Thursday, June 27, 2013

Another Quiet Day on the Homestead

What was my day like yesterday?  Well . . . 

First thing in the morning I cleaned the bathroom.  (We only have one, thank gawd.)



Baked a pan of Blueberry Buckle using some blueberries dear friend B was kind enough to give me after I whined and whined talked about the fact that our less than bountiful crop last year didn't even last us through the winter months.

I went out into the garden and harvested a whole lot of radishes and a good big bunch of scallions.

Made some egg salad to go on the side of our big lettuce/spinach salad for lunch.



The night before I had decided that I would plant rows of corn in the pumpkin patch and let the pumpkins run amok around the corn stalks.  I know this is an old-timey way of doing it, but I've never tried it.  (Picture above taken through afternoon fog.)

I got a little over half of that project done when it started to rain.  Oh well, it was time to go in and get lunch on the table anyway.  It rained hard in the afternoon (about 6/10th of an inch according to our gauge).  Much too wet to go back outside and do anymore garden work.

Taking advantage of time inside, I got a new batch of kombucha going, then made a bunch of Mexican Tortillas for the freezer.



I have a TV in my quilt room (pictured above) but it's been dying a slow death.  (Don't know why this is.  It's only 29 years old.  Really.)  Sometimes the only sound is annoying static.  When there is actually audio to go with the picture, it's either really LOUD or so faint I can hardly hear it.  No happy medium.  I told Papa Pea I'd like to replace it with a TV like we have in the kitchen.  That TV is an old model (but only 15 years old) with the VCR built right into it.  (Yes, we're still using VCR tapes.  Haven't yet graduated to DVDs.)



What a good guy he is.  He found one on E-bay nearly identical to our kitchen TV (but newer -- only 12 years old!) and pictured above.  We hooked it up in the kitchen where I was working all afternoon and I test drove it.  It seems to work perfectly.  Good picture (and sound!), records and plays back without a hitch.  So now we'll transfer it to my quilt room . . . and maybe donate that 29 year old relic in there to the Smithsonian.

Funny, but I can't remember clearly what I did last night after dinner.  Probably came back here to my desk and read some of your blogs, etc.  I do know my eyelids kept falling shut when I sat down in the living room with Papa Pea before calling it quits for the night.  Must have been the quiet day that exhausted me.

What was your day like?  If you were lucky enough to be home on your homestead all day, I'll bet it wasn't much different than mine.

21 comments:

Susan said...

I just love that you are still using VCRs. What a lucky find - I am sure everyone and their Aunt Minnie are ousting the older sets for new fangled flat ones. You sure do have the wet, foggy weather - and you are so much better than I am at taking advantage of it to get things done inside. I THINK about it, but usually slump into a chair like a slug.

Sparkless said...

We still have VHS tapes but our machine has died so we can't watch them. Most of them are kids tapes we can't bare to part with cause they are such good movies, like Bambie.
It sure has been a rainy spring for just about everyone. I think this weekend it's supposed to finally clear up and be summer for us. I could do without the heat but I do enjoy the sunshine.

Tombstone Livestock said...

Boy Mama Pea I may just have to quit reading your blog ..... all this talk, talk, talk about rain and fog and wishing for summer ........ My summer started first week of April and now here it is the end of June .... isn't summer a 3 month season? And I still got 3 more months to go ..... would everyone please shift you weight to whatever side of the world is needed to move the rain from the east to the west.

Sue said...

That blueberry buckle looks so darn good. I'd LOVE to have a little (huge)piece of that with my morning coffee. I still have a bag or two of blueberries left. I think I know what I"ll be doing at 3 a.m. tomorrow. Yum!!!!!!!!!

Sandy Livesay said...

Mama Pea,

Today I was planting flowers on the good old homestead and taking inventory of the vegetables dying in the garden because of the heat.

DFW said...

Mama Pea,

I look forward to seeing what the corn & pumpkins do. I love old-time' farming.

Mama Pea said...

