Updates and the 4th

1. I'm pretty sure I posted more in corn planting than I have been lately...

and I thought this was suppose to be the slow time of the year.

2. Speaking of corn, ours is drying up and dieing. We really need a rain right now. But you know even if we get one, I'm not sure that it will do that much good for the corn, but our beans and pastures would sure benefit!

3. Last week was Vacation Bible School at our church and boy was it fun!!! I was in charge of the games and loved it, the only problem was I couldn't play all the games like I wanted to cause of a certain thing in my belly. I'm hopping I will get to do games again next year, so then I can play with the kids more!

4. Speaking of the belly I also went to the Doctor last week, and I officially weigh more than Caleb now...lol

It was bound to happen. He only weighed 15 lbs more than me to start with. I think I should make him carry around some 10 lb weights to help me out.

5. Another Belly story -
First I must tell you that I inherited cankles from my Great-Grandma. Nobody really notices them, but that's because I wear jeans 99.9% of the time to hid them.

Fact - I can't wear ankle bracelets, or those cute sandals that have cuffs that go around the ankle as well as most knee high boots are way too tight and the calves....oh and skinny jeans, yeah right. Also my thighs are 2 inches bigger than Caleb's and my ankles are 1 inch bigger.

I tell you all this because the other day at the Doctor, I was wearing shorts and she looked at my ankles and mad the comment "I notice you are starting to have some swelling"
I then had to say "No, that's just what they normally look like."

Seriously....

6. In the middle of last week my fridge decided to give me fits.....grrr

7. Caleb and I went and looked for a new one in town, but couldn't find one so he got on-line and did some looking and found one he liked the rating on...we ordered it and well never ordered one without looking at it first. We got it on Tuesday and I hate it! Oh it works fine, but it said it was bigger than my old one and it's smaller...grrr

Needless to say I'm stuck with it and I'm not happy!!


Oh and to make things even better the delivery guys ripped our vinyl floor...yeah yesterday wasn't a good day!

8. On the 4th we got all dressed up and went into town to watch the fire works.

I am now 27 weeks along and my due date was 3 months from the 3rd....

I'm not even close to being ready...lol

I was able to get a few good pics of the fireworks, but then my battery died and I was done :(

9. Lucky Update - She's still alive and doing ok. We are hoping she will pull through still.

10. Oh and I finally got a name for my last bull...We have Benny to already and the third one will be Leonard...after Leonard from the Big Bang Theory...I love that show....Thank You Julie for the idea!!

Well that's all I got for now

Laters,

JP

Diggin' Tatters

So earlier this year I did a post about Panting Potatoes and I got a lot of response to it. My friend Carrie ask me to do one about harvesting potatoes and I am more than happy to oblige.

Usually the potato vie will grow and be full and robust and then bloom and then it will slowly die off and that's when you will harvest them, but that wasn't the case with mine this year.

Ya see mine had a problem with disease and I wasn't able to get out there and spray them near as much as they needed so the plants looked pretty bad and...

Some of them just died off. When this started to happen I decided it was time to get out there and start diggin' them.

Harvesting potatoes is really easy and young kids love it.

If the plants are still pretty strong one of the easiest ways is just to grab hold of the plant and pull the tatters out of the ground...

I thought I planted all red potatoes, but I ended up with some white ones. I guessing this was one of my shriveled up ones, other wise I have no idea how I got it.

If you aren't able to pull them, like I couldn't very much this year, then you will need to dig them. There are a few different ways of doing this...

You could get a potato fork...

 and use it to turn the ground over and...

 expose the potatoes, but...

Every once in a while you might get a causality. Throw this one on the top of the pile and make mash potatoes with it later, or if you have a lot of potatoes just chuck it.

(A potato fork is very much like a pitch fork, but the tines are flatter and straighter. You can get them at any farm and home store.)

Now even if you use a potato fork or you pull them, you will still probably have to get down on your hands and knees and do a little diggin' cause there will be some down there hiding from you.

What I found to work the best for me is to straddle the row and just go to town turning the the soil and bringing them to the surface.

Now I won't lie, I really thought I wasn't going to have many tatters this year since I had the disease problem but...

I was wrong. This what I got from one row so double this and well I have tatters coming out my ears!!!

O-well they keep pretty well. If you have a cool dry place that is best for storing them.

I have to settle with a just a dry place, cause there is no such thing a cool around here right now.

