Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

There is all too often much to be said about head-butting and conflict between neighbors in rural communities.  In every one of the two or three homesteading forums or pages that I have belonged to on social media over the past 20 years one constant complaint is about neighbors; trespassing dogs, kids or other livestock, shooting, peeping toms, thieving...and whatever other annoying rural eccentricity you can name.   Here, however, I am pleased to say that although we are all eccentric in our own ways, the Howards not the least, we form a pleasant community and are always ready to come together and lend a hand.   Yesterday was a case in point.   Young Zach, from several miles up the road, had acquired a new bull for his beef herd, but before he went home he had to stop by Keith's place across the road.  Keith does large equipment repairs.  Whilst Mr Headings was parked there, the bull decided he was tired of this nonsense and leaped out of th...

 My sister-in-law has an old cherry tree next to her garage that has been there for many, many years....longer than I have been here, which will soon be 20 years this fall.  Every year it produces cherries, some years more than others.  I think Gail gets some cherries most every year, but as a rule the birds clear the tree well before she can get many cherries for herself.  This year the little tree is just loaded and the birds haven't touched them.  We were perplexed about this for a time until we decided it must be because they have been feasting on cicadas.  Why else would they pass up a tree full of bright red cherries?   Yesterday Ellen and I picked about 2 quarts of them.  I have pitted one container worth and need to put the other. They look so pretty in this colander. My friend Decie put this colander into my basket when we were browsing through a Good Will store in Portland one day.  She told me I'd use it all the time.  Ha...

 Friday afternoon, when I had just about half hour left of my shift at my caregiving duties, I got simultaneous texts from Ellen and Gary. Ellen's said; "Answer Dad's text." And Gary's said: "Fridge boobytrapped." Then he sent this picture. A carton of eggs had leaped out of the fridge when he'd opened it. Then a bit later, I got the text from Gary: "It's taken care of"  or something to that effect. Then I got this picture. There must have been 5-7 eggs there.  Down the hatch they went. At least they get kudos for being resourceful with clean up duties and not letting spilled food go to waste.

 Time keeps getting away from me and far as daily blogging.  Once upon a time I'd thought that when I reached my 50s I'd have all the time in the world. Ha! The Lord had other plans.  And events just seem to coincide.  Life is like that, I am learning. In the meantime, while life is happening and I am dealing with it, the weather has been very wet.   I don't really have a photo to show how wet it has been, so here is my onion patch full of weeds. I have weeded it since taking this picture, but it has been hard to stay on top of the weeding.  When it is wet like this, even when you till the weeds often have one tendril of root left in the wet dirt and just recover and continue to grow.  The dirt never dries out long enough for the entire root to dry. I do not know if it's the abundance of rain or not, but very few of the seeds to any of my vining plants or squash have been germinating.  Only 3 out of maybe 15-20 cucumber seeds sprouted, and ZE...

 Here's an "I Remember" post; this time about roses.   Gary and Ellen got me this Knockout Rose bush some years ago for Mother's Day, I believe.  Although it could have been for my birthday, but I think that would have been too late in the season for Walmart to have rose bushes.  It does quite beautifully in spring, but the Japanese beetles tend to try and destroy it later in the summer.  I wage a merciless war on them until early fall, when their "season" starts to come to an end.  I remember back in the days of my childhood on 4550 Woods Lane, we had an old-fashioned rose bush.  I believe it was my Grandmother Davis' rose bush.  My mom was indifferent about it, or at least seemed to be to me.  My parents weren't either of them into landscaping or caring much about such things, though my mom loved the rhododendron shrubs; one of which was taller than the house.  They didn't require much maintenance. Most of the flowers and blooming...

 This past Saturday we all loaded up and headed down to Silver Dollar City.  Mostly we hit the music shows, but by the end of our stay I am generally tired of tromping around. Everyone else wanted to go to Grandfather's Mansion, but I elected to stay up near the Gazebo.  The danger of this is that there are random fun shops up around there.  An ice cream shop, a general store, the apple butter shop...  The one I love is the salt water taffy shop.  They have an antique taffy machine and make their taffy on site.  I am not a big taffy fan, but I love sampling the different unique flavors, and it smells delish in there. The trouble is that I get a couple of each of several flavors but forget what I've gotten by the time I check out.  I need to get pictures of which I get and write down which flavors they are.   I remember a few of them: The swirly yellow and pink one at the top is called Fire in the Hole, which is the name of a ride there a...

 Magicicada Tredecim is the official term for what the locals here call; "locust." Never mind that a locust and a cicada are two radically different creatures.  The year 2024 is termed by the older residents of Missouri as a "Locust Year;" meaning that the 13 year periodical cicadas are emerging. The picture above is of a nymph crawling up a tree trunk after having emerged from the ground beneath where for the last 13 years it has been feeding on tree root sap.  It likely crawled up and "hatched" into the winged form of the insect, leaving the husk still attached to the tree.  It amazes me that this little guy has been down in the ground all this time as we have walked around over his head living our prosaic lives while he just chills on tree roots.  Somehow, one of God's own miracles, they count off the years and all emerge during two months in the same summer.    There is a 17 year cicada, but a quick Google search didn't tell me whether there is...

