Halloween Fun!

Dressing up

Trick or Treat

Eating "bones, skeletons, and monster cookies"

Chili and Cauliflower-Cheese soup

Pumpkin Ale

Jack-o-lanterns

Candy

Grandkids

Halloween!

A little chillier, a little darker, a little quieter...

 

The days are getting a little chillier, a little darker, a little quieter, a little shorter. I've had to break out my gloves and warm winter hat.  I'm not very well-adjusted yet to these colder days of 45 degrees for a high.   The hens have a heat lamp in their coop now that turns on at about 5:00 am and stays on until the sun rises fully, giving them a little extra light which stimulates egg production.  Twenty eggs a day makes me think it's a good idea.  This afternoon as the sun sank low, I noticed several hens and the rooster standing on one leg.  The ground is getting colder now too and I guess they are feeling it.

The weaning has begun.  Yesterday we got the cows and calves in and put these yellow nose flaps in the calves' noses.  The flaps are made of a flexible plastic with little nobs that stay in the their nostrils.  The flaps prevent the calves from sucking their mothers which eventually results in a weaned calf.  Weaning is one of the most stressful times in a calf's life.  Separation from mom as well as separation from their milk supply can cause stress and sickness.  Our hope with this new-to-us weaning method is that the sickness and stress is greatly reduced during the process.  In about 5-6 days we will bring the cows and calves back in and sort the calves away from their mothers to complete the weaning.  You might wonder why weaning is necessary.  The cows are pregnant right now and the double demands of the calf requesting milk and the developmental needs of fetus-calf puts a large nutritional demand on the cow. The calf is getting the majority of its nutrition from grazing now anyway, but the attachment to mom is still strong.

 I picked the last of the calendula flowers and parsley to dry.  

I'll use calendula in my body creams and parsley for cooking.

With the cold, fall days comes my desire to bake.  I especially like to bake bread and EAT bread.  I've come to the conclusion that I don't like store-bought bread.  For years when the kids were at home, I made our daily bread.  At least ten loaves a week.  After they flew the coop, I made bread only occasionally, but now I want to go back to baking all the bread we eat.  It's just the two of us, so it's not quite the chore it once was, and we both appreciate the crusty, rustic loaf and the healthful goodness it provides.

 I made a sourdough starter this past week and used it for these loaves.  They are a mix of white and whole wheat flour along with some ground flax seed and honey.  There's no oil in the bread except for what was in the pans to keep it from sticking.  But I sometimes like to butter the crusts of the loaves when they come out of the oven, and then there's the butter that must be smeared over each slice before eating! I found that by kneading the dough for an extra long time (maybe 15 minutes) the interior was very soft and the exterior crunchy. I think this bread would even make a good sandwich loaf.  I had a "good do" this time!  I've had my share of failures.  I was thinking that maybe tomorrow morning I'd use some of the sourdough starter to make sourdough pancakes for breakfast.  Doesn't that sound yummy?  Yep, I think so too.

If you watched The Great British Baking Show on Sunday, did you also watch the short clip about the  National Loaf?  During WWII England's Ministry of Food established a wheatmeal loaf as part of a food-saving plan.  The Brits preferred a white loaf, but because Britain imported 70% of it's grain at the time, it was determined that the national loaf must use the whole grain, thereby using all of the wheat grain without wasting any of it.  Although the people did not like the national loaf,  the wholewheat bread proved much more nutritional than the white breads.  I prefer the taste of whole grains and seeds in my bread loaves.  What kinds of bread do you prefer?


"How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?" --Julia Child

Leaves are falling...

Remember that cold week I told you about?  The one where the low temperatures were hovering around 22 degrees?  Yeah, that one.  Well, it's long past and now it's on to Indian Summer, just what I wanted.  Cool mornings, warm, sunny afternoons, and cool, crisp nights.  It's good weather for me, and it's good weather for leaf-turning.  The poplar tree in the yard is releasing its golden leaves while most of the other trees are just beginning to turn.  Gold is the prominent color here except for some rich red Halogeton which grows in the alkali flats in some of our pastures.  It's pretty to look at, but poisonous to livestock. 

I've been doing lots of things lately.  I took a hike with my son, GentleSasquatch, in Spearfish  Canyon where we went to Community Caves and then to 420 Cave.  (Here's a link to his blog.) Both were steep climbs with high look-outs amidst sandstone rock caves.  It was great fun.  I so loved the varied mountain plants and awe-full views from rock cliffs.  I kept wanting Sasquatch to take pictures, but we both knew they would never turn out just like we saw them with our own two eyes.  S. made the comment:  "The best cameras in the world cannot see like the human eye.  They only wish they could capture what we see."  True.  He does have some nifty fotos on his blog of the views from 420 Cave if you care to take a look.  Here's us (duo-selfie).

I finished up two batches of Zucchini Salsa.  O man!  It was good stuff!  The only tweak I made to the first batch was to add five jalapenos to the recipe for a little extra heat.  The second batch I added more jalapenos for more heat.  The recipe was one of the very best canned recipes I've made.  The taste and texture is a lot like Pace Picante sauce.  Click here for the dandy recipe.

Our local sweet corn grower is calling it quits for the season today.  JJo and I went a couple days ago to fetch several dozen ears of that delicious sweet corn to freeze.  She processed six dozen and I did ten.  By the end of the day, I had 44 pints of delicious corn-off-the-cob for my freezer stash, much more than Hubs and I need, but we can always share it with our kids and guests.

I think I'm done canning except for applesauce.  My dad's apple trees are bursting with beautiful apples so I intend to get some homegrown sauce made and maybe a little apple butter too.  Dad has an apple press; I'm hoping to help him press some fresh apple juice.  Yum!

Our basement, which had the sewer backup problem, is now fixed.  It feels like a totally new place, even though all that was done was drywall repair, texture, and paint, and a new carpet laid in the bedroom and living room, hall, and stairs.  Oh, it's so nice.  All I have left is to finish painting the closet doors and set up the bedroom again.  I'm so blessed to have CarpetnerSon here to fix things up for me.

Now the men are on to a new project -- building a shop that looks like an old barn.  I'm so excited.  CarpenterSon really needed his own space to do his thing and so the men decided to go ahead and build it while we've still got the good weather to get it up.  So far they have the cement poured and the rafters built.  Next the walls will go up and the rafters too.  They'll try to enclose it before wet weather comes our way.

I think that's all that is on my mind for now.  One more thing that I've been thinking about, actually.  From My Utmost for His Highest today, excerpts:

Show to the other man what God has shown to you; and God will give you ample opportunities in actual life.  To be a disciple means that we deliberately identify ourselves with God's interests in other people.  "That you love one another as I have loved you." God's life in us expresses itself as God's life, not as human life trying to be godly.

What are you up to these days?