"Insurance policy" tomatoes; chicks soon!

Well folks, the tomato transplants from last weekend were looking a bit sheepish all week long (SADLY!), although a few were hanging on and showing new growth on the tops.  However, it would appear that last night's frost finally did all of them in :(  

Forty-five plants, three months of pampering, bags of soil, and hours of transplanting seem to have gone down the drain!  

Lesson learned!  Next year:  April 1st!  That's it!  April 1st!   No earlier!

THANKFULLY, two weeks ago, I finally got around to planting some 'insurance policy' tomatoes in the event that my 'crazy-early-planting' tomatoes ended up dead in their transplanting tracks.  We have a little bit of a head start on fifty-three more plants.  

In all actuality, we aren't any further behind than what we normally are at this time of the year.  It's cold up here!  This simply mean that the tomato harvest will, once again, need to happen once we're back at school in September.  **Shrug**   Truly truly, 'better late than never.'

On the flip-side, a conversation with Paul today may lead to a transportable hoop house or small green house being built this summer.  ;)

Hm.  Looks like my lil' planting helper wanted to see if the tomato roots would grow into a pony tail???

Today marks day #18 for our incubator eggs, so they were removed from the automatic turner and placed into their final hatching position.

Take a closer look at the egg in he lower left corner...

One lil' guy seems to be in a hurry to be the first born.

In the next couple of days, I expect a couple of dozen lil' chickies :D

Happenings around the Ranch

No, we don't live on a ranch, but we sometimes refer to our lil' place as the Skattebo Ranch.

The morning routine has been established.  I typically wake around 5:30-6:00 and enjoy blogging/FB time with a cup of coffee.  The girls get wakened at 7:00, and we leave for summer school at 7:45.  

The two youngest attend summer school from 8:00 - 4:00.  WHAT a full schedule for them!!!! Archery, weight training, touring our town on bikes, art, and then an afternoon of science, more art, outside games and swimming lessons.  Cassie participates in some weight and agility training every morning 8:00-9:00, while I spend some time in my old & new classroom; decluttering, cleaning, organizing, and moving.

By 9:30, Cassie and I are usually back at home, having a morning snack, before embarking on our task for the morning.   The garden has been claiming most of our time lately.

The last of the seeds have been planted..... (SO I THOUGHT!)

While just "taking a look at the corn," I started hoeing the weeds around the stalks seeing that we loaned our tiller out to a friend for a short time.  {{I really am looking forward to having it back -- parts of the garden are starting to look like a lawn!}}

The little bit of hoeing turned into a full-fledge TRANSPLANT operation of corn plants.  As typical, not all of the seeds sprouted.  In the end, nine rows (~30 yards ea) of corn were condensed into five.  The four emptied rows will be tilled up and replanted;  this will be the third (and final?) planting of corn for us this year.  On Monday, Cassie and I planted four more rows of corn for her "little" garden plot (yup, her rows were ~about 30 yards long, too).

But now---at least the corn rows are looking a bit more lush than before! :)  And we'll have more corn.  {{yeah, I'm sure I'll be revisiting this post come September, saying...IDIOT!  Didn't you realized how long it would take to harvest all of this corn???}}

I started "looking around" the corn at 10:00....

... I was quite surprised when I came inside for a quick lunch break and the clock read 1:30!  My stomach is usually a better timing device than that!  Truly!  11:30, and my stomach is typically moaning and groaning, "feed me.  feed me."

While eating my sandwich at the table, THIS GUY rolls into the driveway!  Oh boy.  More work :D

Short version:  last year, we ordered a load of wood because the price was right!  Over the crazy snowy winter, our neighbor was having difficulty getting wood shipped (something to do with loggers unable to get into the woods due to all the snow).  Our neighbor processes wood for selling to others, so he was hurting for some supply.   We had barely TOUCHED our load last Fall, but had plenty of processed wood to last the winter, so Paul and neighbor worked out a deal.  The neighbor could have his hand at the entire load from last summer, and when time came to order a spring/summer load, he would simply put our name on the order as well.

Today was the haul day. 

Not having been around logging all my life, I found it interesting to see how all of that wood gets unloaded.

What a little contraption!!!  And 45 minutes later... we was rolling right back out of the yard, emptied.

The chicks were all mesmerized by the noise of the unloader too.

Along the topic of chicks... Big Mama had been given one more day to decide if she was going to sit on the eggs we've been leaving in the nesting boxes.  But, she was still out wandering around with her hen friends.

With 19 eggs neatly organized in the nesting box, I decided to gather them up and play Mama Hen myself.  For those of you who have chickens -- do you find that all of your hens have a favorite box too?  ALL of our hens (mind you, we only have 4 right now) use the same nesting box.

The duck eggs led to zilcho babies :(, but I'm going to give this egg incubating one more try with chicken eggs.  I've been reading up a bit more on incubation -- I think part of the duck-egg zilchness was because we waited too long to get the eggs in the incubator.  These chicken eggs have been laid within the past week, so.... let's see if Steve and the girls have been getting along ;)

Like my little path along the floor taking me to the incubator (on the table) ??? ;)

SOON, Celtic Solstice... SOON you will get some work time.

Another animal we've been seeing around lately :)  I dare say that this is one of Paul's bees....

Parts of the garden are SLOOOOWLY starting to take shape...

Wittle-bitty carrots....

cucumbers... we have 12 plants this year.  The pantry is completely OUT of dill pickles!!!

... onto my tomatoes......

:(

To let you all know:  I'm worried.

It's been cold.  

And wet.   

Here's a variety we produced from seeds we dried and saved from some heirloom tomatoes a neighbor gave us two years ago.  They will make BIG, BIG, full pound+ tomatoes.  We have three planted.

