Make My Horse Life Easier Tip #4

 Here's something I spent maybe $10 on (but I'm pretty sure it was closer to $5) that has made my horse-related life so much more pleasant:

A whip rack.

Such a simple thing, but oh how much more pleasant is my life since I had DH install it on the barn aisle wall near the cross ties.  Prior to that, the longe whip either laid on the floor along the wall, where it was constantly in the way for the daily sweeping of the aisle, or leaned up against the wall inside the tack room, where I'd half the time forget to grab it until after I was outside with a horse in hand on the longe line.  Which meant trekking back into the barn with the horse, apologizing to the horse for the confusion when it thought it was time to longe, and try to go into the tack room to grab the whip without the horse following me through the doorway.

Once DH used his little torpedo level (because, level; I mean, I'm not a dressage rider for nothing!  Picky, picky, picky!) and two little screws to install it, I no longer forgot to grab my whip on the way out to longe a horse, and my whip was never blocking where I wanted to sweep.

And bonus! Now I can bring a horse in from longeing, snap the whip into the rack and put the horse in the cross ties all in one easy maneuver.  No setting the whip down on the floor so I could tie the horse, then having to pick the whip up later and put it in the tack room (or sweep the floor!).

As you can see from the photo above, there's lots of room for lots of whips.  I think it has slots for a dozen (? don't quote me, Google it for yourself if you're in the market) and will hold various lengths and types of whips.  I currently have my long longe whip, a shorter longe whip and my 40" (? again, I didn't take measurements before writing this post) dressage whip stored there.

Could I have stored whips in an old bucket?  Yes.  I've worked at several places that kept them that way. Could I have stored them in a fancier 'whip canister'?  Yep, again, worked at places that were a little more upscale that had a more decorative and metal bucket called a whip canister that whips sat in when not in use.  But both of those tend to collect dust and debris in the bottoms after a while (and occasionally a mouse nest if the whips aren't taken out and used regularly) and they can be very easy to tip over especially if the whips are all leaning in the same direction.

To me, this whip rack and the vertical storage it supplies is ideal.

What I Did This Summer

 In honor of the old-school first week back to school writing assignment, I present to you my (more outline style than final copy style) report on What I Did This Summer. (Caveat: I did a lot more, but this post is pretty much just those things I did that I didn't really post about here during the summer.)

>Rode horses (Poetess and the LBM) 5-6 times each week, with the exception of a week or two where I only rode 3 times.

>Kept the garden weeded and watered.  YAY!  After having the last two summers where my health was s**t in one way or another and subsequently the garden went to s**t, it was a major goal of mine to keep up with caring for the garden this year.  I did it!!  Not to say there wasn't ever a single weed in the garden, or that there aren't some out there now, but I kept them under control and they neither went nuts nor crowded out and smothered my veggie crops.  Good job, Me!

>Visited a couple of the newer 'farm markets' that have sprung up in my area in the last handful of years.  Their schtick, mostly, is 'local'/made in Michigan products and produce.  While I didn't really buy anything at either one (kinda disappointed in the 'farm' product aspect and didn't see any veggies or herbs I needed--desperately seeking fresh dill heads being the impetus for the visits), I got a new perspective on how bougie DH and I live.  I mean, looking at the prices on the 'artisan' handmade breads, the 'gourmet' packages of seasoning mixes, the artisan pickled veggies, I  a) was surprised at how much this stuff that I make as a matter of course goes for at retail and b) realized that a lot of what we are so used to that we take for granted is unique and custom made to a whole lot of people.  I may work my tushie off, but I'm blessed.

>Finally (after years of failed attempts) kept flowers in containers alive at my front porch!!  Yay Me!  I have tried, every year for at least 10, to have flowers on/at my front porch.  And every year, I start off good, but somewhere along late June, I just can't keep up with remembering to water them (or, DH and I go away with grandkids on vacation) and, well, that's the end of that.  Fried, crispy, dead dead dead flowers.  Not so this year!  This year I DID IT! What's kind of funny is that some of the pots I didn't get planted with the flowers I'd wanted.  Somehow, instead, I found morning glories sprouting in them.  Morning glories are fine with me. And ironically, when I purposely try to plant morning glories I don't get much germination, but these, 'wild' seeds that fell into the pots of soil I had sitting awaiting me to put in flower transplants, they sprouted dozens of little plants and soon were trying to vine their way up the balusters of the front steps.

>Went strawberry picking for the first time in several years and without other family members for the first time ever.  It was way faster and more convenient (schedule-wise) than going with others, but I have to say it lacked in the fun factor a little.

