End of the month update

Not too much to report....life goes on as usual. Which is a good thing, right? Tom had a birthday last week so I made him a card and baked him a blue berry pie. He wasn't home when I went to deliver it so I left it on the counter top. He called me later to say thank you and how touched he was that someone cared enough to think of him on his birthday. I'm always concerned about the people we know who live out here alone, who have no spouse or family close by. Who will they celebrate the holidays with, who will care if they get sick, who will know if they die? I guess I have some kind of character flaw because if I like someone a lot, I immediately "adopt" them into my family. My Mother Hen complex I guess you'd call it. My mom tells me I care too much about people. Yes, I actually gave a girlfriend of mine the shirt off my back because she liked it. I'm more family oriented that Pa so I hope he doesn't mind all our extra family members!

Yesterday, Pa, Tom, Wayne and I went to an auction on the other side of Show Low. 10 acres of stuff/junk was being auctioned. Two auctions were going on at the same time. The inside auction had girly stuff like wall hangings, decorations, limited addition paintings, etc. There was a cast iron replica of a wood cook stove with all the pans and pots. It was a miniature one.  I've wanted one for years. I bid $15.00 and before I could take a breath, it was up to $55.00!!!! No way was I going that high. After watching the bidding for awhile, I could see that things were going for new prices so I wandered off to see what the guys were doing. All three were disgusted because so much junk was being sold and it would have taken forever to get to the things the guys were interested in. Tom was looking for a trailer. I had my eye on a trailer with a water tank and a Honda quad. No one wanted to wait till midnight for those things to come up for bid so we left and had Chinese food in Show Low

The work on the community well has come to a stand still until checks start coming in for the cement and other items the guys need. The board already voted to have Pa and Wayne fix the well and told them they could have a check ready in two days. What a crock!!!! Now each expenditure has to be approved before anything can be done. At this rate, they might have it done by next Spring. The guys can't put in the frames for the cement until they have the money and delivery date for the cement because they don't want anyone to steal the framing.  They can't do this because of that. So it is very frustrating!!!!  The guys are chomping at the bit to get things done so we can use the well.

Both of Wayne's pregnant horses lost their babies!!! They were half way thru their pregnancies. I am so sad about it. What is so frustrating is no one knows why so he is hesitant to have them bred again. Hay is $15.00 a bale around here so horses aren't cheap to raise. He doesn't have his property fenced in yet so he can't let his horses graze on their own. I keep hinting to Pa that he should let the horses graze on our property but he ignores me.

Woo Hoo, a couple more weeks and my mom will be here. I can hardly wait, I am so excited!!!!! The garden is still producing a bit here and there. I have lots of tomatoes, small tho they be, that are in various stages of ripening. Hopefully I will have enough to can a few quarts. Something is eating my peas (4th planting) so I won't get much from there. We ate a baseball sized cantaloupe the other day which was pretty tasty. I think I will cut down the broccoli, large plants, little produce so why bother to keep watering it? There are 3 butternut squash that are about ready to pick. The zucchini and yellow squash are about done. I'm not sure what the potatoes are doing. The experiment of having them grow surrounded by a cage of straw was a waste of time. There's not a single potato in the straw. I may dig around and see if anything is in the dirt today.
That's it for now.

Three Guesses

 Can you guess what this is? I'll give you three guesses and the answer has to include how it got there.

 This suddenly appeared on the ceiling......Have you guessed the answer yet? It is on both sides of the kitchen ceiling.
Oh all right, I'll tell you. It's pinto bean juice! I made pinto beans and ham the other night. I had the beans soaking all day and all of a sudden, I thought, "Darned, that's a lot of beans!" They didn't look like so many when I put them on to soak. Any hoo, I put them in the pressure cooker with the ham and some water. Hmmmm The pressure cooker sure looks full.....very full. What the heck, onto the stove they go. It seemed to take forever for the steam to build up. Then I noticed the little rubber stopper on the lid was bulging a bit so I turned the fire down. The thingy on the top that rattles, never did start rattling so I turned the fire up again and the next thing I knew, the rattle thingy hit the ceiling and the pressure cooker looked like a volcano going off. Spewing right out the rattle thingy's spout up to the ceiling. I ran the cooker over to the sink and started pouring cold water on it. The entire time, it was spewing out bean juice. It was dripping off everything including my hair. Finally got the darned thing cooled down so I could open the cooker. I spooned out a bunch of beans and then proceeded to finish cooking the them and washing off the ceiling and what ever else got coated. The ceiling still had some staining on it so I repainted the spots the next day. Lesson learned? That little line on the inside of the cooker that says do not fill past this point? They are darned serious!  The beans and ham were delicious, by the way.

 Another project finished!!!! I am so proud of Pa. He worked so hard on the entire fence project. Not sure what the next project is... probably getting some wood stacked for the winter. Yipee! no more cows.

 Pa put up this sign to warn people that there is a gate around the corner. We didn't want anyone plowing into it.

 I was visiting Tom today and his dog Max caught a squirrel. Neither Tom or I have ever seen one of these out here. It was munching around in his garden. I noticed some digging in my garden this morning. It was trying to dig out and we saw nowhere that it dug to get in so I am wondering if we have one of these around here. Where's the pellet gun!!!!!

 This is the pot that Tom found in pieces. This is the Holy Grail to find something so complete out here. We are going to go out to see if we can find the rest of it.

