Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia.  How you doing this 28th week of 2023?  It's my birthday month so I'm sharing a little each week this month about how it was growing up in the mountains.  Grand stayed a few more nights, Kevin got him home in time for the 1st football practice of the season.  Kevin joined the Gun Club, I went along as a guest to the Range Rule Review & we checked out the shooting range.  It was my Sunday to work so I was up at 4 am to get that day started, during my split shift we went on a jeep ride, walked on the Appalachian trail & had a picnic.  We found mushrooms Kevin thought might be edible chanterelles, we weren't certain so we let them be.  Kevin put up peppers in the freezer, set some more quail eggs, butchered & dressed a chicken & 8 quail.  We decided to let the roosters grow a couple more weeks to get a little more meat on them before butchering more.  The quail were full grown & won't get any bigger.  I washed the sheets on both beds, cleaned & organized in the refrigerator & freezer & done my other regularly scheduled housework. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll talk more, come walk with me...

Sister, Brother, Moma & Me - Moma's 80th
birthday celebration & family reunion back 
in May.

*  Brother is 7 years older than me, Sister is 2 years younger, I'm the middle child.  Sister & I were tomboys growing up & I guess I could say we still are.  We both played Little League baseball at a time that not many girls played.  I was the only girl on my team, the Pirates.  All 3 of us kids played the available sports while growing up including the swim team.  I tried band for a short time.  I played the trumpet. I liked it & thought I was good at it but then I got to thinking it would interfere with playing basketball.  I begged Moma to let me quit not understanding anything about the rent agreement she had made on my instrument.  Moma was the basketball coach for Sister's girl's youth team for several years.  Our parents divorced when I was about 4 or 5.  Sister & Me shared a bedroom back then & we had bunk beds.  I remember falling off the top bunk & getting the breath knocked out of me.  I was playing or such & pushed too hard against the wooden rail & down I went along with the rail.  There were lots of kids that lived on the street, mostly boys.  I remember all us neighborhood kids walking to the bridge at the end of the street to catch the school bus. We actually lived at the dead end of the street & the bridge was at the beginning of the street.  We called the bridge the end of the street because it was on the other end of the street from where we lived.  

Me & Sister, Moma made these outfits & most
of our clothes back then, very stylish for the times.

Me & Brother

We took a couple bowls with
  us on the jeep ride to pick
blackberries.  Kevin thought
we would get enough to at
least make a cobbler but hardly
any were ripe yet.

We took the back windows out
of the jeep for our exploring
 adventure.  We had to ford
the creek several times.

* Nana Grandjoy Camp Run-A-Muk - We went thrifting, Grand got a pair of Harry Potter socks, I got a cute cat puzzle.  We stopped by the car show then had ice cream at Dairy Queen.  We had several more matches of ladder ball, played in the creek & made no bake cookies.  Grand helped us move a pile of rocks from the big camper cleanup.  We placed these rocks along the top of the creek bank.  There is one more rock pile to go.  With the 3 of us working, the rocks were cleared lickety split.  Grand is an Adam Sandler fan, so we watched several of Sandler's movies.  I had found a dvd a while back that's a 4-movie collection.  I saved the dvd for this such occasion.  We also watched The Poker Club, a murder mystery.  That dvd came with the house.  We watched that movie a 2nd time to look closer for the clues indicating the person that did it.  My eyes were closed a lot during the 1st go around & Grand might have been doing things on his phone. The clues were definitely there & the guy flat out admits to doing it at the end of the movie.

Kevin's choice for supper out with Grand was
Taco Bell's $5 classics.  My choice last week
was trying out a different pizza place.

There were 21 vehicles at the car show to look at.

*  We have cucumbers coming in from the garden along with the squash.  I'll be making relish with Moma next week using some of the garden stuff, she said she had enough jars & lids.  The beans are about ready, Kevin wants to try making leather britches.  There's several different blooms around the yard, the sunflowers are going to pop open any day now.  The primrose I got from Moma back in early spring are putting on new growth. They had wilted down & I wasn't sure they were going to make it.  The hostas she gave me didn't wilt at all & most of them bloomed.  We've been saving eggshells to put around the hostas.  It's time to get that done.  I read somewhere that eggs shells are good for hostas.  I thought I'd give it a try since we eat lots of eggs & have the shells to do something with. We've been picking Japanese bettles off the fruit trees & feeding those bugs to the chickens. The chickens love bugs along with the clover Kevin picks for them every day & the garden scraps too.

There were 3 bloom stalks on
the gladiolus, 2 of them broke
over so I cut all 3 & brought 
them in the house to enjoy.

1st mator of the season.  I could hardly wait to
slice it, douse it with salt then sink
my teeth into it.

One of the Rose of Sharons bloomed out. It
looks like the other one that's about to bloom is
going to be white.  There was a 3rd Rose of
 Sharon, it was dead, so we cut it down back in
early spring & cleaned it up.

The strawberries are putting
out lots of runners.  Kevin is
rooting them in little cups.  I
don't know where he is going
to put all these new strawberry
plants, he said he didn't
know either.

 

Kevin discovered this bird nest
in a tomato plant. 

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