I'm Baaaack!

I've been away from this blog much longer than I expected.  That seems to happen to me a lot but I come bearing updates. 

The first big news: We've moved!   We traded in the old house for a much larger one on much more land.  Moving is a lot of work and it seems to get harder the older I get.  On top of the move, DH has inherited a huge portion of his family's farm and continues to work with his father on said farm, he's hoping someday he'll be able to quit his day job altogether and make his living solely off of farm work.  We'll see how that pans out.

Oldest won first place in the fair on her sewing project.  She was extremely proud.  She did all of the sewing herself.  The only thing I really helped with was cutting and piecing.  Unfortunately, as soon as she brought it home from the fair and tried to wear it, it came apart at several of it's seams.  First projects seem to just work out that way sometimes.  She's done a couple of other projects since then with longer lasting results. 

We didn't end up getting the TWH from our friend that I had mentioned in the last post.  The stalls at the new house simply weren't suited or safe for keeping horses.   It was too bad though, Oldest was really looking forward to having a horse around.

I haven't had much time for crafting these days since I've been busy packing, re-packing, and then unpacking.  I'm so tired of seeing boxes at this point that I think I'm going to do all of my future packing in garbage bags.

In garden news, we've had our ups and our downs.  We've had some pretty good tomatoes coming in and our snap beans have been really nice.  The pumpkins were our problem crop this year, there just wasn't enough springtime rain to really get them going.  We did manage to get some pumpkins, about 150 or so, and the ones that did come up are really nice and large so we had enough for the family and for some friends but no pumpkin stand this year.   That's the way it goes, with farming/gardening you have to roll with nature.   

We did, however, have lots and lots of  zucchini. I have a zucchini bread recipe to share that makes a fairly basic but very tasty loaf that freezes well.  Just thaw and warm in the oven for a couple of minutes and it's good to go.  I found this recipe in a promotional cookbook for the local newspaper years ago and it's been my go-to recipe ever since. 

Zucchini Bread

3 c. flour
3 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
2 1/2 c. sugar
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
2 c. grated zucchini
1 c. vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract

   Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease and flour two loaf pans.   Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl and pour mixture into pans, about 1/2-3/4 full each.  Bake for 1 hour.  Let stand 5 minutes in pans then remove to a cooling rack or board.  If you are going to freeze, let the loaves cool completely then wrap in each in plastic wrap and place in freezer bags.  If serving immediately, brush the tops of the loaves with melted butter and sprinkle with powdered sugar.  Serve warm. 

A large zucchini like the one in this picture will make 4-6 of these loaves. 

Oldest has finished her fair projects for this year.  She sewed a dress and has some framed photography she's turned in for Girl Scouts.  I'm pretty proud of the dress she made, she did almost everything by herself (aside from pinning and ironing) and, although there are some mistakes, it looks pretty good.  Considering she's only 8 years old and this is the first time she's ever sewn anything, I think she's done very well.  I just wish I would've gotten a picture of the finished product before we turned it in today but I was in a hurry and didn't think of it. 

I've nearly finished The Afghan From Hell which you can read about in a previous post.  I've been working on it off and on for more than three years.  Hard to imagine.  I've finally gotten to the point of adding the fringe.  Once that's finished, it's finished.  Unfortunately the fringe takes FOREVER because the blanket calls for alot of fringe.  And.....I'm starting to run out of gray yarn.  Uggh.   Hopefully I'll find another skein somewhere so I won't have to run out to Hobby Lobby, which is pretty far away from me, to pick up a new one. 

In farm news, things have been pretty slow for the most part.  We're looking at hatcheries to order a new batch of chicks and have several different places in mind at the moment.  We've had chickens in the past but it's been awhile.  We're in the process right now of getting the coop fixed and fencing an outside area next too it for them.  We're also considering taking on a friend's Tennessee Walking Horse.  She's having trouble paying to board her so she's asked if we would house the horse in exchange for full use of the horse.  She'd pay for the feed and ferrier/vet bills and offer the kids free riding lessons.  Sounds like a pretty good deal but we're still a little cautious.  None of our barns are really "horse ready" at the moment.   We'll have to see how that plays out. 

The few peaches we had are starting to ripen and considering the late frost and then the drought they've turned out really nice.   We have two trees that are chock full of delicious, huge, ripe peaches; one tree that is full of not-quite-ready peaches, and six trees that are completely barren.  Kind of strange how it worked out, it's definitely an all or nothing peach year.  Perhaps the smaller harvest is good this year though because we still have canned and frozen peaches left over from last year.


