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. 

Ear Mites

So starting to get settled back into farm life and I found that Lovie has ear mites.  Warning these photos are "gross" according to Sky.

This is after her 1st treatment of Canola oil (I didn't have any baby oil on hand and found a number of people who used veg oil with success) with some honey because a number of people said they had great results just using honey watered down so I thought worth adding some too.

I am trying very hard to not use any hard meds.  I am following a schedule I found online and I am hoping that it works.  As you can see there is a bunch of oil around her hear because the first dropper full went every place when she moved at the last minute. 

Keeping my fingers crossed that everything heals up quick!

New experience

I am pretty open to trying new things.  Especially food, I will give anything a chance once.  Our neighbor is gearing up for hunting season and making sure he has lots of room in his freezer for a wide variety of meat.  Today he brought over some Cougar meat his wife cooked up yesterday for us to try...I took a bite and thought it tasted pretty good, a little tough but nice flavor.  I was doing just fine until Shane meowed and I had a hard time swallowing after that!  The boys LOVED it!!!  They want Shane to get a Cougar.  If he ever did get one I would HAVE to have the hide stuffed for the living room...

A few years ago I saw a bumper sticker:

 FYI:  Not sure about house cats but Cougar taste more like beef.