Peggy's Patch

Can you hear me screaming inside?

I know none of my followers ever have days when they get so frustrated that they just want to throw up your hands and give up.  Me neither!!!!  But I will say that I am getting close to that right now.

I wouldn’t say by any means that I am a meticulous housekeeper although there was a day in one of my past lives that I did have a house that stayed showroom ready and I was so organized that I was in prison.  Now I am just in prison…I’m laughing!!!

I do like to have things in order and everything in it’s place.  If it doesn’t have a place, then I don’t want it in the house.  I don’t like walking around, over, or into stuff that is unnecessary.  Rick, on the other hand is the opposite.  He’s not happy unless he has way too much stuff than there is room for.  His idea of cleaning up is moving his hoard from one place to another.  Can you hear me screaming inside?  I’m trying to be patient with his thought process, but somehow am missing how this is supposed to work.

This weekend he cleaned out the spare bedroom.  We had the leftover beads stacked in there waiting for me to get the time to do an inventory and then get them out of here.  Now they are in stacks all over the rest of the house, but the spare bedroom has the bed made up for company.  They just have to go through the maze of the rest of the house to get there.  And…who is this company?  Can you hear me screaming inside?

Murphy’s Law says that if your house is a mess you are determined to have company, so I guess I had better get busy and make some yummy cinnamon rolls or something equally decadent to serve my company.  Maybe if I give them enough coffee and sugar they won’t notice the mess or me screaming inside.

On a brighter note…I have a couple of turkey thighs simmering on the wood stove and they are about ready to add some veggies and wild rice to make soup.  I still have a few rolls left from the last baking so that should be good.  Rick wants hamburgers so he can have them and I will have this soup with a big cold glass of the raw milk that I have in the fridge.  Just thinking about that is putting me in a better mood.

Thanks for listening….I feel better.  Have a great day!!!

A trip to the city

On the 27th of every month one of our checks hits the bank and we usually take a quick trip to pick up animal feed, a few groceries, material, material, material, and lunch at IKEA.  I love their meatballs.  Soon the material will stop and it will be seeds, seeds, seeds.

Today we had to also deliver a birthday present to a really sweet girl.  The wild quilt I just made has been delivered.  She wasn’t available to see it so I didn’t get to see the look on her face…I will get an email tomorrow probably to tell me if she liked it.

We also brought one of our gifted rabbits home for a weeks visit while the owners move into an new home.  She has certainly been taken care of and is so cuddly so has been loved while in her new home.  I’m glad.  They told us how her and their cats play like old friends.  A nice story.

While in IKEA I saw that they had cyclamens…my Mom’s favorite flower.  I wanted so bad to buy one for her and actually reached for it…I guess I’m losing it.  I have a bag of Christmas candy here that I got my Dad for Christmas and I’m buying flowers for my Mom.  Do we ever let them go?  I admit, I shed a few tears and went on with my day.  I need to throw this candy out now that it’s one lump.

While we are on the subject of death, a new facebook friend lost her long time pet rooster.  Now that might seem trivial to most after all he was just a chicken.  I feel so bad for her because I have a rooster that I will be very sad when he leaves me for the roost on the other side of the rainbow.  Since he was just a little guy he and his brothers used to all protect me from their Daddy who was the devil of all roosters.  They would chase him off the property every time he came after me.  One by one something got the three brothers and I thought Rooster too but one day I walked into an empty shed and there he was.  I had never touched him but reached down and picked him up and he has been my baby ever since.  I had him penned for the winter and in the spring got him a lady friend.  Some days he is under foot and wants attention and some days he stays his distance.  But the minute he sees me in the kitchen window he runs up and gets whatever treat I throw out to him.  Last summer I had a big rooster that turned mean and the one time he came after me, Rooster was in between us in a flash and had to jump up to get in his face.  He just didn’t know how little he was, but he backed the big rooster off me and stayed in between us until he lost interest in me.  The big rooster was chicken dinner…I don’t give roosters second chances.  I have a Rhode Island Red rooster now named Bubba who is a sweetheart and hopefully will stay that way.

I just got a call from the place I purchase my chicks and ordered 20 Jersey Giants to try out this year.  Supposedly they aren’t that great of layers, but wonderful for meat.  We will see.  They don’t come in until May 31st so I have time to get their habitat ready over at Tina’s place.  All the poultry is moving over there by the end of summer.  I need the barn space and the outside sheds are just too damp for my babies.  They don’t seem to mind, but I do.  We will put floors in the new chicken building.  In the summer they will have the woods behind Tina’s to free range.  Hopefully the predators will leave them alone.  I have seen coyotes there chasing cats.  We will figure out something to keep them safe or use the chicken tractors.  Rick will be glad because he won’t have to mow that and the elk and deer will still be able to walk through there on their way to my garden for a snack.

I found a place to buy organic raw cows milk.  I bought a gallon tonight and had some with my dinner…yum.  It had all these warnings but I grew up on organic raw cows milk and stayed slim and trim and healthy until I started drinking the milk from the store.  I’m still looking for a place to get organic grass fed beef…maybe I will just have to put an elk in the freezer.  I sure have enough of them walking through my yard every day and night.  Seems like one could fall down dead and nobody would miss him.  Another story for another day.

