More pumpkins

Tonight the kids painted pumpkins for the grocery store’s pumpkin decorating contest.  

Parker decorated his pumpkin in about 2 1/2 minutes. 

Morgan took about 20 minutes to paint her pumpkin!

Hauling Bales

We finished hauling all the bales earlier this week…..all 2,500 of them are home now. 

The bales were scattered through the fields like this one, in ditches and in stacks in the fields.

15 bales are loaded on this wagon.  This is the same wagon that has been used since I was growing up on the farm.  We also have a semi trailer that is used to bring bales in from the ditches and fields farther away.    A bale is put on back of the tractor spike for weight and stability.      

Now I really wish I had a picture of the hay fences with all the new bales.

One BIG cow

I have driven by Salem Sue hundreds of times but can’t remember the last time I actually stopped for a visit.  

Carving our Pumpkins

 

   

Shakes

The other day the kids and I took burgers and shakes out to the field.  Of course the kids had to go for a ride.  

The Chickens

I spent the morning cleaning out the chicken coop.  Certainly not the best job around but it needed to be done. The chickens had worked their other bedding into fine particles so it was starting to get dusty in there.  But it really wasn’t that bad to do.  Just put on a face mask and hoody jacket.  The girls really did like it all cleaned up!!

Crab-apples

We have been looking for berries, plums or apples of any sort.  Most of these trees in the area did not produce this year.  We have been watching this tree to see how the apples turn out.  We checked it yesterday and found it full of these beautiful little crab-apples.  We picked one full tub of crab-apples today and there are SO many left on the tree.  I see a lot of work ahead of us…..

5 kittens and a dog

Who said that dogs and cats don’t get along!

Wonders of Combining

I often wonder how they manage to not run into each other when they get into tight corners like this.  

I know that the combines are loaded up with GPS and cool stuff like that but I wonder how they can see where they are going when it is so dusty out and the evening sun has been strangely bright.

Just some things I wonder about.  Coming soon….a photo tour of a combine!!

Park

Fun at the park!!

Freezing tomatoes

It took me less than an hour to get two ice cream pails of tomatoes into the freezer. 

I washed, cored and slit an X on the bottom.

They went into the boiling water for 30-60 seconds just until the skin started to curl like this.

 

I put them into ice water and was able to slip the skins right off. 

Then I chopped them up and put 2 cups into a ziploc freezer bag.  It’s a good thing I did not have a salsa mix on hand because this pan would not have made it to the freezer.  Freshly chopped garden tomatoes is a delicious smell.  Yum Yum!!

Super easy way to take care of some extra tomatoes.  These are great for adding to any hotdish, stew, or chili.

Frost

The weather forecast is calling for a very chilly night……freezing temps or very close to it.  It is 9pm and I really need to find some blankets, tarps and a flashlight.  There is a lot of stuff left in my garden and I don’t want to lose it to the frost.

It would be really great if the frost would hold off for just two more weeks.  I don’t have a big enough blanket to cover up all these guys!!!  They just need a little bit more time.

So I am off to take care of my garden.  Stay away frost!!

Green Peppers

This year I planted way too many pepper plants.  This is the third batch of peppers that I have cut up and froze.  There are just way too many of them.  I don’t know what else to do with them right now.  We are going to be eating a lot of chili this winter!! 

I started with about three ice cream pails of green peppers.  I washed and cored them.  A few went straight to the chickens because their skins were really thin or wilty.   Plus I just have way too many so I threw a few more to the chickens.  And the chickens love the green pepper cores.

I diced a bunch, sliced a few and left some in half.  I sliced these a different way this time.  The other bunch I sliced the long way. 

I have been using sandwich bags to divide these up into serving sizes.  Usually one cup of diced or about one pepper sliced.  Then I put a bunch of these baggies into a foodsaver freezer bag and vacuum seal it.  As I need peppers now, I just cut open the bag right below the seal, take out my little baggie, and reseal the bag with my foodsaver machine.  This seems to work really great for me. 

Late nights

The combines are still working long hours.  It has been four weeks since the wheat harvest started.  There were a few days that were too wet.

The fields are so dusty this year.  There is a lot of coughing and stuffy noses around here lately.