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**Dial-up users beware, this is kind of a big post**

This is our new cat that we got yesterday. . .No, Wednesday. She's very sweet and friendly and loves to sit in your lap and knead your legs.




Yesterday, after Mom picked the basil, I made pesto out of it. I got sixteen half pints last night, and it looks like I only used a third of the basil. I'm going to make more pesto out of it today, and some that basil will go for roasting the tomatoes that are going roasted in the next couple of days.

Pesto - basil or cilantro

4 cups basil, tightly packed. Depending on how strong you want it, you can pack it looser or tighter.
3/4 c. toasted pine nuts
2 -3 small or medium sized cloves of garlic, peeled.
2/3 c. Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste.
2/3 - 3/4 c. olive oil.

In your food processor, put in your basil, pine nuts, and the garlic, and grind until everything is finely chopped. You may need to scrape down the sides so that you get all the pine nuts. Then, put in the Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste, and pulse a couple times until the cheese is mixed into the basil. Start you processor and pour the olive oil in, in a stream and and then stop the processor when the oil is thoroughly mixed. Four cups of basil will make 2 half pints.

Spoon it into jars and put a lid and stick it in the freezer before you eat it all.


Here's the basil, pine nuts and the garlic.


As you can see, I just added the cheese. I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but notice how small the basil is chopped. If it's much bigger than that, you will have too big of pieces if you put in on pasta or something like that.


Mmm, this looks so delicious! I could eat the whole thing!


That's one batch done.

Our reusable lids...


You can't see it here, but there are sixteen half pints.

My helper, who got to lick everything when I was done.

Wordless Wednesday

My First Award

Wow, my first award! What a funny coincidence, my Mom and I both got nominated for awards on the same day!

First, I want to thank Shirley over at Ride A Good Horse for honoring me with this award. Thanks Shirley! Your blog is wonderful. I love your blog because you raise and show Quarter Horses, and you take great pictures of your horses and colt, Choctaw Peppy. He's a beauty!

The rules state that I have to pick at least seven blogs, but I don't think I read enough, but we'll see... Now, in no particular order:

1. Linda at Just Another Day On the Prairie, I love your blog! I love all your cattle and horse pictures, and you have a good eye for good camera shots, and a great sense of humor. Your lifestyle; I wish ours was more like that.

2. Ree over at Confessions Of A Pioneer Woman, what can I say? Your blog is amazing. You're an amazing photographer, and you give great tutorials on how to edit pictures, and everyday I can't wait to see what you've taken a picture of, or what funny/crazy story that you will post.

3. Threecollie at Northview Diary, it's nice to read about a dairy farm and see your funny pictures of the frogs and "marine" life that live in your Rubbermaid stock tank.

4. Jen at Copenhagen Kisses, love your pictures!

5. Nita at Throwback At Trapper Creek or should I say Creak? Eventhough you ask me to check your visits every five minutes, it's still fun to take pictures for the blog and help you edit it...

6. Kdwhorses, at Blackjack Land & Cattle Company, Lovely pictures, and I like to see what's going on down in Texas.

7. Paula at It's All Gouda, your food always looks so good that I'm always drooling and hungry after looking at your blog!

8. Nuzzling Muzzles, I'm a horse lover, so I love your blog. Beautiful pictures, too!

Rules for passing on the award:

1. The winner can put the logo on her blog.

2. Link the person you received your award from.

3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links of those blogs on yours.

5. Leave a message on the blogs of those you have nominated.

Well I was going to call this "raining on sunday", but it's not rainy or Sunday, sooo, I need to think something better...

This is what it was doing yesterday morning, but now it's bright and sunny with a few clouds lurking. Yay! The hay will finally get a chance to dry! It's so nice to walk outside and wear a tee shirt without getting wet, or too cold!

Look at all of those swallows!! When it's a dry day, that is their morning perch from about 8:30 to 10:00, or so. You can't really tell from the picture, but the peak of the shop roof is about eighty feet long. I bet that there is at least one hundred twenty swallows sitting up there.

Trace: "ahhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Melvin: "Is he done yet!?"

Trace: "Oooh, is that a Siamese cat over there??"

