemade soap on it already. It is quite efficient. Yesterday I could feel its heat upstairs in this old farmhouse. Bruce has percolated coffee on it a few times, and found that coffee stays at a perfect warmth without continuing to percolate, sitting on an iron trivet on top. No more keeping coffee and tea warm on "simmer" on the electric stove.

Homeschooling

We have embarked on our first experience at homeschooling. It is a most interesting experience. It has taken me months to sort out what kind of homeschoolers we really are, and to learn the rules and the lingo. We are eclectic and traditional.

My 16 y/o daughter was taking advanced classes in public school and did well to the end of her sophomore year last year. This year at home we are studying what she would have been taking: World History, Literature, Chemistry and Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry. She is also studying French, taking 2 art classes from the local Oglebay Institute (oil painting and ceramics); acoustic guitar lessons, and the HS principal has permitted her to continue being active in the drama club. She is the stage manager in the fall play. She's a self starter, so homeschooling her is probably easier than it would be some other teenagers.

"Homeschooling" a 2 y/o little girl is really just play. But I have printed out lists of things she needs to accomplish by kindergarten. I've already graduated 2 boys from high school. One of them was in speech therapy from age 2 to about 8, so I have a pretty good idea of what needs done already. I have been gifted with 4 healthy children who always could probably have done better if I'd homeschooled them, provided I had known what I was doing. So my second husband and I are going to try it from the beginning with this one. Well, the oldest I may not have had success with. He is very bright, but was always a challange, and I think having someone other than his mother teaching him was a wise idea. But the others could have easily been homeschooled.

I have help. The 16 y/o and my husband have been teaching the 2 y/o number recognition. I didn't realize this until last night when she was pointing at numbers in a book and saying their proper names. Preschool skill lists also help. Like I didn't realize that cutting out little pieces of paper with scissors was something desireable. My husband disapproved teaching her how to use scissors. We will just have to keep scissors in a secure place from here on.

The public school guidance counselor is worried about my daughter, and my pulling her out of school. She doesn't know it, but she is part of the reason I did. I hope to knock her socks off with what we accomplish at home this year and next. I think my daughter will do better without her guidance.

Elderberry Jelly, Part VI, YUM

Need I say more?

Elderberry Jelly, Part V, Straining

Forget jelly bags. I use cheap cheescloth, and always have. I use it for cheese too. You can get it in the craft section at Walmart, or about any fabric store. There are 4 layers here. This is the hot, mashed pulp, simmered for a few minutes until the pulp and juice separates from the seeds.

I draped 4 layers over this bowl, poured the pulp in gently, then tied it from my cupboard with some paper string. I use various thicknesses of paper string for lots of uses. It is cheap. It can be used to tie packages, tie up sheep fleeces, hang cheeses, and hanging jelly from the cupboard door.

Notice the steam curling around the bottom. This pulp is HOT.

I twist this bag when it is touchable. I twist it one way, then the other, tight, and squeeze as much pulp and juice as I can get out of it without ripping the cheesecloth. It makes the jelly taste better.

While this cooled, and before I twisted the juice out of it, first I washed the pot I poured it out of for the last stage of jelly-making. Then I pulled 4 hot pint jars out of the oven and set them on a clean towel. It is supposed to make 4 1/2 cups, which is only 2 1/2 pint jars, but I always sterilize extra. No recipe is exact.

Then I twist every last bit of juice I can get out of this bag; and pour the juice back into the pot. I add my 4-years expired pectin, and bring it to a rolling boil. Then I add 4 1/4 cups sugar, stirring, and bring it back to a rolling boil for one minute. I take it off the heat. I attempt to remove foam, but there is no foam to remove, really. Then I pour it into the hot jars up to 1/8 inch from the top. I use the tongs I've boiled with the lids to put the lids on the jars, straight out of the simmering water I've boiled them in, and twist on the rings.

Now the recipe from the pectin box says to invert the jars for 5 minutes. This doesn't go well. They leak. So I decided not to invert the second batch.

