We have downsized.

 All is quiet around the house at the moment.  Everyone is in their beds tucked in for the night.  Hubby is in his recliner watching TV.  And my grandson, Monkey Boy, 6, is going to sleep in his fort he made in the living room. I would insert photos but I have to figure out how to get them off of my phone onto here or find the site and do it on my phone. It's been a while since I've done this.

What did you have for dinner tonight?  I made two quiche.  One ham, mushroom, onion, cheese and spinach.  The other ham and cheese.  It is hard to please everyone.  I actually had to use store bought eggs.  Our "farm" has dwindled down.  The chickens are getting older and not producing as much now.  

When these girls are gone I would like to start over and have 12-20 hens.  Last year I had over 40 hens plus, roosters, ducks, guineas and turkeys.  I have lost quite a few.  My daughter's dog, if unsupervised, would kill my chickens.  At least a dozen that I know of.  Sigh.  My dogs have never attacked the chickens.  They might chase them for a split second but never hurt any.  

Years ago we had a neighbor with a dog.  I would hear the chickens scream, run outside and there would be nothing there.  I would hop in my car and meet the neighbor half way up the road.  He'd hand me my chicken and apologize.  The dog never hurt the chicken, just carry it home for his owner to see it.

We have since gotten rid of the goats too.  My granddaughter had 7 and my daughter had 4.  The hay loft became empty and I the thought of filling the hay loft was not a pleasant thought.  They had become a chore to my granddaughter, then 11.  She wasn't home schooled any longer and she had friends and other interest so they weren't getting the attention they deserved.  I called a guy, he came to get the boys and ended up taking all ours.  Couple days later he came and got my daughter's 4 also.  

So no more goats!  I do miss them at times but I think it's better for us at this time.  We are so busy.  

My daughter has 3 horses here.  They came with her when she, her boyfriend and two children moved in with us. A year ago now.  So did 3 dogs.  So in our home we have 3 horses, 6 dogs, 2 parakeets and a handful of chickens, 2 turkey, 4 guinea hens and like 6 ducks. I even found a home for our one fish!  lol 

It's raining out...again!  Here in New England we have had such a wet cool summer.  My lower garden, the dryer garden, flooded at least a foot above ground 2 or 3 times this summer.  That turned out to be a dud of a garden.  

The upper garden, at the barn, ended up being so wet and muddy that I couldn't walk in it never mind plant anything in it.  Ok, I tried planting 4 plants in there and all 4 washed away.  Completely disappeared.  So I had to go to my FB community page and ask for containers.  Boy did they come through!  Most of my plants are in containers this year up on pallets or boards or whatever I can find.  The plants still look awful for the most part.  

This is what my lower garden looked like after one of the rains we had.  This happened 2 or 3 times this summer.  Hubby wants me to get down there and pick the few potato plants that are down there.  He grabbed a handful today.  He says he sees an eggplant and maybe a summer squash but that's all that has made it.  The corn is about 2 feet tall with tassels! Ya, no corn this year either.  Very disappointing year again.

Today I picked cucumbers, green beans, 2 cabbage, an eggplant and a couple green peppers.  The cabbage worms devoured a lot of my plants in the greenhouse so I picked those dead plants today.  It is very hard to get down to the greenhouse when I have my 2 year old granddaughter tagging along.  I love gardening.  The quietness.  Watching things grow.  I even enjoy the weeding....when I can get down there.

Once again, not a very productive produce year.  I hope you are having better luck.

I am going to get off here for now.  I am going to play around and figure out how to get photos on here.  I love taking photos!  

Good night.

God bless!  

 

New computer.

 I got a new computer.  A lap top.  I think I have lost all of my photos for the past....well, quite a few years.  

My granddaughter kind of took over the old computer.  Keys were falling off and it was getting in rough shape.  Guess it still worked fine. This is Nanny's computer.  No kids allowed to use it.  My husband asked if he could use it though?  lol  Yes, he's allowed.  

Hubby is old school.  Still uses a flip top phone and knows very little about computers.  He can get it turned on now!  lol  We tend to have to sit in the room while he uses it because some page is bound to disappear on him and he needs help finding it again.  

I really hope I can continue writing on here.  I enjoy being on here, not that you can tell since my posts are so far and few between.

