Horse Games

Last weekend Molly participated in the horse games at the county fair. I didn't do a great job of taking pictures of her, but I got a few. We had a lot of fun, she riding, me watching and volunteering a bit where needed. She's getting to be a good little rider!


Here she's participating in the egg and spoon game, where the participants try to follow instructions given them while ballancing an egg on a spoon. She placed third in that event. Klu was acting up a bit, and kicked at a horse who's rider came too close for his liking. Molly got big applause for keeping the egg on the spoon through his little tirade! :)


More egg and spoon.


Miss M with her ribbons! This was her second year in the games, and she did really well. First in one event, second in two and third in two. I don't care if she places in any of the events, but seeing her blossom as a young woman and a rider is so much fun!

Canning Pickles

Hey everyone! I'm back after quite a busy spell. I've got a lot to share from the weekend, the garden and canning pickles. Thanks to Mama Pea at A Home Grown Journal (thanks a TON, Mama Pea!), who gave me a ton of pickling cukes, I had a bunch of produce for some big batches to can! It was so much fun! It took most of the day to can three batches of pickles, so when Dan came home for supper at 6:00 I didn't have anything ready. He asked what was for supper and I said, "Ummm...pickles?" :)
My canner holds 7 quart jars, so I made 14 quarts of dill pickles. After that I was out of dill, so I made 5 pints of bread and butter pickles with the cukes that were left.
The dills are supposed to sit for 8 weeks before opening. I had one jar that didn't seal though, so what do you think we did? OPENED IT, OF COURSE! :) And they were good already. If 8 weeks improves them, I'd say the recipe is a hit!


Here's the giant pile of cukes I got from Mama Pea.


Cukes taking an ice water bath before canning. Soaking them in ice water for 2 to 8 hours is supposed to make them really nice and crunchy.


Here's the dill, habanero peppers (I put them in 4 of the jars to add some heat, for those who like it hot) and garlic.


Cukes packed and ready for processing.


Lots of pickles!

Pulling Onions

The girls pulling Hattie and Dani's onions. The tiny plants next to the onions are chard and arugula.



Helping with the big onion patch.



Hattie and Dani hauled them in the wagon. Of course, pulling a carrot for a snack was necessary.



Two of the onions grew like garlic bulbs, with these little "onion set" like babies. I don't know yet why two of them grew this way. I'm going to have to look into it. There's so much that I don't know yet!



And here are a couple pics of the harvest. I've been using onions from the garden for a month now. It's so fun being able to go out and pull one up when you need it! Now I have to figure out how to store these away. I really don't have a cool dry place to hang them. I have no idea yet what I'll do with them.




I was getting a bit discouraged about the garden, and the onions were ready so I just had harvest them. I really needed something encouraging to do! The turnips will be next. Some of them are bigger than baseballs now. I'm thrilled with how well and how fast they grew. Too bad I didn't plant more of them. The tomatoes are really growing fast (the heat of the last couple weeks really had a dramatic effect). I don't know if they'll grow fast enough to ripen, but I'm thrilled they've gotten this far. Now I have quite a bit of space in the garden, but I don't know if there's anything I can do with it now, or if I should just leave it until spring.
That's all the info. I have now, but I'll try to post some pics of how things are looking soon.

Horsey Photo Shoot

Saddling up,


at a trot,


round the barrels,


beautiful partnership!