Saturday! Auction Day in the neighborhood. We will see how everything goes. There are a lot of neat things down on Elmers hay pasture. Everything from smokehouses and gazebos to wringer eashers and wood cook stoves. Mark drove our tractor down last night. The little ponies and carts are selling today too. I hope the buyers with money come :)

My in-laws arrives last night to stay the weekend. My father in law hopes to get a bunch of chickens today at the auction. I think they are selling about 300 young hens. He set up shop in our front yard yesterday and made a picnic table out there. It is made out of the extra rough cut lumber Mark has accumulated, a mixture of maple, oak and poplar. The table weighs a literal ton and I think we will need a group of amish guys to move it over to it's final spot under a maple tree. Until then, it can stay where it is.

I worked a lot on staking our 70 tomatoe plants the other night. My hands are such a mess now, between the scratches from the raspberry brambles, and stained fingers from the berries and stained hands from working in the tomatoes.... definitely not a hand model moment here.

Good weather today, thank you Lord. I think I need one more cup of coffee before I go out to face the cows. I'm trying to dry up Mrs Calloway ecause she should be due in a couple months (if I calculated right) and I'd like to give her a little rest. I just milk her out about half way each time until her milk supply goes down to the point where I don't milk at all. She has had a good long cycle this time, nearly two years. Not bad for an old girl.

Well, I'm off to get coffee in me. Have a great one!

I love roosters.

So far they have taken 3 truckloads out. They found better than expected trees here, so maybe we will be getting some extra money for them. We shall see.

My Mom sends me some cute e-mails.  I love these one and had to share with you all.

Who is walking who?

I look like you or is it you look like me?

Ah, can I keep him?  (the dog is asking):

Um mom, why am I wearing clothes and his is not??

Look Mom at what I learned :

Just one little bite that's all:

Are you sure they taste like chicken??

Are you sure they are in here???

That's all for now, Blessings,Mj

Kristi was board earlier today and decided to play wii.  She played monopoly with Hope!  Hope is our soon to be 10 year old golden medical alert service dog.  We train the dog to all kinds of stuff some funny and silly but this is too much!

Titus is doing great in his service dog training.  We took him out for the first time to go shopping and he was wonderful.  If we stopped and looked or spoke to someone he would lay down with out being told to.  I thought it was odd, so I kept testing him.  I would walk and stop not look at him he would just lay down .  That is amazing for a six month old puppy to do on his first outing in stores.  I wonder if Kristi is going to teach Titus to play monopoly??

We start training them as soon as they are born.  Also having good parents helps too.  It took me two years to find his parents, to find the lines I was looking for.  Now we need one more female golden.  We might get one from Alex's breeder.

Blessings, Mj

Okay, Janet is in trouble she let Kristi and Mya run free on the mountain.  Worse yet with a camera .  Here are some pictures of the adventure.

1. Is Kristi finding out there are more than one of her:

2. Mya discover pine cones, do pine nuts come from pine cones??:

3. Is Kristi playing cars (she is the car)

4. Maybe I will be a better car sitting down??

5. Better yet I will play speed bump!! Did I send Kristi with her insuance card???

6. Mya discovers a cow and gives it a kiss !!

7. Milk comes from here ???? I know the poor thing , will she ever get over the shock???

8. Then they made friends with the locals:

JANET!!!!, we do not let the girls play speed bump in the middle of the Road!!! /.    We need to let the girls out of the house once in a while.  Poor Mya was so lost as to where milk comes from!! And did not know what a pine cone was!!!   Poor Kristi she thought there was more than one of her!!  Look at the locals nails on that local, see how long they are?? They could hurt the girls!!

Sorry but I had to write and show the pictures , they are so cute.  I will show more latter.

Blessings Mj

We woke up to a cool day today! So far our high has been about 60 so while I had the opportunity I fired up the wood stove and baked! I made a batch of almond biscotti, bread, rolls and about 4 dozen gi-normous cinnamon rolls. I hope this holds us over for a bit.

Today is also a noisy day. We are select timbering two of our hills and so the logging equipment is out there making a ruckus. Hopefully after this, there will be enough light coming through so that the younger trees can grow big. Right now it is just too crowded out there.

I got outside for a minute and took some pictures today, but it looks like I am out of space here so I will have to go back and delete some old ones before I can put them up. Maybe later if I am not to lazy. I took a picture of the garden but I cropped out my tomatoes. I am so ashamed, I did not pinch off the suckers on my tomatoes like I should have and it seems that everyone notices... how embarassing.

Then yesterday I announced to Mark that I had not been able to go shopping for a month, we were on our last half roll of toilet paper, and I only had three pairs of underwear and they were coming apart. So, he came home early, loaded me and the little girls up and we went to Walmart. I was so excited, We got the enormous 24 pack of scott toilet paper. It is sitting in the outhouse right now. I was reading the packaging on it though, and it has a "Scott tissue community" advertised on it with a little picture of a steaming coffee cup, as if there are actually people who pour themselves a nice hot cup and want to chat about strength vs. softness. Give me a break! (But wait, what am I doing here....:)

I also was so excited about purchasing new chonies that had "do not ride up" on the packaging that I failed to notice that they come up to my armpits. I guess that is one way to get rid of panty lines, to have never ending panties. But alas I digress.

