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Recently my blogger friend, Jordan, over at Blueberry Hills Homestead, wrote about and included pictures of her dog's new favorite outside perch: on top of her car. She commented that hers is now the only vehicle in her work's parking lot with large dog foot prints all over the hood and roof.
Her post reminded me of a very distinct moose hoof print we once had on the black rubber-coated bumper of above pictured car right above the license plate.
The beginning of this tale goes back many years. (Many, many years.) When my mom was pregnant with me and living with her parents while my dad was overseas during World War II, my grandfather insisted that my mom get her driver's license . . . something she had never done.
A few months of driving lessons from Grandpa and Mom was ready to take the test. She went in to take the written part and passed with flying colors. But when she met the man who was to give her the driving test, things came to an abrupt halt. You see, by that time she was nine months pregnant. The gentleman took one look at her, told her to go home, have her baby and then come back to see him. (Coward.)
The upshot was that Mom never did go back to get her driver's license and through all the years of her marriage and raising a family, she couldn't drive.
Fast forward now to just about fourteen years ago. My dad had recently passed away, Mom was left with a very nice car, but no driver's license and sad to say but true, had lost her chauffeur.
She spent a bit of time visiting with us after Dad's death and one day we were discussing the situation, and everyone agreed that it sure would be nice if she could drive. She said she would still be willing to learn, and my husband volunteered to teach her.
One day shortly after the decision had been made, they returned from a driving lesson and Roy announced that he now knew there was nothing wrong with Mom's reflexes.
They had been on a deserted gravel road and Mom was behind the wheel in the very same Toyota Tercel pictured above. There were heavy woods on each side of the road and, wouldn't ya know it, a moose trotted out onto the road immediately in front of them. Mom hit the brakes, the moose did an about-turn in mid air right in front of the car and dashed back into the woods.
Mom and Roy sat there slightly stunned while their heart beats returned to normal. They realized they had heard a substantial "thunk" and Mom said, "I think I hit him."
They got out of the car and there smack in the middle of the bumper was a dusty, perfect imprint of a moose hoof. No other damage whatsoever . . . and they assumed the moose wasn't any the worse for wear either.
Mom took pictures to take home as proof of her driving adventures in the Northwoods and her very close encounter with a moose.
So, see Jordan, the prints on your car could be worse. Especially since your four-legged creature insists on tromping all over the hood and roof!
I left home shortly after noon today to make a run up to the farm to pick up milk products and some pork sausage that I use in making our Stuffed Peppers for the freezer.
On my way out of our driveway as I rounded a curve, I came upon Mama Deer and one of her twin fawns from this year. But do you think I could get my camera out fast enough to get a shot of them posing for me? Nope. Off they skittered into the heavy woods. So I continued on my way.
About two or three miles from home, out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving in the brush on the right hand side of the road. All of a sudden, there stood a big, beautiful, healthy-looking red fox. It's not uncommon to see foxes around here (preferably NOT near poultry yards), but usually we only get a glimpse of one dashing across the road . . . and then they're gone.
This guy wandered to the top of the gravel bank by the side of the road (as I did a U-turn while trying to watch him in my rear view mirror), and proceeded to snuggle down and make a little bed for himself in the sunshine.
I parked right across the road from him and started snapping pictures.
"You lookin' at me?"
"Oooo, I've got an itch!"
Then he settled in for a little grooming in the sunshine. He didn't seem the least bit phased by me and my camera.
"There's one flea here that's really bugging me . . . "
Reluctantly, after a short while, I decided I had to get going on my way. I drove up to the farm, made my purchases, stopped to drop some books off at the library in town on my way back and then did a little shopping at our whole foods co-op.
When leaving town I wondered if he might just possibly still be where I had first seen him. So instead of taking the shortest route from town to home, I made a detour back up north of town to the road I had taken toward the farm.
Lo and behold, I'll be darned if he wasn't still there . . . and looked to be sound asleep in the sunshine.
Totally oblivious of anyone that might be going by on the road or noticing him. Talk about knowing how to enjoy life! And what a thrill for me to be able to capture him in pictures.
My house smells like onions. Our bed smells like onions. Our clothes and my hair smell like onions. According to our daughter, halfway up our (quarter mile long) driveway it smells like onions.
I told you previously that because of the less-than-adequate growing season just passed, my yellow storage onions didn't have quite enough time to mature in the garden. When I had to harvest them because of extreme drop in temperatures (and snow, sleet, wind, rain and hail), the tops weren't dried up much. I lopped off the green tops and have them stored in our heat-tempered garage. I've been sorting through them about every other day and am very surprised to see some (very few) of them looking fairly good . . . like I might be able to store them (for a little while at least) as they are.
But the majority are just going to mold rather than keep for any length of time so I've been concentrating on dehydrating those.
When I work in the kitchen taking off the outer skins and slicing them up to lay out on the dehydrator trays, the fumes are so strong I can hardly tolerate the burning in my eyes . . . let alone the fact that I can't see for the tears streaming out of my eyes and am in fear of cutting off a finger or two.
When starting this morning's batch I knew I had to do something different so I enlisted my husband's help and we set up a small fan on the counter blowing right over the cutting board and another window fan directly across the room blowing air out of the room. This did help a lot and I was able to get the eight trays of the dehydrator filled without nearly as much agony (and grumping and grousing) on my part.
We've got the dehydrator set up out in our attached garage but somehow, the aroma still wafts its way into and through the whole house. Not the worst smell in the world certainly, but very noticeable.
