Wreck of the Hesperus...er...the Peter Iredale and Rhubarb Cobbler

 (Remember, you can click on any of these pictures to make them bigger so you can see them better.)

A couple weeks ago, my husband & grown kids and I camped at Ft Stevens in Oregon for 4 days.  It is the first time we've been camping all together in a couple of years.

The wreck of the Peter Iredale rests on the beach there.  If you Google it, you can find pictures of when it was newly washed ashore in 1906.

 The weather was stunning and the ocean was calm.  Camping on the coast of Washington state in May is often a cold and rainy affair.  Our weather has been unseasonably warm and dry and we enjoyed it to the fullest.

Now we're back to our usual chilly and damp sort of late Spring days, waiting for the sunshine to reappear!

 It's not that I take lousy pictures.  I really do look like this.  Photogenic, I am not.  I am, however...honest...ordinary....real....and I like to think I'm pretty nice.  Most of the time.

We didn't do anything extraordinary, but we walked a bit and the kids rode the bike trails.  I'm pretty much a homebody and the third night was just a bit too long of a stay away from the farm for me, so I was glad to get on the road and head back. 

 This is down in our valley, near the creek.  It's a dirt road to get down there, accessible by vehicle only when the weather is dry.  It's a nice walk down, but uphill all the way back.

We had a hot dog roast in that campfire ring during one of those nice weather days recently.

So far this month, we've been vendors at a two-day craft fair and just a few days later camped in the next state for 4 days.  We had another vendor space for our annual Spring Festival at our local grange (for which I baked 18 loaves of bread and my daughter baked 18 pies) and then we spent 5 hours sitting at yet ANOTHER
vendor space (Farmer's Market).  That one was outside under a canopy and the weather cooperated NOT!  It was rainy, cold and windy!  Took me hours to finally thaw out!

 I am totally tired and ready for time at the farm.  The weeds have taken over the garden and with the dampness that's set in, the strawberries that were beginning to ripen are going moldy.  I picked a few and tossed the spoiled ones to the chickens.  I cubed up the leftover bread from our vending events and dried it in my dehydrator for future cooking efforts.  Now that I've got the dehydrator out and running, I think I'll start picking some herbs and renew my stash - sage & oregano for sure.

The Spring rush on the farm is slowing down a bit.  We just weaned Pinky the calf today and now we're down to once-a-day milking!  A great relief for the hands.  We're still bottle-feeding the last two kids for another couple of weeks.

I've been totally frustrated with my computers.  Both of them are older, reconditioned creatures.  Both of them downloaded Windows 10 WITHOUT MY CONSENT and now my craft room computer is STUCK on the download and awaiting....well, someone to come and figure it out.  My laptop now seems like a stranger with its new operating system and I can't get it to cooperate very well with my camera.  I feel like an old dog trying to learn a new trick!

One should always console oneself with dessert, so I picked Rhubarb and made this lovely cobbler.
I got the recipe from the Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) and you can find it here:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/rhubarb-cobbler/
With a dollop of whipped cream on top and a steaming cup of coffee alongside, well, you could practically conquer the world.  Or maybe even Windows 10.

Country Chicks Spring Fair adventure!

 Whew.  Spring on the farm is exhausting with all the weeding & gardens, new baby animals & goats to milk, repairs & clean up from the winter.  Then someone got the bright idea (um, that would be me...) to have a vendor space at the Country Chicks Spring Festival at our local fairgrounds.  By local, I mean about a 45 minute trip from home!

This is our first time to vendor at this event and I've been making primitives and stressing about it for weeks!  My girls are working with me and both have items ready as well.

 Today we loaded it all up, drove to the Fairgrounds and located our space, and then unloaded and arranged it all.

We walked around and checked out all the other 'seasoned' vendor's spaces, filed away some great ideas for the Fall show and came home. 

I think we're ready...All we have to do is get up in the morning, have the milking & feeding done by 7 or 7:30 and then get ready to jet off for the day!  I think I'm tired in advance, lol!

 I think by the time the weekend is over I'm going to need a vacation!

I'm definitely going to need a few quiet days to recuperate from all the activity but I think it's going to be fun and hopefully profitable.

There are so many great things for sale it'll be a miracle if we come home with any profit at all!  There are some talented people out there and we saw some great antiques, collectibles and re-purposed items. 

I'm off to rest up until tomorrow and then I'll check back into blogland next week...or when I recover :-)

See you there!

Chickies are Hatched and the Calf is Bald!

 Captain's Log:  25 March, 2016.

Incubator #1 - 28 live chicks 16 no-hatch
Incubator #2 - 36 live chicks 8 no-hatch

Conclusion:  We now have a bazillion cheeping chickies!  Good grief, whose idea was this?

