Picking Strawberries and other Farm Stuff

So, the neighbor girl (queen of everything that needs to be done but I don't have time to do it, and she will do it for a very decent price) has offered to pick strawberries for me. This is waaaay cool! She's so willing (12 year olds still value the good old fashioned quarter a pound concept!) to do this for me. And, to boot, for another 10 cents a pound, she'll wash them, and get rid of the green stuff that seems to be attached to the ends of them, otherwise known as stems.
This is HUGE! I love strawberries. LOVE them! Fresh in cereal, frozen in pancakes in the winter, strawberry shortcake, hubby loves strawberry ice cream (homemade of course, still need to look into finding a small one family cow), and of course, the cream on top of the strawberry pile, strawberry jam!
So tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn (literally, she will start about 6 am!) she'll pick me all the berries she wants to pick. As many as she wants, and I'll gladly pay her to do that for me. Not only do I not like to pick berries (skeeters and all) I have Dad Duty this week, so just can't do it myself. And this will most likely be the last week to do this kind of thing.
I anticipate 50 lbs or better. That's approximately 60 bucks or so for picked, washed and de-green stuff-ed berries, all ready to be cut and frozen. YUMM! Well worth the money! And if she can con her cousin into helping her, I'll be that much further ahead!
Not only do I love all things berry (not just strawberries), I also love to make strawberry jam on a cold winter day. Oooh, the cabin smells soooooo good! They (I love this, "THEY" means anyone who is someone other than me!) say that strawberries are the ultimate summer treat. But definitely a year round deal if you do it right.
My strawberries are not doing well enough yet to pick a bunch of them, but there are so many U-Pick operations around here that it's all good.

So back to the current stuff. Weeding the garden, planting more seeds (due mostly to lack of time and weather weirdness rather than season) and last night we finally went to the neighbors house to re-borrow back our pto driven posthole digger. This item is way cool! Attach it to the back of the tractor and zingo-zango! Instant post hole!
This is a definite plus when we're burying posts for whatever needs posts. Hubby can dig a hole faster than I can bury a post! Currently these are for the new chicken area. We're fencing in a HUGE area for my chickens, it will be sooo nice to have them in an area all to themselves. Scavenged a lot of page wire from a scrap heap so I think I have enough of that, might need to get some chicken wire to wrap around the bottom, and some for the top of the pen, but other than that, we'll be good. This project will definitely see completion this weekend. And now that I've said that, but no, I'm motivated on this one. Gotta have this done before we leave for our vacation/family reunion in just a bit over 2 weeks!!

This time of year, it's all about the farm/homestead. Growing things (both plants and critters), building things and harvesting things to make it through the winter. During any lull in the crazy busy farm life, we spend time getting the wood pile built up, also for the winter. It's tough to find the wood pile when it's buried under 4 foot of snow, so that's best done ahead of time. This past fall, we were fortunate enough to get access to a state land tract that had just been cut. After they took the trees that were big enough to be sawed into lumber there was scraps, just perfect for the woodstove, so we spent a lot of time cutting and hauling that mess home, it will be dry and seasoned for this winter, and I hope to have it all piled and a roof over it also this summer. That's pretty low on the priority list, a roof over the wood pile, but we'll definitely get it cut and dry piled and enough brought up to the house to last us most of the winter.

Not much new on the knitting front, I continue to knit when I walk to work, which isn't nearly enough. I only walk when the weather is good (takes about an hour to get to work), and then when I don't need to go anywhere during the day. If the weather is nice or semi nice, or heck even if it's raining sometimes, I'll ride my bike, but walking is my first option. I can combine 3 and sometimes 4 tasks that way. I get to work, get my exercise, get some knitting done, and at the end of the day, I'll start walking home with my dad, and The Mouth will leave her work in time to pick him up on the way, so he gets his exercise in also! Tell me that's not a good thing!

I need to get into the habit of bringing My Awesome Camera That I Bought Myself For My Birthday A Few Summers Ago along with me, there is some awesome photo ops during my walks and trapses around the yard.

Tonight, after our taco night out (because we do have to go out once in awhile) we'll dig more post holes and start fencing. During any lull in that, I need to sharpen the blades on my mower. Hubby found me the coolest mower at a yard sale last year. There's no motor, just push it. Works pretty well, it's hard to push so it needs to be oiled a bit, and definitely sharpened, but it's good exercise as well as not using any gas! That's the best part, and it's quiet! And if I rake some of the grass clippings, my chickens love them!
One of these days I'll write about my automatic self feeding chicken system! Kind of yucky, but they love it!

Another Day, Another Clump!

If someone had told me, a few years ago, that one of the reasons I would look forward to spring is so I could de-clump the PAF (aka... Puff-A-Fluff... aka... Siberian Husky) I would have called the White Coat Guys. Now, I live for it. I pull the clumps out much the same way I used to when I had the Angora Rabbits, every spring as he sheds. Someday I will spin this into yarn. I'm not good enough yet to spin dog fur, I'm really not good enough to spin roving, but I'm working on it.


If someone had told me, a few years ago that the most exciting part of my day would be going out to the barn and discovering my First Ever Turkey Egg, I would have called the White Coat Guys myself. But here we are.

Now I bet you're wondering what the most exciting thing I did yesterday was. Well, I dug out the incubator, when I say "dug" that's not far from the truth. I had to dig for it, it's been a few years since I used it, but the First Ever Turkey Egg demanded to be hatched. So I will try. I hatched out a bunch of wild turkeys once (a nest we found while haying) and they all flew away. Hmm. Funny how I didn't see that coming. My turkeys are left overs from last year, domestic big white dumb things. But this will truly be exciting if I can hatch my own. I also gathered a few Rhode Island Red eggs. As long as I have the incubator going (on my kitchen counter, which The Mouth had a comment for) I may as well fill it up. Right? I thought so too.


I missed Knit Nite last night, we went to cut wood again. It's a good time of year to cut wood, not so hot that you want to curl up and die and not so cold that you don't want to be out. So another pick up load for next winter. I won't do another picture, look at yesterday's post. Same truck, same parking spot, different load of wood. We'll go do that again tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day and as much as we can while the weather and wood holds out.

If someone had told me that the very cute, very adorable puppy (Bu-Dawgh - part Shar Pei, part I'm not sure what else) that I got for Christmas last year, well year before last actually, he's 1.5 yrs old now, would have the Ears That Itch And Drive Him Nuts, I may have thought twice. Probably not, but maybe. By the time he became mine, he was already pretty much part of me. He started out being Blondie's puppy and as is so often the case, became mine when she moved out. To make it official, she put a ribbon around his neck and "gave" him to me for Christmas. Never saw that one coming either. Hmm.


Today is Oldest Grand Kid's birthday. He's 12. I'm pretty sure. I should know this, but I have trouble keeping track of how old I am. Happy Birthday Oldest Grand Kid!