  This is an odd thing to remember perhaps, but in Spring I always do.   Back before my mom was married she worked as a nurse's aide in one of the hospitals there in Southern California.  One of her coworkers was a Japanese lady.  My mom must have spent quite a bit of time with her both at work and away from work, because she seemed to have made an impression on her in the culinary department.  As a child I remember my mom always had a pair of fancy chopsticks in the kitchen drawer.  She taught me how to use them quite early on, as soon as I was coordinated enough to learn.   We had chicken rice often and I soon mastered the art of eating it with chopsticks. Much, much less frequently she would fix chow mein.  There were no kits back then so it was all from scratch.  Some of the ingredients were more difficult to find where we lived, but she would get them and make it.  She didn't do so often because of the amount of steps to p...

First thing is that I have had an annoying head cold all week.  Usually any virus I catch goes straight to my lungs and I am congested for a month.  This all stayed in my sinuses, so it's pretty much gone. But it had me feeling drained a bit so I haven't gotten as far along with my garden as I might have wanted. But here are a few pics of garden 2024 progress. There is a short row of beets marked by the bamboo pole.  Then there are 2 rows of green beans.  For time out of mind the Howards have planted Top Crop variety green beans.  Those have been hard to come by the past couple of years.  This year I actually ordered them by mail.  But to get enough seed I also bought 2 other varieties.  I planted Contender seed.  I forget the other variety at the moment, but I haven't planted it yet. In the background you can see I've started the sweet potato ridge.   For kicks and sheer curiosity I ordered some bush sweet potato slips.  They ...

 Saturday, May 4th, was the Art Walk in Buffalo. There were quite a few vendors, but very, very few customers.  Some of the vendors did really well, many did not.  Pretty much all I sold were the ballerina style dollies, like the above middle ones.  I sold 4 of those and this jute-wrapped starfish mobile I'd made a couple of years ago for my Sunday School classroom.  Id just brought that along on a whim, but some lady just raved about it so I sold it to her for $5.  Ha! Of course, no sooner had I made a sale than I had to turn around and buy a mug from Mary Gainey.   The little dark one in front.  It comfortably hold exactly one cup, so makes the perfect mug for tea...or coffee,  I suppose.  I'm more coffee than tea, but lately I've been doing tea more.  In any case, there went my $4 profit...and then some, so I ended up in the hole.  Haha... But it was fun to get out and see people anyway.  

 Last night was the Future Business Leaders of America; Buffalo, MO chapter, induction Banquet.  Ellen was inducted as the president for the 2024-25 school year; her senior year.  Here she is making her acceptance speech.  She was super nervous, but she is going to do a fabulous job, I am sure.  The girl in the black dress, seated next to her and looking at her, was the former president and will be graduating here next week.  There were lots of tears and hugs and whatnot as they all bid farewell to the graduating seniors.   Every year Ellen, and the rest of them, get teary-eyed over their senior friends graduating.  I told her that is a fundamental truth of life; you work your way up from ground floor of one goal to the next; school, jobs or careers, relationships...etc.  The Lord, and time, have a way of sifting out the wheat from the chaff; or the influential from the non-influential, if that makes any sense.  You hang on to the i...

 We have had a few showers pass over us through the night.  It is after 7 AM, overcast and a bit foggy, as it sometimes is after a rain.   Yesterday I mudded in green bean seeds in the hopes they will be ready to harvest and can BEFORE we take our vacation in mid July.  Also in hopes that we are out from under the threat of a freeze.  I have seen it snow in early May, on this very date of the 3rd.  This would have been my mother-in-law's 88th birthday, I believe.  I remember going up to her house toting in her gift bags and presents with it snowing.  It didn't last long and it melted right off, I believe, but there is still the potential there to nip any newly sprouted veggies. I did set out tomatoes and peppers, mostly because I am tired of babying them along in their teensy little trays. They look like they are feeling the strain, so I am taking the chance and setting them out to make it or not. Here is just a random picture.  This iri...

 Yesterday it just happened.   The dog and I ended up going to the Faerie Spring.  We had been going out across the back upper pasture here on the ridge where the cows overwinter.  But we hadn't been able to the past 2 weeks because of turkey season and random wandering hunters...one of which we have no idea who it was, which is concerning.  Secondly, a few days ago I discovered that the Canadian geese that frequent the ponds there in the West pasture are attempting to nest in the bushes of that back pasture.  Bella and I and Ellen went back there over the weekend and heard the geese wanking back in the bushes.  Since they are almost always out in the pasture or there on the pond I knew they must be trying to set.  It would be neat if they were successful and actually were able to raise a couple of goslings. I digress. So Bella and I bypassed that back field and went a bit further to go through the wooded area on the edge of the ridge.  ...