On a mission

Vic brought us a pie today that his wife made.  The boys announced with great joy that it was the best pie EVER and way better than my pies...REALLY!  So I am on a mission to find a new and even better apple pie recipe!  I have to get out and get the apples picked off the trees...Brady said it is because the apples on their tree are better than the apples on our tree...can you believe them?

The truth...

Shane's aunt June passed away.  I am not sure how I should feel about this though for a few reasons. 

1. Jane (Shane's mom) and June (her twin sister) were polar opposites of each other and did not get along at all. 

2. I never met the woman in person only talked to her on the phone...she tried to help me "find the truth", she is a Jehovah's Witness. 

3. If someone is extremely religious as June appeared to be (at least from my experience with her), isn't returning to heaven the whole goal of things?  She lived a fairly long life, not sure the exact age she was but Shane's mom was like 50 when she passed away when Shane was 18.

I told Shane I would send flowers but I think that is a no-no in the Jehovah's Witness circle.  I do not claim to understand that religion at all but I remember when my friend John was killed in a car accident I looked into it because I had known his mom and wanted to do something.  I ended up getting a plant and taking it to her.  I explained that I understood that flowers were not appropriate for their beliefs but she was gracious and accepted the plant and gave me a big hug.  John was only a kid though.  It was a sad tragedy of drunk driving.  For this situation I think it is best to follow the religious beliefs...right?

Not to say that her passing isn't a loss, don't get me wrong there, I am sure her family is sad to lose her but for June herself...crap, I don't know.  I spend half my life trying not to offend others and be as politically correct as I can be.  I wonder if there is a book out there "appropriate responses to death".  Each chapter could cover the main religions with subsections for any different subcultures included. 

When I die, it may sound horrible but, I hope at least one person cries and feels sad that I will no longer be in their life.  I am sure Shane will have a party and most people will be singing along with him and my boys "ding dong the witch is dead"...

Making changes

Ok, some changes are happening around here!  Now that the kits are ready to butcher the boys are making demands and trying to bargain for that call from the Governor.  So in an attempt to continue our farm plan I have put an ad on Craigslist to find homes for Rosey, Buck and Sozo and all their babies.  We are going to only keep the all white new Zealand.  The boys get attached to the unique colored ones.  Nothing I do seams to help the situation.  I talked to them before starting this and they were on board!  I have enough to do to not have to fight them at butcher time.

Sky wants us to keep raising multi colored and sell them then go buy meat at the butchers...unfortunately that will cost us money.  Keeping my fingers crossed that I can find someone who wants to give these a nice home and maybe when all we have are white rabbits the boys will not get attached.  They have not gotten attached to the white ones at all.  We call them the triplets and they really don't have individual names.  What ever has not found a new home in the next week or so is going to be butchered.  It costs a fortune to keep all these rabbits (22 currently) and all the kits are getting so big we would need to quadruple the number of cages to keep them from being over crowded.

I don't have any plans to attempt breeding this winter.  It was too much last year I want a death free winter!  The plan is next spring we will expand the poultry part of the farm.  Build a separate Turkey coop and run and add a Tom so we can start having baby turkeys.  And we are thinking about adding to the chicken family too.  Build a separate coop and run for the new chickens so they are separate.  And of course I HAVE to get a roo!  Might even consider selling a few eggs at the farmers market if we are successful. 

Wish I could find someone interested in trading rabbits for a goat.  We could really use the help with the brush clean up around here!

been a long couple days...

So Shane's surgery went fine but when it was over he decided he was tired of breathing and they could not get him to wake up enough to keep breathing on his own.  So we spent the night in the hospital.  I was up and down all night checking his monitors, every beep and my eyes shot open to see if he was breathing.  Luckily Shane's roommate went home yesterday evening so they let me stay in his room all night.  Which was nice since I hadn't set up any place else to go.

When Shane first came to the room the right side of his face was very droopy.  I was very concerned but by about 8 last night Shane was awake and talking and by this morning his face is fine again.

