Dehydrating Cucumbers

(partially dehydrated)

Considering I have enough pickles stocked up, I decided to dehydrate the last of the cucumbers.  My cucumber plants are already turning brown.  I have not dehydrated cucumbers before.

I tossed the cucumber slices in chili powder, salt and paprika, to dry for chips.  I will also grind some into powder, for soups, stews, sauces, and dips.

My super chili peppers are being dehydrated today.  They are the only pepper that produced this season, out of all of our 50-some pepper plants.  I have a few habanero peppers on a few plants, but I'm not sure they will amount to much.  The chili peppers were sliced for drying, and then later I will be ground into chili pepper. 

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Ramblings

The weather has been absolutely beautiful these last few days.  The windows are open and the breeze is flowing inside.  There hasn't been much to blog, but boring garden stuff.  

The goats (all 4 got loose again)....sigh...gotta get that fencing finished.  At least it wasn't "Big Boy."

The chickens love me.  Every day I have a treat for them.  In fact, it's the meat/layer (cornish rock) chick that barrels at me first.  We still don't know if we were given a rooster yet.  We ordered all pullets, but this one that we kept (it had been almost pecked to death by the other meat chicks so we separated her) is starting to look like a he instead of a she.  Time will tell. 

Ever had a "coulda shoulda" moment?  I was invited to a Women of Faith conference, and did not go.  I thought I was going camping, but work interfered (barn roofing, which is still underway).  I should have gone. 

School starts in 7 days.  Not sure what to say about that yet.  Fees are $333.99 for three in public school.  That's just the fees.

Normally, this time of year, my tables would be covered with roma tomatoes.  Not this year.  I know I've blogged a lot about our flooded out garden, but it's just sad.  I may have enough of our other tomatoes to make one batch of salsa, but will have to buy all the peppers.  I don't see one roma out there (yet).

Needing a change of pace in my nightly "wind down" time, I pulled out scraps of yarn and started crocheting scarves for the homeless.  I have yet to learn out to knit hats, but have crocheted hats before.  It's been nice to work on something different.  Sometimes I just need to switch projects for a while.  

Oh! I have to share this.  My 11 year-old daughter fell in love with my stitched cards.  I printed her a pattern for the cat, and she finished it.  Not only that, but we put cardstock behind it (her favorite color) and framed it for her wall.  She's already stitching a rabbit.  Also, she was so mad at her 14 year-old sister, for not wanting to do anything but sit and play around on her tablet.  I admit, the purchase of their tablets was not my idea, and I did not approve of the purchase either (the only way to control their time is to shut off of the internet completely).  It was the worst thing Hubby could have bought them.  However, my 11 year-old is being pretty responsible (most of the time), with her time on it.  

So, while I was in town getting cat food, our 11 year-old got out the root beer kit and made root beer all on her own.  She did have to get the help of her brother to pour it into the bottles, but I give her lots of credit for finding a creative way to spend the last of her summer hours before school starts.

I may be cutting my blog posts down to once a week too.  That way I can have more morning time to write my short story I am working on.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm the kind of person that writes and writes, when I blog, and tend to make the post too long.  A bad habit of mine, ha ha ha!