Tis the season

We got a Christmas tree! It is standing in our dining room, naked and unadorned, but it is up. Tomorrow night we will put on lights, garland, star and ornaments, and turn off all the lights in the house to see the tree at its best. Then hubby will brave the frigid temps to hang our Christmas lights outside. Already the chocolate advent calendars are hung on the walls, and boxes of Christmas cards are stacked on the table, waiting to be written and mailed. It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Tonight we watched our first television Christmas special: Phineas and Ferb's Christmas. Not one of the classics, but we liked it. Soon we will begin to see the real classic holiday shows, like 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer', 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas', and 'The Christmas Story.'

But my all-time favorite TV special has gotta be 'A Year Without a Santa Claus,' if only for that song. You know, THAT song. You know the one I'm talking about.

Oh, heck. Let's all sing along!

Jumpin' Jehosafat

Land sakes, deary me, heavens to Betsy! It's been a long time since my last post. These past few weeks have FLOWN by. We've been treated to some wonderful late fall weather. Right now a few flurries are floating down outside, a herald of colder temps for the next week.

No, I haven't butchered the roosters yet. And it looks like it won't happen before next week anyway. Besides, I've still got three bushels of apples in the root cellar to process. Nevertheless, we've managed to finish up just about all of our autumn tasks. Goat barn cleaned out, chicken coop cleaned out, yard tidied up (mostly), garden cleaned up, garlic planted, fences around two apple trees, and snow fence up.


And our new hens have started to lay! The eggs we get these first few weeks will be smaller sized, aka 'pullet eggs.' But they taste just as good, with their orangey orange yolks and hard, colorful shells. We've got a half-ton of chicken feed stored for them, plus a hundred bales of hay in the barn for the goats. We're set on livestock feed for the winter.

Overall, this summer was a good one on the farm front. Yeah, we had another chicken massacre, and we had some garden failures (potato blight and sweet corn slump), but overall it was a good year. I grew (and processed) more garden goodies this year than in any other year past. The goats are doing well, and my latest shearing might actually be sale-able if I find time to wash and sort it. We've got a new root cellar and a stocked pantry. We put up a new chicken fence and managed to raise fifteen new chickens to add to our flock. So, overall, we're doing pretty good.

There are two things that I wanted to accomplish this year that didn't get done. I wanted to have a hand pump installed on the top of our well, and I wanted to get a woodstove. Both of those things are pretty spendy, and relatively hard to find, and I just never managed to get it done. Hopefully old man winter will hold off on any really bad, electricity-killing blizzards til next season.

Broken dormancy

A few days ago I went down into the root cellar and saw tiny spikes of carrot stem sticking up out of the damp sand. This November has been so mild my cellar hasn't been able to maintain the near-freezing temps needed to keep carrots in dormancy. So, I had a choice: do nothing and risk having most of my carrots turn to mush before I could use them, or process them to keep them from spoiling. I decided to process them.

Then, I had another choice: canning or freezing. Since my family prefers the taste of canned carrots, and since freezer space is definitely at a premium these days, I chose to can. Hubby spent a good chunk of the day Friday cleaning and chopping carrots while I was at work. Saturday morning the canning began in earnest. A visiting brother-in-law (thanks Nate!) was even roped in to help.

The canning continued off and on during the day, interspersed with a trip to town, playing with monkeys, a hot hotseat Civilization III game on the computer, and meal preparation. I finally put the pressure canner to rest at 2 am. I was determined to get it all done, and I did.

So, now we have 22 quarts and ten pints of canned carrots. And I now have the wisdom to keep my carrots in the ground until late fall, when the temperature in my root cellar is cold enough to stop carrot stems from growing up through the sand. Another lesson learned.

Running with scissors

Number Two Son found a scissors the other day. I should have known something was up when he was quiet for longer than fifteen minutes upstairs. He came downstairs, smiling a mile wide, with his hands over his forehead.


My brother and sister-in-law, who were visiting, saw his new 'do and burst out laughing. Half of his bangs were missing. He kept smiling until his Dad and I told him we were going to have to shave the rest of his hair off his head. Then he wasn't so sure.

Half an hour later I found him crying upstairs. He didn't want his head shaved. I said we had to, so it wouldn't look silly when he went to school. I told him his hair would grow out again, eventually. When? he said. By Christmas, I said. He said he didn't want to go to school until Christmas.

We took him to the barber, and he got a haircut. Not shaved, but definitely shorter. He's fine with it, and is okay with going to school on Monday.


He says he will never cut his hair again. We'll see about that.