Chuckle du jour

I found this hilariously funny.

Canning apples

Skip this post if the domestic arts bore you, 'cuz it's all about canning apples.



Someone gave us a box of apples. I could either make pie filling or applesauce. I went for pie filling.



It was a hideously hot day for canning, but (ahem) federal regulations require that the ambient temperature be at least ninety degrees before you're allowed to can, in order to maximize the discomfort in the kitchen.

I started by washing some quart jars. Wasn't sure how many I'd need so I washed a dozen. And yes, you can use old mayonnaise jars (second from right, front row).



Out came the handy-dandy apple peeler. This baby will peel and core an apple in about twenty seconds. That includes the time it takes me to retrieve an apple out of the box at the beginning, and removing the core from the peeler's prongs at the end (I looked at the clock).



The result are "apple slinkies," as my kids call them.



Next, blanche the apples (dip them in boiling water for a minute or so), then drop them in to a pot of cold water with a little lemon juice added to keep them from browning.



Cores and peels. Wish we had pigs, as they'd love this stuff. The chickens are still too young to handle it. As it is, it all went into the compost pile.



Next, the "sauce" part of the pie filling, made with sugar, Clear-Gel, apple juice, and spices. Cook until it thickens.



Drain the apples and pour the sauce over them, then fill the jars with a wide-mouth funnel.



I used up about half the box of apples and got eight quarts of pie filling. For apples, I can use a boiling-bath canner.

Frustratingly, my biggest pot only held seven jars, so I split the eight jars between my two smaller pots.



Oh yeah, don't forget to do the dishes while the pie filling is processing.



To make a pie, roll out a crust, pop open a jar of pie filling, pour it into the pie crust, and bake. Voila. Wonderful on a cold winter's day.



I'll finish processing the rest of the apples later.

Ding dong, the hay is stacked!

Our string of miracles continues!

We were wondering how to get our hay stacked between rainstorms. The one neighbor who has a tractor big enough to lift thousand-pound bales was working twelve-hour days, seven days a week in a town an hour south of us (meaning, he was putting in fourteen-plus-hour days). Ironically, he had been hired to...put up hay on a huge ranch.

In came the rain, which interrupted the haying, which gave our neighbor an unexpected two days off, which meant he had time to stack our hay today! Hooray!









We got 24 tons, about a ton per acre, which is a really lousy output for a fertilized field. Hay production is down all over the Inland Empire (as they call this section of the northwest). But it will keep our livestock comfortably over the winter, with a little to spare for friends who do us favors...like our neighbor. He got two tons in thanks for stacking our hay.

Last winter's tarp can pull duty for another winter, but it's not nearly long enough to tarp the entire line. We have rain coming in on Wednesday, so tomorrow I'll get another tarp to finish covering the hay. Later in the summer our neighbor will move half this hay - twelve tons - into our barn. But neither he nor we have time to do that right now, between rain and work.

For now, we're giving thanks for the string of minor miracles (neighbors and friends with BIG equipment) that gave us hay for the winter.

An old farmer's advice

• Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
• Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
• Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
• A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
• Words that soak into your ears are whispered...not yelled.
• Meanness don't jes' happen overnight.
• Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.
• Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
• It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
• You cannot unsay a cruel word.
• Every path has a few puddles.
• When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
• The best sermons are lived, not preached.
• Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna happen anyway.
• Don't judge folks by their relatives.
• Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
• Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
• Don't interfere with somethin' that ain't bothering you none.
• Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a Rain dance.
• If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
• Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
• The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin'.
• Always drink upstream from the herd.
• Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
• Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
• If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
• Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply.
• Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

The eagle has landed

Here in north Idaho, near the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene, the American Bald Eagle is a common sight. Though we see them frequently, they still send a thrill through my heart. We once saw seven birds in one tree. Magnificent.

Here's a video clip of an eagle named "Challenger" who is a human-imprinted eagle and thus cannot be released to the wild. He was blown from his nest in a storm in Louisiana in the late 1980's and raised by well-meaning people. Later turned over to the American Eagle Foundation, he is used for public education to raise awareness about bald eagles.

Challenger is trained to do free-flying during the American anthem in sports stadiums, arenas, even ballrooms.

Many years ago I volunteered at a raptor rehabilitation facility and got to handle birds of prey ranging in size from saw-whet owls (the only bird for which I didn't need a leather glove) to (oof) golden eagles. The most common bird I handled were great-horned owls. But a bald eagle? No. What a thrill that would have been.

Then again, maybe not. The only raptors at the center were injured birds rescued from the wild. I wouldn't wish that on any raptor.

