Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. Happy Easter! How you doing? We have kittens. Two or 3 of them. The dogwood trees are blooming. I took apart Legos this week, so they can be worked again someday. I harvested 3 stalks of asparagus. Kevin went fishing & brought in several messes of fish. He cooked some up with tators & ramps for supper one night & the rest are going in the freezer. We've started saving a few eggs all along for hatching. When there's 42, they'll go in the incubator. Kevin planted some onion plants along with some carrot & radish seeds. Yesterday I got the results from the labs I had done last week. I impressed myself along with the doctor. My A1C was pre-diabetic at 6.3. I changed my whole way of thinking about food & eating. Now my A1C is in a normal range at 5.3. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & let's see what was blooming this week then I'm heading out this weekend to help hide lots of Easter eggs & Kevin is going turkey hunting.

Goldfinch visiting the feeder.

Mountain Air

We took a little road trip to get parts to fix the overheating of the side-by-side. It was a thrill ride for Grandboy Toddlers to get to ride in Pa's truck. Kevin changed out the relay switch & we went out for our next ride. The side-by-side started heating up again as we were going uphill just like it did last weekend. Kevin took out the fuse & wiggled things around. The fan started working, so it seems there is a loose connection somewhere. We had a good time in the mountains with Kevin's Uncle. We did some hiking, dug some more ramps, hunted for wildflowers, picnicked & saw some beautiful hidden waterfalls.

Big Rocks

Stick Bait

We had lunch sitting on logs at the
 edge of the ramp patch. We could
 reach down to get fresh ramps to
eat with lunch. My lunch was
a spinach salad, mustard sardines,
pork skins & a side of ramps.

 

Blood Root

Beaver Dam

 

Bluets

Using panty hose tied up 
did make good handles for 
dipping the nature print eggs.

We had a fun little Easter Day for Homeschool. We took a backroad on the way up & rode by the chicken houses. They have about 800,000 chickens according to their website, so that probably means they get between 700,000 & 800,000 eggs a day. One of the buildings caught on fire recently but we couldn't see that building from the road. We finished up our Dr Suess book reading. We did Dr Suess Read Across America all the month of March instead of just for a week since I do a Homeschool Day with Grands 1 day a week. Sister did a brief presentation about Easter symbols & their meanings. We each gave a presentation of something that happened on our birthday in history. We played an egg game matching homophone words, colored some spring coloring sheets, looked at bugs along with dyeing eggs & having several egg hunts. We tried doing a nature print for dying eggs. It was a fail. Instead of a cute leaf patten, we got blobs of undyed spots. Sister used those eggs to help Grands do egg shrink sleeves. Granny always helps with lunch & looks after the little ones. We all will say that the food is our favorite part of the day.

Granny's azalea was beautiful
in bloom & made good hiding
spots all around it for the
Easter eggs.

   

My people egg head.

 

 

Learning about bugs is fun &
interesting. April themes are
spring, bugs, camping &
community helpers.

Grand discovered this stonefly
skin. We looked it up to get
 the details about it. 

Pajama day & a visit from the Grinch during Dr Suess Month. We watched the
Grinch movie. Grands compared the book to the movie. We read Dr Seuss' 1st
book, last book, the book published after his death, the Grinch & others.

Happy Easter!

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing? Yesterday I had labs done to check sugar, cholesterol & all that stuff. Now I wait till next week for the consult to get the details. I wore a glucose monitor for a couple months & changed my whole way of eating in attempts to get those numbers down to a more acceptable range. Kevin mowed the grass for the 1st time of the season & planted spinach in the garden. One tiny asparagus has popped up. All the hens seem to be laying again just in time for the extra eggs needed for egg dying & egg salad & deviled eggs. Through the winter we were getting about half as many eggs. We took the side-by-side out for a ride & things didn't go as good as it should have. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & I'll tell you if we caught any fish this week, about window shopping & what happened to the side-by-side. Then I'm heading out to help prepare for Easter dinner & egg hunt that's happening next weekend. 

Picnic lunch during trail ride. Of course I took
sardines in mustard sauce.

This week's fish meal came from
Captain D's. We tried the
Trio Sampler. 

We were out on the lake fishing before the sun came up. I didn't get a bite the whole time, but it was an enjoyable morning on the lake.  We saw geese, a squirrel, some turtles & some other interesting things to look at.

Look at all that mistletoe. 

Kevin got a bite or 2 but
didn't catch anything.

The water temperature was 
about 52 degrees. That's too cold
for the fish to bite good
apparently.

  

Boat hair, letting the wind do the styling.

We ran over to Home Depot to look at paneling & insulation for the trailer camper transformation & also to see if they had camper windows & lights.

We thought we liked this paneling
for the ceiling the best. 

They had that one piece of board
insulation Kevin thought we
would need but as you can see,
it was damaged.

We took a gander around out in the
garden section. There were so many
 fresh beautiful blooms.

We took the side-by-side out for our 1st ride in it. It overheated right off due to the cooling fan not kicking on when it was supposed to. We were able to continue the ride, though had to stop several times to let the radiator cool down. The fan worked sometimes then sometimes it didn't work. Kevin dug a couple messes of ramps. I looked for wildflowers in bloom.

 

Ramps

That's not supposed to happen. See the 
water spewing out of the red cap?

Trout Lily

  

Trillium

Kevin enjoys the rough places.
Me, not so much.

We rode along with Kevin's Uncle. Ours
is a Polaris. His is a Honda.

We love bubbles!

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

 

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing? We had all 4 seasons of weather here this week: warm, spring blooms & a thunderstorm; beaming hot sun having to put on sunblock; wind with twigs & sticks in the yard & it snowed. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll talk a little about the Bradford pear trees that are in bloom then were going to baseball games & heading out on a trial ride somewhere another this weekend.

