Rain

We had beautiful, beautiful rain yesterday. Added to what we got on Monday, it has taken us out of the extreme drought and put us in the severe drought category. Hey, you take what you can get, LOL! Anyway, we are very thankful. And so are my tomatoes.

I've been drying my cherry and Juliette tomatoes and will do another batch tomorrow. The hotter it is, the faster those little things seem to come on and ripen.

Hope all of you are having a wonderful week:)

Going Bananas

We like bananas around our house. But sometimes we don't eat them like we should, and before you know it, there's a bunch of browning, extra ripe bananas. Muffins, breads, cakes, and pudding are all an option. This week, with the extreme heat out there, I opted for the pudding.

Going through my stash of pudding mixes, I found only one small box of vanilla. There was also a small box of lemon pudding. I sometimes put lemon glaze on my banana muffins, so why not have lemon in the pudding? I'm so glad I tried it!

My recipe:

1 small box instant vanilla pudding

1 small box instant lemon pudding

3 cups milk

1 cup of Cool Whip

bananas

graham crackers (as many or little as you like)

Cool Whip for topping (optional)

Mix puddings and milk, then add cool whip until combined. While it thickens, break up graham crackers in a bowl or container for the pudding. Cut up bananas over the crackers, add a layer of pudding. Top that with more crackers, bananas and pudding. Then, spread a thin layer of Cool Whip over the whole thing and chill.

I hope all of you are having a great summer and staying COOL!

Happy Saturday

I wanted to share a couple of pictures of our new babies! Ike and Abby are almost four months old. They are half Alpine and half LaMancha. As you can see, they got their little ears from their dad, Domino, a pure-bred LaMancha. He will be coming to live with us in another month or so,


I'm dealing with a lot of problems in my garden. My cucumbers are wilting and no sign of bugs, so I'm wondering if it is a bacterial wilt. Anyone else having that problem? I think most of the yellow leaves at the bottom of my beans and tomatoes are from a nitrogen deficiency, so I'm working on that.

I'd love to hear how your garden is growing:).

Happy Mother's Day

Wishing all of you a very happy and blessed Mother's Day! Have a wonderful day with your family!

“Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.” Proverbs 31:30 KJV

Playing in the Dirt

That's what we've been doing for the past week. We will start planting some of the pecans tomorrow. If the weather forecast holds, we will finish planting over 6,000 nuts in the pots by the middle of next week. And then we will sleep for a week. Just kidding:).

This is one pile of dirt (hubby hauled in fourteen). Unfortunately, they are full of roots, so we have to sift the dirt first. Hubby dumps a tractor bucket full of the stuff through these old baker's racks and they do the job after we clear the roots off the top of the racks.
Then we take it into the designated area in the tractor bucket and begin filling pots. With the bucket, the dirt is at a good height to fill without hurting our backs--which is great since this is such a long project!

Two people fill and two people put them in their holders we made with the fencing. Tomorrow, we will start putting nuts in as we fill. The pots that have already been packed with dirt will have to be planted, which I think will be a slower job. So far, we have about 2500 pots filled. This is definitely a learning project and we hope to get more efficient as we go.

Everyone have a great weekend!

First Tree

Above is a picture of our first pecan tree! OK, it doesn't look like much, I agree, but at least we know that the ones my brother planted in the ground are sprouting.

My husband has hauled in 20 yards of dirt, so far, this week. We will be putting the rest of the pecans in pots sometime in the next 2-3 weeks and then. . .wait and see if they come up.

The weather today was beautiful and I spent most of my time transferring my strawberries to a new raised bed. They flooded last year and I lost over half of them, but they've been busy making babies, so I'm hoping for a fair crop this season and making preserves and jam with my own berries.

Have any of you made strawberry preserves with honey? A friend told me her aunt used to make it that way.

Country Sampler

For anyone interested, Country Sampler has started a new forum. I loved their old one, but could rarely get logged on to it. I love all the ideas the members share--and LOTS of great pictures. If you're a fan of the magazine, click HERE and you can go to the forum.

Have a great weekend!

My Crocus Is Blooming

Someone asked when I was going to start blogging again, and I jokingly answered, "When my crocus bloom." Well, they are blooming and here I am! I've enjoyed clicking around and reading your blogs during my time off.

My dad was in the hospital again after Christmas. The medicine they had him on caused him to have internal bleeding and he had to have several units of blood. He is just now starting to feel some better.

We have been busy with a lot of projects. We are building a new well house and need to do some repairs/modifications on the chicken house, as well as build a shelter for the goats we plan to get in the near future.

The biggest project we are working on is pictured above. Pig races, you're thinking? Well, no, but that was my first thought when I saw the posts and fencing, LOL! There will be pots of dirt in each section of the fencing. We are having to wait for the ground to dry before we can get enough dirt.

This is a joint effort with my brother to join our two farms together. He has been taking classes on pecan growing and we are partnering with him.

We are going to plant the pecans (which have been stratifying for a few months) in a couple of weeks and (if they come up) they will be planted in the 'orchards' next fall. Then, they will have to be grafted in another year. After that we have to keep them alive until they are firmly established. A lot of sweat and labor, but if it works out for us, our first harvest will be in about ten years. If nothing else, it is a new adventure for all of us! I'll be sharing more about this venture as we progress.