Thursday, June 4
It’s my Friday!!! I went in to work a half hour early to get the billing done. I stayed busy throughout the morning and then just before noon I had nothing to do. I was waiting for several email responses before I could finalize the ads. The emails never came through. Since I was caught up with nothing to do I left a little early. It’s hard for me to sit around at work with nothing to do when there is SO much to do at the farm.
We have a late check-in this evening. Here’s hoping that it’s not too much later than the already approved late check-in time. Some of us need our beauty sleep!
This afternoon I finished one of the curtain panels. I have the front cut out for the second panel but I still need to cut the lining for it. Once the cutting and the ironing is done the rest goes fairly quickly. In fact, the tutorial I used said that you’ll spend more time ironing your creases than you will actually sewing. She wasn’t kidding!
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As we were clearing the table after supper CountryBoy spotted two turkeys in the back yard….
One was almost at our back door. They weren’t spooked, either, as we stood watching them. They have a keen sense of their surroundings and usually scamper back up the hillside if they ‘see’ us even while we’re in the house. Not this time. We were wondering if there was a lingering smell of our young turkeys that could smell and that’s why they were bravely venturing near the house. We’ll never know but it was pretty cool!
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Farm news: 33 eggs
Friday, June 5
It’s been one of those days where I’ve been able to do whatever I feel like doing. A basic plan formed while drinking coffee but nothing was set in stone or simply HAD to get done today. Those days are rare and are so appreciated.
While CountryBoy was making breakfast I put the kettle on to make some iced tea. After breakfast I started making a Greek Orzo Salad. We have been eating a lot of salads, thanks to the ‘Simply Salads’ by Jennifer Chandler book I found at our local pickers store for a $1.00. All the different and delicious salads made me hungry for this Orzo Salad. I stopped on the way home from work yesterday to pick up some feta cheese and some more grape tomatoes so that I could make it today.
It’s so simple to make and so colorful. Shouldn’t food be that way? Fresh ingredients, colorful, and a labor of love?
I let it chill in the fridge the rest of the day to marry all the flavors together. During the prep work my B&B boss called. Thankfully I straightened her out (she would love to hear me say that, ha!) so that I didn’t have to go in today. I really need my two days off!
Once the salad was in the fridge I started typing up the instructions for the crochet baby blanket I just made. I wanted to be able to remember what I did (adding rows and chains) to make the blanket the correct size since I was using a lighter weight yarn than the original pattern called for. That seems to be the way ’round here… constantly altering patterns or recipes to suit our needs or the ingredients we have on hand. It works and I’m so thankful that we are able to do so. Anyway, in the midst of typing it up I heard our guest come down in the side-by-side. I went out to make sure everything was OK and to see if she needed anything. We ended up talking for hours. literally! She loved the farm, wanted to see the barn and meet Miss Mabel, we went in the coop, we talked about the various trees, checked out the pop-up camper, and so on. It was just so nice and the conversation flowed easily. I’m tellin’ ya, we have simply had some wonderful guests and it has literally been our pleasure to meet them.
I finally came back in and finished up the crochet instructions and then we dove into the orzo salad. so good. so, SO, GOOD!!! We limited ourselves to one bowl but we could’ve seriously put a hurtin’ on ourselves it was that good. (We also limited ourselves because we were splurging for dessert – homemade apple fritters CountryBoy whipped up this afternoon. Another YUM!) After that I decided to type up the recipe in a format that I had envisioned yesterday (during those slow hours at work).
I may, or may not, start working on a recipe book that I may, or may not, have printed some day. This recipe book would be tried and true recipes we love and would have to be for our use only since many of the recipes originate elsewhere. Although, we tweak recipes so much ’round here… at any rate, it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while but just felt overwhelmed at the task. So, I’m starting slow. One recipe at a time and we’ll see where it ends up.
The day has casually slipped away and that’s OK. It’s been a good one.
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Farm news: 32 eggs
Saturday, June 6
It’s been a nice, long, productive with some relaxing moments kinda day. I like those kind of days especially when it’s a day off. It’s also been a hot & humid day. Honestly, I thought I was moving away from hot and humid when we moved here. Guess not.
I started the day doing a mountain of laundry. I typically do two or three loads on whichever is the nicer of my days off and during the warm months I hang them on the line. Today, however, I think I ended up doing five loads and only hung two of the five on the line. It’s not that we had a lot of dirty clothes but I had decided to wash our winter coats before putting them away for the summer. Coats are bulky so they were one load themselves. I washed our sheets this evening so I threw them in the dryer so they would be dry by the time we went to bed. I should’ve washed them earlier in the day because I do love line-dried sheets.
While doing laundry I also worked on a little project for the pantry. Last weekend I reorganized the pantry and it has been working out great. It’s nice to see what we have. What wasn’t nice (still) was the spice shelf. We have so many spices that completely filled the shelf so that we couldn’t see, at a glance or without having to move them all around, what spice was what. My solution was to add a small shelf above the spice shelf. I found a piece of 1×4 in the barn, measured the length I needed then cut it to length with the chop saw. After that I sanded and stained it then left it to dry. I also found a leftover piece of wood from the bathroom window trim that had already been stained over in the scrap wood pile. I grabbed it, even though it wasn’t quite as long as I needed but it would work. I cut it down to an inch and a half using the table saw. CountryBoy cut a notch out of one corner of the shelf piece and then we screwed the pieces together and then mounted it above the spice shelf. It’s perfect for the new spice jars…
I liked my new spice shelf and jars so much that I decided they needed a proper label. I had the oval labels on hand so I went to Avery.com and picked out the design, added the text and simply printed them off.
It’s so easy to now see what spices we have and they are easy to grab. Mission accomplished plus I got to use some power tools!
While I was doing laundry and playing with the power tools CountryBoy was at a neighbors splitting some wood. He ended up with a truck load and a half of split wood. It’s still green so he wanted to get that wood first so that it would be stacked in the back of the wood shed.
He says it’s about one month of wood and it would be the month of May when we would be using it. He has offers of a lot more wood from a couple of our church friends so if he can manage to get it all cut, split and stacked we should be set for another winter. I do know he’s happy to have gotten a start on our wood supply.
I finally finished the second curtain panel. Yay! My dining room table is now free from sewing paraphernalia – cutting mat, rotary cutter, pattern notes, ruler, measuring tape, fabric, and who-knows-what-else and the ironing board is once again hanging in its position rather than taking up half the pantry. I think I’m just going to hang a sheet over the other window, ha!
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Farm news: 31 eggs
I can see my sugar snaps from the driveway now. After the last rain we had and some sunny days they should really be taking off as should the rest of the garden. It won’t be long we’ll be pickling beets.
Sunday, June 7
Ah, Sunday/Monday. On the way to church I told CountryBoy that the drive to church begins my day. I don’t like feeling like that but it truly is the start of my day. Church, home, change clothes, grab something to take with me to work to eat, and then work until I’m finished. Today I finished at 5:30. Now I’m going to sit on the porch and take advantage of the cool evening after a hot day.
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Farm news: the eggs haven’t been counted yet
Dream Valley Farmstead 