I make my husband some toast with butter and jelly, with the bread he made yesterday, and I clean out my jelly-making pan, the "foam" cup, and the spills. That is when he tells me it is too lemony. But I don't care. It tastes good.

Elderberry Jelly, Part IV, Mashing

What you see here:

A potato masher in a pot of 6 cups of elderberries. Yes, some of the stems are still on. If you try to remove them, you are guaranteed to go insane.

A juicer with one lemon's juice in it, and two lemon's seeds and pulp (this is the second batch). The recipe calls for 1/4 cup lemon juice. My husband later told me it made the jelly taste "too lemony," masking the elderberry flavor too muich. So I won't use it next time. I was just following the recipe.

A soup mug with a ladle in it, for skimming off the foam which never transpired in this jelly.

A pot with boiled lids, and a boiled tongs. I also boil everything I stick into the jelly or anything else I can, to keep it as sterile as possible. The jars are in the oven at 250 degrees on a cookie sheet. I am careful not to touch the tops when I pull them out with hot pads.

I might mention that I used pectin that expired in 2004. It is 2008. It worked just fine - my jelly set up beautifully.

Elderberry Jelly, Part III

And here they are, all in a bowl. All the stems are in the bag now. You can't tell by this picture, and I didn't know it until I measured them, but there are just about 12 perfect cups of elderberries in that bowl. The jelly recipe calls for 3lbs. According to my Pyrex 4-cup measure, 2 cups is 16 oz., so 6 cups is 3lbs.

How often do you pick a bunch of elderberries, and clean the stems, and wind up with EXACTLY enough for 2 batches of jelly?! I was tickled.

Elderberry Jelly, Part II, Cyanide Issues

I cut the berry heads into this brown paper bag, with kitchen scissors. I thought I had eliminated all the insects before removing the stems. Then I proceeded to roll and pick the very ripe elderberries off the stems, right into the bag. To the right is a blueware bowl that I put the empty stems into. It wasn't remotely big enough, but it was handy.

As I de-berried the stems, I also liberated about 3 spiders, 4 brown crickets, 2 tent worms, 1 unidentified worm, and 2 katydids. The sack got rather full of elderberries.

I have read that elderberry seeds, stems, and particularly the leaves and stalks, contain cyanide. The red elderberries (which I've never seen in Ohio but may be here) are more likely to poison than the black. Even so, poisoning is very rare. People make jelly out of red ones too. Pitted fruits (plums, peaches), almonds, apple seeds; plastics, and cigarette smoke contain cyanide, so it isn't uncommon for us to be exposed to it in small amounts. Cooking is supposed to break down the cyanide, so elderberry jelly is not anything to worry about. It has a distinctive flavor. I suppose the breakdown and the way jellies are made is why you can make such from many wild fruits with cyanide laden seeds, with no ill effects.

But if you are remotely worried about cyanide, the CDC website lists these symptoms:

Small Amounts

rapid breathing
restlessness
dizziness
weakness
headache
nausea/vomiting
rapid heart rate

Large Amounts

convulsions
low blood pressure
slow heart rate
loss of consciousness
lung injury
respiratory failure leading to death

Even the mild symptoms should happen within minutes of exposure. Some people can taste or smell a mild almond flavor. I have been around black elderberries my entire life. I have hollowed out the stems and tried making whistles out of them. I've watched my goats eat the leaves, with no apparent ill effects. In fact, my goats will strip any elderberry plant they find. It is quite possible that I have been mildly poisoned in the past and not known it. But after spending a day in the kitchen with elderberries, I still love them as much as I ever did. You will see why in subsequent posts.

Elderberry Jelly, Part I

The first picture is the elderberries. This bush is over where my 7 y/o Newfoundland, Morgan, likes to sleep. It is the only elderberry patch that the berries stay on until I can use them. This photo was taken today, September 10th, 2008. The berries are ripe, and hanging heavy. Many have dropped to the ground. They are also covered in pollen.