>Went to five (or was it six) free local concerts with DH.  While it took some effort to get our dinner made and eaten on time, and the horses' dinner prepped and them in their stalls early in order to get to the concerts by the time they started, it was a nice experience to 'take the evening off' so many times.

>Made a couple of recipes I'd been wanting to for a long time, but kept putting off because I felt like I should 'save' them for when we would be having company (but then those company plans would get changed).  Finally, I decided to do them for me.  The first was summer-themed sugar cookies that I decorated with colored sugar before baking rather than frosting after they were baked.  I made (and saved because so much!) the colored sugar for these.  The second was Scotcheroos (no pictures of those).

>Picked (and ate, no preserving!)  mulberries, black raspberries, raspberries and blackberries growing around the property at this little place here.  They made a yummy addition to my typical breakfast of yogurt and granola.  I also made a batch of mulberry muffins which was basically taking a blueberry muffin recipe and substituting mulberries for the blueberries.

>Took random pictures of wildlife I happened by in my day to day living.

And that, with the exception of maybe one or two more things that will get their own dedicated post, is what I did this summer.

How about you?  What things that maybe weren't momentous or impress-the-world worthy did you do this summer?

That's a Wrap

I am done with pickles for the year.

The cucumber vines started dying off week before last, and I finally picked everything over about 1.5" long and pulled the vines yesterday.  Today I canned the last batch of dill pickles.  There's some 'regular' sized pickles in each jar, and a ton of little dinky ones.

This brought the total pickles made to 15 quarts and 7 pints. Typically I don't put pickles in pints, but since I wasn't sure how the harvest would be this year, I did.  Each day I canned, if I was short on cukes to fill another quart, I used a pint jar rather than not pickle the 'extras' at all.  DH will probably eat a whole pint in one sitting.

Not a banner year, for sure, but considering that I had to buy cucumbers to pickle last year, and in 2023 I didn't get even half this number of jars, I'm pretty happy with it.

A Quick Day Trip

By the end of July, I knew I was in dire need of a break from my real life.  Not that there's anything bad going on, it's just been a very busy year for me and I could tell that I'm spiraling into burnout.  I needed, for sanity sake, to get the heck out of Dodge soon.  Because Fall is coming, and with that is a whole bunch more stuff to juggle, care for, attend in person, and otherwise keep my nose to the grindstone while possibly being called in on sick-grandchild-home-from-school (or retrieve from school) care at any moment.  

No more waiting and hoping to catch a break. I had to make one.  The simpler, the better, and more likely to come to pass. So I gave it some thought and came up with my target idea.

Goal: to go look at pretty rocks in the water and not have to think about keeping anyone entertained or safe from drowning. 

In other words, no family members could tag along or otherwise be invited if they weren't capable of being totally self sufficient.  Because other than a trip away with DH last September, all my away from home 'down time' has included grandkids, or was some sort of  necessary home care business item (running up north to get a new dishwasher from DH's friend with the appliance store) and that's just not relaxing to me.

Based on a tip from a friend who also likes to look at pretty rocks in the water (and bring some home), I decided that Lakeport State Park, in Michigan's Thumb, was the destination.  Truthfully, I had an exact place I've been wanting to go to for the last several years, but it's too far away (500 miles, up in the Keweenaw) to be a feasible trip this year (or last year, or the year before. . .)  So, the Thumb it was, since that's close enough--only a couple of hours from this little place here--to drive to and back all in the same day.

I picked two options of days in August, looked into possibilities for horse care on either of those two days, nailed down the day, and booked my horse feeding and stall cleaning body double (aka DD2).  The date was now written in stone on my calendar.  No cancellations, no postponements. It was a hill I'd die on if necessary.  My surviving the rest of 2025 really did depend on me being able to get away ASAP.

I decided DH could come along, if he wanted, especially if he was willing to drive.  I've never had good night vision and hate driving at night, so if he was willing to be the driver, I could comfortably stay away longer and get home after dark.  

In all honesty, I'll confess that I very hesitantly invited him to join me because he's great at inviting others along (even when he knows I'm not wanting company) and then telling me we're not actually going to be alone only when it's too late to back out.  Remember, having others along was absolutely NOT the focus of this needed break.

This past Sunday was the day reserved for this event.  I planned and packed a lunch plus snacks, as well a list of items we needed to bring, and DH and I left for the east side of the state right after church that morning.  It was kind of a coolish, cloudy, and windy day (and silly me who absolutely gets cold in the wind forgot to pack any pants or a long-sleeved shirt or jacket), but that worked out pretty well.  The beach was fairly empty for at least the first half of the time we were there.