This Nanny is busy.  We received custody of our 12 year old granddaughter back in February of this year.  She is such a blessing in our lives!  Big day tomorrow!  We are headed into 7th grade.  I had home schooled her through that awful couple of years.  But she was missing her friends and went back to public school in January of last year.  I sure do miss her around here.   

I also watch my 2 year old granddaughter every day except Mondays and Fridays when she goes to daycare because after a year of every day, this Nanny needed a break!  It's nice to have a couple days to run errands, clean the house, sit outside with my tea and Bible, hear myself think or even take a nap if I want to.  😉

Speaking of day care, I need to go pick her up now and then when I get home it's time to start the quiche for dinner but I promise I'll be back again. 

 

My two girls.  Love these two.  The are cousins but both live here with us at the moment.

Shall we try this again? Recipe included.

Why hello there.  My goodness it has been a long time since I have written on here.  I have thought about the blog a lot lately and do truly miss writing on here. So, I think I am going to try to keep up with this again. 

Fall is a busy time of year for us here.  My husband is busy trying to finish up some outside dirt work jobs so he can start preparing his plow trucks for the upcoming winter season, which is just around the corner!  He's got to make sure the trucks are all running smoothly as well as the sanders.  We haven't even filled up the sand shed with all the first batch of sand that will be needed. 
Then there is cleaning up the yard of anything extra laying around before the snow covers it up.  Hubby does not like having to plow around junk. 
Another chore is getting the animals all ready for the colder months.  Cleaning out the stalls and coops one last time.  Making sure the hay loft is full of hay...which it is not as of yet.  We need to clean out all the hay waste from the goats in their run in.  They are BIG hay wasters but they are cute and fun to have around! 

           I was able to sell all my babies this spring.  This is how I am paying for my winter hay! 

I even tried my hand at milking one of the goats this year.  She did really well.  I look forward to giving it a try again next year...I purchased an electric pump!  This year I made caramel candy with the milk.  It came out pretty good. 

How did your gardens do?  This was not the most productive year for us.  Broccoli, beets and cucumbers were our best crops.  The potatoes weren't too bad.  There were a lot of scabby potatoes but we still harvested about 200 pounds.  I will can some.  Mash and freeze some and then have some out to use. 
The green peppers are small and growing slowly.  The eggplant flowered and then disappeared.  The tomatoes are still green or never showed up at all.  The summer squash did nothing.  We had a handful of zucchini.  The pumpkin or watermelon, is still so small we can't tell which it is.  lol.  And there are only 2 of them.  The garlic was small, didn't grow well.  I need to order more garlic to get ready to plant here soon.  Let me go write myself a note! 
I have about 5 spaghetti squash growing.  The brussel sprouts are a no show.  So all in all it was not a very good production year for us.  Part of it is that we put up a new, to us, greenhouse (12x30). We are learning the ins and outs of it.  I learned a lot and can't wait to put into practice these things next year! 

                         Here's a picture of the greenhouse and some of the spring babies.  💖🐐 oh, and a couple dogs. 

With all that zucchini we had from the garden I made a zucchini bread and then shredded and froze a few bags of extra.  Here is the recipe I used for the bread.  Hope you enjoy!

* 3 large eggs
* 2 cups sugar
* 2 cups flour
* 1 cup quick oatmeal
* 1 tsp cinnamon
* 1 tsp nutmeg
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1 tsp baking powder
* 1/2 tsp ginger
* 1/2 tsp salt
* 1 cup oil
* 3 cups shredded zucchini
* 2 tsp vanilla
Combine the dry ingredients, cream eggs and sugar well.  Mix oil, vanilla and zucchini in a separate bowl. Alternate mixing dry ingredients with the zucchini mix.
Spray pan.You can line it with parchment paper if wanted.
Bake at 350* for one hour or until center is cooked.  Let sit for at least 5 minutes before removing.  I left it in the pan for easier cutting.
Enjoy!
This recipe came from a pen pal of mine. 


Tomorrow I will be trying my hand at making pickles with all those cucumbers on my kitchen counter!  I spent today cleaning and gathering any supplies I will need to make them.  Wish me luck.  I'll be sure to take pics and let you know how it goes. 

My chickens are laying tons of eggs lately.  I need to get them all put in egg cartons and brought to the store to sell or call up some of my neighbors to see if any are in need of more eggs.
I have had broody (hens laying on a nest of eggs) hens and ducks all summer long.  Only one egg has hatched so far.  I have a duckling.  She and mom are in their own pen until baby is old enough to hang out with the big guys.

