Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

Reflecting back upon my mother's kitchen, I vaguely remember that she had a little wooden spice rack mounted on the wall. It had maybe 3-4 shelves, 2 or 3 of which were filled with odds and ends; maybe some food coloring, a bottle of vanilla extract, and maybe 3 or 4 other flavorings, a salt and pepper shaker set or two, and then a few spices; salt, pepper, and honestly I cannot remember what else. She seasoned most every dish with garlic salt. My father thought black pepper was a heinous evil, on par with white bread, baking soda and baking powder. (Hence she hid those last 2 items in the cupboard-white bread was not allowed into the house at all-along with any other white flour products, like soda/soup crackers...etc.) I had not had my own kitchen long (starting only a little over 6-7 years ago, a bit before I married) that I realized I was NOT like my mother. I love exotic spices. I am not into hot spices, but just exotic spices. It probably began back in Portland with my first ...

Ellen loves to copy mommy; as is typical with children. I let her play around with my makeup on occasion. This is a shot from awhile back of how artistic she can be on her face. My mother has a photo of me when I was about this age. I had found my way into her dresser drawer where she'd stored her old makeup. I had been much more liberal that Ellen was in my artistic endeavors on my face. I wish I had a copy of that picture to post in comparison. On Tuesday evening Ellen and I made cookies. There was this moment that totally unnerved me; not really in a bad way, but just in a weird way. Ellen was helping mix the eggs into the batter when I just glanced down at her and got this weird impression that she was me as I was when I was a child; that I was working with much younger self. Ellen occasionally has certain expressions that for a fleeting moment makes her look like a photo of myself at her age had come to life and stepped out from the pages of my photo album. At times he...

Ellen and I planted over 50 tomato seeds today. They came in those packs of 20 little white pelleted seeds in each, but really there are closer to 20 pelleted seeds in each pack. I like using the pelleted seeds; Ellen can pick them up and plant the in the little holes I've pushed in the soil. She had a fine old time poking seeds into the holes, covering them up and, later on, watering them. Several hours later she came back in the house, inspected our containers and wondered why there weren't any tomatoes growing yet. Time means little when you are 4 years old. Last year I bought several different kinds of peat pots. This year I am not going to waste my money. I just used empy containers, like sour cream tubs, yogurt cups etc. I am also going to try making my own little pots from newspaper. Seems easy enough.

Argh! I sure do neglect my blog lately. Sorry blog and blog readers. Along in here, somewhere between my last blog post and this one, Ellen celebrated her 4th birthday. Above is a picture of her and the cake I made for her; Stinkerbelle's castle. If you don't know who Stinkerbelle is, then you really need to do some research on kid's animated characters. Ha ha. At any rate, it's not the best castle cake I have seen...and they have plenty of examples online, but Ellen was happy with it. Today Ellen had her 4 year well child check up. She did great. She's 41 and 3/4 inches tall and 46 pounds. Doc said Ellen may or may not have an umbilical hernia; we'd have to go to a specialist and have him look at it. She said it might just be an outie. We will continue to pray that it will heal over. Here on the dairy we have had a rush of calves. At the moment I am bottle feeding 6 heifer calves. We actually have had 4 bull calves come along in the past 3-4 weeks, but 2 of the...

We have had a spurt of calves in the past 2 weeks; maybe 5 of them. One little bull died, for no good reason that we could determine, though we didn't autopsy or anything. All of our calf huts are full (we only have 3) so hubby made a temp holding pen in the hay shed. There are 3 of them in this shed. Woe be unto the calfkeeper who has to bottle feed 3 new calves in one pen. It's a messy job. This morning I fed the 2 who'd come to me to get their bottles. Then I had to climb in there with a bottle to feed the newest little bull that has no clue about anything. I got slobbered on and headbutted, but I survived to tell the tale. Hubby called the guy who has been buying our calves...well, he called him on Thursday. No response. Now we have TWO little bulls to get rid of and still no response. He, hubby, went ahead and advertised them on Craigslist. This has been a chronic problem with these folks. They won't respond to our calls for a week or more. Then they...

About 2 years ago on a whim I bought Ellen a little kite for her birthday. I figured it was just a little gizmo that wouldn't fly. But I thought it was pretty. At the time she didn't take any interest in it. She found it again this past fall. Now she gets antsy to fly it. So on windy days we take it out and get it up in the air for a bit. The cord is only 40 feet long, but it flies pretty well. Here is a pic of it up in the air. It looks like it's tangled in a tree, but really it's several yards away. Here's what it looks like in hand: You wouldn't think this little thing could fly, but we were all pleasantly surprised. For now it's just the right size for Ellen, and it stores easily as well. The windy season will soon be upon us; I expect this butterfly will do lots of fluttering.

For Valentine's Day our church had a little party for the younger children; all of whom were to make their own Valentine box for display and for a friendly contest. They broke them into age groups; ages 8 and younger in one group and then on up to 12 years or so in another group. Well, Ellen just HAD to have one you know. Not that she knew anything about it...it was her mother who was rabid to make a box. About a year or so ago we found one of her little stuffed toys; a quacking duck, that had been catnapped by a stray and carried off into the hay shed; it had been mangled, but the quacker was still good in it. I took out the quacker and tossed the duck. So I asked hubby; how would we go about making a duck Valentine box that quacked when we opened the lid? His sage answer; "I'll think on it." Hmmm...yeah, right. So, after a week or so of pondering, I came up with my solution to the make-it-quack issue. Voila: The Quacking Duck box: Lift up on the top half of ...