 How incredible to find something like this!

 Pa and I went out exploring yesterday. This is sure a rare find. It was lying amid some pottery shards. Crystals aren't native to this part of the country so you know it was brought in by some ancient Indian and left when they departed. Pa found this.

 It's very worn so ya know it has to be very old. I'm going to find someone who does wire wrapping and have it made into a necklace for me.

 This is Henry. I found this baby Horned Toad over by Wayne's the other evening. He is so darned cute. I'll probably let him go soon so he can get prepared for winter.

Can you see the hand on this pottery shard? Tom said he has never seen a stick figure on a piece of pottery. Pa found this and I wish I knew at the time what it was because I would have looked for other pieces.
  My green beans are finally doing great. Not enough to can but enough for a meal. The tomatoes are so small and slow to ripen. My Beef Master tomaotes are finally starting to turn red. I picked a huge bell pepper today. That's about it for the garden.
   Fabulous news! My mom and her husband are coming for a visit in October!!!!! I'm so excited. I haven't seen her for a couple of years. We had the devil of a time figuring out where to fly in to. If she flew into Flagstaff, she would have been flying for hours and hours, changing planes 3-4 times. I finally told her to fly into Vegas and I would pick her up but she opted for Phoenix so we will pick them up there. There are only 3 airlines that fly out of Eugene, Oregon and none of them had a direct flight to Albuquerque unless they got in at midnight or later and even then, I can't remember if she had to change planes. She is 87 years old and all those flight changes would have made her a nervous wreck. At one point she asked me to fly to Oregon but I really wanted her to see the ranch and all we have accomplished. She saw the bare land once in December a few years ago. I am so happy she and hubs are coming. I am so blessed to have this woman as my mother. She is my very best friend. I can tell her ANYTHING and she never condemns me and loves me no matter what. She is a real prayer warrior. I used to say she had a direct line to God because He always answered her prayers. She is an amazing woman and I love her with all my heart.

PEPPERS AND OTHER STUFF

 One of the few things that have grown well in the garden are bell peppers. You can see how large they are compared to my Kitchenaid mixer. Last years had thin meat in them but these are very thick and delicious. I've had to pick the red bells before they got red because they were so huge, they were breaking the plant.

 Pa and Wayne checked out the community well to see what all they would have to do to get it fixed.

 Their estimate of materials was a lot lower than what the board said they allocated. The two musketeers volunteered to do the work for free. Wayne has had experience working on wells before.

 Wayne brought his tractor to our house so he and Pa could drill holes for the posts to put in the gate. It took them forever to break thru the crust but then it was smooth drilling.

 The gate will be 16 feet wide. Pa planned it that way in case someone brought a mobile home thru. Most of the gates around the ranch are only 12 feet wide which eventually will be trouble for someone bringing in a home. He also wanted the gate to be wide enough for the road grader to get thru when he does the roads. We won't be able to lock the gate because the road goes thru to other properties around the corner but we can put up a sign to please keep it closed. The majority of the people out here respect the gates and keep them closed so the rancher's cows will stay in their designated pasture/weed bed.

 Boy, the auger makes quick work of punching holes in the earth.  Now ya see it......

 Now ya don't!

 This is at the other end of the road. The rancher put up a rickity barbed wire fence. One day when the road grader guy came thru, he knocked the post loose, causing the entire fence line to sag.

 Eventually the fence would fall over so Pa decided to put a rail road tie in and will re- stretch the fence and attach it to the rail road tie.

 We were watching the Incredible Dr. Pol on the Nat. Geo. channel last night and were amazed at how much energy the 70 year old Dr. Pol has. Well, I'm telling ya, Pa has as much energy as any young man. Once he sets his mind to something, he is like a hungry lion and keeps going till the project is done. I don't know how he can work like this in the sun.

Varrom.....varrom! The 2 musketeers went down the road to check on the old pile of horse poo to see if it was still there on the abandon property. When they got there, they saw a herd of elk!!!! Mama's and babies. The poo was still there so after drilling the holes for the gates and eating lunch, Wayne took the tractor down there and we took the truck with trailer. Wayne loaded 7 buckets of poo into the truck and trailer. Wow, much quicker than doing it by hand!!!! We took the back way home and got the truck stuck in the wash. It had washed out during the last rain storm. Luckily Wayne was behind us and pulled us out.
Pa made it loud and clear that I had better get the truck unloaded as soon as possible as well as the trailer. The guys had to go rescue someone who had broken down and by the time they got back, I had the truck unloaded. Today I did half the trailer and had to quit because of the sun. Hopefully by tomorrow, I'll still be able to move my old bones and unload the other half.
Boo Hoo, one of Wayne's pregnant mares lost her colt. She was 6 months along. Pa said the colt was perfectly formed and was a boy. Wayne was going to give me one of the colts after it was weaned but now I am out of luck.
Craftwise, I've been making Christmas cards. Early, I know but time goes by so fast, it will be here before ya know it.
I'm going to start tearing out the dead tomato plants and what ever else is giving up the ghost. Around here, if you don't produce, out ya go! Of course the dogs are the exception. They just lay around and eat and bark at rabbits. But the do produce poop so I guess they are safe.
Until next time!
Oh, I forgot to tell you. When I was waiting for Wayne to bring the tractor thru the back gate, I heard an elk bugle. It was in the field on the other side of our property. I couldn't see it tho. I was ready to get my gun and go hunting.