Skies on the Farm

My breath is just taken away from me sometimes when I look up to the heavens.  I don't think there is anything that makes me feel closer to God in nature.  It's like when I'm looking up and searching the skies, the clouds, the sun, the stars, my face is lifted up towards the heavens and God is looking down on me. I know He can see me all the time, but I like for Him to see me looking up to Him.  His light is infinitely brighter than the sun, yet the sun is the brightest thing we can see. And when that radiance from the sun shines down onto my upturned face, it feels like the very light of His face is warming my soul and loving on me.  I love skies.

I love to sit in the dining room with the morning sun streaming through the window while I pray.  Especially in the winter, I need that warmth and light so much - His light and warmth.  Even at night with the moon shining down, it feels like He's right there keeping me company.

You know when there are lots of thunderheads in the sky like there has been the last couple of weeks?  And the sun is behind them and there're rays of sunbeams streaming out?  That is my idea of heaven sort of.  That the radiance of the Lord is so brilliant that it has to stay behind the cloud or we just couldn't bear to see it. But someday we will!!!

There!  Can you see it?  A very faint rainbow!  Actually, there were two, but the other one's behind the pine tree on the right.  We have so many trees here that it's hard to take sky pictures.  Out at the farm, I love it, cuz we can see all around us.  I love the promise of the rainbow, too.  We got no rain, but some beautiful skies this evening!  (OOOPS!  I lost my rainbow picture - will have to fix that!  OK now it's fixed...)

Gotta throw one kitty picture in.  Here's Sam upon meeting Hayley's dog, Bella.  He bowed up and started spittin' and clawin'.  Look how he stands up on tip-toes.  He was not at all happy!

Well, gotta keep it short and sweet tonight, good buddies - keep your dress down!!!

Summer Vacation

Blogger is not updating all of your posts this morning! What's going on? Some of them are fresh, but some of them are not! Anybody else having that problem?

courtesy - http://www.locogringo.com/research/ruins.html

Our best friends from church have a vacation home in Akumal, Mexico, and we have planned a family trip with them for the first week of August. All our kids grew up together, and nobody's married yet, so everyone is going! I'm really excited as we haven't been on a family vacation together where ALL are going in several years! We visited our friends' home on the beach in Mexico about 9 years ago and it was beautiful!! Here's a link ----> http://www.akumalmexico.com/suenos.html  AND here ---->  http://www.locogringo.com/akumal/casasuenos.html?name=Casa%20de%20los%20Suenos  . Check it out - you might wanna go stay there sometime! It sleeps 2 families - great place for a group to go. It's BEAUTIFUL! Can't wait!!!

Akumal is a little further south of Cancun and Playa del Carmen on the Yucatan. We fly into Cancun, rent a Suburban, drive to Playa, go to the grocery store, and then on south to Akumal. A little out of the tourist areas and quiet in a small lagoon with ocean views from every window. Most of us (except me and Hayley) are divers so Hayley and I will be snorkeling while the others are diving. The Mayan ruins at Tulum are nearby so I'm sure we'll be visiting there. It's the most beautiful, breathtaking place I've ever been.
(Lord willing, and we don't get a hurricane...)

We woke this morning to soft rumbling on the southern horizon. It later developed into a slow, soothing, soaking rain. It's noon now and it's gone on most of the morning. I sure hope it rained at the farm... We've harvested all the purple hulls peas and green beans. The watermelons are about ready (I'm hoping to have one for July 4) and the corn's about ready, too. The cucumbers are waning, the potatoes need to be dug as well as the remaining onions. We cut the peas back - dad said he did that a few years ago, and they came back and bloomed again and he got another crop. I'm gonna try that. I'm having a bumper crop of tomatoes & jalapenos and canning salsa is on the agenda again for this weekend. Altho we have a wedding at 3:00 on Saturday that we HAVE to attend. Good friends...so I imagine I'll be smellin' all onion-y and garlic-y for the festivities.

Just thought I'd post a few pics for ya - hope you're not gettin' tired of garden pics...not much going on right now except garden stuff and trying to stay cool. At least today is a little cooler because of the rain...

This is a baby scissortail in my garden. His momma and daddy were perched overhead in a tree and they kept fussing at me for taking his picture, but they never did swoop at me like the jays and mockingbirds do...

All for now, friends.  Hope you have a great rest of the week!  Keep your dress down!

Farm Kitty Alice Has a New Friend!

Mind a few more kitten pics???  Farm Kitty Alice has a friend!  My son's girlfriend's parents' cat had kittens and they brought us one! (did that make sense?)  His name is Sam!  Alice has been alone for a couple of weeks, and she didn't quite know what to make of him, but after batting him in the head a few times and hissing at him, they settled down and had a fun time! Alice is still a little skittish and doesn't like loud noises.  Sam is real laid back and just plops on the porch.  He doesn't even care if Alice bops him on the head - no big deal!

MEET SAM!  Nothing seems to bother him.  He and Alice ate their crunchy food side by side and acted like they'd known each other forever.  He followed her lunder the porch and I could hear them playing and bumping around under there.  They'd play, then come up and get a drink and a few more bites, plop for awhile, snooze, and then go back to playing.  Is there anything cuter than watching kittens play?

Alice  plopping...

Alice and Sammy are about the same size and same age.  I hope this works out well and I feel better knowing Alice is not alone.  They can look out for each other.  Two sets of eyes and ears are better than one!  I left a bowl of crunchy food out tonight.   We'll see what happens!

Now, don't all of you feel better, too, that Farm Kitty Alice has Farm Kitty Sam for a buddy???  And as soon as it's time  we'll get the Farm Kitties "FIXED" so we won't have any more Farm Kitties!

