Busy on the (Tiny) Small Holding

I got the first of the raised beds up, and planted with frost Hardy seedlings.  I’ve never grown anything from seedlings, so this is an adventure.  

Then it was indoors to try making sausage for the first time!  I think they turned out pretty good!  We have a wonderful butcher about six miles away who buys local meats and man, they are good.  But I like to get as far into the making food process as is practical.  There’s a woman down the road that sells goats milk, and I love it, but I seem to be the only one in my house who does.  😕

These are the chickens whose eggs I eat, and they are the best, and freshest I’ve ever had.   They are Easter egg colors, and so feed both taste and sight.  I look forward to adding chickens here at Bag End, but I must be patient.  In the meantime, breakfast is a happy time!

I’ve been working on enlarging the fire pit so I can have a bigger fire, more people, and fit a small oven next to the wonderful tripod/spit that Red Oak Forge made for me.  

Last evening I roasted the first of many chickens on the spit, and ate like royalty!The wind was so strong though that I had to lower the spit way down and keep the fire really built up rather than just cook with the coals.  Turned out great though, so, okay.  

Dinner tonight was a simple chicken and veggie soup, southern style cornbread, and good conversation with G2.  What more could I want? 

As evening settles like a shawl over Stone Mountain, I am content and warm, full and happy.  I most certainly live in paradise, and look forward to what each day brings.  God has been good to us.  

 

The Weekend After

After a week of not feeling tops, this weekend was pretty much a bust. I unloaded more from my car, but am still not done. I washed many loads of laundry, and put away all my art stuff I took to Pennsic. I tried, operative word TRIED, to make a pair of earrings. I just couldn't make any I really liked. I think I need to go back to sewing for a while, my jewelry making needs a rest. I am posting a pic of my sister's sunflowers along with a few more pennsic pics. Kris's husband Don is amazing with anything plantlike. These flowers are typical of his prowess. The view of Pennsic with the sky turning from blue to black was on packout day, and indicative of why my sunshade was ripped out of the ground and broken across my tent ridgepole. High winds. Really strong gusts. Oh well, every year has its weather issues, and this was less bad than it could have been. Certainly not the worst I have seen. The 4th year I went (this was my 18th) I had a tent ripped to shreds, and the 2nd, the same tent had floated on a river of runnoff. One year it was so hot the battles were cancelled left and right, no one wanted roasted fighter brains, and one year was really cold at night, in the 40s. So why do I do this, you ask? Friends, fun, and SHOPPING! Okay, really the whole thing is fun, the weather issues just don't get to me. Somehow after doing geology in Nebraska with tornadoes and storms and snow, none of the Pennsic stuff bothers me too much. Well, maybe the year we sat in the courtyard watching the little green twisters forming and unforming above us...