Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing? It's officially strawberry season. We've picked lots of strawberries. Kevin made a cake with some & froze some of the others. We went on a good little trail ride, checking out a different off-road area. We had Grandboy Toddlers last weekend while Daughter took Grandgirls on a Girl's Weekend Trip & Son-In-Law took Oldest Grandboys to a Savannah Bananas baseball game. Braden didn't make the top 3 on American Idol, though lots of concerts are being planned in his hometown & around our surrounding area. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage, let's have a piece of cake & catch up, then I'm going to go start packing for an all-day trail ride Son-In-Law is getting together this weekend, but 1st I've got to put some towels in the wash & clean up the kitchen. 

                

I liked having the kittens around, so soft & fuzzy, checking to see if their eyes had opened, watching them walk around, wondering when they were going to start eating the cat food. They turned 6 weeks old & have moved out. They went to live in homes that have children that are going to love them & give them lots of attention.

The spinach is unreal, it done way better than expected. There is so much of it, way more than I can eat. Kevin planted spinach seeds in several different places hoping to get enough for me a salad. We've talked about freezing some, but I don't know. I eat it fresh & don't cook with it. From what I read about freezing it, it needs to be blanched & then it's good to cook with after it's been frozen. We've pulled a few radishes & been eating on the onions. The onions are still a bit small, about the size of a pecan but they're tasty. The tomato plants have took off good. Several already have blooms. The pepper plants are doing good. Bugs have eat up on the zucchini, squash, tators & pumpkin plants. Kevin has been having to water often. 

Spinach & tomato plants. There
is spinach in another bed too. 
 

  

Radishes & pepper plants.

Onions

     

A little Seven Dust on the tator
plants after trying some dish
soap concoction.

Sweet tator slips that were planted
in the garden.

       

             

Rose the pup & some of the knockout roses.

A Happy Birthday & a Happy Mother's Day goes to this lady, my Moma.

The one thing left to do in the camper is finishing up the bed & putting in the mattresses. 

The mattresses.

  

Building the cabinets.

Making doors.

Foldout dining table & extra
 counter space built in.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been? Go out & have a wonderful weekend.

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

 

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing? A local in our home county is one of the top 5 to become the next American Idol, Braden Rumfelt. Vote for Braden! Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & I'll tell you about going to a frog race, some of our current favorite kinds of ice cream & some other April things, then I'm heading out to a baseball game & going on a trial ride this weekend.

Work continues on the enclosed trailer camper transformation. The cabinets & floor are done. We still need a sink, bed & to finish the bathroom.

The library had a frog extravaganza celebrating National Frog Month with books, games & crafts & I wanted to go check it out. I lured 2 of the Grandgirls to come along with me. We listened to books read aloud about frogs that were fun, silly & educational. We made origami frogs & raced them. My frog was cute but didn't win any of it's races. Grands chose to eat out at Taco Bell for supper then we went for ice cream.

These are our current favorites,
what's your favorite ice cream?

April was Kevin & Daughter's birthday.

Happy Birthday to Daughter,
Kasey with basset hound Max.

We had a good day fishing on the lake. We ate some of the fish, the others went in the freezer. 

I caught one of the fish.

There was dance pictures & a tball pizza party with trophies.

Homeschool themes were Easter, Spring, Camping & Bugs. We had a day camp at the lake doing some fishing & hiking. We picked up trash & made bird feeders for Earth Day. Sister & Granny grilled hotdogs. There was a bird's nest in one of the grills.

 

We ended the month hosting a farm day with baby chicks, kittens & strawberry picking.  Neighbor came over with one of their horses. There were sand farm playsets, water tables, balls & frisbees. Green beans put up from out of the garden were included in lunch.

These are a few of the things that went on in our neck of the woods this month, how has your month been? Go out & have a wonderful weekend.

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

 

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing? The lady slippers are blooming. I really like getting out in the woods this time of the year looking for them. We got several messes of fish on the lake this morning. The fish were biting good. I gathered some spinach & got several more asparagus spears this week. Kevin had to have breaks put on the front of his truck. (Opppsss, no, it was the back breaks, the front didn't need them.) That was an unexpected pretty penny. He got mulch to clean out the chicken coop & got it ready for the baby chicks scheduled to start hatching at just about any minute now. We ran over to Home Depot & got materials to work on building the kitchen & bathroom in the camper. We had a good time at the Wilson Goat Farm Trade Day. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & I'll tell you all about how the sale went then were having fish for suppers this weekend & going to look at the rhododendrons at the fairgrounds.

We went down the evening before the sale & set up camp. The camper was simple & cozy inside with the cots pushed together to make a bed & a small fold up table ready for my morning coffee. There was a porta-john on site for the bathroom facilities. The Wilsons invited us to their house for a fish fry, but we had already ate at Kentucky Fried Chicken on the way there. We walked down to visit for a few minutes & did end up having a couple pieces of the fish & some hushpuppies. 

  

I took my little dog Rose on a walk around the farm as the sun was setting. There was bubbling peanuts slowly simmering getting ready to be put in cups & sold. I don't care for boiled peanuts, but I know a lot of people that do, including Kevin. Several canopies were set up & a few covered utility trailers were sitting here & there. The blackberries were starting to show their white blooms. Curious horses & donkeys came to check us out & say hello. A couple of wagons had been put away to the side. The fields were full of yellow flowers. One of the best things was the smell of the fresh cut grass.

  

We got the tables set up & everything in its place by daylight. The morning temperature was in the chilly low 60s. Folks came out early looking for good finds & deals. We had good conversations catching up with family, friends & meeting new people. Many conversations were about the blackberries in bloom, explaining the cold spell we got mid-week being blackberry winter, now the weather is expected to turn hot for the summer. We met a guy that knows probably everything there is to know about marbles. Most of the crowd disappeared after lunch. By 1:00 most the sellers had packed up & left to beat the heat. The afternoon temperature got up in the high 80s. We stayed a little longer to greet a few last-minute onlookers & to help clean up. 

There was a good turnout of sellers & browsers. It was fun & interesting seeing what all was there. It was the kind of day where you never know what treasures you'll come across.

I spotted a couple pets among the crowd that I couldn't resist getting a closer look at. 

        Do you know what this is?

                 It looks like a badger,

       It's not a ferret,

              It's not a hedgehog,

What is it?

It's a groundhog. I don't think I've ever
seen a baby groundhog, have you?

It's a dachshund. 

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been? Go out & have a wonderful weekend.