As you can see they are pretty easy to harvest, the only thing you have to worry about is not finding all the tatters when you are digging. So if you are having little kids help with the digging, you might want to follow them to make sure they found them all, cause I'm sure they will miss some along the way.

Once again if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Good Luck,

JP

No-Bake Cheese Cake

Ok so one of my favorite deserts ever is cheese cake! I didn't really grow up having it. It wasn't till Jell-O came out with the no-bake box mix that I really had a cheese cake, I won't lie I loved it. Then I had a baked one and they are good, but I was still stuck on that no-baked one. I liked the creaminess of it.

I had always assumed that you either had to have the Baked or the Jell-O one, but then...

While watching Master Chef...I think that was the show. It had Gordon Ramsey in it...

Anyways, the little southern girl that won it made a no-bake cheese cake from scratch and well that got me thinkin' I need to figure out how to make that. 

It was then I found out just how simple it is to make them. Once you try this recipe you will never go back to the box kind of no-bake again.

First I will say this recipe is my adaption from The Pioneer Woman's cheesecake and Martha Stewart's no-bake cheesecake.

Ok let's get started first we have to make the crust. This came from The Pioneer Woman's recipe, but I had to tweak it so I could fit it in a regular pie pan since I don't have a spring form pan...

What you need: Nilla Wafers, Pecan's, Butter, and Vanilla Extract

If you have a food processor this would be a lot easier, but if like me you don't and have to improvise here's what I do. Throw about 3/4 the box of Nilla Wafers and 1/4 Cup of Pecans into a gallon zip lock bag...

And then using the flat side of a meat pounder...

Smash the crap out of them. You could also use a rolling pin, but best case scenario would be you have a food processor and you just throw then in it push a button and you are done.

Now if you are having to do the zip lock bag way you will need to dump all the smashed up goodness into a bowl, but if you are using a food processor then you can just do the easy mixing in there.

Now add in 1 1/4 stick melted Butter and 1 tsp Vanilla

Now grab a spoon a mix it all together...

or if your one of those losers who has a food processor just push a button.

(Don't mind me, I'm just jealous, but soon I will have one...probably before stinker gets here. Anyone got recommendations on what to get?)

Now pour it into a 9 inch pie plate and either with your fingers or with the bottom of a glass smash it down...

I use my fingers cause I don't want to have to wash the glass.

No if you can find room, which I have a hard time doing, stick the pie plate into the freezer while you work on the filling. This allows the butter to firm back up so the crust will be more solid.

If you have a recipe for a gram cracker crust that you like better then go for it, but I love the mix of vanilla wafers and pecans...yummy!!!

Ok now it's time for the good stuff!!

Filling:

What you need: 2 packages Cream Cheese, 1 Lemon, 1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk, and Vanilla Extract

Now with an electric mixer mix the cream cheese till smooth.

Then add the sweetened condense milk a little at a time. Mixing it in between each addition...

Until creamy and smooth.

Now add 1 tsp of vanilla extract and...

the juice from one lemon.

(Martha's recipe calls for more lemon, but I find if you add any more then your cheese cake won't set up as well)

Once again blend those until creamy.

Now simply spread the filling into the crust, cover and refrigerate for 2 -3 hours till firm.

Now just top with your favorite cheese cake topping of server plain.

Wa-la, your done. Easy right!?!?!

So I totally forgot to get a picture of the finished product, but it was good.

I hope ya'll make it and enjoy it!

No-Bake Cheesecake

Makes One 9-inch Cake

Crust

¾ box Nilla wafers

1 ¼ sticks butter

1 tsp vanilla

¼ cup pecans

Filling

2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, room temperature

1 14-ounce can (1 1/4 cups) sweetened condensed milk

1Juice from 1 Lemon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Crust

Put vanilla wafers and pecans in a large resealable plastic bag, and crush them with a rolling pin or meat pounder until very fine crumbs form. (Or place them in a food processor and pulse the mixer till they are chopped fine)

Pour crumbs into a medium bowl; melted butter and vanilla extract and stir until well combined.

Press the crumb mixture into a 9-inch pie plate or a spring form pan, spreading it 1 1/2 to 2 inches up the side; press flat. Chill crust in freezer at least 10 minutes

Filling

Using an electric mixer set at medium-high speed, beat the cream cheese in a large bowl until smooth. Beat in the condensed milk a little at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. Beat in the lemon juice and vanilla.

Pour the filling into the crust; smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Cover and refrigerate until firm, 2 to 3 hours.

