I forgot to post this last weekend! Sorry, if anyone noticed. I’m still trying to catch up from being away from home six days in a row, including two days on the other side of the island visiting Esther for her birthday. I’m feeling a bit more caught up now. Esther came home for three days this week, and it was great to have her home for a little while. We’re hoping she’ll be home for a longer time soon; she’s helping a family from the homeschool group we used to be part of.
This is a very busy little girl. She must have found the paints that day!
We enjoyed watching these ponies graze in front of our house for two years. Now, this section has sold, so the ponies graze somewhere else. Nothing has been done here yet, so we’re enjoying having open space in front of us still.
Mr. Imagination, my artistic son, made this creation.
Little Miss Busy worked and worked to get into this box of jars. Her feet are several inches off the floor here. Once she had figured out what was inside the box, she gave me the grin in the next photo.
We were given a lot of milk the last couple of weeks of June. One Saturday, I made three cheeses. See the three presses? The two on the table hold the cheese from 2 gallons (8 liters) and 5 gallons (20 liters). The one on the floor, with the buckets stacked on top for weight, holds the cheese from 60 liters (15 gallons). I made that cheese in 6 pots. I heated two pots, added the starter and moved them off the stove, heated the next two…. I did the same for the stirring and cooking step. It took a lot of concentration, but was fun. We’re eating that cheese now, and it turned out deliciously creamy. These are all Colby cheeses, and the smallest one, which we haven’t cut into yet, has chili peppers in it.
Here are the three cheeses after we took them out of the press the next day. That’s 15 kilos (maybe 35 pounds?) of cheese right there.
She was delighted, one day, to be able to chew on her toes!
Gayle turned 50 the end of June. Esther was coming home from helping a family for six weeks, that day, so Gayle went to the top of one of the mountain passes to meet her and bring her home. That got him away from home for three hours, and the boys got busy cutting down trees as soon as he left. There were several trees around our yard that we didn’t want anymore, including this ornamental plum, the tall one behind the sleepout in the second picture, and the camelia in the third picture. I took off for town and bought two apple trees and a cherry tree, and the boys got them planted before Gayle got home, as a birthday surprise.
There were several loads of brush to take to the dump down the hill, as well as some firewood. Mr. Intellectual is using the plum wood for smoking hams.
These wood pigeons were apparently living in the plum tree. They were quite upset by the loss of their home. We saw five at once! They soon adjusted to the new look, though.
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