A gathering of days

This is my favorite summer or hot weather snack. This would also be good as a desert, too. All you need is some yogurt, and thawed raspberries. If you do use fresh ones, crush them a little, so that you will get some juice without having to put sugar on them. Then mix it together, find a good book and curl up in your favorite spot!

As you know, we spent Saturday cleaning out the shed on the Horse Barn, that the milk cow's yearling calf will live in during the winter and early spring.


It was deep - up past my knee! I'd say that it was two and a half to almost three feet deep in some places. Despite that we finished just after quarter to six in the evening. It's amazing how tightly packed it gets in the corners. For the last three or hours of the cleaning, I took a pitchfork and dug out the corners and then forked it into the bucket.


Afterwards, my hands were so sore from the seven or eight water blisters that I got from not wearing gloves (I caught heck about that), that I could hardly type.

Then after that was done, Dad hauled a few bucket loads of sawdust and spread it in the shed for the first layer of bedding.


Yesterday afternoon, Dad started baling the "wet" hay. Despite being lighter than the previous bales, we got less by about twenty. I forgot until I heard it, how much I like the sound of the baler and how much I had missed it, though I am glad to be almost done with the hay. The picture above was not loaded last night, it's the last load we hauled from that field until now, we just never unloaded it.



When I was reviewing last night, the pictures I took yesterday, I was looking at that field and thinking how long ago that we cut it and how nicely the grass was coming back. We were done with it by the twenty-fourth of July. That seems so long ago, but it's really only a month a half or so.

Cleaning the barn...

Well, today we're, actually Dad is, cleaning out the Horse Barn today. Finally! We were going to clean it last week, but we got that big downpour, soaking the ground again, so we had to postpone it until today.

Paula and to everybody else who commented on my last post; I promise that I'll answer your comments tomorrow, 'cause I don't have time to answer them today, please be patient. Have a great weekend! :D

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.