The most important thing to say first is Happy Birthday, (oldest grandson's name goes here)!!! No, only those who know me has my family's names. Nothing personal to others. He is now 12 years old and a good 5'1" tall. That is 5 1/2" shorter than I am! He is going to be tall, most likely. He is a math and science wizard. I hope jr. high works out for him. The odds are he will go into home-schooling if not. He needs to be in advanced schooling, home-schooling is the only way for us working folks to give them top schooling because we cannot afford private schools. Intelligent children are not appreciated in the public system, I guess. The current curriculum is the most inane thing I have ever seen. Check it out if bored, sometime. (shaking head...)
We had a deer get into the garden. My fault. I had not put up the fishing-line barrier this year. The darn thing ate the blooms on one-third of the cranberry beans and lentils area, a few leaves and blooms off some Jacob's Cattle beans, most of the pole beans and ALL of the blooms off the potatoes. Whether we get potatoes or not this year is up in the air. I do not know if it makes a difference. So... I put up the fishing-line barrier. A few days later, we find hoof-prints to the line, veer off, and go all around the garden area, then go under the saw-horse Himself put up, thinking the deer would be too lazy to go under. Wrong. The deer ate a few more beans, (never ate the pods/beans themselves either time), and one large tobacco plant. The deer have never ate those and they work as another barrier to the garden area in our large meadow. Not this time. One plant with 12" leaves was eaten down a bit. The deer never came back. Either it killed it or gave it such a headache and stomachache it may never come back? Himself still put up a bit of tall fencing as a "gate", just in case. I do hope we do not have to fence that area. 8' deer-resistant fencing is expensive. So is losing a good amount of our food, too. Prices are skyrocketing with a dizzying pace. We are trying to be as responsible for ourselves as possible.

I did get my first harvest off my bush green beans and the peas. Once I start picking, the green beans start coming in heavy for about a month. (Click on any photo for closer views.)

The peas, about 2 weeks or so longer. This first picking gave me 6 pints of green beans and two half-pints of peas with one half-pint of peas/green beans mixed. I am the one who likes peas the best, except Sally. Putting them in small jars is perfect.

I gathered three bags of Sally's combings and carded them. After I was done, I took the photo. (The tin shows a size comparison.) I went into the craft room to put away my carders and found one more bag. sigh.... I carded that up, then sat down to spin. In all, I got 312 yards of yarn. Though I weighed up the fuzz and divided it evenly, I still ended up Andulean-plying the last bit. I do the wrap around my left hand to get to the end of the bobbin of yarn. I take the end to where the plying stopped and finish plying off my hand instead of waiting to have enough fuzz to add to the empty bobbin for plying. I know, clear as mud. I do wish I had had the groomer save her combings when she was groomed. I would of had just as much. As it is, she is way over-due to be bathed and get her toenails dremeled. Next month, for sure.


It has been very hot lately, too hot to take the chickens out in the tractor for more than a few hours. I water down the chicken yard first thing in the morning and again throughout the afternoon. I also attached one of those snake mister things to send a cool mist to the chickens during the hottest part of the day. We put their temp fence around the coop so they had a bigger area to wander around in during the day. The plastic fence is 3' or 4' tall. The first few days, the chickens were happy. Then, the now-dubbed Stew escaped. We could not figure out how, except some of the fencing bent in the heat. We tightened it up. He escaped again. And again. And again. Fine. Fishing-line 6" above the fencing so he bounces off it. He cleared it with ease. Darn it!

We removed the ghetto wire from the tops of the garden beds, (no pine cone bombs this time of year), and attached it to the top of the fencing until we can afford metal fencing that is taller (tomorrow). We did put a strip up that made it only 5' tall instead of 6'+. So far, he has not discovered it after bouncing off the fencing that was a good 6' tall. 6' tall, it is. I watched Stew go around the fence for a while, turning his eye towards the fence, looking for a spot to jump over. We won this war. The improvised gate is a pike-thingie woven through the fencing mesh that I sink into the ground to keep it closed. It was impossible to improvise the taller added bit to the gate, so I have to duck when entering.



Who, (whom?), ever thought chickens were boring never had them. woof...
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