Well, I'm closing this post for now.  More photos and news to come tomorrow.  Night. 

I leave you with a photo I took this past weekend on the Kancamagus Highway of Lily Pond, one of my favorite spots up north.  The leaves are just starting to change.  I love this time of year! 

Found it!

I have been searching high and low for this Libby's Sausage Gravy.  I had bought a couple cans to try a while back and everyone loved it!  I went back and bought 8 more cans.  I ran out a while ago and have been searching all over for it.  The store I originally purchased it at has been out and has not ordered any more.  Finally found it at Walmart today.  Very top shelf sat a few cans.  Of course I could not reach it so I had to find an employee to grab a ladder and get them for me.  He found 7 cans up there!  I told him if he had any out back I would purchase a case of it.  This Walmart is going through renovations so he said there wouldn't be any.  He didn't even want to look. That's ok, I was happy to come home with 7 of them. 

Guess what we had for dinner tonight?!  ^^^^^^^^^^^  Scrambled eggs over toast with sausage gravy!  Oh so yummy.  I have made the gravy before and that is really good but this is good for a spur of the moment breakfast or dinner.  Something the guys and cook up too.

After our stop at Walmart today I had to stop at Tractor Supply to pick up some chicken and goat grain.  And wouldn't you know....they had baby chicks on sale.  🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔 Yep!  I bought 6 new babies.  LOL  Just what I needed on top of my 40+ others.  I did actually have a purpose for these.  That broody hen that lost her eggs to the skunk, I was hoping that she would be happy to adopt these.  Nope, not happening.  She had already decided to coparent with other hen and she wanted nothing to do with these 6.  Oh well.  My granddaughter is loving them.  I bought 2 Buff  Orpingtons, 2 Dominiques and 2 Asian Blacks.  I know absolutely nothing about the Asian Blacks.  I had never heard of them before.  I'll try to get photos tomorrow. 
I believe my GD has named two of them so far.  Sugar and Sweety. LOL  the names that 7 year olds come up with. 
Well, I'll leave you with this cute picture of my grandson.  I have to be over to my daughter's house for 4 am tomorrow.  UGH.  She hauls meat birds for a customer to Maine (from NH) to the processing plant.  She does this during the summer once or twice a month. Blaine does not like being in the truck that long.  It's about an 8-10 hour day depending on how quick the processors process the chickens because they have to put the empty crates back in her trailer so she can bring them back to the customer.

He loves his horses!  He has his own little pony named Bonny for when he is a little bit older.  This is Dunkin. 

Night! 

End of Summer

I've got a blister on my hand today from raking.  My granddaughter and I played outside from about 10-3 today.  It was such a beautiful day.  Not a touch of humidity to be had.  A nice cool breeze.
I raked and picked up the yard.  Time to start thinking on winter preparations!  While I raked and picked up she played with her two new friends.  Let's see if I can remember their names. Sally the Caterpillar and earthy the earth worm I believe.  Probably have those both wrong.  She tends to change names of toys quite often.  For a while it was Diesel.

 She built little habitats for them with food and water.  I'm expecting the caterpillar to escape during the night.  The worm I'll have her let go tomorrow.
The yard looks good.  Much better than it did.  I raked all under the swing set and the table and chairs that I like to sit at.  All along the end of the house where stuff seemed to just get left until "later".  Wound up the extra water hoses but did not put them in the shed because of the bees nest.

My next project is to clean that room as you walk into the house.  It is the biggest catch all in the house.  I need to have my husband's dump truck on hand so we can fill it and haul stuff to the dump.  I'm thinking this coming week might be a good one to do that.  No rain in the forecast so if I need to move everything outside and start fresh, I can.
And of course while we played outside the boys had to come visit us and "help" out.  The only thing they "helped" with was eating the grapes and ripping open my bag of shavings.

These guys have crazy horns.  They had been burned off but are growing back all weird.  Bo, on the right has only one. Luke on the left has two but one is really deformed and growing every which way!