Even though we'd both brought bathing suits, neither one of us actually put one on or went swimming.  With the chilly-ish (low 70's) air, the water actually felt warm, but as soon as I stepped out of it, even only having been ankle to mid-calf deep, I was shivering.  I told you I get cold in the wind. *shrug*

I spent several hours wading at the water's edge, occasionally getting splashed up to my waist by a particularly big wave (they were forecasted at 3'-6').  DH looked for a bit too, but mostly sat on driftwood logs and either looked for ships or looked at his phone. 

I'm a really neophyte rockhound, I don't know a whole lot about the different types, what's rare, etc.  So, when I look at pretty rocks in the water, I look for those that in some way speak to me.  Be it color, pattern, whatever.

This particular beach I noticed lots with rings of color.  That seemed to be the theme for the day.  There were a few with spots, and several with fossils, and lots and lots of granite, but many had one or more rings.  I'd get a bunch I liked, and take them to the log DH was seated on to show him, then set them on the log next to him and go back to see what else called my name.  Eventually, I knew I had to pare down my finds and only take home a realistic number.

Below are pictures of the rocks that came to live at this little place here (plus a few as gifts for DD2, who did horse chores for me that afternoon so I could be gone).

After we decided we were done looking for rocks, and neither of us wanted to go for a swim, we left the beach and drove down into Port Huron.  It was a little after four, and I didn't want to head for home yet, so we went downtown to the waterfront where there was a walking path and benches that you could sit and look at the water (which, at that point wasn't Lake Huron, it was technically the St. Clair River).  On the other side of the water, not far at all, is Canada.

The first thing that caught my eye as we were looking for where to park, was a metal sculpture that looked like it could be a horse.  So, of course, as soon as we had parked the car (we took Sweet Madame Blue on this excursion), that was where I headed.  

It was located around a slight bend of the walking path, between the path and the river, and it was a horse!  A life-sized scrap metal sculpture.  Some person had recently picked some of the nearby goldenrod that was in bloom and stuffed it in the horse's mouth, making it look like the horse was grazing the brush.

We sat a bit, hoping to see freighters or other commercial ships in the water (this is part of the St. Lawrence Seaway), but we only saw a couple docked on the Canadian side, none actively traversing the water.

We did see a few Border Patrol and Coast Guard boats patrolling, and a cormorant that was busily fishing back and forth in our area.

Cormorant looking like a tiny Loch Ness Monster

While at the river, we looked up possible dinner places on DH's phone.  There were a few that sounded really delicious, and fairly cheap (looking at the prices on their menu) until we noticed that they were on the other side of the river, in Canada. While we easily could have gone across (the Blue Water Bridge is in Port Huron), we decided an international crossing just for dinner probably wasn't the best use of our time, and we found good sounding food on the U.S. side instead.  DH had wanted to go somewhere with a patio overlooking the water, so we ended up driving a few miles down to Marysville and eating at the Junction Buoy.  It was good.  And in the U.S., LOL.

After that we drove home into the setting sun, which constantly stabbed us in the eyes despite our sunglasses and the sun visors on the car.  It was just low enough, other than the first 5-10 minutes, that the visors didn't extend low enough to block it out.  Rather than taking backroads home for the scenic view, with our sun-glare limited vision, we decided not to risk the deer that would be plentiful in the evening on a country drive and just took the expressway instead. 

And that was my day away.  It was just what I needed. And I'm so glad I went, because the next day I got a text from DD2 asking if I could pick her kids up from school/the babysitter the following Monday so she could go to a dentist appointment after school/work.  Grandma duty calls!

Free Oak? Yes, Please!

 On Friday afternoon, DH found that he had no work meetings scheduled.  And then, he was contacted by a friend who lives near where DH works, and was told that there was free oak firewood available. A tree service had been contracted to remove some very nice, very large old oak trees from a neighboring homeowner's property and that if DH could come that afternoon while they were there, the tree service would even load it onto his trailer for him.

Well, you don't have to ask DH twice if he wants free oak.  It makes great firewood, lots of BTUs for those cold mid-winter days (and nights!).  He quickly decided to take the rest of the day off, hook up our 16' trailer, and head over to where that tree service was giving away wood.

When he got there, the guy in charge loaded the trailer up with some huge chunks of tree trunk, as well as some 'smaller' logs --about 12"-18" across-- from limbs, and told DH that if he wanted more, the guy would be working for several more hours trying to finish the job that night so he didn't have to come back on the weekend to do it.  So DH picked up his nearby buddy, brought buddy and the wood back to this little place here, and they unloaded that trailer with the tractor, a chain and the log tongs as fast as they could and headed back for more.

