Smells--pleasant and not so pleasant!

This afternoon, I cut up the apples that had fallen off of our apple trees and made a batch of apple-sauce and apple-juice. After I had gotten the apples cooking, I went outside to the garden for a little while and, while I was out there, I smelled a very unpleasant scent: skunk "Perfume"! I was plenty happy to return to a kitchen that had that wonderful aroma of apples cooking!!!

This morning, my dad and I went up to the huge cemented-in water tank in the pasture and swept/shoveled it out. Dad had drained it a few days ago, as the water looked pretty brown and he wanted it cleaned out before we move the cows into that cell. While we were driving up there, we noticed a cow sticking her head in between the top barbed wire and the electric wire, so we knew that the fence wasn't working right somewhere! After going around the fence and untangling it in about 10 places (and putting several clips on that had fallen off,) we had it back in working condition...

After lunch, my dad was going to go finish baling straw, but decided to check on Andrew's milk cow, Cheerio, first as she was looking very close to calving this morning. Sure enough, he found her in the pole barn with one foot out, but nothing else. As he wanted to get going, he decided we should get her in the calving pen and see if she had trouble. It turned out that it was a good thing we did too... The calf was in the right position to come out, but she wasn't pushing and needed some assistance. We could soon tell that the calf was not alive. :( As we pulled on the calf, trying to get the sholders to come through, the strangest thing happened... A bunch of watery stuff started coming out of the calf's nose and mouth. Each time we pulled on the calf, a bunch of liquid would come out and splash onto the ground. Literally, there must have been a couple of gallons of water that came out of that calf. It was really gross and really sad. I felt bad that Andrew had to come home to that disappointment, but like my dad said, it would have happened that way even if he had been here... My dad said that he has never seen anything like that calf before, and he's had a LOT of calving experience in his lifetime, so it was just really strange.


On a happier note--our house is once again fully occupied, as the boys got home about 7:00PM. It is so good to have them back, and we've been enjoying hearing what an Appleseed Shoot is all about. We saw pictures too--both the pictures that Andrew had taken and the pictures that one of the members of the Bartlett family took (and that Andrew had added to his card.) It looks like the shoot area was set up really nice and I especially liked the picture of the grass that one of the B. boys had mown down to say, "Appleseed" on the hillside! If you'd like to, you can visit here:http://andrewbornemann.blogspot.com/, here:http://jonathanjbartlett.blogspot.com/, here:http://outinthendboonies.blogspot.com/ and/or here:http://gloryandgrace-hannah.blogspot.com/ to see pictures and to learn more about what an Appleseed Shoot is all about.

Now I'll post the rest of the pictures I promised--the ones that were taken at the Dagley homestead yesterday.......

Here Mr. Dagley is talking about Kombucha, I believe...

Mrs. Dagley was giving some samples of the tea...
Hannah S. helped shred the cabbage for the Sauerkraut demonstration.

Mr. Dalhberg has completed a challenge (it was for at least a years time, but I think it was for even longer) to only eat foods that he could buy locally.

He had many neat things to show about preserving foods without canning them--by using lacto-fermentation. It was interesting to see his variation on making Sauerkraut and I think we'll have to start packing our cabbage down harder like he does, as it saves space in the pantry that way...

Some of the audience...

Yours truly~

Amanda and Hannah smiling sweetly~

These are some of the flowers Amanda's nieces pressed in my flower press over the weeks time that they had it. I was surprised to see how well the yellow flower petals retained their color...

This man was talking about using cover crops and no-tilling and such... He is the father of the young ladies I mentioned (in last nights' post) that I was very happy to meet.

Some tall corn...

...and some of the Dagley's pretty flowers...

Mr. Schadler demonstrated one of the ways to get the kernels out of heads of grain... What he's doing is called "Flailing" and it looked like a lot of hard work! It made me grateful for the invention of such things as combines. :)

Mr. Schadler also showed how to get seeds out of bean or pea plants... I remember doing this very thing when I was younger, except Mother would put the plants in old pillow-cases and Andrew and I would then jump on them to our hearts content. :)

Hannah took this picture of mother and I out by one of the garden sheds...

Friends~

Mr. S again--showing how they use their hot-houses for plants in the garden. This system looks like it would work really nice and the tomatoes inside looked really well.

The garden tour...

Ben Dagley's cover crop experiment...

Hannah S. going over the somewhat-scary bridge. :) (You can't bounce the bridge too much or you'll get water in your shoes!)

My new friend, Alyson (left) and my old friend, Carrie (right) visiting...

The zip-line over the creek was very popular--as usual...

"Hold on tight!"

More tomatoes...

After a shared supper, some of the Dagleys and members of their square-dancing group demonstrated their skill... It was hard to get a clear picture as they were all moving so fast!

It was a wonderful day and I'm so glad that Mother and I were able to attend! (I hope you enjoyed the pictures, Dagleys--and Hannah--and everyone! :)