Hilltop Homestead

 We heat our house with this wood cookstove.  Ever heard people say that food tastes better cooked on a woodstove?  True, every word ;-)

It's mild enough that we don't need a fire now until this Fall.  Just so you know, I don't cook all our food on this stove......but I could if I needed to!

 We're milking 6 goats at the moment and the excess feeds the goat kiddies and a couple of bottle baby calves.  Right now we've got three kids almost weaned (10 weeks) and three kids about 3-6 weeks old we feed twice a day.  The latest calf is about 12 weeks old and could be weaned, but then what would we do with the extra milk?

We were raising a pig, but he's at the butcher and soon will be coming home to Freezer Camp!

 Dearest Husband brought me TWENTY (you got it, honey, that's 20.....) pineapples!  What on EARTH do you do with 20 pineapples?  Well, you can them of course!  I'll do that in a couple more days when they've ripened a bit.  You think store canned pineapple is good?  Me, too, but you oughta taste home canned - ooooh baby!

We love to walk in our woods and one day last fall we found this grinning beast!  Wanna guess what it is?

I'm already looking forward to Winter (yep, that's what I said alright.)  I love the weather and being outside in Spring, Summer & Fall, but I get so BUSY that there aren't enough hours in the day and not enough day in me to do all the things I set out for myself!  I still haven't finished planting in the garden - the squash & carrots ought to go in!  Those 9 marionberry starts want out of their pots, the weeds in the flower beds are atrocious!  I want to quilt and write and read, but not much time for that until Winter sets in again!  Oh well, really I LOVE to weed (don't tell anyone) and of course Summer is the only time in W. Washington that it doesn't rain much.  Someone once said to my daughter "but it rains there all the time" to which she very honestly says, "oh, it only rains about 9 months out of the year - the rest of the time it's nice!"  Guess we're used to it :-) 
P.S.  It's the skull of a Roosevelt Elk.....