Oh.  That's right. 

 I get overwhelmed in the Spring.  I want to do everything.  I start everything.  I have Lyme Disease, a chronic illness.  I get tired.  And then I laugh at myself and after awhile, things slow down and I'm not quite so overwhelmed and I drink more coffee and I think I'll survive.

AND THEN THE SUN COMES OUT!!!!  And I must go outside and do MORE THINGS!!!!!

And so it goes!

 This is the calf we started that has done well from the beginning.

 This little bald guy is the one that was very very sick.  I gave him everything in my 'sick calf' arsenal and he has rallied!  He is now drinking his full bottles of goat milk and eating grain each day.  I am sure his hair will grow back eventually.  I think it's a side effect of too many meds, but he was dying and now he's getting well, so DO NOT LAUGH AT HIS BALDNESS and he will probably forgive me, lol!

 This is not a selfie.  How would I take a picture of myself while I am milking?  WHY would I take a picture of myself while milking and WHY would I be smiling like that while milking?

Actually, I don't mind milking at all.  It hurts the hands (arthritis), but honestly, the milk is worth the effort.  No chemicals, it's fresh every single day and it NEVER tastes like goats.  Honest.

 For a couple of weeks I have been overwhelmed with orders for primitives.  Large orders.  I started to wonder if I could actually accomplish it all in the time required by Ebay and Etsy, but I have prevailed!  (It helped that it's been raining endlessly here and the sunshine & birds were not calling me to the great outdoors!).

 I sewed, I painted, I grunged and I tied.  I finished, I mailed!  I heaved a great sigh of relief and now I'm in the process of cleaning my sewing/craft room up once again.

My daughter bumped a vat of oil off the shelf in my pantry and so I cleaned my pantry, too.  Do you know how hard it is to clean up (cooking) oil when it has splattered/pooled/soaked into many items in your pantry?  It's very clean in there now.

 Ok, this is officially a selfie.  I drew this back in the olden days when I was young.  The year was 1977....the year I graduated from high school.

I do a lot of craft work and sewing nowadays, but I haven't actually tried any drawing in years.  It's on my list of things to do before I die....but the list is long and I don't have time yet. 

My husband and I are dreaming of a solarium off of our dining room onto the porch.  We can't afford it, but that doesn't actually mean that we won't figure out a way to do it anyhow!  He's a builder, so the labor is free ;-)  We do have a greenhouse, but it would be so much more fun to have a warmer, heated solarium attached right to the house..right?  Probably we wet Washingtonians think of these things more than other people.

He's been milking one of the goats every morning, too.   That was our deal - We could raise two calves this year if he helped with the milking since my hands just won't tolerate all that effort.  He likes this ole E-Goat and he loves his little calf buddies, too.

This guy is a keeper.  We've been married for over 36 years and I still like him.  He's down the hill at his bee house right now.  He had a dentist appointment earlier, sold some honey in town, came home and got right on the tractor and headed down the hill to work on expanding the bee house.  There are six hives full of a gazillion stinging insects down there.  I personally could not be convinced for any reason under the sun to BUILD SOMETHING NEXT TO THOSE BEES!!!!!  But he is a braver man than I.  Especially since I am not a man!

That's a bit of what's going on at the farm.  We're keeping close to home most of the time.  When my mom was so sick, we spent many hours in doctor offices and cancer clinics and passing the time of her treatments in town.  We're catching up on things we let go around here and just trying to get our bearings & strength back.  This is the first Spring without her and I miss her with every bloom and every ray of sunshine.  We used to play this little game every Spring to see who could spot the first trillium (wild flower in our woods).    Dave & I went for a walk in the woods the other day and I spotted that first trillium of the season and it makes me cry every time I think about it.  She was my biggest fan and I miss her so very much. 
Ok, now that I've cried all over my keyboard, I'll buck up and think about something else! 
A friend came over today to talk about Lyme Disease.  We shared, we laughed, we even cried a bit.  I think we encouraged each other on this difficult road of life and agreed that it draws us closer to the Lord and more fit for His Kingdom! 
May each of us be drawn ever closer to Him as we travel this road with its joys and sorrows!   Off to live more life on the farm until I sit down to blog again!

Brace & Bits, Doctoring Calves and Dodging Raindrops!

 I wonder how many people today would recognize this amazing set of tools?  My husband had these in his shop and I have stolen them.  A nice brace & set of lovely auger bits are just what I need in my sewing/craft room!  Actually, I stole them a long time ago. I've used them to drill holes in fence posts for gate hinges and I've also used them in the house for craft projects.  Sadly, the smallest bit is missing from this antique set.