By the time they had the trailer reloaded, the tree guy was just about finished, so DH knew he would be gone by the time DH drove the 40ish miles home in after work traffic, unloaded, and drove back a third time.  So he thanked the guy, gave him his phone number and said that we'd gladly take more oak if the guy had future similar jobs in the area.

I had a late dinner waiting when DH got home the second time (buddy didn't come with DH as he had family plans for the night), and then I manned the log tongs while DH operated the tractor to unload the second load of wood.  It was dusk by the time we were done, but I took a picture anyway before DH moved the truck and trailer.  I wanted them for scale so anyone who views the photo can get an idea of just how much wood was in those two loads.  It's quite a large pile.

Here's a picture in the light of day on Saturday morning.  Without the truck behind it, it doesn't look quite a big, but it is.

This pile we'll let age until next summer before we cut, split and stack it.  It's a good start on firewood for the 2026/2027 heating season.  Gotta love free oak.

Peaches, Done!

 I love peaches.  But they have to be properly ripe, which typically means I don't have fresh peaches until August.  I never buy them from the store, those are always too hard, picked too soon to be as flavorful as I like them to be.

So, unless I can peaches, I go without them a lot.

DH does not like peaches.  He could care less if there was never, ever a peach at this little place here again.  In fact, when our (struggling for many years) peach tree finally croaked this past winter, he wasn't sad.  At all.  Unlike me, who is still wondering if we will be living here long enough to make it worthwhile for me to buy and plant a new peach tree.  With DH hoping to retire in 5-6 years, and then who knows how much longer we'd live at this little place here, probably not.

For this year, I decided to buy peaches from a sort-of nearby farm/orchard and can them.  At least that way I have some that I can eat now and then throughout the next eleven months.

 And, I confess, before I bought a half-bushel for canning, I bought a quart box to taste test.  I ate that quart of peaches one by one (not all in the same day!), standing next to the kitchen sink, which in my book, is the proper place to eat a perfect peach.  Because a perfect one is juicy and the juice will run down your chin and your arms, and you just don't want to drip that sticky juice onto the furniture or the floor.  So you must eat a fresh peach leaning over the kitchen sink.  Let the sink catch those sticky drips.  Easy clean up.  And then you're in prime position to wash your face, hands, and arms when you're done.

Anyway, I spent the vast majority of Friday afternoon canning peaches.  Some of my half-bushel felt like they were too hard to can, so I left those to ripen more and will just eat them fresh in the coming week or so.  But the vast majority were just right, and so I put up 17 pints of peaches.

More Hay

 I ended up buying the wagon of hay I talked about in my post about Saturday's activities.  After DH got home mid-afternoon on Sunday, we went and got it from the farm of the people who do custom baling in the neighborhood (including my own field).  K3 was interested in helping unload it, so she came along.

It was a hot and humid day, but there we were, in our jeans and long sleeved shirts, to protect our skin from the stiff prickly cut ends of the hay bales.  Honestly, there were 'only' 117 bales on the wagon, so between the three of us we didn't expect it to take very long to unload and stack the hay in the loft at this little place here.

And, really, things were going well the first 50 or so bales.  And then the elevator broke. 😭😭 A link in the chain that carries the bales came apart.  After about 20 minutes of fussing with it, including unhooking the PTO shaft from the tractor so we could hand turn it to get the chain in the right spot, DH and I were able to get the link reconnected.  At which point I asked if he thought we should put a couple of zip ties on it, just in case.

To which he said No, wasn't necessary.

Well, I think you can guess what happened next.  Only took two more bales and deja vu, there we were with a disconnected link in the chain.  And now the chain had also jumped the cog at one end of the elevator, so now things were uneven, as the elevator has a chain on the left and a chain on the right with bars that run between them.  The left chain was 'up' two links from the right chain and the bars were all wonky.

More fussing with the elevator for DH and I while K3 waited patiently in the loft for us to be back in business.

We finally got the chains evened out, the right one back on the cog wheel, and the disconnected link pulled back together.  This time, DH put a big honking zip tie on it (while I bit my tongue.  Hard.)

After that, it really didn't take long to finish unloading the wagon and get that hay all stacked in the loft.  In the process of all that elevator chain-link issues, we'd gone past dinner time, and it was now after 7 p.m.  Which meant it was time to get the horses their dinner and bring them in for the night. 

K3 helped me with that, and then she requested that DH take her home so she could take a shower and change into cooler (and less nasty sweaty/full of hay chaff) clothes.  Given how gross and hot we all were feeling at that point, we didn't even try to talk her into staying for the pizza we'd planned to order--pizza being our easy-out go-to dinner after putting up hay.  So DH quick changed his own clothes and took her home.  

