What's happening in your area of the world? Update on ours.

    Lots of things spinning around in my head now to put them in some sort of order. Let's start here at home; we've been run ragged by our zucchini, harvesting 6-8 a day. The plan is to slice and dehydrate( our freezer space is limited) as many as possible for use in soups and casseroles. I found a few recipes for Zucchini chips, which we of course will try and if everyone likes them we'll make a few batches( not sure how long they'll store) We're going to grate and freeze some for breads and cookies and we're enjoying them fresh in salads and as steamed/ cooked side dishes too. Our peppers are now in full swing, the tomatoes are beginning to ripen slowly and the carrots are tender and oh! so sweet. The only problem is, this always happens, our lettuce mix has bolted due to the heat and it's still to hot to replant more( we've tried and it just doesn't fair well) so our salads consist of chard and spinach and a few beet greens.  The beets are ready to harvest, not sure what we'll do with all of them as we only need a few jars of relish, pickled beets and plain ole canned beets. They really took off in the cooler wet weather and my feeling is if left in the ground until time to dig for storage they'll rot or get so large they'll be woody. Maybe we'll try to dehydrate some, never heard of it being done but it's worth a shot, otherwise the chickens will have enjoyment of the ones we can't use.  The Painted Mountain corn is growing well, ears are large but still have yet to set on their colors. The raspberries, elderberries and chokecherries are all absolutely loaded this year so we're working on taking full advantage of these as well.  We have apple jelly and butter leftover from last season, as well as peach butter and jam and plum jelly so with the added berry jellies, jams, butter and syrups we'll have a very nice selection to choose from and I almost forgot, a dear friend in TX, gifted us some fig jam, Mmmm, Mmmm. Soon we'll be readying beds for our fall greens. When the peppers, in the hoop house have ended their production we'll remove the plants and try our hand at raising some carrots, radishes, onions and lettuce and work to keep it us and producing well into Nov.( with some heat at night). Montana just doesn't have enough daylight in winter to sustain growing longer than this anyway. This is the reason we planted tomatoes, a few pepper plants, okra and eggplant for a later harvest, in hopes of storing them in the refrigerator, to extend our fresh produce season before relying on the root crops, cabbage, potatoes, turnips, squash, pumpkins and carrots stored in the cellar. When you eat seasonally you do have to think a bit outside the box. This was one reason behind our building the hoop house, otherwise we'd be out of fresh produce( tomatoes, salad greens, eggplant, cantaloupe, etc....) by the end of Oct. and that is a long time.

We surprised Cortney with an added late birthday gift. You see she is a HUGE Country music buff and when she heard that Jason Aldean was coming to the city, for the local fair she was so excited. Well, it also gave us good motivation to cleaning up some items to be recycled. The money earned from the recycling paid for the tickets with some to spare for fair time snacks*wink*  Of course Cortney had no idea this was the plan, until we presented her with reserved tickets right down in front of the stage, she was speechless for about an hour, then she never stopped talking about it!  On top of this a friend called and asked if she'd like to go earlier in the afternoon, the day of the concert, and look around and ride some rides. We met up with them after we'd secured our seats. It sounded as if they had a great time, rode lots of rides and walked around looking and window shopping. The concert had to be relocated from it's original location, the Metra, to in front of the grandstands like in days gone by before the Metra was built. If you recall back on Father's day the Metra was hit by a tornado and was severely damaged. Many of the concerts( Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood and a Rock band) scheduled, cancelled, because they didn't want to play in an outdoor venue. The weather was cloudy and cool( 62F for the high), with spotty rain, so we all took/ wore added long sleeve coats or sweaters. Thankfully it didn't rain, but their was a steady breeze making it quite chilly after the sun went down.  The opening act was a group called The McClymont's. Here is a free download of one of their singles. They were good, but their background music drown them out, so it was hard to understand the words to their songs. Jason Aldean soon was on stage singing all of his hit songs, a few singles and even a new song to be released on an album to be released the end of November. I know the words to songs but never realize who sings them, so was surprised to hear many songs and tie  them to his name. Cortney was waiting for his hit single; "Big Green Tractor" and when he left the stage he hadn't sung it. I told her to wait, the crowd would cheer him back for a few more songs. After approximately 5 minutes he came out singing....... you got it! " Big Green Tractor". The crowd was singing along, so loudAldean. Of course he was encouraging this and commented after the song that the crowd was wonderful and crazy!  We slipped out in the middle of the last song, to beat the crow, and do some walking around before heading home. It was fun but I realized that I'm getting old, me and 11pm don't mix well, LOL! Good thing Mike was driving, because it was all I could to to keep my eyes open long enough to make it into the house and into bed, Whew!

So much is going on in our country right now, it's mind boggling. Did anyone see Glenn Becks show on the 12th? Now I'm not a Glenn Beck follower( we can't even get his program unless via Internet) and I don't always agree with everything he says or does but this show was inspiring and heartfelt. My prayer is that it will be a wake up call for many who seem oblivious to what is really happening and light a torch in their hearts and lives. Now onto the announcement of the Mosque on the sight of 9-11 and the support of the President, under the guise of Religious Freedom. Here is another video that states the irrationality in this announcement. Once again we are told to "listen" and obey, for they know what is best for everyone, even though in polls across the media, people have voiced that this is wrong and yet again they refuse to "listen"!  Maybe they'll hear us in November, when I pray, the people make our "Will" known, LOUD AND CLEAR!
How about yet another bail out? I urge you to watch Glenn Beck's show and then investigate and educate yourself, so that you are prepared for lies ahead for our country.

Our weather has been so cool and wet all summer, with only a handful of days into the mid to high 90'sF and now the last few days we've been in a real cool down( high 50'sF and low 60'sF), feeling much like Fall temperatures. Praying this isn't a preview to what is coming! A few years back we had a hard freeze in mid August, killing everything that wasn't covered. Some weather forecasters are saying( for what it's worth) that for those of us in the North, could be in for a Winter Armageddon ! 

Mike is on vacation this coming week and we have a list, approximately a mile long, of things that NEED to be done. Firewood is one of those, not only finishing splitting and stacking the wood we have but to collect more wood that was given to us. This wood is pretty dry already and we'll most likely haul it home and split some and leave the rest stacked in chunks as reserve. Our hopes, every year, are to collect wood in the winter and in early Spring, split and stack it, but it never quite works out this way for one reason or another. We're also replacing our garage roof with a metal one, the hail a few weeks back, damaged it beyond our hopes of holding off for another year. This means that the pump we'd hoped to get up and running this summer/fall for irrigation won't happen. We are going to get electric run out to the site and put in a small pump with pressure tank and build an insulated pump house for winter watering of animals. It will be a blessing not to have to haul water via 5 gallon buckets from the house anymore.

Other items on our agenda are getting our heifer bred or buying our own bull to bred with( which means building a stronger corral), making room in the freezer for the 35+ chickens, 4 turkeys and our cow and by end of January using enough to make room for a pig. What a blessing to have the problem of space in your freezer.

Well..... off to make some raspberry jam and slice zucchini for the dehydrator. :o)

So tell us what's new in your life  and what's on your mind, we love hearing from you :o)
Next week posting will be sparse, to take FULL advantage of Mike's time off *wink*
Blessings for your weekend