 Shhh.  Don't remind him that he used to own this....After all, HE'S got power tools.

 Today I drilled the knob holes in this old thread cabinet just a little bit bigger so I could put new knobs on it.  If it had been in better condition, I'd have done my best to restore it properly, but it's seen better days and now it's going to serve as storage for my primitives patterns as I make them.

 It rained on Monday, so I made foxes.

 It rained today, so I made Cinnamon Bunns and blue Steller's Jays.

 Come to think of it, it's been raining forever, it seems.  Tonight it's raining hard and the wind is blowing pretty good.  The weatherman was suggesting gusts of 40mph and I notice the lights have flickered a few times.  I really hope they don't go out...I'd hate to lost the chickies I've got half-incubated!  I've been turning them three times a day.

 These little coffee cup bags have snap-shut tops and in the picture above I'm showing you the secret to making them snap!  Two sections of an old tape measure (I didn't steal it, I asked for it very nicely!), one on each side - makes it snap closed nicely!  I'm adding them to the things we'll take to sell at the Country Chicks Spring Festival in April.

 My newest addition to the sewing machine collection is a child-sized treadle!  This one is called an Eldredgette and stands about 24" tall.  It looks bigger than it is in this picture because it's in the foreground.  It's actually amusingly small.

Remember the quilt show I mentioned in my last post?  Well, here we are....I asked my husband that morning if I looked ok.  He said I looked like a hippie.  I was just a kid during the hippie era, but I guess I'm a late bloomer ;-)

The farm is still hopping.  We've got another calf, but this one is struggling for life.  He's got scours and probably pneumonia, but we're giving him everything I've got in the barn medicine chest and we've got him tucked in a cozy, hay-filled stall with a heat lamp to protect him from the wind & rain.  It's a big job to take care of animals.  Normally we feed calves a bottle (goat milk) twice a day after we milk.  While this little guy is sick, he gets his normal bottle (with many added meds) and then a bottle of Re-Sorb (gatorade for calves) midday and just before WE go to bed.  We give him Penicillin shots, too.  We're hoping and praying he turns the corner and gets over it. 
My new chickies came in the mail today, too.  I've got 6 baby pullets (girls) and two baby roosters - an old English breed called Speckled Sussex.  I've made more trips to the barns and up and down the driveway in the last couple of days than I can count!  Did I mention it's raining?  Can you say....drowned rat?  That's what I've spent most of my time looking like, lol!
Well, time to call it a day.  There'll be more chores tomorrow and I think I need to make bread again, too.  Pleasant dreams until next time!

Busy Farming, Hatching Eggs & Fried Rice for Breakfast!

 I just did a couple of things and POOF! weeks have gone by and I haven't blogged!  It always seems to get away from me.  Oh, well, it's my blog and most definitely reflects ME, so there you have it.  Sniff.

This is a litter of Velveteen Lops.  The rabbit house is (wait for it...) hopping right now, with litters expected all Spring!  These little guys are born almost hairless with eyes closed and very helpless.

 They grow pretty fast and in 3 days you'll see their coat colors clearly as their fur grows, in 10 days their eyes will open, and in 3 weeks they'll be hopping out of the nest to explore mama's cage, food & water.  By 6 or 7 weeks they'll be totally weaned.

This song is posted over my sewing machine.  It's one of my favorite hymns and helps me focus on the Lord during the times I feel overwhelmed by the darker days of life.

 In case you haven't noticed, I'm going to ramble all over the place in this blog, so hold on to your horses while we zip through the last few weeks!

One of the desks in my sewing room - where I stamp & craft.  I have another with my computer on it (and more junk) and, of course, sewing machine tables, too.  And notes.  And lists.  Lists of ideas.  Lists of things to remember.  Lists are my favorite.  Paper and pen, so much more down to earth than electronics.

 I bought these little claw cactus starts on Ebay.  They're growing nicely and each one is a different variety.  I used to have several large ones, but a packrat got into my greenhouse (outdoors) and ATE THEM.  Beast.

 Sniff your screen now.  Do you smell this fresh bread?  OH MAN.  Nothing smells quite as wonderful, warm & homey as fresh baked bread.  You can have the crust and I"m going to have the first big soft slice....with plenty of butter.  Real butter, of course.  Why would you use anything else?

 In April, my daughters and I will have a vendor space at a big craft extravaganza (Country Chicks Sping Fair) at our fairgrounds.  We're all working like crazy and one of the things I'll be selling are these little woolly owls.

I'll be taking lots of my handmade primitives, but we'll also sell other vintage items and probably a few sewing machines.