While he was gone, I called our favorite local pizza joint and put in an order, which he would pick up after dropping off K3 and before coming back home.  Then I jumped in the shower to cool off and clean off.  I swear I couldn't get that shower water cold enough, I kept turning it down a hair, and it only felt cooler for a few seconds before I felt the need to turn it down again.  I was going for 'Lake Superior in early June' temperature (IYKYK), but never did get it that cold before my turning the dial down incrementally ended up just turning the water completely off.

Oh well.  I did feel cooler and less covered in green 'herb' sprinkles (aka hay chaff) than I had prior, and DH arrived with the pizza right about the time I was dried off and dressed.  In shorts and a tank top.

Glad we had the opportunity to buy the hay, it looks to be good stuff.  Glad we got it up in the loft.  But man, a cooler day to do that would have been nice.  (Or, at least, an elevator that didn't break and add about an hour in the blazing sun.)

Any Given Saturday

 Last Saturday, I was (again) home alone for the majority of the weekend.  While there were some 'must dos' on my list for the day, I decided to, for the most part, tackle whatever I felt like doing around those have to do items.  For funsies, I kept a list of everything I did that day.  (Well, not everything, as I obviously didn't record bathroom breaks or brushing my teeth and hair, getting dressed, etc).

Anyway, if you're bored interested, here's what my Saturday looked like on that given day:

I fed horses their breakfast.

I fed myself my breakfast: a couple pieces of ham (I'd put small baggies of 2-4 slices of ham into a gallon sized freezer bag and put them in the freezer last year for such purposes as this) and two chocolate chip pancakes (also from the freezer, leftover from last time the grandkids spent the night).

Then I boiled six eggs and when they were done in the hot water and ready for their cold soak, I 

-went out and turned out horses

-cleaned stalls

-replaced the grossly-full-after-less-than-a-month fly ribbons hanging above the horse stalls

Also before noon, I was able to 

-clean past-their-edible-phase fruits and veggies and non-meat leftovers from the fridge and put them in the compost bucket, which I dumped in the compost bin out by the garden

-clean out the still sorta edible (like not moldy or slimy or gross) but I wasn't going to eat it things like shriveled blueberries, leftover peas (I'd already had some of the peas twice that week), and overripe watermelon from the fridge and give it to the chickens, which I let out of their coop at that time.

-wash and hang two loads of laundry on the clothesline 

-ran down the road to look at some hay I'd been offered to buy off the wagon after it was baled later that day (same family that does my hay was cutting and baling a neighbor's field about two miles away)

-rinsed my cucumbers that had been doing a limewater soak the three times rinsing and resoak in clean water 1 hour each time called for by my go-to customized dill pickle recipe

-set up the canner to heat the water to a boil and also set up another pot with the vinegar, water, canning salt and turmeric brine to simmer.

Then I fed myself lunch, which was two more pieces of ham from that breakfast baggie and some thin-sliced smoked gouda cheese made into a grilled ham and cheese sandwich on homemade bread with about a dozen sweet cherries on the side.

Wow!  I was kind of amazed when I looked at my documented activities from the morning.  Not bad.  I actually had done a lot and wasn't feeling tired/overworked yet.  So I continued after lunch.

I made deviled eggs with three of those hard boiled eggs I'd cooked that morning; the other three eggs I left for eating on salad in the coming days.

I peeled and sliced some short but fat cukes from the garden and made them into refrigerator pickles for DH to enjoy after he returned home on Sunday.

I canned dill pickles made from those cucumbers I'd limed the night before and rinsed that morning.  Three quarts and one pint worth.

While waiting on the canner, I emptied the dishwasher of clean dishes, swept the mudroom and kitchen, and vacuumed the living and dining rooms plus DH's home office.

After that I tallied up how much it had cost to raise the broiler chickens this year.  DS2 and DD1 each had wanted me to raise a few for them with promises that they'd reimburse me the costs of each bird they took.  I was unhappy to find that it cost me $18 per bird--although each bird weighed between 5 & 6 pounds after processing--because my original guesstimate based on last year's costs was only $13-14 per bird.  That extra $3 per bird processing fee having to not use my planned on processor really was a hit.  All the other price increases--like on feed and the purchase price of the chicks themselves--were tiny compared to that.