Fortunately, we've had several inches of rain out here over the course of the last week or two so the impact of the drought is starting to ease a bit.  The rain has been a Godsend.  It's not only perked up most of our garden crops but it's cooled the temperatures down a bit as well.  I've been able to go outside in my shorts and a tank top and not feel like I'm literally baking in the sun. 

That's it for us at the moment.  Nothing to exciting and, unfortunately, no pictures this time.  Hopefully I'll have plenty of pictures for the next post.

Summer projects

 The last few weeks Oldest has been working on her project for the county fair.  She decided to learn to sew and make a dress as one project and do either a photo collage or a family tree for the other project.  With the power outage and the computer being down for awhile, I'm thinking the family tree option might be out of the running this year.  


Otherwise, the kids have been busy working on "fun crafts" the last couple of days. 

They made the birdhouses this morning .  The houses themselves we were able to pick up at Joann's for about .50 a piece which was a pretty good price for an activity that kept the kids busy for at least an hour. 

The garden stepping stone I bought as a kit.  Each kid stuck in a few pieces of tile, stones and shells.  They really had a good time but wow, was it messy!  Good thing we worked on it outside.  I had to hose them off, literally, before letting them come into the house. 

At least I was able to keep them occupied another couple of days.  Now I just have to figure out what we are going to do for the rest of this week.   Maybe a few trips to visit Memaw and Papaw are in order...

Drought and Delay

 



We had a really quick and really nasty storm a couple of weeks ago.  The first and last bit of rain we've had around here until today.  Unfortunately the storm knocked out our power, which with our cruddy power company usually translates into several days in the dark.  No different this time, we went 4 days without power.  Signs of an aging infrastructure I suppose.  That's probably going to be the "norm" for most power outages unless it gets even worse. 

While we were out of power, DH decided he just had to get his computer up and running for at least one night.  He's much more dependent on computers and television than the rest of us, but we love him anyway.  So, he hooked up his custom built pc to the generator we had to run the freezer, fridge and a fan for a few hours a day.   Despite having two surge protectors between his precious computer and the generator, he still managed to fry the power supply unit.  So, even after the power was restored we were without a computer for another week or so which meant no blogging for me for awhile.  Fortunately things are now back up and running on the technology front.

Unfortunately, we are still in the middle of this really awful drought.  The area's largest river is all but dried up.  The "falls" are no longer falling and are instead reduced to a rather pathetic dripping.  The crops are suffering, of course.  Corn and soybeans are still doing "OK" thanks to drought resistant genetics. But the garden and orchard are in sad shape this year.  We have little in the way of peaches and apples thanks to the lack of rain and a late freeze earlier this spring.  We have nothing in the way of cherries.   Zip, zilch, nada.   Good thing we still have some frozen and canned.  The zuchini, brocolli, cauliflower, and sweet corn have all been experiencing pretty stunted growth even with our sprinklers running all day (at least all day since we've had power...life with a well means no power=no water).   The popcorn isn't even coming up.  It's really not looking good for the pumpkins this year either.  They usually need a lot of rain early in the season to do well.   It did rain some today, a good downpour for about 5 minutes.  Definitely not enough to even come close to getting us back on track. 

Our next best chance for rain is supposed to come this Wednesday when the half-blind, all-seeing eye of the weather center predicts we'll be once again getting some nasty storms.  They also predicted we would have rain almost every day last week.  Clearly they are not infallible.  Still, I hope the rain comes on Wednesday and stays around for awhile, I just hope it doesn't bring the wind with it.  Apparently, this is the most widespread drought since 1988 and we're right in the thick of it.   Yuck.  Without things getting any better, and it looks like they probably won't get much better, we can all expect food prices to hike up and up and up. Blech. 

But even in trying times like these we must remember to count our blessings and be thankful.  We can be thankful for the fact that this drought hasn't taken a huge toll on human life the way a similar drought could do in villages in Africa or other third world countries.  That fact also gives us all the more reason to consider reaching out in any way we can to help those people in third world countries suffering the effects of natural disasters.   We can be thankful for our good, old fashioned American resolve and resiliency.   We can be thankful for what we do have.  In our case, we have a pantry stocked full of canned peaches, cherries, tomatoes, juices, jellies, jams, pickles, beans, soups, etc. Which means we'll still be able to enjoy the fruits of our labors even without a grand garden this year.  Most importantly, we can be thankful for a loving God who knows and cares about our troubles and even when He doesn't solve all of our immediate problems for us, we can rest assured that He hears our prayers and is still in control.