The second picture is the plant whose pollen the elderberries were well dusted with. As a matter of fact, while I was picking berries, and stepped on the stalks of this plant, the pollen filled the aire like mist. It worried me a little since I was about to make jelly with berries literally caked with this pollen. So I spent about an hour going through my books identifying the plant. It reminded me of ragweed, but I knew it wasn't - at least not the real stuff. I seemed to recall someone calling it "Indian Hemp." Repeated googling came up with duds. I finally found it online with the words three-lobed leaf invasive weeds pollen, or some such thing. You can't tell by my picture, but the leaves have distinctive lobes.

It is Ambrosia trifida, in the aster family.
It has many common names:
Giant Ragweed (gut instincts are sometimes right!)
Wild Hemp (hey, that too!)
Buffalo Weed
Horse Cane
Tall Ambrosia
Bitterweed
Bloodweed

With some further googling of the latin name along with the word pollen, poison, and so forth, I learned that the pollen is actually used as a treatment, ingested, for ragweed allergies. And bees use the pollen. I am curious how the hemp got in there, and am wondering if I can use this as a fiber also; possibly in basket weaving or making rope. But I was satisfied the pollen was harmless. So I was satisfied to go on and make my jelly with Ambrosia trifida dusted black elderberries.

ACLU vs. United States

I have been surfing for the past hour to attempt to find out information on the ACLU and communism. One of my coworkers and I had a discussion over the weekend. He claimed that the ACLU was involved in subversive activities, trying to undermine the United States, and that it was started by communists.

I know some communists. Some of them also claim to be anarchists. Are they trying to undermine the U.S. so that another country, like the Soviets or China can take over? No. They believe that an Ayn Rand capitalism doesn't work. I haven't talked with them for a long time though. I'm trying to throw the FBI, I mean the whadayacallit, the homeland security people who might be so very interested in my "connections." Shhh, don't tell anyone.

So I'm surfing, to find the meat of some real information from a conservative website. What I find is froth: people quoting authors like David Kupelian, or whatever his name is. That guy brings me back full circle to the one person who has caused the most political unrest in my direct experience than any self-appointed anarchist I've known - Scott Savage. He rightfully challanged OSU investigating him for sexual harassment when he suggested Kupelian's book, "The Marketing of Evil," for student reading. But then he went on to write an article on Kupelian's own website, telling his side of the story. He claims to have suggested that the university choose a book students might actually WANT to read. You know, books that aren't full of humanistic gobbledygook. And he can't understand what all the fuss is about now. Innocent him.

That isn't the first time he has made anger-provoking statements as the proverbial lamb in a pack of wolves. He called a town meeting in little Chesterhill, OH to try and do something about the drug problem there, and ended up later having a gun put to his head in his home by a drug dealer. Then he organized a neo-Luddite Congress in Barnesville, OH. (Wouldn't Luddites be considered workers?) I have a weird sort of regard for him, but the definition of anarchy as I understand it espouses this personage. He adopted the Quakers, but I never saw him at a Peace and Human Relations Committee Meeting. I think he had his own bees in the bonnet from the get-go.

Many people of both conservative and Christian mind do not think that communism and capitalism can coexist due to the idea that socialism is the path towards communism. So they create this black and white world where there is forever a struggle. Christians, particularly of the fundamentalist conservative leans like to do that, and this is the reason they are losing this black and white battle. Most people see shades and color. Most situations are full of shades and color. When every small err from the one-sided path is potentially a slide toward "the other side," and you MUST stay on the ONE SIDE, lest you be seen as either a communist or a pawn of communists, I for one lose faith in your cause.

So digging through the muck, the best I can make of it was that ...who were they? Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman - oh yeah. They wanted rights for ...workers... and ...peace... and - hey, WAIT! They called those ideas COMMUNISM. So they must be BAD, and HUMANISTIC. ooh. ouch. Maybe they just liked the communist ideas of rights for workers, and peace. Those can be capitalist ideas too, maybe, with a stretch. But, they might be too socialistic.

