The simplest things here are never without a bit of excitement.  We’ve needed a rug for the family room ever since we refinished the hardwood floors, which was two years ago.  With the cold weather just around the corner, I increased my search for the ‘perfect’ rug, one that would not show the dirt, fit the room in size and style and still be inexpensive or let’s just say it…cheap.

Overstock and I found it!  It arrived and I dove into setting it up the moment I arrived home from school.  It was very good, that Number Two Son was upstairs as I would need just a little help moving some of the furniture.  I hollered upstairs to him,

“Would you mind helping me put the new rug down?”

‘Okay, let me know when you need me.’

I started moving the simple furniture, moved the couch and let out the loudest girly scream you might have ever heard!  Dead mouse…grey and flattened…and gross.

Back to the stairwell and more hollering upstairs,

“Number Two!!!!”

‘Dead thing?”

“YES!”  

I paced in the living room as I waited for the Dead Thing Removal Crew (Number Two Son and a strong stomach) to clean up the dead mice, yes mice as in more than the one I saw, it had a friend.  Two dead mice and it was gross and it would be better if The Damn Cat could do her job, more out in the open…or something.

…and the rug…fabulous and currently mouse free.

Although we might have had a varied and appreciated list of visitors, there have been a few that we have been missing…and you know who you are.  This last week, two very dear and precious friends made their way (finally) to Glory Farm.  I cannot tell you how excited I was as their arrival days approached.  I’d often be heard to say,

“Oh, I just can’t believe that tomorrow I get to see….”

Fall is a wonderful time to visit.  The leaves are changing and the weather is cool, but not cold.  They jumped into our life here, and this shot of feeding animals is a much better picture than that of her scooping up poop, but she willingly did both!An amazing and creative soul, My Friend J is walking thorough those days of confusion in mid-life, with her Dad passed away and her Mother failing and life being life…she needed more people to love on her and I knew just the place to take her…Quilting!You do not need to live nearby to be part of this group and with fabric in hand and a wonderful new friend to help her along.  My Friend J was quickly putting together colors and designs and excited…and I was happy.  We think she needs to come each season to rest, to care for animals, to create and be part of our home.

We’d barely waved her out the door and our second set arrived with a second set of hugs and delight that they were finally here!Fun and funny we’d had no doubt that this would be a time we’d treasure.  As Realtors together, we’d weathered our share of client storms, family storms, storm-storms and the like.  What did they want to do?  Just hang out…and help out and enjoy the animals…and did I mention help out?  She and I caught up about kids, clients, and life as we dug up the vegetable garden, burned the slash pile, split and stacked wood.As a Radio Advertising Salesman, he knows something about hard work, and yet he’d warned us that he wasn’t handy, but he was strong…did we need something moved?  We did not realize that giving him a chain saw would create a sort of single-minded Paul Bunyan (Pablo Bunyan, if I want to honor his Hispanic roots).  We could not actually get Pablo Bunyan to stop…there were just a few more logs he needed to conquer…and kept saying how much fun he was having…yep, we get it.When we are not working them, we love to drive our friends through this beautiful valley we call our home, so thankful for them in our lives.  The fact that they each leave with plans to return, well, that is just even better.  We love sharing our new life with those we love…and we are blessed.

Unfortunately it would seem that despite the wonders of modern science, our recent efforts to get Agnes bred did not work.  How would we know?  Well, one cycle after ‘the fact’, we had a large bellowing black cow on our hands calling out to the bull down the street.  She bellowed for 24 hours…loudly and often, as if to say…”Hey, there Big Boy (wink, wink) want to play?”

Number Two Son stated,  “Mom, I think there is something wrong with Agnes.”

My Girl who was trying to sleep through it all, just sent me a text.Agnes is not a milk cow.  Her job is to produce cute little Black Angus calves.  We needed a new plan, which is why we had all three cattle in the corral the other night trying to load one very large black cow, one medium-sized black steer into our stock trailer as they and we ran in circles around one three-legged black heifer who managed to always be in the way.  It didn’t help, that the hose pipe had sprung a leak the night before and we were often moving through 4-6 inches of mud.  Yep, we are rookies.  Next time we will use a loading shoot, but eventually, we did get the pair loaded up.