I made ice cream this afternoon.  Was one of the best batches I've made so far.  I've only made vanilla but would like to start playing with different flavors.  I have strawberries in the freezer that I'll take out so they can add those to it.  My husband, granddaughter and grandson are BIG berry eaters.  I am just starting to eat a few of them.  I don't remember eating berries when I was younger except the wild ones I would try now and then when I found them.
I also made another loaf of bread today in the bread machine.  I find that very handy.  Just pop in all the ingredients and forget it.  I like making bread in the oven too but I have to be right there with it.
This loaf I mad dropped, same as the first one I did the other day.  I'm thinking maybe the yeast was old.  This was the last of the yeast so I'll pick up more tomorrow and hope that it doesn't do the same thing.  I didn't get any photos of the bread because it tends to disappear rather quickly.  :-)
I did get a picture of my veggies I baked up the other day.

Potato and tomato from the garden with onions, garlic, Feta cheese, olive oil and shredded cheese.  So yummy.  Love those baby potatoes!
Last night my granddaughter came back from her visit at her mom's (Friday to Friday during the summer) and she wanted my home made chili.  I didn't have any hamburg so I used left over boneless chicken breast instead.  My husband wasn't sure how it would be.  I am happy to report, it was a hit.

Of course there is my Tupperware spoon.  I love Tupperware and even sold it for a little while.  I have lots of it!  If anyone is looking for a wonderful consultant, I can point you in the right direction!
My friend, Sandy, and I have started a puzzle.  Oh boy, what a puzzle.  I have never done one this large before.  2000 pieces!!  It's a hard one too.  This will take us quite a while I believe.  I do love doing them though.

I stayed up till after midnight working on it the other day so there is quite a bit more done.  Pretty much all of the buildings are completed, you know, the easy stuff!  lol
We were going to head to the ocean the other day but my car was having problems so we started the puzzle instead.
Well, I'm off.  I was in my bedroom writing this up but hubby says bed time!

Church tomorrow and then after a trip to WalMart.  I'm on the hunt for something really yummy.  If I find it, I'll share it with you.

That time of year again.  Working on filling the wood shed for the winter.  It's a job not many of us enjoy doing but we all seem to love the benefits of burning wood.  We use oil as back up but wood is our main source of heat.  The wood stove is in the basement and usually we have to shut the door to the upstairs because it gets too warm up there.  Anything over 70* of wood heat is too warm for me.  I tend to sleep with the window in the bed room cracked open all winter long.  I do find that my husband tends to shut the window during the night.  lol 
We used to get our wood by the logging truck full.  A friend of ours is a logger and he and my husband, a mechanic, would barter for services.  My kids used to cry....NO!!!  Not Jake! when he drove into the yard with a monster logging truck full of full length logs that needed to be cut, split and stacked. 
I help stack some and I run the wood splitter.  Because of my emergency hernia surgery  a while back, I'm not supposed to be lifting heavy stuff.  I have been very fortunate also that the guys help me as much as possible when it comes to lifting all the grain bags too.

I just finished locking up the chickens for the night.  I did not have anyone around to lift up the nesting boxes for me to check for skunks so I am praying there are none in there tonight.
While I was waiting for the few stragglers to get in the coop, I sat outside with DJ, our dog.  It was so quiet and peaceful.  The only sounds I heard were the chickens and a few birds talking.  It was just starting to get dark so I sat and watched a bat flying above the house.  I love watching them.  I find it so peaceful.
I was debating on leaving two eggs outside in a spot where some of the girls lay.  I figured I could tell if there was another skunk around if they were missing in the morning but then I thought I shouldn't leave food out for them to get.  I decided to bring the eggs in. 
I asked one of the girls to run down to the barn yesterday and look for eggs.  I know some of the hens are going down there to lay but I couldn't find them.  She came back with a basket of 17 eggs!  lol  They were way up high in the hay bales.  I've sold 7 dozen eggs this week already and have 5 more dozen available.

I have a group of 5 girls that should be starting to lay any day now.  This spring I purchased 6 Brown Leghorns to try.  I have lot of White Leghorns but had never had the brown ones,  I am curious to see if they lay as well as the white ones do.  They are awesome egg layers. 
I only have 5 of these hens now.  The bear got to them.  Because they were new to the group they started sleeping on top of the chicken coop.  They figured they were up high enough no predators would get them.  I looked out one morning to see a bear climbing up on the coop to get to them.  He didn't get them that morning but soon after.  Now, they sleep in the trees WAY up above the roof top of the house.  I have no worries of bears, skunk or coyotes getting them up there but I do worry about the hawks and owls that are around here.

                                                                     Brown Leghorn hen

                                                           Some of today's bounty.