Me: "Uh, no, there's nothing over there. Come on, Trace, lets go this way, before you yank my arm off!" Contrary to what I was telling Trace, there actually was a Siamese cat hiding out in the hay field, but I managed to convince him nothing was there and just barely avoided getting my arm ripped out of its socket...

October?

Did we skip a month and it's really October, and nobody told me? Okay, maybe we didn't, but it sure feels that way.
It's dark and cloudy all day, and raining, too.

As you can see from this picture, that we have about four hundred 18" x 36" x 14" sponges out there soaking up all of that rain. We did get two loads hauled before the rain hit us, but there is still four or five more out there.

On a brighter note, we did get three boxes of miscellaneous flooring scraps, and a bundle of stickers from the flooring mill down in Portland yesterday.

These boxes are about 4' x 4' and three or three a half feet tall. One down, two more to go!


Our helper. . . I didn't even notice that Trace was sitting in the cab of the truck until I reached for the camera, which was on the dashboard. What's funny is that he can jump right in the pickup when he really wants to get in, but otherwise you have to lift his back end up, and help him get in.

Wheeeee! I just love the look on Trace's face - priceless! He always gets this funny look on his face right before he starts running his circles and figure eights, like most aussies do.

I'm sorry, but I can't take credit for this one - my mom took it. It's a blue Lacecap Hydrangea.

Wordless Wednesday

Too Busy For Words Sunday

Misc of the last couple days...

Yesterday, we finished hauling the last of the "fourteen acre field", which is the second to the last field, and then we are done.

This is a nice short load of sixty bales, so I didn't have to go five high, I could do four stacks of fifteen instead of two and a half stacks of twenty-five, which would then need to be tied on.

Because it would be too much trouble, and it would just waste gas to make another trip, we towed the "Donald" back to the house with the hay truck.

This is the of the last field, partially cut. It's going to be a devil because there are so many obstacles to go around, putting big wows in the rounds.

While I was putting the horse out this morning, I heard some cutters start felling trees to the north, and twenty minutes earlier, I had seen a logger's pickup go up the mountain.

It'll be nice to have log trucks going by again. After they finished their job and moved out in late spring, we missed hearing the tower(it was a canyon that was being logged), and the loader, and the trucks going by.

My Mom and I were are so good at recognizing engines, that we made a game of guessing which truck was coming by, just by the engine and the driver's driving habits.

With it being so hot and the humility in the mid twenties, when you step outside, you don't even have to take a deep breath and you can smell the woods/trees. Everything is a dry as a tinder box. When the woods are like that, the loggers are on one o'clock shut down, and then someone has to stay for a couple hours on fire watch. I have already smelled a couple fires so far.

When I got up this morning, it was already 60* Fahrenheit. In preparation of the heatwave, Melvin got his pants trimmed, so that he will be a little cooler and won't overheat, hopefully.

In other news, I ate the first blackberry of the year this morning. It was a little sour, but delicious!

This was a luck shot, of the swallows sitting in the big, dead cherry tree. They usually sit on the top of the shop roof. I counted fifteen in this picture and about ten more on another branch.

The high for today was 102* Fahrenheit, and as of now - 8:20pm - the temptature has went down to 83*. The weather man is forcasting even hotter for tomorrow.

Found this spider on the way up to the greenhouse this morning. I can't tell what it has caught...maybe a crane fly or something like that.

Wordless Wednesday

First broccoli and a summer treat

We picked our our first broccoli of the season this morning, woo hoo! As soon as the first heads are ready, it seems like we're flooded with broccoli, but then it doesn't amout to much after we've gotten it ready for the freezer. This morning, before it got too hot, I went out in the garden and cut the heads that were ready and of course, there was a dog lurking in the shade, patiently waiting for me to finish.

I cut the heads into smaller, bite sized pieces and then Mom will blanch it and then we'll put it in jars, and into the freezer.

The three quarters filled basket made almost two bowls worth of smaller pieces.

After I did the broccoli, I got the idea of making breaded and fried, stuffed squash/zucchini flowers. I got the idea from a Chefs Afield episode that I had seen a couple weeks ago. All you need is squash blossoms, some grated cheese, breading, and olive oil.