Memorial Day 2012

Most of my family was here in America well before  America was it's own country, including European and Native American descendants.  Several of my ancestors fought in the Revolutionary war which made us a free and sovereign nation in the first place, including one who served under George Washington himself...pretty cool, huh?  I've had great-grandfathers, grandfathers, uncles, and cousins fighting in almost every American war since the Revolutionary war so I'm proud to take this Memorial Day to thank them and every last one of our soldiers and veterans, including those who lost their lives, for their service and to take this time to honor all my family and friends who have come and gone before me. Happy Memorial Day everyone!!!

Healing

I got so fed up with being sick.  I was coming up on two weeks of battling that viral infection and things weren't looking any better.  I did something I normally don't do.  I asked for help.  I asked for prayers.  Our God is truly an awesome God.  I went to bed feeling miserable Wednesday night.  I was itching all over.  The rash was still terrible.  My legs, arms, and hands ached.  I was tired all the time, every time I stood up my heart would start beating out of my chest.  I said my prayers as I do most every night (I know that I should make that every single night without exception and that's something I intend to work on) and I went to bed.  I woke up and the rash had almost completely faded.  My resting heart rate was under 100 for the first time in two weeks and it stayed that way all day long. I was starting to get my energy back.  I felt better than I had in a very long time.  And today was even better than yesterday.  The rash only shows up on my elbows, when it shows up at all.  My resting heart rate was even better today than yesterday.  The aches and pains are almost completely gone and I made it through the entire day without needing a nap.   Two weeks of doctors and medicines and fluids and rest couldn't do what one night of collective prayer accomplished.  I'm reminded again and again, these last couple of months especially, that God is there through the good AND the bad times. 
I know that there are many people out there who will read this and think it's a coincidence.  There are those who will read this and think it's all in my head.  There are those who will read this and think I'm crazy or downright stupid. I'm not posting this for those people.  I'm posting this for those going through a rough patch who will read this and find hope. I know many people won't see this as a miracle but I do.  I know it was "just a virus" and that's a small problem in the scope of many of today's ills but maybe my small problem and my answered prayers will give you hope in help and miracles for you problems big or small.  It's also a call to action.  You were created for good works.  I got help from everyone who took time out of their day to pray for me and it may seem simple but it made a big difference for me.  You're meant to be a help and hope for other people, whether that is through works or prayers or both.   Blessings.

So Things Haven't Gotten Much Better

My "little virus", hasn't gotten much better.   In fact, in some ways, it's gotten much worse.  I still have the low grade fever and still have the occasional muscle aches and headache.  However, my rash that was only on my hands and around my ankles is now covering my entire body. I'm exhausted all the time, my eyes have been bloodshot for 4 days, I itch, I have occasional stomach pain, dry cough, constant rapid heart rate, etc. but the swelling that had become severe in my feet and ankles has now gone down some which is a plus still pretty bad in my hands though.   After eight days of illness, two doctors office visits and one emergency room visit (for crushing chest pain that radiated up my either side of my neck), I still don't have an "official" diagnosis although two of three doctors suspect mononucleosis....nice.   Apparently mono can takes weeks to months to heal, so I could look like this,

for months on end if that's my malfunction in the first place.  Not a happy camper.  So I've been mostly sitting in my big, comfy chair watching tv and rotting what's left of my brain.  My garden is not too happy because I haven't been out to work on it in about a week and I have no intention of working on it any time soon.

As if we hadn't had enough, our water heater decided to die on Thursday so we've been shopping for a new one.  This translates into my husband making multiple trips to the hardware store and muttering things that would cause a sailor to blush.


At least t-ball season has started so we have the adorable t-ball games to keep us busy.  Middle is doing much better and taking it much more seriously this year than he did last year.  Last year he spent his time playing in the dirt, pulling up grass, dancing and chasing his friends.  This year he cares more about learning to hit from the pitches instead of off the tee and learning to field.  He loves playing first base and catcher.  It's really fun to see the first year players this time and think back to how similar they are to Middle his first year out and know how much can change in just one year. 

The t-ball games are a nice distraction from all the recent bad luck.  Otherwise, I'm turning to prayer.  Lots and lots and lots of prayer.