August was a slow journey, but flew by.

 I still don't know how that happens. While we were experiencing August, every day slogged as slow as molasses in January, but upon reflection, was as busy as a hive before the first chill and flew by like that final weekend before school starts.

The storms were large, but coming at a much slower pace, requiring the irrigation system to aid in the watering. We were loosing more water through evaporation than was falling from the sky. Only on one evening, did a lovely cold front come through to give us a break from the dreadful humidity, and the dry air provided us a rare, clear view of the Milky Way in July.

August means the start of the fair season. Country fairs come first, but the thought of going in the heat and humidity was off-putting. I certainly had no plans to enter anything this year. I had already entered in our country and all adjoining counties (which is allowed in the rules) and won blue and red ribbons.  Between the challenge being old, the drive, and the weather, I was simply not in the mood this year.

Canning season was underway with a fury. The jar cabinet in the basement was bare, and there was always something in the pressure canner; beans, peas, beef, chicken, stew meats, corn, jellies, sauces, tomato sauce and purees.

Orange Jelly

The grapes came in finally towards the middle of the month and cooked up to the most lovely shade of rose jelly. It was then I had the brilliant idea to enter the State Fair, a four hour round trip. I dreaded that idea until I found out that I could mail my entry. Done.  I entrusted both a jar of the jelly and a jar of my plum duck sauce to the USPost.

More canning and Suzie filled my days of waiting.

Sometime in the month of July, Suzie managed to pull the tendon in her good back knee. In reality it wasn't good. The knee that she came to use with freshly repaired had been neglected so long by her previous owners that she weakened and wore out her other knee.  We still don't know how she did it, but she had surgery and was home on the same day, walking around and being pampered and drugged to the moon for three days, but wanting to play.  She was a little slower for a few days after that, but honestly almost back to her normal self within a week. Although we DO throttle her back and won't let her go on long walks or horse around like a crazy dog, yet. 

In the midst of the canning frenzy, there was, of course, a needed comedic moment. So again, enjoy at my expense.

I had spent the past week canning and have barely come up for air. I was getting 20 pounds of tomatoes every 2-3 days. The peas were done. The greenbeans were done. Plum sauce was done. And I was in in the middle of jelly. Chicken soup was done. Ground beef and stew meat was done. Chunk and shredded chicken was done. I still needed to do sweet corn (it's not quite ripe yet.) Beyond that it's just keeping up with the tomatoes until the frost kills them off. Then I'll just preserve up left overs as they come, spaghetti sauce and such.
Last night I did 10 quarts of chicken soup and this morning I noticed one didn't seal. So I wasn't thinking and dumped it down the drain. It was like that slow motion moment when you lock your keys in the car at the same time you are slamming the door shut. Ya. Shredded chicken down the drain. Of course it clogged the T-joint. I have to unclog it sooner than later, I have 40 pounds of tomatoes on the counter. I can't can without water. I have a cake to bake and dinner to do. SO.....

So here I am with 15 pounds of simmering grapes on the stove (it's a timed thing) and a sink about two inches deep in water, and I have to take the underside apart and clear it. grrrrr.

Then I take it apart only to find the 6qt bowl I've put under the plumbing isn't enough. SO NOW I'm sitting on the floor, with grapes simmering on the stove, a bowl filled to the brim dripping black chicken water onto the old towel I DID have the brains to put under the bowl, and using the flat of my hand to block the pipe from the garbage disposal. OK, NOW WHAT?! (Can you picture this?? It's funny as hell.)

My brain briefly pondered dumping the bowl in the sink. DUH, I can't lift it with one hand while my finger is in the dyke. and oh ya, that water would be going into the broken sink. OK NOW WHAT??? OK need another bowl, pot, anything. Hmmm... So now I'm holding back sludge with the flat of my right hand and turning my body around like some kind of sadistic version of Welcome to Adulting Twister, so that I can reach the pot cabinet opposite the sink on my left, you know the cabinet that holds all my CAST IRON POTS.