The Case of the Missing Bowl...

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the following ------ Be on the lookout for a deranged, thieving, dangerous criminal!  Something strange is happening at the farmhouse.  An investigator or a ghostbuster may need to be hired to solve this crime.

It all started when one black and white female feline subject arrived at Sand Flat Farm about 2 weeks ago.  Everything was clicking along just fine.  Said subject was settling in to her new home and new routine with no problems.  Subject was taking her meals on the front porch of the farmhouse located at Sand Flat Farm from white Corelle bowls that her owners brought out for her each day usually during afternoon hours.  There was also another piece of evidence in addition to the Corelle bowls - an antique berry bowl that belonged to the feline's owners also went missing.

The bowls were left overnight on the front porch to allow our feline subject to eat to her heart's content and upon rising in the mornings, the bowls had mysteriously vanished without a trace.  Feline subject was questioned extensively but seems to have no knowledge of the thefts and to date has not been charged with any crime due to lack of evidence. If she does know something, she's not talking.  Her owners started placing her bowl on top of a rustic white table meant to hold flowers and attractive junque thinking that perhaps this would be a safer place to put the bowls and feline could eat in relative safety.

This didn't work either.  Another attempt to thwart the theft of the bowls was made by placing them into a pet crate under the table.  Again, the bowls disappeared.  To date there  have been a total of 6 bowls that have gone missing.  Owners have checked and searched all under the bushes in front of the porch and around the yard and even made searches on foot through surrounding pastures, but to no avail. The bowls seem to have vanished without a trace.

Was it a packrat?  Is there a family of rats up under the farmhouse that do their dirty work at night?  Did our feline subject transform into the Incredible Hulk Kitty and drag the bowls off the porch and table and pull them up under the porch herself?  This is not believed to be the case as the bowls are almost as large as the feline. It is impossible for the human species to see under the porch because the building comes down almost even with the dirt.

Upon further investigation, a large, odiferous pile of canine  excrement was found near the scene of the crime and this led all involved in this case to suspect that the perp may be either the neighbor-down-the-road's mammoth Pyrenese dog that uses our land as his cut-thru to other places he wants to visit (always with two large nanny goats in tow - they go wherever he goes) OR the mange-y loner coyote that has been banished from the pack and has been spotted in the late evenings hanging out by the pond and the surrounding woods for the last 3 years.   The suspect visits the porch after daylight hours to confiscate said bowls and removes them to his lair.  That is the thinking at this time. Owners will have to stay up very late at night and keep watch to see who our suspect is.  We will keep you updated on this case as soon as facts are available.

Meanwhile, bowls will have to be replaced.  Heavy crocks are being considered as well as disposable bowls, however landowners do not want to see bowls all over pastures and surrounding countryside.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program...

Edited to add:  Aunt Amelia is worried about little Alice.  Let me say that Farm Kitty Alice usually stays up under the porch where nothing can reach her.  If she hears a bump or sees something out of the ordinary, she's a blur getting under the porch.  I think she'll be okay.  Hey, she's a farm cat - she'll have to be tough and act like one.  We can't keep her in the house - Me and Hayley are highly allergic, unfortunately...

My Sis & Me & Alice

This past weekend, my sister came to the farm to help me make jelly and pickles.  We've got plums running out our ears around here from my daddy's tree.  We had two big ole 5 gallon buckets and another bucket full on Saturday.  I'd already put up a slew of jelly already, but we can't let this go to waste. There's also another bucketload of ripe plums still on the tree and a bunch on the ground! We've been givin' 'em away!

We cooked  plums down nearly all day long, and also made jelly while we waited. My seester is my bestest friend in the whole wide world. We're both country girls 'n we figger we can do just about anything alone or together that a man can do -'cept pee standin' up!  And we could probly do that, too, just might not be able to hit what we're aimin' for!  Why wait on your husband to do somethin' for ya when you can probly do it yourself, and you don't hafta wait!  Together me 'n her have gotten into some fine messes, but always got ourselves out of 'em.  We can fix stuff, build stuff, we can fish and hunt, and clean a deer & fish, we can re-wire a dryer from gas to electric (actually seester did most of that), you name it, we've probly done it.  We hung around with our do-it-all dad all the time.  He is still the bee's knees to us!

OK, back to jelly.

Here are the plums cookin' down. It smells heavenly to breathe in all that lusciousness!

Here's me in my farmhouse kitchen warshin' more plums for the jelly...

Sis is dipping up juice to run through the strainer. We put the whole plums in the pot, and the skins and seeds come out in the strainer and we're left with just juice!

We're havin' a laugh over somethin'.  We laughed all day long. AND we never could figger out who took our picture together. Was it Mom? She was there for awhile, or was it my daughter? She was there for awhile, too! Not the most flattering of photos, but good memories nonetheless!  And voila! The final product!!! I sent half home with her for her family and some to mom and dad.  It was so good!  Now with some homemade bread and real butter, I'll be in hog's heaven!  We still have almost a whole 'nuther bucket of plums, ripening and fermenting. I hope I can git 'em done before they rot!

Alice the farm kitten is doing so well.  She is growing right before our eyes.  She's getting less skittish and runs out to the car when we get to the farm.  Loud noises still make her nervous and sometimes she'll take off and run under the porch.  But she's getting better.  She's finally started purring whenever you pick her up and scratch her.  It's been awhile since I've had a cat.  I've had cats all my life and it's nice to have another one. I still think I'm gonna git her a buddy.

Is this not the cutest kitten you've ever seen? She always has dirt in her nose from playing under the porch all the time.  She seems very healthy and playful and she's eating like a little pig.  I'll have to get her to the vet for a check up soon.   Take care, people!  Have a great week!  And keep your dress down!