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Showing posts from September, 2012

Were they; Separated at birth?

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This past summer during the drought we were forced to sell off many of our young heifers due to the fact that we just couldn't afford to poke so much hay down their gullets.  Hay that was supposed to be for winter months, not summer months. Now we are in the process of replacing these heifers.  Hubby wants to get springers (heifers soon expecting their first calves) and dry cows (cows that aren't milking and are expecting a calf in a few weeks).  A couple weeks ago we went down to a small dairy by Rogersville and took a look at this guy's springer heifers.  Hubby liked what he saw so we bought two of them.  In the picture above is one of them; the one in the foreground, looking off to my left.  What struck me was the strange similarities of their facial markings.  It is difficult to see the markings clearly of the heifer in the background, but the main difference is that on the one in the foreground; the...

Green Beans, the Arora Borealis and the Taste of Christmas

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Or...what I did for most the the morning of Sept 11, 2012. This past spring in my garden I planted my first half of a garden bed of green beans on May 29, 2012, the second half I planted about 2-3 weeks later.  I watered them all the rest of the spring.  No blooms.  Hubby watered them for 2 weeks while Ellen and I were in California.  No blooms.  We came back home and I kept them watered through an interminably hot, hot summer; daytime temps 90 degrees and over for at least 2 months...sometimes over 100 degrees for a week or two at a time.  No blooms.  I watered them when they looked so wilted and decrepit I thought I ought to stop watering them.  No blooms. But I persevered. Hubby said nothing, but had severe doubts, I believe. But finally a few weeks ago, when the temps dipped below the 90s at last; LO! to my everlasting relief my green beans started to bloom!  THREE MONTHS after planting...

Run, Bob, run!!

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I went out to our 'west' garden this morning.  The only thing the deer have left us are the tomatoes.  Not that the vines are actually producing any tomatoes, but there are LOTS of vines.  And on closer inspection, there are-or were-also lots of visitors chomping on said vines. You can't see them very clearly in the picture; but I found SEVEN of these nasty buggars on my tomato vines.  They are Bob the Tomato's worst nightmare; tomato horn worms. Bob, stop smiling like an idiot; RUN, BOB, RUN!!!