Then I found a columnist, Devvy Kidd, who made the stretch to say that Albert Herlong Jr. a former Democrat from Florida, read the 45 communist goals that the "ACLU PROMOTES" into the congressional record. Nope, Devvy, got that one wrong. Those were written by Skousen, in "The Naked Communist." The goals were about radical communists, not specifically about the ACLU, and transposing intentions one person perceives onto another entity based on their founders' political party is not accurate. Saying all communists are joined at the hips, is as wierd as saying all Christians are joined at the hips. It is a pretty big jump, particularly given Skousen was a Mormon professor of religion at Brigham Young and prior to that worked at the FBI. My son's high school sweetheart goes to Brigham Young. If you think I'm going to take a conservative Mormon's word, and apply their philosophy of an ideology practice in a blanket way to every activity of a self-professed communist Tom, Dick and Harry, you are wrong. If you want to say that the ACLU is doing everything Skousen thought communists were trying to do on his stent in the FBI, maybe you ought to look a little deeper into Baldwin's actions when he found out Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a hero of the Soviets. Maybe he really WAS just interested in ...workers rights and peace. Passionately.

But one thing is for sure, so far as I can see in nearly every conservative website I went to for information. No ultra-conservative is going to stand up for my constitutional rights. I'm no communist. I'm just a moderate Democrat. Espousing the values of the ACLU is about the only way the U.S. is going to survive in years to come, as I see it, whether their ideas came from communism or not. The Gestapo-style spying on peace meetings is scary; scarier than any commie I've ever met. Dictatorship comes in many shapes and sizes.

The true utopian idealism has not yet been found, and it surely isn't going to come about by taking the best trademarks of all idealisms and villianizing them. I ain't burning my card, Kidd.

Garden 7/19/08

This was after quite a bit of weeding work. The pumpkins have taken off out of the corn at the far end. We put down 4 bales of hay, shaken out across the grass for the pumpkin plants to crawl away on. On the upper end, the rutger tomatoes are all weeded and respaced. The top row is yellow squash which hasn't started to bloom yet. The second row is herbs; then tomatoes, peppers, a row of spanish onions, and then the bean poles in the middle.

Bruce planted some Jacob cattle beans between the peppers and onions, and they've come up nicely.

Below the beans are the Job's Tears; then the beets which are infiltrated with last year's volunteer tomatoes. Then basil and carrots, and before the horseradish came in so abundantly, we planted lettuce, mustard and green onions in there.

As you can see, the blue corn is tasseled. The hubbard squash south of the corn either was burnt off by the manure, or eaten off. The watermelon at the far end didn't have a chance. But its okay. The pumkins are coming out all sides of the corn.

What fun, what fun. I planted some persimmon seeds in the herb row where the cumin didn't come up. We will see if the persimmons do better. How I'd love to have some persimmon trees!

My Oldest Son and the Grape Arbor

This is my 21 y/o. He asked me, "What is that thing for?" I told him it was the grape arbor. He said, "How come the boards are just laying on top of the posts?" I told him, "Because nobody has nailed them on yet." He said, "That's like a simple job, right? It would only take 15 minutes." I told him that simple jobs were more complicated than he thought. So he set out to prove me wrong, except that he found out that I was right. But my grape arbor is yet more put-together. It has been 3 years since we bought those treated posts. They laid on the ground for one year. Then Bruce and I put 3 of them in. The other 3 went in this spring, and I bought the 2x4's. The garden is right next to the arbor. You'd think with all that time weeding, some time would have been made for the arbor. The goats have eaten most of the leaves off the grape vines for the past 5 summers. It is amazing they are still alive.

My great-grandmother planted those Concord grape vines. I hope to train them to the top of this arbor where the goats will have much more difficulty eating the leaves. This was a memorable day.

The Garden on June 20th

I was taking a picture of the Job's tears, which were just weeded and are between the two row markers. But you can't see them very well. They look now like a cross between corn and grass. They are between the green pole beans (to the left) and the brussel sprouts which are just next to the beets. Out at the end, you can see the pumpkin plants have begun spreading, and you can see the corn peeping up behind the horseradish.