Plus, I also

-moved a dresser we don't need/use from the upstairs down to the garage so I can get rid of it (will list on local free pages)

-emptied the water in the dehumidifier

-weeded the four rows of peppers in the garden and 4 of the 6 rows of cucumbers

-walked to the mailbox and got the mail

-fed myself dinner of a salad and a protein bar (too hot to feel hungry)

By then it was time to bring in the horses and feed them their dinner.  Once that was done, I

-picked beans, cucumbers and zucchini

-made a chocolate zucchini cake

-loaded the dishwasher

-shut in chickens and gathered eggs

-sat on the porch swing and read Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts while listening to cicadas singing in the nearby trees

--ate a big hunk of zucchini cake still warm from the oven (YUM!)

 And that was what I did with my Saturday.

Happy Things This Week

 While I may not have taken any days off, or gone anywhere that would be considered fun this week (I do not consider the grocery store fun), and I was incredibly busy all week, that doesn't mean it was a bad, draining, unhappy week.

Am I exhausted, sitting here typing this on Friday evening?  Oh heck yes, I'm ready for a twelve hour snooze (as if that ever happens, even on the rare vacation).  The heat and humidity are ramping back up, and I certainly feel that pressure on my body.  But, as tired as I am, I can still see things that made me happy.

For one,--and don't judge me for the first picture, which is partly a before and partly an in-progress photo--I got the master bath shower scrubbed.  It hadn't had a good scouring in about a year (and, honestly, not even a half-assed one in six months or more) and was looking pretty skanky. Gotta love well water, especially iron-rich well water (and yes, we do have a water softener but it can only accomplish so much. . . )  

Part of the lapse was because I was out of my go-to wonderful shower cleaner, and found out several months later that it had been taken off the market (it was pretty potent stuff, so probably not the greatest environmental- or health-wise, but dang it did a good job with hard water stains.)  A different brand was finally recommended to me by someone else who has very hard water, and I was able to get ahold of some of that to try.

Before/During

The after picture looks much more appetizing.  'New' brand did the trick, although it says no scrubbing needed, just spray on and wipe away and I most definitely had to scrub, even with a scrub brush in some areas. Now to keep it this way. Perhaps a monthly cleaning will only require a spray on and wipe away. . . 

After

 I didn't, technically, enjoy scrubbing out that nasty shower, but I am loving how bright, clean, shiny and generally more pleasant it is now!  (Do you think I can give myself a cash bonus equal to what it would have cost to pay someone to do this unpleasant task?)

Much more fun than taking a mineral deposited shower back to pristine brightness (or as close as it gets after almost 22 years of use), was cutting a bunch of black eyed Susans from the front flower bed and bringing them inside to beautify the dining room table.  

The 'vase' is actually an antique blue glass Ball canning jar that previously belonged to DH's paternal grandmother. When she died about 20 years ago her daughters divided up her canning jars and, since they knew I was the only one of this generation (the grandchildren) who cans and preserves food like they do, they shared some with me.  The blue ones I don't use for canning, but use them for display instead.

I have been trying to get DH (and myself) to eat salad of some type--not counting pasta salads-- at least three times a week all summer.  We had an especially colorful one with our dinner the other night (along with marinated and grilled chicken breast from one of our freshly butchered broilers).

After not being home enough the last three weeks to work on anything in the Finish The Tack Room category, DH installed the light fixture I'd bought for it.  It's LED and SO BRIGHT!  But I wanted bright, like full sun daylight bright, because 1) it's a 12' ceiling and 2) there's going to be a 18" or 24" wide shelf around three of the four walls at approximately 6-7' from the floor for storing totes of out of season or otherwise not used daily/weekly horse-related stuff and that shelf is going to kinda block light coming from above.

This is the light I got, with two moveable panels so that I can kind of aim the light 'under' the future shelf, which is where the saddles and bridles will be stored.

Last Sunday evening, DH and I had a small campfire (really to burn some brush and paper garbage we'd accumulated), and while sitting out there watching the fire, I was able to do some knitting.  

Back in March, when we'd taken K3 and Toad to Sedona on Spring Break for a hiking trip, I had started working on a new pair of socks.  It pretty much got a few inches knit on that trip, and then I didn't touch it on a regular basis after Easter.  However, it was to a point that two hours of knitting on Sunday brought me to the needed foot length for beginning the toe decreases. And once you start the toe decreases, well, you get kind of obsessed about just finishing the dang sock already!

I finished the toe and grafted it closed last night while DH was watching TV.  So now I have one sock knit this entire year! Woo Hoo! I'm hoping to at least find a half hour someday soon to cast on and get the cuff knit for it's mate; maybe by Christmas I'll have a pair I can wear.  The yarn is some Trekking XXL that I've had in my stash for probably 10 years.  So if I make it into socks, does that count as decluttering my house?