The ducks aren't laying.  Poor things laid and laid on their eggs then the skunk stole them all.  If they are laying they are hiding the eggs really well.  Some days it's like an Easter egg hunt around here.

We have a bee's nest is this barrel.  lol  It's right in the door way of a little shed we have so none of us can get it the shed to get anything out.  Not sure what we are going to do with it.  Wait till it gets colder and then pull it out?  I tried spraying into the barrel but last night I looked into it and it looks like there is a big speaker box inside.  I think the nest must be inside the speaker so the spray wasn't effecting it at all.  I tell ya, it's always something around here.  Haahaa.

Well, I'm off for now.  Tomorrow is another day trip to the ocean with my friend, Sandy.  I love our days out!  Seafood is calling my name!  Oh yum! 

Summer days.

 We were blessed to be able to fill our barn with hay again this summer.  This year we only did about 500 bales.  That was a piece of cake for all the guys/girls that helped this year, last year we did around 1800.  Our barn only holds about 400 so last year we sold a bunch, my daughter took a bunch and then some of it was wet and nasty and still sits in a field on a trailer under tarps. 
This should be enough for my needs for the year.  I only have 10 goats I'm feeding.  My daughter has horses so she comes and fills up a truck load every now and then.  I'm very fortunate to have people that are willing to do this for me.  They have no need for the hay but they help this old grandma fill her barn.  Love my hubby!  He's so good to me!

One of our many rain storms this summer.  It's been so hot and humid!  There was a double rainbow but I couldn't get it in the picture with my cell phone.  God's promise to not flood the earth again.

We have also had many beautiful sunny days.  I love taking photos of clouds.  You know they'll be different every time you shoot. 

This was a beautiful day for a church picnic.  We all had a great time with great food.

My granddaughter and I actually spent some time at the local town beach this summer.  She is getting older(7) and enjoys going and playing with her friends.  This girl is a fish in the water!  She is an awesome swimmer! 

We were dealing with head lice recently.  My granddaughter spent time with a friend, while at her mother's for visitation, and came home with lice.  Her father, my son, got a small case of it too but we seem to have caught it early enough that it didn't get as bad as last year...same friend.  We have been using the medicated shampoo and using the comb.  I even use a hair straightener on my GD's hair and pop any of the eggs.  Burn them right up!  My husband shaved his head and we both shampooed multiple days.  We never had lice, even as kids ourselves, until last summer.  Hopefully this is the end of it.  We'll see cause she's at her mom's this week and she's with those same friends.  :-(  

My friend, Sandy, and I enjoyed going on day trips together this summer.  She has not seen much of the state, New Hampshire, so I took it upon myself to show her around.  We are hoping to maybe get to the ocean again this week.  I only like going during the off season.  I don't like the crowds.

I am going to share a few pictures from our summer travels.

 These 3 photos above are from the Cathedral of the Pines.  It is a wonderful spot with lots of flower gardens, soldier grave yards, hiking trails, a few places with benches to sit and pray and a museum of the area and the family land owners military history.  I had been here once before but Sandy had not.

 Because this was beside the main road I could not get a photo of  both the bridges .  We were driving down the road, headed to the Cathedral of the Pines and saw them.  Had to stop and check it out.  Love these historical markers.

This photo above is of Madame Sherri's Castle.  It was quite the drive to get there.  The GPS like to take back roads.  We took some small dirt roads to get there.  I was wondering if we were going to make it or not!  

http://madamesherri.com/

Love these historical sites.  It was a nice short walk from the parking area.  Beautiful ruins to walk around out in the middle of no where.

We actually ran across a sign at the end of a dirt road that read..."This is a dead end road, your GPS is WRONG."  lol  I got a kick out of that!

 The Lupine Festival was in Sugar Hill, NH.  It was not quite peek season when we were there but it was still beautiful.  There was a great gift shop and museum across the street too.  Bought some wonderful hand made items and yummy home made goodies. 

 Ahhhh, the ocean.  We love our trips to the coast of NH.  It was a cold and cloudy day.  Not the best beach day.  It was late spring that we went.  Had an awesome seafood lunch though! 

 Sandy checking out the beach at http://www.nhstateparks.com/odiorne.html  We did not go into the little museum that they have there.  I had been there before. 

                           https://www.ci.durham.nh.us/boc_conservation/wagon-hill-farm

Sandy and I have had some wonderful day trips together.  I look forward to many more.