Agnes had a date, well, truly it is more like a slumber party.  She was going to spend a week with Justin Case, Our Friend the Farmer’s small bull.  When I was making the phone calls to arrange the ‘slumber party’, I felt a bit like a pimp, but I guess most Ranchers do not refer to the process as “Hey, does your bull want some action?”

We are hopping that they get along really well! As Bob is too little to be weaned, he had to go with Mama as well, so now, just Elsie is home missing her friends and…. bellowing.

With cooler nights we returned to working on the attic bathroom, we could get away with the gaping hole we called a ‘window’ for summer, but not any longer.  I scoured our old window supply to find one that would fit the opening to no avail.  The thought crossed our mind (briefly) to order one new…paying money for it, waiting for it and it would be ‘new’ in our old house…nope, I decided to keep looking.  I climbed up a small ladder to the side of the old chicken house, which currently houses nothing, and stole/re-purposed a window from the old shed.

The window was a tad too small, so My Loving Spouse had to build it up a bit.  Build the frame, paint it and install the window….all before we lifted it in place with these important words…

“Be careful when we put it in place we don’t push it out the hole and it goes crashing to the ground..”

‘Ahh…good to know…that would be a Bad British Word’

Luckily for us all that didn’t happen and we installed it like pros.It swings open on the side for ventilation like many windows in England.  My Loving Spouse was thinking ahead about small children playing with the window when they are supposed to be showering and the window slamming shut on their fingers, not that any of our future grandchildren would do something like that, but you might be visiting with yours and they would probably try it.The hardware is quite pretty and could possibly be wasted on a bathroom window, but oh well.Small steps once again, and although the look might still be a tad rough, if you are the one sitting on the only other functioning item in this bathroom in the middle of a cold night, you’d probably think it is just lovely.

The herd is hungry AND we’ve been getting ready to winterize the lawn mowers (yes, Southern California…’winterizing’ really is a thing).  We see long grass and think one thought, ‘how can we get the hungry herd to the growing grass?  The last time we tried to use one of the horses as a lawn mower, it didn’t go well.  However, now we have a small, hungry little horse and a dog yard full of juicy green grass to eat.  Peppa was a happy little girl spending her day in the dog yard and the dogs did not mind having her at all.Normally, looking out the window and seeing this site, would cause a LOT of running around and shouting those words no one wants to hear…”THE COWS ARE OUT!”However, we’d spent the morning moving the herd behind the house to mow down the grass, fill their belly’s and do a bit of fertilizing as well.  We installed a temporary electric fence to keep them out of trouble and then moved them in.  Agnes and the big horses took to the grass in a blink of an eye.  Elsie on the other hand is not playing with a full deck and took the longest time to move into the grass filled area.  She stood at the gate’s opening for 15 minutes while the rest of the herd was eating away.Even Bob left his best friend to gorge on fresh grass….Eventually, everyone was in…grazing on long green grass…mowing it down and saving us one more day of hay.

My Loving Spouse had been worried about what he was going to do with all his down time during THE knee recovery period this summer.  (So, we know how that went!)  There always seems to be some small new thing he is interested in doing and manages to prepare well in advance to do it…which usually means buying tools.He procured a collection of leather working tools from Ebay and started watching ‘how to’ videos on YouTube which always seemed to include the sound of hammering….or a tap tap tap tap tapping.  I call it ‘Man Quilting’ and just like my quilting, he has a lot of projects in mind for this winter.  Belts, saddle numbers, rifle slings…and if you know him, you know he’s most interested in making things for others….need some chaps?

P 1

Peppa is improving by the day.  As her feed is now plentiful, her coat is starting to come in better and some of her scars improving.  She is not as shy about being handled and we touch her and talk to her daily with My Loving Spouse working on leading her.  At night she is put into her small corral so that she can have special grain, but more importantly get into her shelter.  Peppa shares The Red Condo with the pigs at night.  Red pigs on one side, Red horse on the other with one small common wall to separate the two.  Peppa loves her herd and our only concern now is that she might think she is a cow.She spends the day out with the cows, who are kind and gentle with her.  No one bites her or shoos her off the food.  Bob and Peppa are buddies and it is a happy, growing herd.  When the cows lie down to cud, Peppa lies down with them to nap.