Oh, I have horseradish all over my garden. We let it grow where ever it sprouts. When the garden is tilled or plowed, each little bit that gets cut off tends to sprout and form new crowns. I dig it up with a garden fork and make grated horseradish often enough that I we try to confine it to certain parts of the garden, but it is growing out by the chicken house somehow.

There is a row of large Spanish onions next to the beans. I started the onions from seeds and transplanted them, and they are teenie tiny, so you can't see them in this picture at all. The blue pan off to the left is where I ended the green pepper row, and there are two rows of tomatoes further left of that. Then there is a row of herbs and tomatillos, then yellow summer squash, and then sunflowers which either never came up or got eaten by something. I am having a problem with ducks, chickens and groundhogs.

Brussel Sprouts and Pumpkins and Blue Corn

I took these pictures on May 31st also. The first picture is my brussel sprouts. The second is the pumpkins just peeping up, and the corn that I planted directly in the manure we put on the garden last fall, that Bruce dug the weeds out of and spread around a little.

The Garden on May 31

Finally, it loaded!! Now this is June 22, and it looks quite a bit different than this. But here is that picture of May 31st. You can clearly see the Bull's Blood beets, two rows. Next to them is a row of carrots; and then the kolarabi, and then the red-leaf lettuce the geese at off.

You can't see in this picture well, but in the back, in the manure, the corn and the pumpkins and squash are just coming up. To the left of the beets is a row of broccoli; then a half row of Job's tears.

And interspersed is horseradish that I let grow.

What Comes Down

I rarely tire of listening to rain falling. This makes me feel a little guilty when it has been raining for some time, and there is flooding. But I love to listen to the rain.

Simple pleasures have been more difficult to come by. I still take the time to make myself notice them. Several things have been sort of eating at me for a few years, and try as I might to let go of them, they bother me at times.

These things have changed the way I live my life and conduct myself. They have ruined simple pleasures that formerly I gave little thought to. They have also tainted my reputation in certain crowds, and although they are false or misleading, I have no way to redress them. There is no way things can go back to the way they were before these things happened. There is no way for me to fix the damage they've done in my extended family and extended community. I have retreated from being involved in many events I used to be involved in because of them. I used to have a little more fight, but pain after pain has me at home, excercising my feel-better muscles, and building a more solid base in other communities than those I was once so connected to.

But I see it as sort of a grounding time of my life. I am finding other simple pleasures to take the place of those ones and little by little, finding some peace. I have been re-evaluating who my friends are and what is important. Who I really am - who I know I am - hasn't been changed by the impressions of others. No honorable path is a simple one.

I have taken the time and am taking the time to let go so that I don't become vindictive or vengeful, and have attempted to send some sort of good will their way.

11 Days Later

I tried several times today (7 or more actually) to post a picture of my garden, but it wouldn't upload. The blue corn I saved from last year's harvest, the Bakers Creek hubbard squash and some pumpkin seeds I saved from a pumpkin we bought at a private farm market all came up where we planted them directly in the manure.

It is an experiment. I've been reading all about no-till planting. We did weed the manure, and Bruce spread it out using a garden fork. It was spongy stuff to plant in. I didn't bother trying to mark the rows. I'll be interested to see if the corn stalks stand tall. That area of ground was seeded with yard rye and bluegrass, and we just dumped the manure on it straight out of the barn last fall. Now little corn sprouts are poking out of it.

The kolarabi and brussel sprouts have been suffering from some bug. I dusted them with diatomacious earth the day after I posted last. It seems to be helping, but negligably. Any help they get, however is worth the effort if we get kolarabi and brussel sprouts in the end.

The geese ate my beautiful Lolla Rossa lettuce down to the ground. They were banned to the goat pasture the very next day. The geese are big enough now that they can't get through the woven wire fence. The lettuce is coming back slowly. Fortunately they left the mustard, so I have greens to put on my sandwitches for work, without having to buy them.

