Westmoreland Fair Without Animals

Okay! We start with a chicken quilt. So animals are inspiration for crafts.

Julia's Blue Ribbon Pina Colada Bread

But there is so much to the fair aside from the animals, unless, of course, you figure where these ingredients came from.

  The 4-H Court of Honor.

Preserved goods,...

And the raw materials below.

 Best of Show Handcraft.

 Recycled crafts

Soybeans 

 Wool being spun and woven.

 Is this a swan or a serpent?

Bear Paw Quilt

 

This really was supposed to be about everything but animals, since there is so much to see at the fair, but it seems that the pictures I chose led me otherwise.

Well a few more animals to come as I catch up on the Westmoreland Fair next time.

 

Westmoreland Fair 2012(More to follow)

Fun and Work

If there was a trophy for goats with personality, I think we all agree at our farm, that Adeline would be a winner. She is always first at the stall door demanding to get out and get the day started. No lingering in the background for her.

Julia has her entered in the Westmoreland Fair again this year, and we hope they can do well again. 

Trixie had been an entry all along, since the day she was born, and was a very big girl until she had a bout of pneumonia about two months ago. We almost lost her, and to save her, started bottle feeding her again. Lucky for us, we have 4-H friends who traded us goat milk so that we could nurse her to health. Of course, now we will have to wean her again, but it was worth the effort. She is not as robust as she was, but passed her fitness vet check and will show at the fair.

Each morning, when she can, Julia helps get the goats out, fed and watered, and helps with any special tasks, like shots, where another pair of hands is helpful.

To get the three goats she is taking ready, she has tried washing off those dirty knees and grooms them at night. With her mother and brother helping she gave all three a major bath yesterday while we had a nice warm day to dry them up. No need to have them catch a cold now.

 There's a lot of fun in all this work.

Today I even LET Julia dump the manure!

Its a bit of a walk up the hill, but I remind her of what a good work out she's getting to keep her in shape for running (yes - she runs races with her dad).

 Jock helps of course!

 Can you see? She's still smiling!

So tomorrow the animals go to the Westmoreland Fair, and a busy nine days begins.

Good Luck Julia, Adeline, Ali and Trixie!

Happy Birthday Julia Child!

If you don't know what's for dinner tonight, my suggestion is to pull out a Julia Child recipe and start there.

Julia would be 100 today.

I learned a lot of my bread and soup skills from the VCR tapes that my old and current library have. She was so fun to watch. And there was the one spot where the editor missed her wrap skirt exposing her thigh! Woo!

Last year a book club friend died in a car accident and her books were donated to the library.  Unfortunately, many of them had been temporarily stored in a musty garage, and so the library could not take them. I was left with a musty car and stacks of books. 

Not being able to just throw them out, I went through them and found one lovely copy of Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home.  I also adore Jacques Pepin. My Kristin and I would watch the cooking show on PBS where he shared recipes with his daughter. We would giggle at her slow, unpracticed skills that made her dad squirm. But it made us more comfortable in our own kitchen experiments. From him we learned how to use "real" garlic.

I decided to wrap Julia and Jacques for Kristin as a Christmas gift.  As I leafed through, I came back to the title page. There I found autographs of both the authors. What a thrill! 

I miss my friend who loved all these cook books, and I hope she is with Julia watching us share their love of cooking today.

Bon Appetit.

On the Pond

Growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I used to fish for "sunnies" on the Conestoga Creek.  Sometimes we would travel to the Susquehanna River in Columbia to fish, and there we caught flathead catfish. I think that put an end to my fishing interests! Ugh!

Here are some shots from the pond this week-end.

A young neighbor brought his grandfather to share some quality time before school starts.

Twenty Three Eggs

For days I've been wondering if the hens read the post where I bragged about their production. 

Since that day, their production declined to the point where today there were NO eggs in the nests. Tonight, Julia and I searched all the usual hiding places and found nothing. 

We got to work putting down bedding and getting the stalls ready for the goats tonight, when I turned around and LOUDLY exclaimed, "OMG!". I scared the heck out of poor Julia!

To the right is a stall door that is propped open with a cinder block, and to the left is a side wall.
In between the two were...

TWENTY THREE EGGS!

And you know what is going to happen to those eggs?

They all have to be thrown out!

Actually, I likely will toss them in the compost pile a couple at a time and let the hens eat them. But no human consumption of these eggs.

So now we have to look back here for eggs while I try to make the hens move back to their nests.  I'll have to stuff something in here to make their lives uncomfortable! Suggestions my chicken experts?

Feeling Grateful

Its not the land that's important,

Its the lessons learned from the land.