Goatbaby!

If I Use Blue Corn, What Color Cornbread Will I get?

Purple, of course!
Here's our beautifully feminine colored cornbread batter, and the finished product. I got an order of bulk food from Frankferd Farm in Pennsylvania, including blue corn. I used my handy-dandy Vitamix to grind it. And we stirred up a delicious pan of cornbread.
This tastes so much different from store bought cornmeal. It's like the difference between store bought and garden fresh with a tomato.
We'll make up some cornmeal mush to eat with maple syrup for breakfast, then start grinding our Prairie Gold wheat for the rest of our baked goods.
I've got some 5 gallon buckets for storage, and am just about to order Gamma lids to keep them tightly sealed.
What fun! And to think, I could have done all this back in Y2K, but my kids were little, and I didn't have time to care that the world was about to end.

Debbie's Saga

I wish that pets could speak our language, or write letters.
Instead, Debbie had to think of a more creative way to explain to me that she had a urinary tract infection.
At 5 in the morning, I felt her crawl into my bed and snuggle onto my hip. I thought, "Ahh, she's sooo warm."
I don't know how much later, I awoke to find myself lying in a soaking wet bed.
I thought I had wet the bed, but soon realized I had been peed on by my cat.

We don't have a litter box, and it had been unusual for Debbie to come inside at 2:30a.m. when I let the dog out, so I didn't rush her to the vet, thinking that maybe she just had to go potty.
The next morning, she came in at the usual time, went directly to my laundry, and peed. So off we went to Dr. Bryan.
He asked me, "Is it better to be pissed on, or pissed off?" I told him that I didn't know, since the two were practically simultaneous.
Debbie got her shot, her new kitty food (which is, in itself, due punishment for having peed on me), and is back to normal.

Dress Up Night

I'm not a pageant mom, and had no hand in these photos. The girls took them during their ball last night.
Can you tell that Laura's hero is Grace Kelly from Hitchcock's Rear Window?
And yes, these are my daughters who carry pocket knives, want to hunt deer, and butcher chickens.

Late Night Visitors

We got in later than anticipated last night, and I went straight down to the barn to milk. When I turned on the light, I saw a blacksnake curled up by the feed bag.
Yuck.
But, undaunted, I started milking Tuscany. The snake decided to get up on the stanchion, so I was bonking him back down with a rake handle, finally got the better of him, and he zoomed out the open door. When he left, I saw another blacksnake outside!
Double yuck.
Then I saw a weird animalish thing hanging from the eaves of the barn when I went to check on a goat, so I sent Big Dan to investigate. Guess what it was?
Yep, a third snake. We know it was a third because the other two also slithered around while Big Dan was down there.
In the top photo is the upper snake, and below is a snake in the barn, eating an egg.
I was going to sprinkle moth balls around, but heard that they don't work. We thought of buying Snake Away, but I decided to just be careful of snakes instead.
I have the daughters doing the barn chores tonight. Can't be more careful than that.

Summer Sleep In

I love to see sleeping children.
I especially love when all three girls are asleep in the same bed, and I can look at them all at once. Like a triple dip of serenity.
Well, this morning, one child was up and at 'em, but two were sleeping in.