Hope ya'll Love it like I do!!!

Janet

Lucky

So a while back I wrote a post titled "Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day". I never really went into detail about that day, but I will tell you it had to do with working cattle.

FYI: Any time a farmer is having a Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day it will almost always involve one of two things...Either every piece of equipment they touch that day has something wrong with it or it has something to do with cattle. These two things will make up 99.9% of the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day's on a farm.

Ok now that we have that cleared up back to what I was saying.

Back in March when this happened I really didn't want to talk about it and I'm not gonna say a lot about it now but just that it involved, pulling a monster calf, the calf dieing, chasing cows, and poking a heifer's eye out.

A short synopsis, but that's what made up our day that wasn't soo good. So why am I telling you this now and why is this post titled "Lucky"? 

Well they all fit together. Ya see that heifer that lost here eye, there is more to her story. 

They eye, how did we poke it out. Well actually there was no we, it was just me. We were trying to get her in to load her up to take her out to pasture. Well I was trying to hit her on the nose to turn her when she wasn't doing what she was suppose to be doing and some how I managed to get her in the eye.

Ok so I never played softball in school....why...well because you could throw a 100 balls at me and I might hit 1.

Well unfortunately for Lucky her eye was the one.

Oh by the way we named this heifer Lucky and her eye was strike #2.

(I felt terrible after this happened, it made me sick  to my stomach and not because of the the blood. She ended up loosing the eye as a result of it)

Strike #1 was the fact that she was a teenage pregnancy.

We were planning on keeping her for a replacement heifer, but now that she is missing an eye we were going to sell her, but only after she has her calf...

Umm looking back we wish we would have just sold her as soon as her eye healed up.

Ok so all of this brings me up to last Thursday. We have been out in the wheat filed all day and the guys were still there finishing up. I was headed home, it was about 8:20, and I drove by the pasture where are heifers are and that's when I see it...

A heifer on of the heifers off by herself with a little discharge hanging out her back end...

Which means she's tryin' to have her baby. We will usually give them an hour than go back and check on them and if they haven't made any progress then we will get them in and pull the calf.

So I called Caleb and told him what was going on and an hour later I go back an check on her. There really wasn't any progress so I called Caleb up once again and told him he had better head this was so we could get he in and to bring the pullers cause we will probably need them. By this time it is dark, but we go out there with the trucks a push her in and you know she was the easiest cow we have ever had to get in...

But that's where the easy part ended.

We got her up in the corral and got her penned behind a gate and Caleb started to work on her. He reaches his hand in her to find the feet and that's when things got a little weird. One foot was coming out strait while the other was at a weird angle. When he felt the head it was also weird feeling.

If you think of someone diving into a swimming pool well that's what a calf is suppose to look like coming out of it's momma....

front feet, then the head, then the body, then the back feet and it's back bone is suppose to be parallel with the mothers.

Well this calf was more or less laying on it's side. They always tell you to call the vet if you reach in a feel something weird so we do and of course our vet is out of town at the time and can't come help us, he suggested for Caleb to try and push the calf back and then turn it...

umm yeah right. he tried, but that didn't really work so well. He also recommended another vet to call for emergency. So after finding the number for the vet...thanks to my smart phone...we give them a call but still don't get anyone, so we leave a message and go on messin' with Lucky. Well after trying for a little bit longer we decide there really isn't any more we can do and we will have to wait till morning.

So we head home and by now it is 11pm. between the long stressful day in the field and this we are beat. about 11:30 we finally hear back from the Vet. He said we would need to bring the heifer down there so he could do a c-section. Well their office is at least a 40 minute drive on top of having to go get the trailer and load her up and get going. Well by the time we did all that we wouldn't get there till about 1a.m. and wouldn't be home till 3am or later and then we would have to still get up and at 6am and get going in the wheat field.

Well by this time the calf was already dead, so we opted to wait till morning and take her down.

So the next morning we go and check on her and still no progress...

It's never good when you see feet hangin' out. (Don't worry that's the worst picture you will see.)

So I take Lucky down to the vet and at first he tries to pull the calf out in pieces...

Which is not nearly as gross as it sounds.

But after trying for a while with no luck we then had two options...

Put her down or do a c-section, which is expensive and we only have a 50-50 chance that she will make it. We decide that we will go ahead with the c-section since she was still standing and doing ok.