I can reach the knob to open the cabinet no problem, but I cannot reach the top of the slide out drawer to pull the 30 pound drawer of iron pots towards me to grab a 6 qt pot. So keeping my hand on the drain hole, I twist more and send my left foot around and up to the lip of the drawer. (God, I'm glad I'm still bendy.)The whole time the timer on the microwave is counting down to turn off the gas for the jelly juice. I snag the drawer, grab the big dutch oven and twist myself and it towards the sink again. Now where to put the damn thing? The other bowl is taking up the room I need and the garbage disposal is in the way. I have to hold the bowl with one hand long enough to get the other away from the hole, then I can two hand it. Geesh, what a smelly mess.get the whole thing drained, and the grey water (literally) dumped down the utility sink in the laundry, and clean the pipes, the cabinet and put the whole thing back together and sanitized. The timer on the jelly juice had 40 seconds to spare. I swept and mopped the floors and dealt with the juice.

What an adventure that was.

They boys took the month of July in stride. What else are they supposed to do?

They spent a lot of time lounging in the long cool grass in the evenings, their afternoons napping in front of the giant barn fans, and their mornings in their favorite shady spots chewing their cud. What a life,eh?

The garden was still plugging along although the tomatoes were struggling. The large hauls of the early weeks of August came to a screeching halt, and became a trickle. I would harvest anything orange or red before each storm to avoid splitting on the day after the rains. My counter top was covered in smaller and smaller piles of tomatoes ripening, awaiting the mill and the simmering pot. Although, I'm sure the men were happy to not come home every day to the house smelling of oregano.

A couple of the beefsteak tomatoes threw me a few giants, which Chris was more than happy to eat atop hamburgers, on salad, broiled with cheese,or simply sliced and salted on a plate.

One of the gorgeous Prairie Grasshoppers. These
are the same species that are known for the great
black plague of hoppers of the prairie lore. In great numbers
they were known to eat anything organic, including tanned
leathers on their march through the countryside. Luckily here, the 
hens keep their numbers in check. 

The literal heart of one of the giant tomatoes.

As the end of the month approached, so did the opening of the State Fair.  A weekday visit was out of the question, as the dog couldn't go too long without company or a trip outside. Doc would be home one the weekend, and while opening day Saturday would be in the humid 90s, and Sunday would be only in the
low 80s and dry, I chose Saturday as other shops I wanted to visit would be open. So off I went to enjoy a couple hours at the fair.  It was a quick trip and a blur but it was a nice outing. Imagine my surprise when I went to the Open Class exhibit hall and came across this!

The Catawba grape jelly from our
vines came in first place, and the plum
sauce came in fourth. I'm happy
with that!

Dewy, hot mornings are August's trademark.

The month of August decided to not end on a quiet note. The thermostat decided to die on the final Sunday morning of the month and no one could come to replace it's digital goodness until sometime on Tuesday.  No thermostat, no AC. Mother Nature having the sense of humour that she does, cranked up the heat and humidity on Monday to feeling like 105'F.  There was no wind at all, and I couldn't get the house cool. That night, with lightning in the distance, we slept outside on the deck, which was only a few degrees cooler than inside the house. We abandoned the deck about 1am when the lightning became too bright and the mosquitoes found us.  Joker that she is, the day the thermostat arrived, was breezy, gorgeous, and only 74 degrees. 

November -

 Well another month gone by. ( Forgot to hit publish on this post. Sorry about that.)

Suzie is still a little dream.  She has high anxiety problem.  And who can blame her, she was bounced around from home to home and lived at the veterinary surgery for months.  So every morning, she takes a doggie Prozac, hidden in a marshmallow (she's figured out liver treats, cheese, bread, etc so marshies it is), then she gets her enzyme doggie bone that cleans her teeth every morning.

Her leg is healed.  

Her ears are healed.

She's still a nut and VERY routine orientated.  Which is fine by us.

She has her own group of followers on Twitter (@WthrLdy) as Coding With Beagles - she's such a helper when it comes to computer and other house tasks.

Our weather has been fantastic, considering what it could be.  We could use precipitation, but the temperature has been in the 50s and 60s, and the sun has been a near constant companion.

