Pioneer Woman at Heart

One refrigerator has been successfully disinfected, cleaned out and reorganized.  Whew.   One more step ahead of garden season.  I got a few other chores marked off my list too.  It's been cold and raining.  The weatherman was wrong about a 62°F day.  Brr.  Today however, it's already 36°F, but that's our high too.  I believe we'll need to cut wood tonight.   I haven't had enough good weather days to get back to the barn debris, but one day while taking old man Jesse out, I found a gem in this pile.  I took it to the house.  I hope to have an update on what I did with the "gem."  It may not happen for a few months, as Hubby goes to nights pretty soon (he is working a temporary supervisor night shift for a while).  I'll need a bit of help from him.  There are many gems in that pile, so I'll be writing down some more ideas as we pick through it.

Monday madness didn't stop this gal from getting the list crossed off.  Even though I was dog-gone tired.   Popcorn was all pulled.  I'm not thrilled with the harvest, but it's more than the year we only got 2-3 ears.  I'm happy, but sad to see so many small ears this year.   I brought in 8 more pie pumpkins.  Had I thought in advance, I would have kept the white one for target practice.  I tossed it.  It was the heirloom variety that went rotten before ripening, and I only got 3 of those pumpkins, out of 4 mounds of seeds planted.  It's not a good variety to plant, but my New England variety did well.  Grand total of pie pumpkins this year is 23.   I brought in a bit more of the hot peppers too.  I'll be freezing most of them, and tossing a few in dinner.  I had some tomatoes too.  I have been very late in getting those dang plants pulled.  The day of knocking this barn down...

Happy 4th of July!   We stayed around the homestead for the holiday weekend.  Well, most of it.  We visited family and friends at the Lake, and stole off on a few motorcycle rides.  But.  We started on the big barn. We've managed to move one barn door from the ruble.  It wasn't moved very far, and is now waiting it's next move. They are heavy by the way.  It'll take more than two of us to get it up and on the other barn.  Hubby and I dug through the debris and started pulling out barn siding.  We took the saw to a few, made them look nice, and delivered them to the folks who knocked the barn down.  They loved the "samples" and we'll be back to this mess. All that siding laying down is weighed down by beams, so we have to get equipment to take care of that to free up the siding. See that siding up on the old straw?  Well, I removed the fungus covered wood, and crawled up there. I got what I could without putting mys...

This showed up yesterday afternoon, while I was out fetching eggs late in the day.... and this happened......

Hubby and I had another prosperous morning in the chicken/goat barn.  We used odd pieces of barn siding (recycled from the big barn) to repair and fix up the barn doors.  You can see in the photo there are a few holes yet to cover, but the bottoms of the doors are looking much better (sharing photos soon I hope).  . . . time and patience.

We booked our last camping trip for this weekend, but had to cancel it yesterday.  Why?  Rain and wind.  We've camped in rain before, but this time the weatherman predicts we'll get over 2 inches of rain on Saturday alone. It is to start raining tonight, and it rained yesterday.  The temperature is nice, but cooking would be an issue.  We don't have an RV, with a full kitchen inside.  We cook all meals outside the camper (which I prefer).  When the wind is in bad, we can't put our awning out to cover the gas stove either.

I'm back to gutting the garden, but will leave the greens in for a while yet.   It was a toss - clean the coop or head to the garden.  Tough decision.  School was delayed, and eventually closed (again) for fog.  I sure hope we don't run out of our snow days before the snow even arrives. Instead of work, aside from laundry, I ended up "playing" first.

It rained all day Saturday, but we split wood inside the barn.  I also tackled cleaning the last window blind, and Hubby helped.  We managed to get one air conditioner in storage, and a few windows washed on the inside as well.  It was cold, but I was not going to fire up the wood stove.  No way.  I need the chimney swept first.  We hunkered down with flannel pants/pajamas, and lots of blankets instead. I've been stocking up more herbs, and getting more medicinal herbs put into jars as well.   I started a jar of plantain/comfrey oil that I'll eventually use to make a salve, and I got a batch of elixir made.

  A while back, I ordered a few stencils to paint signs for your home.  I'm painting sayings on the old barn siding we removed from the big barn.  The stencil above was a free sample, and I'm glad I had a sample to practice with.  Rough barn wood is not easy to paint.  I'm so glad I got the stencils vs. trying to freehand them as well. This one had a few nails at the end, and even gently giggling the nails loose, they both broke.  It left the sharp end on the other side, so those had to be removed.  Just old stuff to work with.

I took this photo back in March of this year, in hopes to locate a barn salvage person or company.   This challenge is one of our big jobs on the "to-do" list right now. Well, the first two did not want the barn - not old enough, not "enough wood" to mess with.  Not long ago few men stopped in after the corner collapsed in a rain storm.  We talked, Hubby got in touch with them.

Grab a cup of hot steaming coffee, tea or your favorite beverage.  It's one of those posts. A while back, I bought a bag of curtain hooks for $.75.  I actually figured out where I had stored them.  I'm recycling them into another barn wood herb drying rack.  They look awesome in the house too.  You could call it re-purposed or recycled I guess.