What 'simple' joys did you find in your week this week?

Maybe This Was a Sign

 You know how, back in June, I posted about my struggle to get ahold of broiler chicks to raise this year?  If now, take a sec and read this.

Well, turns out procuring chicks was not the end of the difficulties in raising my own meat birds.  For five years now, I have used a wonderful processor that is about a 40 minute drive from me.  They do a great job, very nice facility, very nice people, and have been very easy to work with.  Unlike the closer to me processor, they do not require me to book my butcher date before I even have chicks in hand! (Growing time being 6-8 weeks, the closest processor is so busy they require you to book your date at least two months out, preferably three. . . )

I have been very happy with the further processor, until I tried calling them in mid-July to get on their list for last week of July processing.  Typically they only book 1-2 weeks out and don't take reservations further out than that. I've never had an issue with them not being available in the date range I need. Imagine my utter panic at having 4.5 week old birds and finding out that my beloved processor has sold their business!!  The new owners are almost another hour further from me, and they aren't set up yet.

OH NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who am I going to find to process these birds in 2 or at most 3 weeks?!?  I googled.  I left phone messages.  I emailed.  I prayed, and I faced the fact that very likely it was going to be me processing these 16 birds when they were 6-7 weeks old.

I can do it.  I have done it before.  It's not fun, and I don't have the ideal equipment (no plucker for one, and last time I processed my own it was a smaller batch and I skinned them rather than plucking). 5-6 of the 16 are going to family members, so skinning wasn't going to work for those.

When the closest to me processor called me back two days after I'd left a message, and said they could squeeze my birds in the first week of August (at which point they'd be 8 weeks old), I jumped on the opportunity.  They charge $3 a bird more than what I'd planned on paying (for the other processor), and they individually bag & shrink wrap and toss all the birds into their walk in fridge(s) to await pickup at the end of the day (rather than tossing them into large bags if I so choose, calling me to come get as soon as my batch is finished, and storing them in coolers on ice provided by me). 

But you know what?  Beggars can't be choosers and nobody else I'd contacted could do them in the needed timeframe, and I sure didn't want to have to process them myself.  Too busy right now to spend more than half a day slaughtering chickens, cutting them for the freezer, and cleaning up the mess.  Cutting them up after they've been processed and then packaging for the freezer myself is way faster and easier than doing the deed from start to finish.

Loaded up to go to the processor.

Home again, looking like dinner.

The local processor that I used this time, despite being almost twice as much per bird for processing as the further away processor, really was a great experience all the way around.  And I am super thankful they were willing to squeeze me in instead of saying "No can do, you didn't book at the proper time to get on our schedule."  If I do decide to keep raising my own in future years, I'll budget in the extra $$ for using them and I'll try to book a butchering date as soon as I order my chicks.

But, back to my thoughts on this year's meat chicken experience as a whole. . . 

So, it was not only difficult to get chicks to raise, it had also been difficult (and stressful, very stressful) getting someone to process them for me in the needed date range.  Strike One.  Strike Two.

Raising them was mostly uneventful until the last week and a half of their lives.  At which point I had raccoon trouble.  The coons have been avoiding the live trap that I've constantly had baited and set next to the grow out pen since moving chicks outside from the brooder.  Instead, they've been trying to break into the pen, and it's only been divine intervention keeping my broilers alive.  The coons have yanked off the wire in one spot, but thankfully didn't realize they had a hole large enough to squeeze through.  They've pulled off a chunk of board on one side where the side meets the roof--ironically climbing on top of the live trap in order to reach that high, and again, thankfully it wasn't a gaping enough hole that they climbed in.  They've pulled small chunks of wood off a lower section of that same side.  Each morning that the destruction is discovered, DH has patched my grow out pen back together, but it is obviously on it's last legs and it's useful life is being shortened by the coons.  

I'm thinking that's Strike Three.  Rather than building a whole new pen for next year's birds, and trying to reserve birds in January for May/June delivery, and reserving a butchering date in advance of the chicks even hatching, it might be better to just look into who grows pasture raised broilers and order what I need from them.  Maybe I'm just not supposed to raise my own any more; maybe this was a sign.

Hey, What, It's August?!?

 For the last several weeks, most days if you asked me what day it was I would tell you the wrong one.  Usually a day or two ahead of what it actually was.  This week, for example, Tuesday felt like Thursday all ready to me.  So on Thursday I was sure it was Saturday, and yesterday I almost put horses out an hour early so I could change my clothes and get ready for church.  Except it was Friday, not Sunday, and thank goodness I realized it in time before I got myself all gussied up. (Which, honestly isn't very gussied but does usually involve a dress or skirt, earrings, and not having my hair in a ponytail. LOL)

While yesterday may not have been Sunday, it was the first day of August.  All ready!  