The alpacas are packing on their winter fleeces, so SOMETHING much be in our future.  So far we've managed a quick passing snowstorm, but then hit 70 the next two days.  Then we had a beautiful, albeit, annoying, ice storm.  Then we had more heat.

The hens are doing their thing.  The teenagers, not knowing any better, are still laying away.  So we still have 6-10 eggs a day, which is wonderful with the holiday baking season looming.

I sold two of my antique typewriter and worked my way down to owning just one.  Then I found another I just HAD to bring home, clean up, repair and refinish.  Ya.  It's amazing.  She works like a dream, sounds fantastic, and suits me to a T.

 She was one hot mess.

But now...

While working on ANOTHER project I opened up a high, high kitchen cupboard and found, not the item I was looking for, but rather a set of dishes I though I had gotten rid of 6 years ago.  Wondering if I had just cleaned and sorted all the upper cupboards and DIDN"T get around to getting rid of them, I opened all the upper niches. Yup, more dishes.  All in all 8 sets of dishes in all the cupboards combined.  That included our daily use dishes and our wedding china.  OK, that had to change.  Every time we moved, it seems I changed up the dishes to suit the locale.  Kind of like the throw pillows of the kitchen.  

Well that had to stop.

I put of plain dishes aside for the boy to take with him some day.  Put the wedding china away.  And the daily dishes and the Franciscan apples could stay, everything else had to go!

Friends, neighbors, Goodwill.....and finally the Etsy shop for the pricier odds and ends that might a hole in someone else's collection.

All in all it was a busy month.  A good month.

What do you do when you are up to your eyeballs in work?

Meet Suzie.  Yep, we've finally gone and done it.  It's been 16 years since we've had a dog.  We stopped moving around the country 6 years ago, and for the past two years, something just seemed to be missing.  A ranch needs a dog. It's not easy for an OCD to have a dog.  Mucky feet, accidents, dog hair, and doggie smells go against just about every fiber of a clean freak, but then again, so does all the other ickies that come with keeping up a ranch.  But up until now, I could keep the ick outside the house.

We talked the pros and cons to death.  But no matter how many times the cons won out and I came back to the world of the sane, another dog would pop up on my humane society adoption page.  Of course our search reached it's peak about the same time the whole country was snatching up every lonely animal in every shelter.  We were far down on the lists as each fur ball came up for adoption.  I decided it was Fate's way of making sure the right dog came to us.  We applied for 5 dogs over the period of a few months, but we weren't first in line.  The last dog came from a family of small children, and when the decision came between us and another family, the adoption agency chose the family that had children.  Needless to say, I as heartbroken again, and was ready to give up.  On a whim I opened up my adoption pages.

There she was.  She was older, over 8.  She was given up on. She was very broken. We locked eyes.  She was mine.  Fate pushed all those other dogs aside so that I could step in and save her.  She was more than twice her allowable weight.  She had blown out her knee and the muscle had atrophied.  She had to have major surgery and two full months of hard rehabilitation.  No families wanted to step up and work with her.  Three rescue societies and a kind vet refused to give up on her.  So we wouldn't either.

She's been here for three weeks and she's a riot.  She's a full blown beagle.  Her nose rules her brain.  She has a couple of habits we are breaking her of, like sofa sleeping or trashcan raiding, but that's trivial.  As a hunting dog, we do choose to keep her away from the livestock altogether.  Although she can watch them from the deck.  She finds the alpacas intriguing and the chickens are something to be gruffed and hummed at. 

She is glued to Doc when he gets home.

Sometimes she'll just wander around the house looking for him or sit in the laundry room, waiting for him to walk into the house.  I'm the big meanie who gives her her medicine (ear medicine is NOT a favorite), does her physical therapy, takes her on therapy walks, gives her baths, shoos her off the sofa, puts her in the kennel when it's time to run errands or do ranch chores. But Doc is the king of the beagle universe. LOL.

So welcome Suzie, I'm sure you'll be quite the added feature to the blog.