P2

The pigs, Maggie & Winnie are just plain funny.  They are getting bigger by the day, but not so big, that they both cannot nap in their feeding trough waiting for their next meal.The pigs get an assortment of special (expensive) pig food and left overs.  They prefer the left overs, preferably pancakes with a bit of maple syrup on it and the odd bit of bacon, (but don’t tell them where it came from).  The pigs are such messy eaters that the chickens have all taken to hanging out around the pig pen to feast on the food strewn about.  The chickens have so much to eat right now, that we’ve stopped throwing out their chicken meal, because they prefer pig left overs.

P3

There will be no pictures of this one, but suffice it to say with the cattle/pony herd being kept around the barn there is a lot of poop.  We invested in a better poop rake and that thing and I are getting a work out.  Anyone want some manure?

P4

The ‘P’s wouldn’t be complete with out a few pumpkins.  Fall is my very favorite time of year!  So I’ve given a small nod to the season, which just makes me smile.  I hope you have a perfectly peaceful day with a herd to hang out with, plenty of food and a place you love to call home.

My tractor Blue and I were hired to mow a field.  There were no bogs, ponds or irrigation ditches.  I carefully mowed around the 5 water spouts in the field, leaving them all intact.  I did not run into anything or run over anything.  I did not need to rent special equipment to drag me out.  I was doing a stellar job, mowing the field for fire abatement, mowing down the dry brush.  Even the Ellensburg Fire Department said it wasn’t my fault that I set the field on fire…it was just an ‘accident’.There I was doing a great job mowing, when I smelled something burning.  Being a careful and cautious tractor driver, I was concerned that something was wrong with my tractor, so I turned Blue off.  I still smelled fire and found that the metal plate near the exhaust was covered in burning brush.  I jumped off of the tractor and tried to stomp it out, then grabbed my water bottle to pour water on it.  The grass fell to the ground and quickly caught the dried brush in the field on fire.  I jumped back on Blue in an effort to remove my tractor from danger, but the fire was spreading quickly so I leaped (not regular ‘Grandmother leaping’, but more like ‘Oh, holy Hannah My Tractor is on fire leaping’) off the tractor again to get myself out of the fire….and called 911.

The owner of the field was there at the time, which made me feel a lot better, because I was sort of stunned and feeling very badly and waiting for my tractor to explode like in the movies.

“I’m sorry I set your field on fire…”

‘Oh, you did me a favor, historically farmers burned their fields’.   Yes, this is a good guy, who understands that ‘accidents happen’.

Luckily, I had been mowing the field from the outside in, so the fire did not spread to the adjoining fields as easily, which was excellent as the neighbor had a huge stack of hay and a pile of firewood logs at the fence’s edge.  I was fairly shook up, as I’ve lived most of my life NOT having to call the fire department and say things like, “There’s a fire, I started it…”My Loving Spouse showed up, managed to move Blue, who had a few parts melted, but all the important parts still worked just fine.  He spent most of the afternoon laughing and saying, “It’s never boring being married to you!”

So we went out to diner…because I needed a good burger…and a small drink or two.The next day I went back to finish mowing the field, because it is good to finish what you start….unless what you start is a fire…

Although the pumpkins were the most fun to grow, our vegetable garden did produce a plethora of food for us all.  I was very proud of our bounty and used the final produce to feed my Zeta sisters while they were here.

Beets…prepared by My Loving Spouse…boiled with just a hint of vinegar.

If you’ve never had fresh beets, you’ve never really had beets at all!
Buttered carrots…Green beans to which he added almonds…Cabbage, cabbage, cabbage…huge heads of which we made a salad.

Cabbage, layered with grated soft cheese, dried cranberries, pecans and drizzled with honey.

So good, it was gone in seconds!Waste?

Not with this many animals about…

Chickens eat zucchini raw.

Horses like carrots, even the odd-shaped ones.

Pigs eat almost everything else, but the cabbage..

it goes to the cows.

Agnes loves cabbage!

She ate all the cabbage parts not suitable for humans…

She prefers hers without nuts…

……

Update:

Here is the Cabbage Salad recipe