Best day ever moments with
 baseball, kettle corn & the
smell of fresh cut grass. I
could eat this whole bag myself
in a sitting though I did share
most of it.

Kevin cooked us some fish bites
for supper one night. The fish
were caught fresh then put up
in the freezer.

I've got a rocking camp chair picked out for when the enclosed trailer camper transformation is complete. Kevin said he can just use a fold up metal chair. I will probably get 2 of the rockers when the time comes just in case Kevin decides he does want to sit beside me by the campfire & rock too. Kevin got a utility trailer for the side-by-side so we can go on day rides without having to use the larger enclosed trailer. This week we worked on getting the side-by-side ready to ride, needing insurance & a tag. A deputy had to come out to look at the vin number & do a little inspection. The vin number tells the life story of a vehicle such as if it's been wrecked, stolen or whatnot. GA is not a ride anywhere you want to ride state, with only being able to ride on county roads. There are many private places for riding for a fee. We'll be checking out some or all of those places eventually. Some are in neighboring states.

I discovered a different flavor of pork skins
at the grocery store this week. They are
 pretty good to tame a sweet craving.

A row of Bradford pears beautiful
in bloom at the cemetery.

I had a good little chat with a lady that was walking her dog along the river walking trail at the ballfields while waiting till game time. She mentioned that the Bradford pear trees were now considered invasive, she thought they were banned & people could get fined for having them these days. We have one on our property, so I did some reading & sure enough. Some states have banned the trees & other states have it up for consideration. The trees started being planted in the early 1900s to 1960s. They were considered one of the best landscaping trees due to their ability to grow just about anywhere, their beautiful early spring bright white blooms & their pretty fall leaf colors. They became one of the most popular ornamental trees in the United States. Problems started showing up 20 to 30 years later. It was first believed that the trees wouldn't spread seeds & would stay where they were planted. Early 2000s the trees were declared invasive because overtime, the trees did cross-pollinate with other pears & spread aggressively to places they were not wanted to be. Since around 2010 the trees have been considered one of the worst invasive trees in the Southeast. My area does not currently have bans or fines. There are local programs such as the Bradford Pear Bounty Program that encourages the trees to be cut down & they give free native trees to plant back. Well, I be.

Robins on the ballfield. I know
I've mentioned it before, I go
to the games to smell the
fresh cut grass.

  

My early morning shadow &
spring blooms along the trail.

It snowed! 

We had an overnight thunderstorm that rocked & lite up the house. The grass turned a vibrant green as daylight approached. Later in the evening it snowed then the weather turned miserably cold compared to the sunburn heat that we had just had.

The Lenton rose thrives in our late-winter
early-spring cold snaps.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia this Friday the 13th. How you doing? The forsythia bushes & some of the fruit trees are blooming. I spent the week with Grands while their parents went on a spring break getaway. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll talk about our themed days & how the camper transformation is going. I've got unpacking & laundry to do then I'm going to the opening baseball ceremonies this weekend. 

Moma, Me, Sister - Read Across America 
with Dr. Suess. We take our homeschool
day themes maybe a bit too serious.

The youngest Grands explore
in the garden.

Messy Monday - Hotdog roast & catching tadpoles. Our pond has failed to hold water. It's still on our to-do list to line it with some Georgia red clay. For now, it's the perfect place where tadpoles can thrive. 

Sometimes at Nana & Pa's
house you have to cook your
own food.

About a trillion tadpoles
 were caught.

Topsy Turvy Tuesday - Grand's birthday, desserts for every meal, meet the parents for lunch & an adventure outing. Desserts included birthday cake for breakfast, cinnamon roll for lunch, ice cream for snack & peach parfaits for supper. 

Elk crossing in the national park. The Grands
had never seen elk. It was a learning
opportunity of all sorts - How do you spell
elk, why is that one wearing a collar...

  

One cinnamon roll was enough to feed
the whole table. 

  

Snow tubing inside
where the temperature
is 65 to 70 degrees
year round.

Animals to pet, feed & hold at the zoo. 

   

Ice cream before I head back
home with Grands.

Happy 8th Birthday to Grand Jemma.

Wacky Wednesday - Hat Day. Trail walk, playground, picnic, space presentation & local history tour.

We got our hats on heading
to the picnic area.

 

Stars & planets for lunch.

We found lots of sweet gum balls
along the trail & saw some squirrels.
Dandelions were popped up everywhere. 

  

We walked to the river, skipped 
rocks then Sister took the oldest
ones to a couple of local historical
sites pertaining to the first settlers
of the area.

Thankful Thursday - Cooked a turkey, cleaned bedrooms & studied for Bible drills.

Grands prepped the turkey.

  

The turkey cooked up beautifully, though it 
wasn't done in time for lunch as planned.
Starving Grands got chicken bites
quickly cooked in the air fryer instead.

The parents brought home donuts in loving
memory of Baby Grand's birthday & the
cat's birthdays.

  

Daughter always has the most beautiful
centerpieces on the dining table.

Happy 2nd Birthday to Grand Aisley,
forever a part of our family
story.

It's a pretty blue color. It has rock lights 
underneath & speakers of some kind.
It even has a ceiling fan. Yay!

Kevin cleaned out the enclosed trailer, bought a side-by-side & already hauled it home while I was away. He wanted to get a side-by-side 1st, so he can build the camper around where the side-by-side will travel in the trailer.

Pear tree blooms. We've had a nice
warm spell. A cold front is moving in
 Monday with temperatures dropping
below freezing that will probably
kill the fruit buds.

These are some of the things that's has been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?