Well, no wonder I'm starting to feel a) burnt out on gardening and b) like my house needs to be gutted and thoroughly cleaned and c) like I need to run away and go somewhere relaxing!  

As the sole caretaker of the animals and the garden as well as the person in charge of all things food at this little place here, summer is not a time when I laze around, take vacations, and generally wonder what to do with my time.  Summer is like full speed ahead, balls to the wall, hit the ground running every morning and don't sit down until dark every night.  Not that I don't hit the ground running every morning all year long (I suspect this is a habit I really should change to be a bit more relaxing and warm up to the new day kind of lifestyle), but in summer with it's long hours of daylight that's 14+ hours a day 7 days a week of not sitting down with the exception of eating meals (and church on Sunday).  And, like the hit the ground running morning ritual, meals typically are not a long time of sitting, more like the minimum seat time necessary for refueling and then I'm squealing tires out of pit row and back into the race.

You know, the fact that DH doesn't adhere to the same seasonal extra-work-can't-leave-home schedule and has been gone (*ahem* playing in the name of taking various family members on canoe and kayak float trips) most weekends since the middle of June probably doesn't help with my glut of work that keeps me from sitting and relaxing.  Or taking even a day off to recharge myself somewhere that I'm not responsible for making sure 36 mouths have enough to eat (20 young chickens, 9 adult chickens, 4 horses, 1 cat, DH and myself)  and that the garden isn't shriveling up from lack of rain/watering or getting overrun in weeds that smother my veggie crops and that the dishes get washed and laundry gets done and put away and bills are paid and the floors aren't too gritty or the furniture too dusty or the trash too stinky before it gets taken out to the bin. . .

I'm all for making hay while the sun shines, but you know, I need to include down time for enjoying while the sun shines, not months from now when it's chilly and damp and icky outside.  I like sunshine. I love sunshine.  That's part of why I practically live outside in the summer months; I can't pull myself indoors away from the sunshine so I go whole hog on outdoor work.  Do I need to raise our own meat birds?  Perhaps I could, in coming years, buy them from a local person raising them.  Do I need to grow as much as possible in a quarter-acre garden and tend it by myself?  And then be the only one harvesting and preserving the bounty?  While some of that is a yes because of my dietary needs (ie avoiding a lot of additives in food from the stores), maybe we should do some budget shuffling to procure the same good food from someone else.

And then there's the whole point b) gut the house thing. . . Housekeeping is not my favorite task.  And, when I'm outside all day, housekeeping is reduced to the bare minimums.  Which, by this time in the summer, means that the inside of my house is driving me nuts because no one else here takes care of it (lookin' at you, DH, who's idea of tidying is to every few weeks stack things in piles for me to take care of).  When the weather changes and I'm forced indoors in a few months, I really don't want to be in a cluttered mess of a place.  Housekeeping fairy, where are you? I could use a visit from your magic wand. . .

Which leads me to c) wanting to run away.  The urge to take a day trip is getting stronger.  I need to wait until after this week--broiler chickens are meeting their doom going to freezer camp--and find a farm care person who is willing to not just do feeding and turnouts but also clean stalls (DH adamantly refuses to help with stalls) and then I think I going to run a few hours away and do some beachside rockhounding.  Still outdoors, but no garden weeds or chores in sight, and while it's still August, i.e. summer, i.e. sun shining!

Meanwhile, let me offer you a sampling of photos of things going on at this little place here lately.  If it weren't for the fact that phones these days are practically never separate from our bodies, and that phones have cameras, I probably wouldn't have any pictures of my life to remember summers by.  Hence, this collection of things that caught my eye, or I thought about sharing as I've gone about my busy days.

the tomato patch, with grape arbor in the background

friendly neighborhood cat (not my cat, therefore not a mouth I feed)

visiting me while I was checking for pickle-sized cucumbers

the wild blackberries on the edge of the woods are getting ripe;

this was enough to enjoy with my yogurt and granola breakfast the next morning

Faline helping me hang laundry the day DD1 needed me to watch her for a while after VBS

blue swallowtail

reddish day lilies

little green frog

a brown garter? snake

(not sure, as I don't know if they come in brown; first brown one I've seen)

running some errands in Sweet Madame Blue and she rolled 3100 miles

(that lady lives a life of luxury and goes out in good weather only)

K3 having a riding lesson/helping me train the LBM

(owner wants 'anyone to be able to jump on and ride')