Do you believe in miracles?

The one thing farmers must contend with is the weather. And oh boy, can that be a major factor.

A local farmer, Phil, cut our hay last week. Haying equipment is expensive (take a look at the size of this baler!) so we must depend on Phil to cut and bale for us, since he has the equipment and we don't.



When hay is cut, you let it lie for a few days to dry. The weather was clear and hot during this period, curing the hay perfectly. On Saturday (yes, the 4th of July - farmers never stop this time of year) Phil came and raked the hay into windrows, which are big fluffy rows. This not only "stirs" the hay to better cure it, but it gets the hay ready to bale.

This is the nail-biting period, because if it rains while the hay is on the ground, the hay is ruined. We've already spent over a thousand bucks fertilizing the field, as well as paying Phil to mow and windrow it. If it rained now, we could kiss the money - and hay - goodbye.

And, naturally, the weather reports called for thunderstorms with rain.

Trouble is, farmers are super-dooper busy this time of year. They have a lot of fields they're mowing and baling, not only their own, but others' (like us) as well. I can hardly call Phil and ask him to put us on the top of the list for baling, as he's doing the best he can to get to everyone's fields.

Late yesterday afternoon Phil came and baled our hay. Thank God!



I went out and paid him on the spot, and we watched a black mass of ominous clouds gathering on the horizon. Within half an hour after he left, the wind kicked up and started blasting us - the gusts must have been over 70 mph. Then thunder and lightening. Then - you guessed it - torrential rains. I was trying to milk a restless Matilda while my husband and kids were running around battening down hatches - buttoning up the chickens, grabbing the plastic lawn chairs that were being flung around the driveway by the wind, that kind of thing.

But the hay is baled. True, it's lying out in a wet field getting wet, but the bales are tight and hopefully will shed the water. These are thousand-pound bales.



To folks who don't have livestock to feed through an eight-month winter, this may seem like petty stuff. But for us, Phil's timeliness was a minor miracle.

It's still raining. Baled hay cannot resist rain forever. I'm praying the rain stops long enough to let the hay dry out, so we can stack and tarp it.

Chuckle du jour

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Bryon suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?'

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, Why not?'

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR 3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'

'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'

'You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government,' says Bud.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie. 'But how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required,' answered the cowboy. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog.'

Great tea party sign

It's a boy!

Finally got a glimpse of the genitals and looks like we have us a pretty little bull calf. Should'a known from the start...he has a bullish-looking head. Daughter #2 named him "Beef." Not overly pleased with the name, but she insists. We always name our bull calves "meat" names because that's their destiny.

He's a hefty package! I'm guessing 35 pounds.





Meanwhile Raven, at 2 1/2 weeks, is frisky and growing.



Here's Brit, curious about human barns.

Another new calf

Hot weather has finally arrived in north Idaho, and we're all sweating and suffering until we get used to this (ahem) hideous 85 degrees. I took the girls to the lake today to cool off.




When we got home, we decided to put the cows in the woods behind the house for the next few days because a heat wave is upon us (temps expected to be in the 90's) and I don't like animals to be in a pasture without shade during such weather. I opened the gate and let the animals out of the pasture.

But Jet, one of our herd matrons, stayed behind. A quick glance at her hunched-over posture revealed she was in labor.



Her udder was turgid this morning, a sign a cow is near her time. I figured today was the day. Guess I was right. We all trooped down into the hot pasture to watch the birth.

The tips of the front hooves just starting to show. Birth is about ten minutes after this point.



Chateau, Jet's yearling steer calf, is wondering what's going on with his mama.



Another good contraction.



Unfortunately Jet decided lie down during the last major push, so the birth photos aren't as clear as I'd like:




First sniff at the new baby.



Amniotic sac, still full. Like how the sun is shining dramatically through it?



Amniotic sac after it emptied.



Start licking!





Did you know we've been accused of depriving our children by living in the country? But look what city kids are missing!





We left before the calf stood up (we were sweltering!), so we don't know the gender as of this posting. I'll find out tomorrow.

Peaceful pastures

This is one of my favorite times of year - when the fields get mowed. I know it's tough on the farmers 'cuz they're working nearly around the clock. But sheesh, is there anything prettier than mown fields?



My brother owns the parcel kitty-corner across from us. Yesterday the local farmer came and mowed it for us (he'll bale it in a week or two, barring any rain).



Twenty-five acres of grass hay will yield enough tons of feed to keep our animals comfortably through the winter and into late spring.



Ain't it purty?