I guesstimate I've got at least three more fillings of the dehydrator yet to do. Roy has suggested I dump the whole batch of onions in the compost heap, but I can't see wasting all those (blasted slow-growing, non-maturing) onions I nurtured all summer.
Penny-wise and pound-foolish? Could be. Wouldn't be the first time I've made a not-very-bright decision.
Uh-oh. Roy just came in for a few minutes from working outside and announced we had to figure out some sort of a new system before I do yet another batch. I've been in the house all day and have apparently become slightly desensitized to the smell but he says it's overwhelming and becoming more than a little unpleasant. (Maybe that's why I have such a headache? Can onion fumes be noxious? Gosh, it's dangerous trying to be self-sufficient.)
Ooof. Yesterday was one of those wild, hectic days with people coming and going, a two and a half hour phone consultation, someone here for a service call, a small logging operation going on, and . . . and . . . and undoubtedly several other things my brain is too muddled to recall this morning.
Today I had all kinds of plans to get great things accomplished . . . but this morning started with a long, confusing, tedious battle via computer concerning my PayPal account which I couldn't have made it through without my husband's help . . . all the while trying to maintain our sense of humor and not take out our frustrations on one another. Now that that is resolved (geesh, I hope), I'm concentrating on getting rid of my tension headache and Roy has just suited up to go out into the cold, damp, gray, great out-of-doors to clean up the three trees in our back yard parking area that we took down yesterday.
He's been really, really nervous about these three poplars ever since the big wind storm. If they ever blew over, they most likely would have landed smack-dab on the garage so after witnessing perfectly healthy looking trees go down in the storm, he wasn't going to rest until we removed these.
He did the cutting and I did the pulling with the Suburban truck via a cable attached to the tree to make sure it fell in the direction we wanted it to go. All three went slick as a whistle and now only the clean up is left. (I tell ya, our chainsaws have been working over-time in the last couple of weeks.)
Our daughter, Chicken Mama, had a long day of nannying in town yesterday which included a mid-day trip back out (one hour one way) to their homestead to meet a service man for their current satellite problems. She and her adorable little charge made it back into our place just in time for a soup dinner with son-in-law on his way home from his work.
This was right after dinner when son-in-law and the nearly two-year old cuddled in the recliner for a short snooze.
Then it was off to town and the Community Center parking lot where Chicken Mama handed off the little pumpkin to her own parents and the four of us went on to a meeting inside.
The days just continue to zoom by leaving us wondering when we will ever possibly manage to get all the necessary things done, let alone find time to relax, recharge and recreate. (That would be "recreate" as in "recreation." Re-creating is long over for us!)
Ruthie over at Nature Knitter had a post today that reminded me of a framed poster that I have hanging in our bathroom. It always gets a comment from everyone availing themselves of our facilities for the first time. I found it in a gift shop years ago and would give credit to the original author but have no idea who that might be, so here it is:
Minnesota - Closed for glacier repairs.
Land of many cultures . . . mostly throat.
Minnesota . . . come fall in love with a loon.
I came, I froze, I transferred.
Save a Minnesotan. Eat a mosquito.
One day it's warm, the rest of the year it's cold.
Minnesota. . . home of blond hair and blue ears.
Where the elite meet the sleet.
Minnesota . . . have you jump started your kid today?
Many are cold, but few are frozen.
You are entering Minnesota. Use alternate route.
Minnesota Theater of Sneezes.
Land of 10,000 Petersons, Andersons, Johnsons and Nelsons.
Survive Minnesota, and the rest of the world is easy.
In Minnesota, ducks don't fly south. People do.
Minnesota . . . glove it or leave it.
Land of two seasons. Winter is coming and winter is here.
Jack frost likes Minnesota. He spends half his life here.
Minnesota . . . mosquito supplier to the free world.
Minnesota . . . where visitors turn blue with envy.
There are only two things you can grow in Minnesota . . . colder and older.
If you love Minnesota, raise your right ski.
The way this winter is starting out, the above may become all the more meaningful this year. (And yes, it is snowing as I speak.)
This past Friday before the predicted snow, we decided we'd better dig our potatoes and harvest the sweet peppers we had under a cold frame. It was gonna get colder than any protection the cold frame could provide for the peppers I was babying along, trying to encourage to all turn red.
Although not all of them made it to the vitamin-rich, tastier red stage, I sure do have a passel of peppers with which to make Stuffed Peppers! I haven't made an actual count but the two pails in the back are both 5-gallon ones. I've got them in cold storage right now and the way my week is shaping up, it's gonna be a struggle to get them done and in the freezer. But do it I will, because they make such an easy, convenient meal that we both like a lot and have missed the last couple of months since we ran out of last year's supply.
We harvested only 106 pounds of taters from approximately 90 feet of plantings. Boo-hiss. Thumbs down. Not good. But considering all four rows of the reds were hit by the blight, maybe we should be thankful we got what we did. You can see that we have lots and lots of small ones. If they had all sized up, we'd have enough to share . . . and some to spare!
This is the second year in a row that our potatoes haven't amounted to much. No blight last year to blame it on. Usually, root crops are easy for us to grow in our climate, so I don't know quite what's going on with the spuds.
When we were digging the potatoes, we commented that if we were one of the early homesteading families up here with six growing kids to feed, it would be a disasterous harvest. But as it is, we'll just eat more rice this winter. That's okay. Rice is good.
Plus, we'll have lots of Stuffed Peppers to consume!
Her post reminded me of a very distinct moose hoof print we once had on the black rubber-coated bumper of above pictured car right above the license plate.