We are home and I just want to sleep but, Mom and Dad have dealt with the boys for 2 days now and they need a break.  Shane is sleeping comfortably and I am here typing. 

Took some talking to get him to let me take a pic.  Not a happy camper!  So far though he has not been in too much pain.  Most problem is when he tried to eat.  The chewing motion is uncomfortable.  But they have a very stylish cup covering the left side of his head to protect the area and the strap holding it on gives him a nice '80's head band look...lets get physical, physical... I can hear Olivia Newton John!  Look even the pressure cuffs on his legs gives the appearance of leg warmer!...he's a maniac maniac on the floor...

Happy thoughts

Shane has his surgery tomorrow.  I am not handling things as well as I wish I was.  I am trying to get the house cleaned up and food pre-prepared to make tomorrow manageable.  Thank heavens my mommy and daddy are coming over to be here for the boys.  I don't think I could make it if I had to deal with the boys at the hospital all day too.

Pam:  please send me a pair of your rose colored glasses!  Christmas is coming it will be the perfect gift for me! 

Things have been crazy around here.  We have the outside of Shane's new office done.  Now as soon as he is back on his feet we can start finishing the inside.  He has a big window over looking the property and the view is spectacular!  I wonder if he will ever get any work done.  I go out there and just marvel at how lucky I am to have that as my back yard. 

Promise I WILL catch up on pix of the house!

What to do with mushrooms...

So I have gallons literally, gallons of mushrooms and if you Google Chanterelle mushrooms you will find not only many different ideas on the ONLY way to preserve them but they say the other options don't work.  So what am I to do?

I'll tell ya!  I am using my new dehydrator.  It is taking for-ever to get them all done but slowly but surely I am getting them cleaned and dry and packages.

new problem arose, we have 68% humidity as a minimum around here lately so after dehydrating I packed them in paper bags, which was the most common advise for storage and the mushrooms started to re-hydrate from the ambient moisture.  So now I am trying to vacuum seal them in those canisters I got with my vacuum sealer and have never used.  This way I can open it, take out what I need and re-seal.

about half of Brady's Saturday find

some are pretty good sized too

It is amazing how much of them are water.  After starting with more than5 gallons of mushrooms I ended up with about a gallon of dried mushrooms. 

Not sure how many of these I will uses over the winter but Brady is having lots of fun hunting with Vic so as long as it keeps him out of trouble right!  Next batch I am making homemade cream of mushroom soup!  Found a recipe that yields equivalent to 3 cans of soup.  I stopped using canned soup for cooking a couple years ago and have been hoping to find a good recipe.  Fingers crossed!

Here is the hill across the street, the morning fog makes it all look even more beautiful!

The crew

Re-thinking the farm's plan

So I need to talk to Shane about reducing the number of rabbits on the farm.  We have so many and now that we have some that have had babies I think we should think about which rabbits we don't need or want to have.  If we just keep 4 rabbits...3 Does and 1 Buck...then we can still have some rabbit meat from time to time but the work involved with the large rabbit set up is more than I want to deal with on a daily basis.  We could easily add more chickens and turkeys and it won't be much more work because they are housed together and we don't have the individual cages to deal with.

I have so much other stuff I could be doing, pickling beets and drying mushrooms and making black berry jelly, not to mention the apples will be ready soon and I will have a bunch of apple pie filling to get done up.  But instead I am spending time each day dealing with the rabbits partly because I can not count on the boys doing their chores. 

I wish I could find someone who would like to trade some breeding rabbits for a goat.  We could really use a goat to help clear the land around here.  I don't know how much work a goat will be though?  I have been reading up about them though so if we decide to give it a try I have some knowledge to start with.

I do know I like my chicken girls and I have NO plans of EVER getting rid of them!  We are planning to make a separate turkey run though because those 3 girls are so darn bossy!  We are thinking if we get a separate run and then get a Tom and maybe more girls down the road if all goes well.

Sad morning

During the night Nugget started to have seizures of some kind and he past away this morning.  He had become my baby.  I loved that little guy so much.  He would give me kisses when I held him.