I planted Job's tears, turnips and basil that day. The turnips are up. I'm not sure if the basil is or not. I'm hoping the storms today provided enough water to moisten the Job's tears thoroughly and get them going, because I did not soak them before planting.

I think menopause is beginning to settle in. After being 17 days late, taking 3 negative pregnancy tests and surviving a flood that wiped me out that entire week, I've pulled out a book someone recommended to me a few years ago, "New Menopausal Years The Wise Woman Way," by Susan Weed. It is a wonderful book. There are some new herbs, flowers and vegetables I am thinking of growing now; not to mention, the dandelions all over my yard have taken on a new important function. Dandelion greens are better for you than about any green leafy vegetable and replace exactly what you need in such circumstances.

The big new project this summer, gardening-wise, is going to be the flower bed next to the house. I'm finished with my Japanese knotweed eradication program. It didn't work. And since it still has to be pulled out, better that it is not between briars. See, I let some bird-planted blackberries grow in the flower bed the past few summers, propogated them, and harvested bumper crops of blackberries. But half of the berries have a bad rust. So after the blackberries are done, they will be cut off; all the knotweed pulled up, and we are going to do a manure experiment on the flower beds. When I figure out how to post pictures again, I will.

The Garden

Please permit me to share my garden with you. In several months, I hope to post a picture that you will find unrecognizable from this one.

In the far background, you can see my brother's trailer. Then there are box elders lining the drainage ditch; their leaves clipped as high as goats eat when they get out, and a large black willow behind the chicken house.

Between the garden and the chicken house is an area that I seeded with grass several years ago for my folks, when they felt they had become too old and too busy to garden its entirity. We covered a portion of it with sheep and goat manure from the barn last fall. Our 8 goslings of unknown breed, and the two ducks enjoy that area immensely. The goslings are mostly white with some gray tones. The Rouen drake and the brown Indian Runner hen hang with the goslings often, as if to parent them a little. Off to the left in that grassy area is what I had intended to be a trellis for some cutleaf blackberries that are still growing after 3 years of being transplanted there, but have never thrived.

The garden has green onions, mustard greens and red leaf lettuce to the right in a small area I turned over by shovel in early April. The larger tilled area that is growing in nicely with small weeds also has a barely visible row of kolarabi, then carrots, then 2 rows of beets, then brussel sprouts. A lot of the green you see is actually volunteer tomatoes from last year. I have since weeded most of them out, and it looks much prettier today.

Bruce tilled off to the left, a size about this big. Today I planted a row that is half Job's tears, and half turnips. He also weeded and turned the manure, and in it now is 5 rows of blue corn, surrounded on the 3 grassy sides with hubbard squash, watermelon and pumpkins that will hopefully grow out over the hay and assist in keeping the deer and goats out of the corn.

In the foreground is a rusty old chime that hangs on the porch. Some carpenter bees make a nest in one of the bells each year. Down below the chimes from the porch are some blackberries I have been propagating for several years, and lots of Japanese knotweed. The blackeberries were part of my Japanese knotweed eradication program; but alas, it was not as successful as I'd hoped. I am doomed to pull knotweed from around my porch, as I and my mother before have done for the past 30 years. Whats more, about half of the blackberries have a very thick rust on them this year. So I am going to cut them all out after harvesting them, pile manure on, and make it all back into a flower garden.

Shearing

This is me shearing Rosie, our Corriedale/Lincoln cross ewe. She was pregnant before we shore her, and lambed a few days afterwards. You can see her full udder. We have electric shears, but prefer to use the hand shears. It takes a little longer, but the sheep jump and fight less.








Rosie has a beautiful black ram lamb. Here she is after lambing, eating some grain left on the ground.

Black Lamb's fleece

This is the first shearing of our one-year-old black lamb. He was jet black after shorn, making sheep I used to call black look dark gray. Left is the inside view. Below is the folded fleece with a staple measured next to a yardstick on a gray roof slate.







And this is the outside.