Mark is going to try to sell his tractor at an auction this weeked. I hope it goes well, if it doesn't look like it will bring enough, we will just buy it back ourselves. But it is just too light to pull the brush hog up into the hills and he REALLY wants to find something with a front loader on it. We shall see. The first step is to see what we can get out of the current one.

Well, I'm going to see about deleting some old photos. Have a great day!

~Marie

I have a 7 book lot for sale:

The Creative Recipe Organizer

Meals in Minutes

Main Dishes

Lunches and Snacks

Desserts

Soups and Muffins

Breakfasts: Blender Batter Baking...

All of these are the Deluxe Covered... except for Meals in Minutes.  All like-new condition.

55.00ppd.  media shipping with insurance.

Dearest Readers,

It is time to celebrate America's Birthday!  Here at Honey Hill Farm, that means decorating our entryway......

Ribbons, vintage (and not so vintage) postcards, Holly Hobbie plates and flags all have pride of place....

A sunny and patriotic spot to welcome our guests...

Turn of the century Ladies' accoutrements wait patiently for a chance to go out and be seen...

A Liberty inspired vignette.....

The American Flag has never looked so lovely....

Every corner displays the American Spirit....

A truly delightful Fourth of July to share with family and friends...

 I hope that you are enjoying this wonderful holiday, Dear Readers...

Yours so kindredly,

Shan

Well, it looks like we have been had. In all my years of used car buying it had never happened to us, so I suppose it was my turn. It looks like the engine has been sealed with a stop leak fluid... might even be a cracked head. Kind of like me? Cracked up?

Oh well. God is still in control and I still have more raspberries to pick. So pick I shall and pick I have. I pick  until my hands are covered in scratches and my fingers covered in juice, and my tummy is full of berries.One for me, one for the basket.... you get the picture :)

So, the blueberries aredisappearing off the bushes at an alarming number. I am afraid the birds are faster than I am so I have resported to picking them while they are still violet and leting them finish "bluing up" inside before freezing them. I can't wait for a cool day to bake blueberry muffins this winter. It is just so hot to fire up the wood stove or the old gas range in the summer, since we are still virtually electricity free and have no fans or AC (however we do have high speed wireless internet available in the outhouse. Ahhhh life if full of paradoxes such as these :)

I am going to head back out in a minute to milk the cows and bring in whatever other bounty the garden has for us tonight. Last night it was zucchini. We will see what tonight holds. Zuchini season is funny. By the end of it everyone is so tired of it, and if you leave your car door unlocked during church you may just find a bag of it left on your seat anonymously by some other person trying to figure out what in the world to do with all this squash. But for now, the season has just begun, and we are still very happy to bring the reen shiny guys into the house for supper.

I have a 1/2 bushel of pickle cucs soaking in sal water to pickle tomorrow. I am still out of dill, and honestly don't feel like going out in search of it today, so this may be another batch of bread and butters. But that is ok with me. I love the little guys.

Mark is off hauling a buggy horse up to Schwartzentruber land to get bred. I hope it is romantic for everyone. My cows are getting larger, Mrs Calloway is due in 3 months so she will really start to get wide here in a bit. It makes it mighty cozy in the little milking stall with a big pregnant cow, let me tell you. They have this awful habit of having to ... um... relieve themselves as soon as I am done milking. So I have anout 90 seconds from the time I make the last squirt until I have to get them out the door of the barn unless I really feel like shoveling up a ton of yuck. (which I don't) I can guide them out with a stick, but that is too slow, it is not always time efficient..... So I have a system that is a combination garden hose water and fly spray and I can have them turned around and headed out the door in record time (and get the stanchion area clean) however, the water hydrant is outside the barn's front door, so I have to make one really quick mad dash, unlatch the back door (that they will leave through) (If I leave it open all the sheep will wander in while I'm milking just to check things out and really complicate things even more) run to the front door, push the dog out of the way(remember I am working on desensitizing Jake with the livestock :) throw up the hydrant lever grab the hose, jump back in the barn and spray the stanchion floor and the cow with the fly spray in about 20 seconds or less. I am working to improve my time. Do you think it could be an olympic event?

Wel, have a wonderful night. I will be here, typing with purple fingers. Ta Ta!

~Marie

It was my first time. I was nervous because I have small vains.

I think it took like an hour at least. Filled out a paper, read a pamplet, did a quick check up(bp, temp, iron,ect), the gave the blood. My vain WAS a bit small. But they poked around till they got it enough to get the blood.

It hurt a little bit, but I just told myself "you might save a life doing this" so it was all worth it.

Got my juice, was offered cookies but I declined, waited 5 to 10 minutes and I was on my way.

I feel good, glad to have done something that could help someone else.

Have you given blood lately? It's no big deal, give it a try! LOL

Nancy