Susan - My hubby would have switched us over to DVDs long ago but he's married (ahem) to someone who doesn't do change well and is very happy with things the way they are, thank you very much. (Just call me Dina, the dinosaur.)

Sweeze, I STILL don't have all my garden planted so whenever it's possible I'm outside working on that. When the weather MAKES me stay inside, I have to go, go, go because I'm so far behind on that aspect of my job. Geesh.

And just for the record, I don't think you EVER slump like a slug!

Mama Pea said...

Sparkless - I know I just have to reconcile myself to the fact that the weather will NEVER be just as I would have it if I were Mother Nature, or whoever the heck controls it. For us up here in the middle of thousands of acres of forest, too much rain is much better than too little. That old forest fire danger is a big one.

Mama Pea said...

Tombstone Livestock - Haha! "Talk, talk, talk about rain and fog . . . " You really wanted to say "whine, whine, whine" didn't cha??

Believe me, every single time I blog about rain or wet weather, my heart does a little "clinch" thinking of what you are enduring. Do you think it really would help if we all stood on one foot and leaned toward your dry, dry land? If so, I promise we will all do it!

Mama Pea said...

Sue - If I'm awake then, I'll give you a call and see if you really are baking! ;o) (Actually, I'm pretty sure you will be.)

Mama Pea said...

Sandy - Oh no! Your garden really is dying already because of the heat? Boy, we may fight our too cool temps all summer but at least we have the option of cold frames and hoop houses and greenhouses but what can you do when the temps are so high? You can never water enough to keep things going, can you? Arrrrgh.

Mama Pea said...

DFW - I don't want to be pessimistic, but truth to tell, I envision one big ol' snarled mess of corn, pumpkins and weeds!

Anonymous said...

We have tv's like that too :) Old, but still plugging along, so I won't replace them until I have to.
I spent part of my day outside transplanting monkey grass and deciding what layout I will use in my new garden. SO beyond excited and happy to be playing in the dirt.

Michelle said...

I honestly have a TV like that in my quilt room. The VCR doesn't work so I use a portable DVD player. It old but it works. That's what counts.

Practical Parsimony said...

I have a tv in my sewing room. I had a tv with the vhs player, but a tape got stuck and I gave it away after five years of trying to get the tape out. I loved that tv. My tv in the den is one of the fattest tube ones, made in 1993. It works!

Yesterday, I spent the day recovering from the day before. Plus, I took a nap after being awakened by a storm and not being able to sleep the rest of the night.

DFW said...

I was too. But, I'm glad you are experimenting with that instead of me! Happy to see 'your' experiments instead of mine ... lol.

Cozy Thyme Cottage said...

We are still using some VCR's too although we do have some DVD's. I recorded some of the garden shows when the good ones were still on TV and like to watch them sometimes. Hope you got to finish planting your corn in the pumpkin patch. We have had quite a bit of rain here. Nancy

Mama Pea said...

Stephanie - We've never replaced ANYTHING just to have the "newest" thing out there. (I don't think I'd do that even if we had unlimited funds. Why make a change if what you have works?)

So happy to see you finally being able to do some of the homestead-y stuff you've wanted to do for so long!

Mama Pea said...

Michelle - I've never been able to play tapes in my quilt room, but now I can! I've made recordings of some quilt shows showing particular tricks or methods and I wanted to be able to play them (start, stop, rewind) while I was actually doing the project. Hope I don't have to wait for the winter months to try this new set-up out!

Mama Pea said...

Practical Parsimony - Last year when we remodeled the living room, we finally broke down and bought a modest sized flat screen TV. The picture on it is no better than on one of our old, old fat tube ones! Yep, those old ones still work, don't they?

Mama Pea said...

Cozy Thyme Cottage - STILL couldn't get the corn in today. We've had nothing but on and off thunderstorms, pelting rain and fog. I would go out inbetween the showers to plant but the soil is just too wet to work in. I think I could get the corn in if we could get one whole day of sunshine . . . but it's not in the forecast!