scenes from lately

Righty-o, so as someone commented on my last entry, ten days between postings is way too long. I know! but I do have a fairly legitimate excuse this time around. Blogging has always been a nighttime thing for me, with occasional exception, and for the last almost two weeks I haven't been home at night because I was house-sitting overnight, and although I did have the laptop with me, it does not have photo editing software on it (not that I remembered to bring my camera card reader anyway), and on top of that the internet there was down for several of those days anyway, AND by the time I finished all my chores (here and there) it was always late and I was always just too dang wiped out!

I've been very busy, and time is flying, and I can't figure out how it's Friday again because it just was Friday, that couldn't have been a week ago. Cripes. My big scrimshaw project, the "Greatest Generation" (WWII) pistol and knife is heavily into the sketch/revision stage, and I'm pouring hours and hours of work into coming up with some pretty kick-ass designs, if I may say so myself. This project is gonna rock! I've still been baking like an insane person, but Sunday is the last day of the whole "recipe testing" thing. And then I'll be doing some (how much? I don't know) of the baking for a wedding. I love it, I really do. It does take some serious time though! And of course right now ALL the fruit is ripe. Either the nectarines are late or the peaches are early but it's all ready at once. I made 88 jars of jam this season, I've frozen a bunch of pie fillings, and I'm going to be spending the vast majority of the weekend (when I'm not baking cupcakes or researching airplanes or sketching General MacArthur) canning peaches. Tis the season. Summer fruit is awesome, but holy cow.

Anyway, here are some photos for your entertainment... things seen around here lately:

This is what happens when someone decides to lay eggs behind the hay stack where I can't reach them:

Got your ducks in a row? Aren't they a cute little blended family. ;-) Do you suppose Diego (the rooster) wonders why his kids in the previous photo don't look like his "kids" in the next photos?



Jam!

In the garden:


They're growing!

Angus (left) had a play date today with Trog (middle) and Porter (right). Angus is soooooo tired now! Hee hee!


I'll try to be better about blogging. Really.

let's see if this works

First attempt at posting a video:



The fence project is admittedly using up most of my time right now. I'm sore and whiney, and when I finish fencing for the day if my hands and arms don't feel 100% good I'm just not comfortable doing scrimshaw. When one is working on an image that's an inch and a half tall, one can't have anything less than normal dexterity! So I'm not getting a whole lot done on the grips this week. I am sanding down some mammoth ivory pendants though, that requires less precision. Stinky work, I don't enjoy that smell. :-/ Had errands to run and other crapola today too.

Fence update:

Top rails: 1072 feet done, 1192 feet to go (oh what I would do for a massage right now)
Hot wire: going shopping tomorrow, at least for investigational purposes! I've decided on solar, because I think the best place to put the grounding rods is out near the creek, and that's too far from the electrical outlet in the shed. There are still a few areas I'm not sure how to handle, so cross your fingers that some hunky single dude will be at TSC to answer my questions. ;-)

EDIT: okay, now that it's uploaded I can see that the video quality is CRAP. Blogger must compress the heck out of an already compressed video. I'll have to ponder this and see if I can come up with a better solution. I was going to upload it to youtube but they said it would take 45 minutes to upload the original file off the camera. Cripes!

fun with animals!

I cut up this watermelon for dinner the other night, only to find it totally blah tasting. Hmmm, what to do with it....

I think I found some volunteers!




By morning, it was but a mere shell of its former self (yeah, they have skills!). I washed off the ducky dirt... Now what to do with this lovely bowl, hmmmm...

I think I found a volunteer!


Looks like she has some competition though. ;-)


These ducks just crack me up this year, they have so much more personality than any other batch I've raised. :-)

I'm trying to decide whether to attend the State Fair art show reception Thursday August 20th. Anyone want to be my "date"? I use that term very loosely.

Fence project update:
Top rail fixing: 568 feet done, 1696 feet to go (SIGH)
Hot wire: budget approved, need to go shopping! Still working on the logistics.
I can't wait to get it all wired now. I knew the fence was bad, but didn't realize how extremely bad until I started working on it. What a pain. Sigh, where is my Farm Boy? (Bonus points if you just said "As you wish.")

sort of a foodie day

Okay, there really aren't enough hours in the day lately.

I am so excited to show you all the belt buckle when it's done. It's not done. I should refrain from ever thinking something might go quicker than my initial estimate, because it never does. ;-) The day just flies past. I must really get into "the zone" especially when I'm using the AirGraver. I've noticed my breathing gets really really slow. Weird huh!

