Happy Thanksgiving

What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets.  I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?  ~Erma Bombeck

What did I drink last night?  Is that a turkey on my head??

We are going to have a quiet thanksgiving, just me, Jim, Gmar and the dogs.  We have to spend most of the day getting ready for our Sir Cluckington Baak Friday open house tomorrow.  We invited some relatives and neighbors over for a get together and more turkey, one of Jim's heritage birds.  So I have got to clean house, clean the porch, bake and cook some sides, but it should be fun.

So much to do, so little time

The weather has been all over the place.  For the past week it has been in the 70's, but last night we had rain and it is now in the 50's where it should be at this time of year.  Jim and I have progressed on my porch green house.  I got all my dado's and tenons duly cut and left him to cut 1/2 of the plastic panels to fit the frames, while Gmar and I played bridge yesterday.  I don't know where his head was, but he ended up cutting ALL of the panels, for which I payed a pretty penny.  Yeah, I was kinda mad.  So now we (HE) has to fix it.  In the meantime I have to move my plants out today, clean my room, move the plants back in tonight then move them out again tomorrow then move them in after the party.   GAAAAAH!!!!

The cockers, bless their little hearts, had another rogue nest in the wild.  I watched one of the girls acting funny as soon as I let her out.  So I followed her at a discreet distance, and it was lucky I did, because there was a hawk sitting on a tree about 30 yards away from her.  I didn't see it until I scared it away.  It flew a little distance then stopped again.  So I spent about 2 hours outside making sure there was no attack.  Thank you God.  Anyway, after some minutes, I saw her disappear into a hollow formed by some branches we had cut from one of the trees we took down.  Sure enough, there were 14 eggs in there, of all sizes.  My buppy has been laying in there as well as two more older hens.  So I removed the eggs and put a wooden one in.  I think there may be one more nest out there cause I had another hen disappear into a copse next to the barn.  I haven't found that one yet.  Why can't they all just lay in the coop??

I don't have any goat milk to make goat cheese right now so I got some almonds and made my own almond butter.  It is 1/2 the price that you can buy it for in the stores.  I'm not sure what to do with it yet, but I will figure something out.

I have been working out at the Gym for a week now and feel much better.  I don't hurt badly anymore, except for my knees, so I graduated myself to two reps on each machine, except for a few, where I can only do 1 and 1/2 reps.

The christmas season is ramping up and the calendar is starting to get filled with programs and luncheons.  I can't believe that the year is almost over.

Well, got to get busy now for the feast today and tomorrow.

Everyone have a blessed turkey day and,

gobble gobble

Blogged down

The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate. - Joseph Priestley


So, I am not going to get bogged down in trying to attach pictures all the time.


"When all other means of communication fail, try words."- Anonomous


Quite a bit has happened in the past couple of weeks.  It has turned cold for the long haul, I think.  Right now I have all of my tropical plants scrunched into my bedroom.  They are not happy and I am not happy.  I finally got my panels to make my little greenhouse on my porch but have to prep the wood that goes around them.  Jim taught me how to do dados on the table saw. I've done all the 2x2's but don't know what to do with the cross bars yet.  He has been too busy with local jobs to continue my lessons.  So I continue to be unhappy and my plants continue to be unhappy.

I finally got so disgusted with myself, that I joined the gym in Atkinson.  It doesn't have a grocery store, a restaurant or even a bank, but it now has a gym.  And a pretty good one too.  All of the equipment is more or less state of the art.  The only thing they ain't got is space.  The owners are very nice people.  I was in there yesterday and Jerry, the husband, talked to me for about an hour.  I think he gets lonely when there are few people around.  I try to go around 8 am when the morning rush is over.  So I got his life story, or at least a version of it...

The chickens are molting and the floor of the coop looks like someone plucked a whole chicken.  I don't know why they chose to do it in the cold weather.  My buppy has laid her first egg.  She is not quite the size of the older cockers, but she is much more pretty, with her new feathers and all.

...You do know how to cackle, don't you?

I love this time of year.  Not because of Thanksgiving.  Not because of Christmas.  Not because of cool weather.  Because the sun is now hitting the disco ball!!!!

Deesco, Deesco Pato, Quauk Quauk

I've also spent the past two weeks gleaning sweet potatoes from the harvested fields.  It was a good year.   The potatoes are really sweet.  I have made deep fried chips and sweet potato cookies and sweet potato pie.  And for the dogs, I made dehydrated sweet potato snacks.  They LOVE them!!!  I have given a bunch away.  I am not so much into eating them myself but I will dig them all day long.  It's like looking for buried treasure.  I did find a bit of a treasure during one dig.  A piece of a horse shoe.  Very old and rusty.  I have no idea how old it it or how long it had been buried in the field.  Maybe a piece of antebellum history.

The garden still has a few herbs in it and some lettuce.  The rest of the stuff I have pulled up, except the dead basil.  The cockers like to hide under it, so I will leave it til next year.

That's all from the farm.

bak bak

Old Time, New Time

Don't forget it's daylight savings time. You spring forward, then you fall back. It's like Robert Downey Jr. getting out of bed. - David Letterman



Got up bright and early at 6:30??? to let the cockers out.  This gave me one hour more to cook for church.  Today is our green team assignment to bring dishes using leftovers.  So I made a sweet potato pie from left over sweet potatoes (more on this later), and a bean and rice casserole from left over bean soup.


On Thursday, my two aunties and I went to glean sweet potatoes in a big field of one of her Baptist friends.  I took my little potato rake and dug 3 five gallon buckets of sweets.  It is such fun!!!  I am not all that partial to sweet potatoes, but I LOVE to dig for them.  I am trying different things with them.  I made some deep fried sweet potato chips that were really yummy.  I put some in the dehydrator and they turned out to be crunchy and chewy.  I'm not sure if I like these or not, but supposedly they make great doggy treats.

My Haul

Last night was the auction.  There was a lot of stuff and a lot of people.  I went to bid on a couple of items for Christmas presents.  Got some but the ones I wanted went for a ridiculous price.  There were 4 of them (can't say what cause I still may find one) and I stopped bidding at 75 dollars apiece.  The ahole bidding against me took all four.  D*** dealers!  But it was entertaining, as always.

Yesterday, besides the auction, I drug another of my aunties out of bed at 4am to get to a charity sale at Belks in Wilmington.  Besides a five dollar coupon and massive sales cuts, to the first 150 persons through the door, they gave another gift card worth anywhere from 5 dollars to 1000 dollars.  When we got there, at 5:30, there were already about 125 people in line.  So we got cards, but it was a close thing. Both of our cards turned out to be only 5 dollars, but she got some intimates and some sheets and I got some intimates and a cake carrier for very deep discounts.

On the way back I took this picture of a cotton field, pre-harvest.

Looks like snow

Lastly, the cockers have been fighting with the squirrels lately cause they eat the scratch I throw out.  I haven't been able to get a shot of it, but one of the cockers was chasing the squirrel around the hay bale this morning.  Very amusing.  Here is a video of the squirrel, anyway:

bak bak