Caleb was mad that I didn't take any pictures of all this cause he wanted to see it, but there wasn't a lot of room for taking pictures and I didn't want to get in the way...but I will say it was cool to watch, but I never want to see it again....at least not on one of our cows.

What they do is clip all the hair back on the spot they will be making the incision in and then make a 12-18 inch cut and pull the calf out. Lucky had to have an 18 inch cut, because her calf was huge!

After they remove the calf they will a sterilized garden hose and flush her insides out with water. They do this in hopes to get any of the "nasty" that might have came off the dead calf out and this will decrease your chance of infection. Then they proceed to sew her up and they have 5 layers of material to sew individually.

After they got her all sewn back up they gave her an antibiotic shot and we took here home.

And there she is, with her stitched up side.

Come to find out the reason the calf was twisted inside her was because she had a twisted uterus. But even if the calf was coming out normal, it was so big I think she might have been paralyzed by us pulling it and that would have been a bigger mess.

I said "I hope her luck changes" but Caleb said "she is lucky to have made it through all these things."

I guess we will see. We still have little while till she is out of the woods, but so far she is doing good.

Update

I told you a while back about our bulls and asked for some help to name our new ones and here's what I have so far.

Far left is: Benny

Big bull on the far right is: Tom

I am still thinking on a name for the middle bull. Hopefully he will have a name soon!

Well I have some cleaning and a millions other things to do, so I had better get back to it but I will have a post soo about Wheat Harvest and Soybean Planting as well as Diggin' Potatoes...

Laters,

JP  

A Weeks Worth of Catching Up - A List

I know it's been a while, but I was gone all last week and was crazy busy the entire time I was gone, but there will be more on that later. I thought I would give you a little up-date / catch up on what's been going on around here.

1. We have gotten all the fescue mowed, raked, baled and put away.

To be honest I really didn't do all that much this year. I raked some and hauled some, but that was it.  I love mowing but Caleb didn't share the mower one bit this year he keeps sayin' something about me being pregnant...

Wait I am pregnant....

And here's the belly to prove it....lol

I can still see my feet, but I am sure it won't be long till I will forget what my toes look like.

2. The wheat has been turning fast!!! We have had at least two weeks of 90 degree weather with no rain.

In some fields there is still a little green, but they started cutting this past Friday, but then it rained...

But we really wanted the rain so there were no complaints.

And Actually Caleb said they were gonna get back to it and start cutting again this afternoon, so there will be a lot more wheat pics to come!

3. Like I said I was gone this past week. My sister and I took a spur of the moment trip to Nashville for the CMA Music Festival.

It was HOT, but we still had a blast! We got to hear some great music.  My favorite was Brad Paisley and Alabama, as well as Jason Aldean and Zach Brown Band. I wasn't too impressed with Reba, to be honest she was my least favorite. 

Stinker also like Jason Aldean and Brad Paisley.

I left last Tuesday morning and got back home Saturday night.

I didn't take all that many pics, cause I really didn't want to lug my big ol' camera around with me. I mean I am already hauling around an extra 10 pounds in this 90+ degree weather and since I don't have a zoom lens for my camera it really wouldn't be worth the hassle.

I did take my little point an shoot, but I am not all that happy with the pics.

4. Before I left I had to get some things done, like Pick and pit all the cherries. There weren't near as many as we had last year, and they were barely worth my time.  They were really wormy this year and there was barely enough for one person.

I am planning on canning them like I did last year, but since I didn't have a lot of time I just pitted them and froze them as well as all the juice I got from them. Later this week I'll get them out and can them, but until then they are doing just fine in the freezer.

5. I also had to cook my hubby some meals before I could head out, cause I didn't want him to waste away to nothing while I was gone.

6. Jasper is rotten!!!

End of story.

As I am getting all the last minute things done Tuesday morning I go our side to find Kit and Hank being goof....for once and then I find Jasper looking like this...

Why, you may ask, does Jasper look like this??

Because...

He did this to the place where I had some of my plants.

Ya see I go out side to find him trying to get an armadillo back here in this spot.  The armadillo had dug a hole that was about 10-12 inches deep.

This is what is left of my citronella plant...

and here are the rest of them...

One was completely destroyed and another one was luck to still be alive.

Needless to say I wasn't a very happy person when I found this.

This would make at least 5 if not 6 armadillos that have lost their life here in the past 2 months.

7. Since I took enough clothes to last a month, I have a lot of unpacking to do as well as laundry.

Well I had better get back to it.

Lots of Love,

Janet