Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing this 34th week of 2024? It's been a few weeks since we've chatted. I got the blackberry jelly made, enjoyed a food truck event & hosted a Farm Day Summer Day Camp. Kevin butchered some roosters for the freezer & got his retirement benefits approved. We're both officially retired now, though he chooses to continue working part-time for the time being. Great Grand was born & Moma spent a few days in the hospital getting treated for phenomena. I spent a few days with Grands while their parents went on their annual anniversary get away. Me & Kevin had a couple good days out on the lake fishing & then went for a jeep ride. Grand's football & cheer practice started, the leaves are starting to change color & the goldenrods are blooming. Fall is in the air. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll catch up. The gender of Grand Twins has been announced & I'll introduce you to Great Grand...

Meet Ash. 8 pounds 1 ounce.
20 3/4 inches long.

*  I took the jelly making supplies up to Moma's. Me & Grand spent the day up there just a few days before Moma got sick. We made jelly, planned the final touches of Cousin Camp & started planning for a Two Little Pumpkins baby shower for some time in October. Then we all went to the food truck event in town for supper.

Cooking & mashing up the
blackberries to make
juice for jelly.

 

Straining out the seeds & pulp
from the juice.

Beautiful & tasty blackberry jelly. It's so good on buttered toast.

Me & Sister tried the pina colada
lemonade. It was delicious with
the cherries & crushed lemon
pulp.

Elvis was there at the food truck event.
Well, at least it sounded like his voice.
We enjoyed listening to the band while
 we ate.

*  Farm Day was fun. The time went by so fast. There were garden food samples, chicken petting, a picnic & playing in the creek. Have you ever had mud pie coffee? If you have, I know you will agree that it's one of the best kinds of pretend tasting that there is. We did an egg drop activity to see if an egg could be protected from breaking using some things normally found around the house such as cotton balls, newspapers, toilet paper, lemons, marshmallows & pieces of egg carton. The results of the experiment were that egg cartons do protect the eggs very good. Most the eggs survived being dropped from 8 to 6 feet, but there were a few that didn't. 

 

Everyone took turns touring the
chicken house & gathered a 
couple eggs.

The food sampling consisted of looking,
touching, smelling, handling, squishing,
tasting... followed by a spit out bowl. There
 was banana pepper, tommy toes, cucumber,
blackberry jelly & strawberry jam to taste.
 The jelly & jam was tried on graham
 crackers. Several rounds of Hot Squash
 was played.

*  Back in mid-July when Daughter's Friend was visiting, me & her hosted the Grand Twins pregnancy announcement & gender reveal. Daughter wanted to wait for the public gender announcement since one of the babies had 85% accuracy on it's gender at the time. We made predictions & had a lot of fun with it. Baby B continued to be stubborn as it took several hard hits to crack that ball open.

Baby A - It's a girl, 100% positive. Turns out,
 the later ultrasounds show it's a boy 100%.

 

Baby B - It's a girl, 85% sure. The cord
was between it's legs. Turns out, the
later ultrasounds show it's a girl
100%, maybe.

Where the lake meets the river, there was about a 20 degree
 colder difference in the water temperature & we could
feel it in the air too.

Sitting around the fire at Cousin Camp,
eating popcorn & listening to creepy
stories being read. The Cousin's
are Moma's Grands, 3 generations
of them now.

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

Happy Birthday to Grand Austin &
Granddaughter in Law Jessi. Happy
 Birth Day to Great Grand Ash.
We celebrated their days at
 Cousin Camp.