APPLES, APPLES, WUAH, HA ,HA

What do you do when you have an abundance of Apples. We besides being thrilled out of your mind, you make apple sauce,  Apple chips, and Apple juice. There are most likely other uses as well, but these are the ones that we concentrate on. We just finished up getting two more Dehydrators full of apple chips on to dry.

We have already used over ten gallons of apples in drying, giving away, and eating fresh. We still have several trees to pick, this tree being the fullest. We gave our neighbor a box of about 3-4 gallons, we gave a full plastic grocery bag to our son, filled our Dehydrators twice (about 5-6 gallons). And we haven't made sauce or juice yet. 

The reason this poor tree looks so bad is that although we thinned the fruit this spring, we were not able to get to the center of the tree. Well the storms started before harvest and a couple of center branches came crashing down. You can sort of see them hanging on the lower left of the tree. We decided since the branches were not completely broken off, we would leave them to ripen.

Lesson learned; make sure to thin all of the tree of fruit!

OK, I may have been mauled by the girls a little last week, and of course I hated every minute, hey it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it!

 

TASHA GOT HER HORSE FIX

Tasha, Kaitlyn, and Tiauna were her over the week end and the girls got a little horse fix. Tiauna said this was her first times on a horse.

 Flash was a little on the spooky side, because of the wind.

 Of course Flash had to pose for the picture with Natasha. Flash loves his Tasha person.

 This was actually Tiauna's second time on one of the horses (I think).

 Being on horse back was exciting for Tiauna, and Flash was being very good for his Tasha person.

Dancer on the other hand, escaped most of the children attention.

BUILDING MORE AREAS

Our son, D.J. has been here helping us get things built that we have wanted for some time. The first thing was an area of covered Hay storage. We actually started building this area a couple of years ago, but then didn't get finished the first year and was then used for the pigs earlier this year. Well it is finally done (OK, not quite). I still need to build a little shed under the roof at the far end in order to keep my air compressor and dust collector out of the shop area. But it really looks good now.

 Janice and I had spread gravel in this are prior to the roof going up.

This will be a nice area where we can unload the hay onto pallets and run them in under the nice dry area. 

Our ladders will be stored on hooks on the wall like the one in the picture.

This is the 10x12 garden shed D.J. is now building for us. This took a lot of fill dirt and gravel in order to get the floor up to grade. 

This is going to be a real help by holding all of our garden tools, empty flower pots, Peat Moss and other gardening stuff. Things are coming along nicely, D.J. Thinks he will have the sheathing on it today. He already has most of the flake board on the roof and has started putting the T-111 on the sides (not pictured yet).

 This picture was taken when I was first able to get outside today.

This picture was taken at the same time by my lovely wife Janice. D.J is farther along in the process now so we will update this later.

 Progress!!!

 Front View.

The Garden shed is coming along very nicely. I am happy, happy, happy!



THANK YOU ALL

I just wanted to take the time to say thank you all for your views of our blog and your kind comments. We have on average between 15 and 50 views per day and those from all over the world. I just checked our audience and found nine countries listed besides the United States.

THANK YOU!!!



THE NEWEST GARDEN BED

Janice just finished the newest garden bed at our place. We still need to install the lattice around the bottom of the deck, but all in it's due time.

 This shot looking down from the deck.

 Close view, the Echinacea in the rear is the plant we intend on spreading more of, around the rear of the Elk Horn Cedar. We already have three more flats of them started from seed, the Echinacea not the Cedar. 

 In this shot from a distance you can see why we want to install lattice around the bottom of the deck.

We are also going to add another lattice panel on either side of the existing lattice with the Jasmine climbing. At this point I don't think we will ever be done making changes to our garden and home.

I also planted 30 Daffodil bulbs and a flat of Echinacea in a bed at the bottom of the stone steps (not pictured).
Since this post, Janice has planted two mature Echinacea and four flats of small Echinacea seedlings, around the back of the Elk Horn Cedar. I'll try to post a picture after the current rain stops.

THE WEEK AWAY

Janice and I along with our youngest son and his two kids got a week away from the homestead. This would not have been possible without our oldest son and two of his daughters. Natasha and Cassandra spent a couple of weeks here prior to our leaving learning how to care for the animals and getting to know them. As you can see below they got to be comfortable with the horses, very comfortable.

 Cassie and Tasha Rode the horses quite a bit while here.

 Bare back was more comfortable!

 Cassie

Tasha

DJ our oldest son and his youngest daughter came and stayed while we were gone. While here he did all kinds of things, keeping busy, that are much appreciated.

We first went down to Lodi California to visit Janice's parents. Janice's mom had a stroke a little over a year ago and we wanted to see them. Lodi is a pretty town although way too many people for me.

 This is the newer Lodi Arch.

 This is the older Lodi Arch, that's been around since before I can remember.

 The old Lodi Train Station is still in use.

This is new to the old station.

We left Lodi and drove to Christmas Valley Oregon in northern Lake county. We had purchased ten acres there a couple of years ago and wanted to get started with a development plan. While there we visited the "Crack in the Ground", which was not only interesting but a welcome relief from the heat which was in the ninety's but a dry heat so not terribly uncomfortable .

 This is where the trail starts into the Crack.

 Janice and Madison at the beginning of the Crack.

 Bobby and Madison down a little way.

 Madison getting deeper, and the temperature is cooling down.

 There were areas that closed in a little.

 Other areas were wide open and at points go seventy feet deep.

 This Crack was through an old Lava flow, so the rock formation was interesting in shape and design.

Our youngest son Jon, felt exceedingly strong that day.

We returned to the motel and went through some pretty country and capped the day with a beautiful sunset.

 The Juniper trees here are not tall but can be quite gnarled, this is a good representation of our property there. 

The trip was a very good one, oh but how nice to be home again!

OK, so I used a couple of old pictures.

SHUTTER BUGS IN THE MAKING

The visit with our grand daughters has been going well, lots of animal interaction, computer games and face book, gardening and oh yes both of the girls have discovered photography. They really like using my SLR and thus far have amassed over three hundred photo's in just three days.
Tasha spends a little more time on trying composition, Cassie will learn. This is not to say Cassie does badly, on the contrary, Cassie has a lot of natural talent as demonstrated below.

Tasha takes the experience much more seriously and really does look at composition with imagination and ingenuity.

I am really impressed, and of course I am not biased just because I'm their grand father.