First frost and an award

We got our first frost this morning... A couple days ago, we actually had a tiny bit of frost, just on a few clover leaves, but today was a real frost.
The sky looked so wierd this morning with the sun kind of hiding behind the trees and making a halo.

I'm glad that the ice on the bucket is only a thin film, and not a quarter, or half inch thick like it gets in the winter.

The grass out in front the Horse Barn.
One good thing about the frost, all the frosty barbed wire pictures!
Trace is up in the Ten Acre field watching Melvin run at mach 5 to the house. He got shocked on Nick's electric fence. Melvin had to run to house so he could shiver and hide under the table for a few hours.

The other day, Shirely over at Ride A Good Horse gave me this award. First of all, thank you, Shirely!

The text that goes with the award: “To translate the gift from Portuguese to English, it means: “This blog invests and believes, the proximity” (meaning, that blogging makes us ‘close’ - being close through proxy)

“They all are charmed with the blogs, where in the majority of its aims are to show the marvels and to do friendship; there are persons who are not interested when we give them a prize, and then they help to cut these bows; do we want that they are cut, or that they propagate? Then let’s try to give more attention to them! So with this prize we must deliver it to bloggers that in turn must make the same thing and put this text.”
I'm passing this award onto Threecollie, and Paula

**On another note, I'm goin to set aside some time tomorrow and go through and answer all the comments that I'm behind on.**

Wordless Wednesday

D.L.B. award

I received this award from Notshy over at Just Another Day on the Prairie. Thanks Notshy! Trace was so excited when I told him that you bestowed the award to him.

I would like to pass this award on to Kiera at Author Mom With Dogs. She is a very beautiful dog!

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I'm sure that you are wondering what our dog is doing, carrying around a huge broccoli head.


Well, here's the story. Yesterday morning, I took the harvesting basket out to the garden to cut the broccoli heads - mine and my mom's row.


Most of the heads were just right, but some of them had been left too long, and now they were enormous, and starting to bloom. I was told that if I came to any of those, just to cut them off and set them in a nice, neat pile and they would be taken to the pigs the next time she (mom) walked by garden that day.


Okay, that would work. Naturally, the dogs went with me to help, and keep a weather eye on things. I found five or six of the above mentioned blooming heads, and set them in a pile.


I finished, whistled for the dogs, and carried the nearly heaping full basket back to the house with the dogs trotting ahead. A couple hours later, my mom and I happened to look out the kitchen window and see Trace carrying around his prize.


Logically, I grabbed the camera, ran outside and snapped pictures of Trace and huge broccoli head that he had stolen out of pile for the pigs, when we weren't looking.

Oh, and I picked the first cauliflower yesterday! This variety is called Cheddar, I've had amazing results with it. The seeds are very strong and always comes up, it grows really well here in the Pacific Northwest, and the color doesn't bleach out when you steam or blanch it. I like Cheddar waaaaaaay more than Graffiti, another one that I grew for a few years, but quit growing this year. The seeds were so weak that maybe you would get two starts out of a six pack. Once they were in the ground they did okay. When steamed, the head bleached out and turned this kind of unappetizing blueish color. With seed so expensive, it just wasn't worth it.

We had this head for dinner, steamed, slathered with butter, along with our fettuccine. Delicious!! I wish I had thought to take a picture of it steamed.

** Dial-up users beware**

**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.

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.

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.

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!

It's Raining Dogs!

This post is dedicated to our wonderful aussies Mel and Trace.

"Did you call my name?"

Melvin ejoying the sun in his 'hole'

"What are you doing?"

Trace keeping a watchful eye on the fence that attacked and viciously bit him awhile ago.

"Don't I look cute?"


Mel and Trace 'helping' us haul a load of hay to the horse barn in March.


Looking regal. Melvin doesn't like the camera and looks away if you stand close to him and try and get a picture. To get these rare pictures of him looking directly at you, I have to stand at least ten feet away and use that wonderful zoom our camera has.

Sleeping beauty. I came back to the house to get a fresh battery and found Trace conked out on his chain.

Having fun in the chaff.

"Now I told you a million times, quit sticking your tounge out at me!!!"

"Much better, good dog!"

"I love gardening!"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to step on your carrots...."

"I'm going to pace around the bed of the hay truck and squeak until you show me how to get down."

"I love you Mom!"

"This is MY wool, go get your own!"

"Hey, that's mine!" "No, it's mine!"

"Can we share it?"

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and this post; I had alot of fun putting it together. The dogs wanted to help, but their paws where too big to make the keyboard work, and they thought the mouse was a field mouse because it had such a long tail.