A week ago today we celebrated New Year's Eve on the farm. We started doing this several years ago, the night before we start seeding our winter wheat crop, which begins our new crop year. And, since we're going to work in the morning, we don't stay up until midnight!
Last week David, Ryan James and I went to Green Bluff to pick a few peaches. The fruit is as sweet as can be. Ryan James ate quite a few, right off the tree! Sun warmed, tree ripened fruit is simply the best.
Hidden Acres is our favorite Green Bluff orchard. It's a bit off the beaten path, not quite as commercial as some of the others and the folks that own the orchard and work so hard to provide the produce are delightful.
I harvested these tasty tidbits yesterday in our pasture. I have been watering the grass in an effort to keep it from dying from drought. An added benefit is mushrooms, sprouting in the draw, around the trees, where it is a bit more humid. These mushrooms are so good. They taste like the earth.
We received a tenth of an inch of rain today. Even that small amount was so welcome and refreshing. Perhaps this is the beginning of a trend? One can always hope....
After so many months of little to no precipitation, it felt good to sit in the bee garden for a spell and let the tiny raindrops fall and dampen my clothing, albeit only slightly!
The view from my little wooden chair made me smile.
I am determined to eradicate the prostrate knot weed from the pasture. I have decided that the best way to eliminate this pesky weed is by mechanical, rather than chemical means. So, I have been spending quite a bit of time cutting the weeds out and hauling them away to the burn pile.
This morning, Reynald offered to help and I gladly took him up on the offer. We spent about two hours cutting and loading and hauling the knot weed away. We made really great progress and now I'm fairly certain that I will be able to finish up this project this week.
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| Prostrate knot weed. The tendrils can stretch for several feet. |
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| R is still fairly chipper at this point in the process. And Baxter is keeping watch in case some one, or something, tries to sneak up on us! |
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| I found that cutting the plant, just below the surface of the soil, with pruning shears, is an effective way to make sure that these buggers don't come back. They are pretty hard to pull once they get this big. |
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| Two full wheel barrow loads hauled off today. |
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| And Baxter continues to keep an eye out for possible predators! |
From knee high on the fourth of July.......
To High as an Elephant's Eye one month later! K, I'm not an elephant but the corn has definitely stretched out during this past month.
Thinking about winter quilts may be a way to distract from the record heat that has gripped our area for the last few months!
Some may remember that I set a goal of making a seasonal quilt for every bedroom in our house. I was closing in on that goal, until I decided that three of the Christmas quilts were just too "Christmas" to take us through the remainder of winter. A sale at the fabric store in Odessa pushed me over the edge of making two winter quilts! I already had a option that I have been using for the third.
This winter I set to work and completed these two. Here's hoping for an abundance of snowflakes outside this coming winter, as well as inside!!
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| Bear's Paw block. This turned out to be a bit more labor intensive than I originally thought it would be. The piecing had to be precise, in order for it to be a striking quilt. More than one seam was taken out and re-sewn! |
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| Quilting by Nikki at Heartbeat quilting. |
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| Pineapple Log Cabin block. I'm very pleased with how this turned out. This is the second Pineapple Log Cabin quilt that I have made and it is one of my favorite blocks. |
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| Quilting again by Nikki at Heartbeat. |