Pick as many flowers as you would like - the already pollinated ones work the best. Gently open the top of the flower, it's very delicate, and fill it almost full with water, and swish it around in a circle, still holding it upright, to rinse it. Dump the water out and run water over the flower and then shake it to get off the excess water. Stick them in the fridge if you aren't going to use them right away.

Breading:
3/4 c. flour (more if you're making more than six or seven).
Salt to taste.
Pepper to taste.

Mix together with a fork, or your fingers and set the bowl aside. Heat your pan to medium high, and put in a couple tablespoons of olive oil, or butter if you don't want to use olive oil.

Then, take some of the cheese that you grated, and stuff it into the flower, carefully, roll them in olive oil, and then in the breading. Do them all then put six or seven in your heated pan, depending on the size of the pan. Let them cook about forty-five seconds each side. Then lift them out - I find that tongs work the best - and place them on a platter and if you are worried about grease, put down a paper towel.

Cut the blossom ends off - they are terribly bitter - leave the blossom end on until right before you serve it, because if you take it off before you fry them, they will just fall apart.

This makes a great summer treat that is tasty, easy to make, and takes hardly an time at all!

My faithful companion who dutifully followed me to the garden and waited while I picked the broccoli and then watched, drooling, while cooked the squash blossoms. Thanks, Shan!

Ghosts in the fog

This morning we woke up to low clouds and drizzle. Not good weather for having hay down, which we just so happen to have, but luckily it's not a big piece.

On the way over to take a couple pictures of the new barbed wire gate, the fog was so thick that you could hardly see the trees around the house and the orchard across the road, which was no more than one hundred twenty yards ahead of us. The trees reminded me of ghosts in fog.

This is my favorite of the fog pictures I took the this morning.

Milk cow lurking in the fog.

And there was plenty of spiderwebs covered in dew or mist drops all over the tall grass in the barnyard and the wooden fence and the metal gates, too.

In other exciting news, I got kicked in the hip by the brown/caramel colored Gelbvieh "Keith", who was part of the load that we were taking to the butcher in Canby. Luckily there was nothing broken and no bruise either. :D

Wordless Wednesday

Record heat?

Well the heat has finally come. Yesterday it was 92* Fahrenheit, the weatherman is forecasting 99* for today, and then cooling down tomorrow to a nicer 93*. Hopefully we won't get over a hundred...but this is good haying/hay drying weather. A couple years ago...2006?... The temperatures hovered right at 104* and 105* for three or four days. Everybody and everything was wilted!

Fixing some barbed wire fencing around the corral orchard is on the agenda before it gets too hot to be working. Luckily, there's some shade from the apple trees.

Took this on Saturday, when Dad and I were rebuilding a couple bared wire gates(another post).

Red-tailed hawks, bees, and barn ornaments

Yesterday morning when I was in the house, putting away the laundry, and Mom was going over to water the cows with the pickup, she backed back into the driveway and whistled for me. I went out to see what was the matter, and she told me to grab the camera, there was a Red-tail hawk out in the Four Acre field. I got a couple pictures of him before he flew off to one of his favorite dead cherry trees on the other side the field, right next to were we're going to start cutting hay in a day or two. I got a picture of him in the tree before he noticed me and flew away. Out in the field, he had been eating a rabbit, or maybe a Graydigger (I think they may also be called Columbian Ground Squirrels), but I looked right around were he had been standing and I couldn't find a trace of anything, even though I had seen him eating.

After I took the pictures of the Red-tail, I was walking back into the driveway, and noticed that that the two huge chestnut trees framing the end of the drive way were literally abuzz with bees going about their business. This is my failed attempt at videoing the sound. The bees seemed loud to me, but the camera didn't pick it up, unfortunately. But it did pick up the sound of the baby Red-tail screeching in the background...

The front of the Horse Barn is covered with a solar system, stars, two or three suns, and a moon or two, and swallow house that the swallows don't use anymore.

The swallows used their house for a year or two, but then they quit because they prefer to build their nests of hay and feathers on the sill plates of the barn. I think that the yellow jackets are using the swallow house as of now.