I got enough orders to make another batch of apricot jam today. Yay! I really love making jam. Perhaps the best part is getting to scrape the bowl and eat the tiny bit of leftovers that don't make it into the jars. ;-) I'm pretty fast at it now, I can crank out a batch of jam in no time. Lots of water, lots of boiling, lots of sugar. It's an interesting process.



And this afternoon I made cream cheese brownies, which are dangerously good. Really, like, consume with caution because you might croak of sheer bliss. I will post the recipe another day. New recipe for me (which I of course modified).

And I fed more watermelon to the ducks, because it's hilarious. This end piece was kinda mushy and gross. It didn't take them any time at all to eat all the good stuff, leaving only a green and white "bowl" behind (which Shylah the horse was entirely happy to eat). Animals, the great recyclers. :-)

ducks!

The days are packed lately. Seriously. I'm blogging at midnight. It'll be tomorrow by the time I post this.

The ducks are growing like weeds. They'll soon by bigger than their chicken mommies. These two hens have done such a great job with them! They just got the run of the whole garden a couple days ago and they are so much fun to watch.

Ducks and watermelon, it's a great combination. ;-)




Homer decided it looked like a good place for a nap. Hens and ducks decided to check him out.



Homer decided to find somewhere he could nap without being pestered!

fuzzy adorableness

Okay, first of all, the big news that was waiting in my inbox this morning:

The zebra knife sold today at Blade Show in Atlanta!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I hear it got lots of rave reviews!!!!!!!

And as for the other news of the day, pictures will say it better than words, though "awwwww omg cute!" pretty well sums it up. For those of you who sorta know my birds, the non-black hen is "It." As you can see she is molting in some normal colored feathers, and I'm super curious to see if she loses the wing bays. Either way, she's got the mama-skillz!

another Sunday night

Whoa there, what happened to the weekend? Been busy I guess. I think I finished the Spangled Cornish drawings today. I say "I think" because the committee could tell me otherwise, but in my mind they are done. If you felt a strong breeze this evening that could have been my sigh of relief. That has been a VERY tough color to draw, it's soooo intricate. I am looking forward to something solid-colored for the next pair of drawings. :-) Anyway hopefully these will be accepted, I think they are pretty cool. I am almost a third done with the project now (that's actually rather depressing...)

The ducks are flying now, and will soon be gone. I guess I should explain that, for anyone who doesn't know the duck story. Almost every year for the past..hmm...at least 15 years, probably more (?) we have raised wild Mallards. The eggs come from hay fields that are being cut. Once the nest has been mowed over, the hen won't come back to incubate the eggs. So we know a couple of hay guys, and they bring the eggs to me. Used to be that I would raise them in a brooder like I do with the chicks, but ducks are really rather disgusting creatures that delight in taking water out of the waterer. Not that they drink it all, they just sort of fling it around until everything is soggy and smells awful. And of course being wild ducks they are insane. So several years ago I realized if I gave the newly hatched ducklings to a broody (sitting on a nest) chicken, they ducklings will bond with the mother chicken (and vice versa, to an extent) and that works out just beautifully. Then they can be raised outdoors in the garden and I don't have to deal with them turning everything they touch into mud (they still do, but if it's not in a small enclosed space it's not nearly as offensive). So anyway, they grow up and then when they are about 2 months old they are able to fly. It starts with just short flights out into the yard, and then they go a little farther out into the pasture (cracks me up that they FLY away, and WALK back home...). Then they start circling the property, going farther away for longer periods of time. And then one day they don't come back. And so ends my time with the ducks. I love it. Everyone thinks that must be so sad to see them leave, but it's really a beautiful thing. I love to see them fly away. And that's not to say I don't enjoy having them here. They are cute and amusing, but they are wild birds and it's a really cool thing to see them return to the wild. So this years ducks will be gone within a few days. In fact I'm not sure they are here now, but they may be back in the morning. Or they might not be. :-)

In other news, I am finally going to have a round pen soon! Boy has this been a saga. I had to save up for ages to afford one, they aren't cheap! But I have found that I really need one, considering I have a two-year-old filly who I plan to start riding within the next year...and therefore I have LOTS of training to do. So I have had the panels themselves since April. They are just sitting by the barn. A friend came over with his tractor today and scraped the area of the pasture where the pen will be set up (just to make it flatter and get rid of the weeds). The sand will be delivered (and spread, yay!) on Thursday, and then I'm not sure yet when we'll get the panels up. Possibly over the weekend, though it just depends when various people are available to help. I can't wait to finally have use of a round pen!!

The Boys

A small trickle of water from the drip irrigation + Mallards = MUD!!! They are so easily entertained. :-)