New Girls in Town.

I have decided that scratched into the wall of the feed store restroom is the following message-- "For a good home for your feathery friends, call Clink."

Saturday morning -- around 11:30 -- Sheepie Neighbor called from the farmers market. "Karen from the feed store called. She's got two Buff Orpingtons hens to give away. If you want them, you need to pick them up by noon." First of all, Karen knows that Sheepie Neighbor is a sucker for poultry. But then, Sheepie Neighbor knew that I wanted more Orpingtons. We are women that spend our time talking about poultry! I should be concerned but Ravelry has a knitting group for "Women that like Chickens." So it must be perfectly normal!!

Orpingtons are large birds that are great layers, have nice dispositions and the most important aspect -- they are pretty and lay pretty eggs! So I sent Honey up to the feed store with a large Rubbermaid container to pick up the birds. Poor Honey. The guy is busy on a project, has a lot of stuff to do -- and I interrupt him and tell him to run to the feed store -- NOW!

Ok -- he was given a choice. 1) He could peel tomatoes, watch the catsup, take care of the customers that were picking flowers and make sure he got the green beans out of the canner. He doesn't multi-task any better than I do -- he went to the feed store!

When he told me 6 years ago that I could have chickens -- I'm pretty certain he didn't expect to get into the poultry rescue business! But the new girls have settled in nicely and have even delivered some large light brown eggs. Yes -- they are good girls.

The rest of the weekend has been spent "putting" up for winter. The other night we did 5 doz ears of corn --- we got 16 bags for the freezer.

This is a local favorite -- Peaches and Cream -- its a yellow and white corn with a supersweet taste. There are as many ways to put up corn as there are varieties of corn. I start by blanching the ears for 3 minutes, cool them down in ice water and then scrape the kernels off the cob. I use an archaic corn cutter called the Keen corn cutter. It is at least 40 years old -- my folks used it till my Dad ruined the corn by slicing his finger -- they never used it again.

See! Five fingers ..... no band-aids. This, as Martha would say, is a good thing!

The 70 tomatoes I planted have finally kicked into gear. So I have spent my holiday weekend making 8 - 1/2 pint jars of catsup (yes, Honey is spoiled -- I know!!!) 11 quarts of tomatoes, 3 pints of tomato juice, 10 pints of green beans and wax beans and 18 pints of zesty salsa. The zesty salsa took almost 6 hours and one nutroll to do......... and Honey wants more. It is delicious.

The pantries are quickly filling up and I'm searching for space to store more jars. But that leads me to Honey's project. If you haven't picked up the drift yet, I have a hobby or two. Or twenty! The house is over-flowing with fabric, fleece, yarn, embroidery floss and reed. So we decided that I need a fiber studio and I am taking over part of the barn/garage for my creative activities.

Honey has started the project by running electricity from the shop to the barn ......... the corn-zebo and potting shed will follow. Then he can spend the winter -- remodeling the garage into a wonderful area for me! The plans have been fun to work on --- I like the creative challenges of using recycled materials to create a unique, practical and useful environment. As time goes by, I'll post pictures. But to celebrate the first step ........... I bought a new sewing machine!!

We'll talk more about that later.