Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

The acorns are clunking onto the buildings. The leaves are falling, though they haven't started to turn nice colors yet. I dug my sweet potatoes week before last and have used a few of them. I got about a 5 gallon bucket of them. They are nice to have on hand, so expensive in the stores. I made some sweet potato biscuits. They are pretty good, husband liked them. Ellen has learned how to open the fridge. So far she hasn't made a habit of it, but soon I will have to install a lock on the door. One of her "things" now is getting into the laundry basket, finding a pair of my underwear, sticking her head through a leg hole and wearing them around. I now make sure and put a clean pair on the edge where she can get them. She has figured out how to get in and out of her rocking chair and likes doing that off and on. She has figured out how to get off of the little rocking pony, but she can't figure out how to get back on so she sits there and howls until I put ...

( Disclaimer: if you are offended or grossed out by potty humor or things of a more visceral nature perhaps you should skip this post, but it IS a different kind of potty humor so read on if you dare.) Yesterday evening along about 6 PM a little fancied-up S-10 pickup truck went by here slowly and then pulled into the driveway and parked. Hubby was out in the barn milking so I just peeked out the window to see what was going on. The window was open so I could hear some guy on the phone talking about how they had a flat and no way to fix it, so please come help...then he gave directions. Because I knew hubby would be curious as to what was going on, I picked up the phone to call him out in the barn. He was already on the phone with one of his buddies so I just butted into the conversation and advised him. ( Of course at this point the buddy had to tell one of his stories about some drunk dude knocking on his door at 1 AM wanting to borrow gas to get home on. It's inevitable th...

I seem to be getting worse about blogging, but here I am back again. There has been quite a bit of stuff going on; some of it funny, some not. But I just am having trouble finding or making a chunk of time to get on the computer. Anyway. I will blog about today's adventure while it's fresh on my mind. Hubby has been working on being able to drill wells. He doesn't (I don't think) want to get certified to drill OTHER people's wells, but wants to be able to drill wells on his own property. Anyway. He has had this well drill for several years now and has been working on it off and on as he has time. Today he had everything set up to poke a hole in the ground out near Windyville on a test run. So we chucked the baby off to her granny's and off we went. As you can see we are in the middle of a thistle patch; so much so that you can just barely see my husband there at the right of the drill. The green tower is the well drill fully extended. My husband (to give you an ...

This past spring my pen pal from the Czech Republic and I exchanged seeds. She sent me a packet of pepper seeds; called ram's horn or paprika peppers. I can't find the packet at the moment to tell you for sure. I decided to grow them and planted a bunch of them. I had never grown peppers from seed before and was pleasantly surprised they turned out so successfully. Now, however, they are producing quite profusely and I am not sure what to do with them. As my husband would say, they are "firecracker" hot, and we don't "do" hot and spicy stuff. I cut up a few of them to freeze ( I do that with my green peppers too. Frozen peppers do well in stir fries and other cooked dishes ) and didn't use gloves; my hands burned for 3-4 hours afterwards; a lesson learned. I have given some away to folks at church and to a neighbor, but these 6 or 7 plants are producing so abundantly I am afraid I am going to have to toss some of them. Maybe I will freeze some...

Haven't had much time on computer lately and when I AM on here this blogger deal gives me a bad time. Doesn't like to take my posts for some reason. Anyway. Mother in law had quite a few watermelons so I tried a new recipe; this watermelon salsa. It's pretty easy, but dunno what I will use it on. You can Google and get tons of varieties of watermelon salsas. This version actually has one cup of chopped cantaloupe to go along with the 3 cups of chopped watermelon. Dairy news: August was a new heifer calf month; we got 4 of them, about one every week seemed like. Then I went up the road yesterday and there is yet another little heifer up there. Plus there are about 2 or 3 other cows close to calving. Hopefully a couple of them will be bull calves, we are running out of room for heifers. We had two escapee incidents last week. One was caused by a dead tree falling on the fence. Hubby went out and there were 6 weaner calves trotting around by the hay shed. They were ...

Peanut Butter ‘N’ Jelly Cake ½ cup butter, softened ¼ cup peanut butter 1-½ cups sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 3 teaspoons baking powder 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup milk Frosting ¼ cup butter, softened ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon peanut butter 1-¾ teaspoons vanilla extract 3 cups confectioners’ sugar 4-6 tablespoons milk ¾ cup grape jelly In large mixing bowl cream butter and peanut butter until smooth. Add sugar, mix well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well with each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine dry ingredients; add to peanut butter mixture alternately with milk. Pour into 2 greased/floured 9-inch round baking pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from the pans to wire racks to cool completely. For frosting; in mixing bowl cream butter and peanut butter. Add vanilla, confectioners’ sugar and enough milk to achieve spreading consistency. Place one cake layer on servin...