"Yes, I'd like a large bowl of fruit salad and 11 quarts of Sauerkraut please!"

Mother and I cut up several of our melons before the noon meal and made a large fruit salad for the guys. It was such a good feeling to know that we grew everything in this salad--except for the pineapple. Too bad pineapple trees don't grow very well here in North Dakota!
Later in the afternoon, the boys helped me finish up our cabbage for the year. We made 11 more quarts of sauerkraut, plus saved 2 heads of cabbage for eating later--fried in butter or shredded into coleslaw...

Oh yes, while Mom and I were working on cutting up fruit, we saved seeds from the 4 different varieties of melons we grew this year. In the background, you can see the book that's been a big blessing to us...

We had a lengthy family discussion this afternoon about if we should keep milking cows and raising bottle-calves or if we should sell back and just milk a cow by hand--just to get enough for our own consumption. I, for one, was pretty discouraged by the price we got for our yearling Holstein steers (about $280 a head), and was thinking we should stop, but after doing some figuring, we realized that we did make a little bit of money on our calves this time, and decided to stick with it. There will always be hard times and better times, and I guess this is just one of those harder times... Besides, like my dad said, we need something to keep us busy and active in the long Winter months!

I started writing my review of the movie, "To be one," but I'm only about a third done, so I guess I won't get that posted tonight. We have a busy morning planned, so I'd best get to bed now.

I'll leave you with a quote by Hannah Whitall Smith~

"We must take our troubles to the Lord, but we must do more than that, we must leave them there."

How easy that sounds, and yet how difficult it can be sometimes!