Today I stumbled across another rabbit grower who has the same basic philosophy of raising rabbits as I do.  He is out for a good quality of life for them and works on quality rather than quantity.  Also he looks for raising as much of his rabbit food as possible which is my goal.  I picked up some pointers from him and am excited to get them into my program.  All these ideas and can’t do a thing about them for several months.  Poor Rick when Spring gets here.  He’s going to start calling himself my slave again.  I keep telling him that he’s my favorite slave but somehow that’s just not enough.  What’s a girl to do?

Enough chatter for tonight…..have a great day!!!

Lady Charlotte alive and well

I can’t believe that our Lady Charlotte who was a half (or more) dead turkey hen last week is now up on her own and eating us out of house and home.  She is chowing down on anything I give her.  I am amazed and in awe!!!!

All of her wounds are healing and looking pretty scabby.  The best part is that she is getting up on her own and walking.  Tomorrow, Rick is going to take her out to the barn and let her scratch through some hay and get some exercise.  If she seems to be okay, she might stay, but if not, she can come back inside at least for the colder night hours.  I might have to make her a jacket if she stays out all night.

Now that Rick doesn’t have her on his lap each night, maybe there will be room for me…NOT!!!!

I made the best bread today.  It had a lot of whole wheat so took a long time to raise.  That and my kitchen stays so cold this time of year.  It was so yummy.  I made some honey butter and it was hard to behave myself and only eat one biscuit.  I sure love my grain mill.  It’s noisy, but gets the job done.  I need to try making some crackers next.

Hope all is well with you….Have a great day.

A little background before we get going again.

Now that we have the basics of where I am at this time and what is occupying my time, lets take some time on two subjects for the next couple of weeks.  The first being an introduction to our little wanna be farm and the second being the road to becoming able to live a self-sustaining existence.  At nearly 65 years old it’s a little late for both, but I am going to try with the help of a strong and healthy husband and a like-minded daughter.

I grew up on a farm and spent 35 years away from it first in college and then following my husband around the world as an Army wife, briefly a missionary to the military and then with his career in portable X-ray.  All of those gave me little time or space to do much gardening or farming with a few brief exceptions.  In July of 1999 my mother was told that she had 6 months to live.  She wasn’t much older than I am now but had abused her body to the point it was quitting.  I moved here to help take care of her and my Dad who’s strokes had caused him some problems.  To keep myself occupied I got a couple of bantam hens with a bunch of chicks.  Soon they were joined by some turkeys and some Rhode Island Reds.  Along came a couple of geese and 3 goats.  Last came the rabbits.  A buck and a doe.  My Dad built me a great 3 room rabbit house that nestled next to the chicken house I had built and we started having babies.

 And so the story begins.

My Dad and his friend plowed up a nice plot of ground for me and fenced the deer and elk out and I started my gardening adventure.  There are so many memories of that first year.  The baby geese were in my hip pocket all time and “helped” me in the garden.  Sometimes I had to just stop, sit in the dirt and play with them until they would leave me alone to work. When it got tough going with my Mom’s illness, the animals kept me going.  They gave me time away from the constant care and sadness of her illness.  On December 27, 1999 she passed away and I was ready to move back into the 5^th wheel I had been living in and my Dad asked me to stay here and I haven’t left since.  He moved out and then later to Montana to start a new chapter in his life.  I became a farmer and never wanted to go back to my old life.

There are a few things don’t like about farm life….the main one is butcher day.  The other one is that I just plain get tired.  It seems like the more you get done, the more there I to do.  I have it in my head that you don’t play until your work is done and it’s never done.  Therefore, from May until October, there is no play time.  This time of year, I can relax a little and play.  One thing I do in the summer is stop when I get company or a neighbor stopping by.  Don’t ever think you are interrupting me…you are giving me the only break I will get that day.

This coming summer, Tina and I are getting our fishing licenses and taking time to do some fishing.  That will be our play time and relax time.  It has been a long time since either one of us has been fishing but hopefully it is like riding a bike…once you know how, you don’t forget.  We certainly have the worms from our compost pile.  Although, I am going to start my nightcrawler collection as soon as Spring gets here.

That’s it….have a great day.

It’s been a while since I was here

It has been 8 months since I last put pen to paper and wrote something on this blog.  That means it’s time to get back into the swing of things.  Soon I will be planting seeds, hatching chicks, and welcoming baby goats into the barn if Billy Bob did his job.

Right now it is the dead of winter and a time to look back at what we did right last year, what we did absolutely wrong and what we can improve on now that we have been there.

But for now the patches I’m working on are in the sewing room.  The quilt tops are coming out in record numbers this year.  The main reason is that I’m making quilts for Mexico for the nursing home and orphanage our church works with there and they are simple blocks and tied not actually quilted.  There isn’t much art to them, but they are functional and very much appreciated by all who use them.  I have thrown in a couple quick comforters on the easier side and finished up a couple of started quilts and started a once a week block book so that adds to the mix.  On the burner I have a purple and teal quilt planned for my bedroom which I’m dying to start and am taking a couple of classes on the internet to hone my skills.  One is a machine quilting class that should be very interesting. 

The garden is always in the back of my mind and I have so far test sprouted all the seeds I harvested last year from the garden and had a 100% success rate.  That is one thing I did right.  Next I am going to test the old seeds in my stash before I go and buy all new seeds.  Then the real planning begins to decide what I can actually have room to grow.  I want to try it all but need to be realistic.  Somehow I need to find the $$$$ to be able to build a proper fence for the garden.  Last year the deer had breakfast in my garden each morning and I lost a lot due to their healthy appetites.

So much for today…Have a great day!!!