 Here's another item that will be heading to the Fair with us - a pair of primitive pillows that I just finished!

I love crows & ravens, homespun fabrics and squishy pillows!  You can hug one of them, but don't get it dirty!  (You did wash your hands after eating that buttery bread, right?)

 Today we tromped down our hillside, below the goat pasture and into the woods to see a spring on the hillside.  You'd think that with all the precipitation we get (almost 60" a year, on average) that watering our garden in the summer wouldn't be an issue, but unfortunately it is.  So, today we walked the hillside to imagine developing an irrigation well at the site we believe to be the original hand dug well back in the early days of our place, early 1900s.  The water was flowing nicely out of the hillside and the skunk cabbages were blooming - a sure sign of water.  Now, all we have to do is rob a bank and we'll be all set!

 Here they are again (the bunny kids)  a few days later.  Now you can see their pretty coat colors!  See those two tri-colors and that harlequin?  Nice! 

 The trees are still pretty dormant, though the wild plum blossoms are just starting to open, to the delight of the honeybees,  and the daffodils are blooming.  Soon the camelia will burst forth in color and leaves will start to appear on the deciduous and fruit trees.  Of course, it's always somewhat green here in Western Washington, even in the winter.  All those fir trees, doncha know!

 A bright spot on the porch.

 This lone machine had been left out in the rabbit house/greenhouse because I figured it was only good for parts.  Well, once I got it in the house, I didn't have the heart to part it out and now it's all cleaned & oiled and I scavenged up all the pieces for it, put it in a spare base I had, added a hand crank and she sews like a champ.  Made to last, those old Singers.  Nothing like a little tri-flow and elbow grease!

 Dave wants to gradually increase his bee 'herd' until he's got up to 25 hives.  Right now he's got 5 or 6 and really enjoys all the work that goes into keeping them and selling his (their?) honey.  He's got his compressor going on the porch with the hose coming in the open window of his 'office' and he's been building frames for his boxes.  In the office.  Yes, he has a shop, but I guess he figures it's warmer and more enjoyable to work up here at the house ;-)
I added these votive candle molds to the last bee supply order for a little crafting fun.  Sshh.  Don't tell Dave!

 Here's a few of the machines that my older daughter and I took to the Quilt Show in Centralia over the weekend.  They have a huge show and asked if we would loan 10 or 12 machines, covering 100 years of sewing for their extravaganza.  They also wanted us to be available to chat about them/answer questions.  It was a lot of work to haul them, unload them, talk about them for 2 days and then haul them all home again but we had a lot of fun and many people loved seeing all the sewing history.


Is your warming oven filled with sticks?  Mine is and they are not for kindling.  They are for crafting.  I found out that if I don't dry them before crafting with them.....they sprout!  They came from a big ole pussy willow tree in my yard.  Younger daughter and I wanted the pussy willows for our craft show and decided that we could also use the sticks.

 Since I don't have enough other work to do (waiting for laughter to die down...) I decided to hatch chickies, too!  The incubator on the left has about 40 eggs in it - mostly Buff Orpingtons with just a few Americaunas.  The one on the right is now heating up and I'm going to put eggs in it tomorrow.  I'm hoping for a good hatch rate, but I must say that trying to remember to turn them twice a day is surprisingly difficult! 

 The green eggs are the Americaunas.  Yes, we sometimes have Green Eggs and Ham, doesn't everyone?

By the way - this is the spare bathroom.  We still have a tub we can use for the next 21 days while we wait for chickies to arrive....Aren't we blessed to live in such a wonderful place??

Ok, now you see just a smidge of what's keeping me busy and I can heave a sigh of relief that I'm caught up, at least on my blogging ;-)

 For my big finale, I'm going to show you how to make delicious FRIED RICE out of leftover rice.

First, throw a few chopped peppers and onions into a little oil in your pan.  Beat a few eggs in a separate bowl and then scramble them into your peppers & onions.

 This is leftover Basmati rice, but you can use whatever kind you've got.

 This is actually just lunch meat ham.  You can toss in leftover chopped chicken, pork chop, steak, whatever you've got.

 Toss it all in, stir while it's heating up nicely.

 This picture is sideways or your head isn't on straight.

Add soy sauce to taste (I use Dr. Braggs Liquid Aminos, as you can see....)

Stir and EAT IT UP.  I promise, it is succulent and tasty.  Makes a marvelous breakfast.

That's it from me for this post.  God is good, all the time.  I have healed from my bout of diverticulitis and am learning new lessons daily in my life on this earth.  My prayer for you is that you grow ever closer to the Savior until your work on this earth is done.

See you next time!