A new variety that I'm excited about:  Red Oxheart.  But, they are CERTAINLY taking their time to grow big and lush.  I hope it warms up soon to give these guys a boost!    We have 10 planted.

{{BTW, it's raining.  Again.}}

Another new variety this year:  Abe Lincolns.  Gah!  See how yellow those leaves are?!??!!?   These plants really need a break from all the water.  We have 8 of these planted.

There's more garden to show -- eventually.  Right now, it's really a bunch of brown dirt without a lot of green.  

First week of summer vacation

Yes, folks -- school let out for the Summer last Monday already!!  Already.

I was kinda surprised at the LOADS of excitement the girls were holding back that morning, too.

At least Caitlyn was showing me some eyeballs.

So now, the routine of waking at 6:00, eating, and heading out to the bus by 6:50 are now behind us for awhile;  soon to be taken over by 7:00 wakenings in order to head out the door for 8:15AM summer school schedules.

I'm not sure who or when our bus drivers started the annual ice cream treat bus stop, but pictured here is Trish, our bus driver.  Instead of traveling the normal route, she stopped off at the ice cream place with her posse and helped all of them order up their ice cream cone flavor of choice.  Each night for the last week of school, a different bus stops to celebrate with their kiddos.  How cool, right???

So now, the schedule of summer vacation takes over.  One week into it, I'm kinda wondering how this summer will be different than the others.  This is the first year that Cassie is too old to participate in the summer school class offerings, so she is going to be staying with me for much of the day while the other two head off.  On the schedules this summer's mornings:  archery, intro to weight training, tour the town, photography, learning to tie knots;  and the afternoons are known as "stay-n-play" this year. Small groups of science, swimming, arts-n-crafts will take the kiddos through various stations of Day Camp activities, mixing in time for swimming lessons to boot.

We've scheduled an hour each morning for Cassie to hit the weight room;  all the while I'll probably work in my classroom gearing up for the big changes to start my new school year in a couple of months.

And then... gardening.  laundry.  cleaning.  {{at least to start off the summer!}}

Paul's bee keeping mentor (our neighbor) has been taking him through the ropes of bee keeping;  the girls helped decorate some new boxes to increase the height of the hives.  And of COURSE, she arrived the moment I needed to jet out with Shadow (dog) for his appointment, so I wasn't able to get any action shots.  Soon, though.  His hives have kinda reached the "not much to do" stage.  The bees are doing all the work.

The day of the duck hatching came and went, and went, and went.... with nothing to show for it. :(  

I've been reading up on incubating more and more and have some theories as to why nothing came of these eggs.  I'm saddened, but not overly so...

... because about a week after starting up the incubator, Mutter (aka: Muttduck) started sitting on a nest. We are hoping to see some lil' ducklings come week's end :)

Steve, the rooster, has transitioned in with the hens very nicely!  It's been over a week, so a couple of days ago, we decided to "leave the eggs" for a few days to see if Big Mama (front right) will try sitting on them.  She's our brooder mama! :)

And naturally, I've tried to find my crafting time, but seriously... this past week was filled.  Two days alone (Wednesday and Thursday) were filled with road-tripping around the entire northwest region of the state, looking for a truck for Paul, while the girls stayed home to clean their rooms.  (Ask me if they are finished yet!?!?!?!)

Truck hunting was a success... at the last minute... on the leisure ride home... on the backroads. 

All of that time in the van allowed for me to make some great  progress on the lazywave Fall Ripple afghan I started a couple of months ago.  The picture doesn't justify just how well the colors match my Asics shoes!  

And after six months, I finally finished up all 121 blocks for Celtic Solstice!  I found three turned blocks after analyzing the picture.  This will be the first project I try to tackle to the finish line this summer.

 5:20AM was the wakening time for me today;  I'm sure much of the summer will be the same.  I'm not sure why my body wants to wake up that early -- I'm just going with it.

HA! My relaxing afternoon.

So much for being lazy for the afternoon!

I walked past the counter a few different times;  every time thinking I needed to get motivated to do something with the strawberries we picked this morning.  We simply don't have room in the fridge to store two buckets of strawberries.  Besides, tomorrow we'll be on the road up to the Farm... so I really had to do something with them TODAY.

So be it.

"GIRLS!!!! Who wants to help make jam?"

Candace was the only one who came forward;  didn't even think of snapping pictures of her working with me.  It was kinda hard for pictures anyway, because I had two batches sugaring and pectin boiling for each within 5 minutes of each other;  my hands were busy with little downtime.

Once the jam was made, I moved directly into prepping dinner:  Pork/Venison meatloaf and meatballs.  There was one more 1.5LB package of ground venison in the freezer (deer meat, for those who don't know the term venison);  mixed together with 1LB ground pork and some seasoning.... it's so close to the texture and flavor of ground beef.  So, half of it was loafed up, and the other half was balled up, browned and marinated in some home made BBQ sauce.

Between browning and stirring, dishes were done up.....

....and I had a "I-crave-something-sweet" attack.

Loads of eggs in the fridge.

Loads of strawberries in the fridge.

Any guesses???????

Angel food, of course!   However, rather than making up a cake in the classic angel food pan, I used two loaf pans.  Easier for strawberry shortcake.  Duh!   :D
Last year was my first attempt at homemade angel food cake.   It's so easy to make.  And delicious!  One loaf will travel with us to the farm tomorrow, in addition to the 2nd bucket of strawberries.  Mother-in-Law was excited when I called her to let her know of the goodies heading her way.  I'm SURE she'll make some jam.... and maybe even a strawberry pie!  **lickin' lips**

So NOW....
Dinner has been eaten.
The girls are washing up the dishes.
The angel food is in its final moments of baking.

And my feet are up.  I sense some crochet ruggin' happening very soon!

Happy Tuesday!

I love summer.