Last night's rodeo

I always thought rodeos were pretty stupid.  And I STILL ABSOLUTELY ABHOR country music.  But, since working with cattle and such, I have discovered that rodeo's evolved from meaningful competitions and games and such.  I also have a better understanding of the techniques used.  I still hate country music more than a Republican hates Obama. 

All that aside, the below shots were the best I could do.  The flash bounced off the railing causing dark photos, and when the flash was off, the shutter stayed open too long and made it all blurry.  But I did my best.  I even uploaded a nice little vid to you tube.  Ahh, aren't I sweet.  All pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.  So, allow me to explain the following:

The Queen-I think there was a contest including a written test, I really don't know.

 Saddle bronco.  I suppose this originated from Native Americans trying to tame Mustangs or something.

 Barrel racing.  This is just for competition.  I've heard it's bad for horses, so doing it a lot with one horse would be mean and bad.

 The rodeo "Zamboni"

 Lassoing a calf and tying 3 of its legs together.  If you've ever had to catch one of the little $#%, you would understand where this came from.  Speaking of which, we need to buy a new lasso rope.  Doing as necessary won't hurt them-no, seriously, it won't.

 This is obviously just a competition.

 Team lasso.  They attach pretend horns to the calf with a harness type thing and one guy lassos the head, while the other gets the hind feet.  You don't want to know how this originated (castration).

 I like this one.  You can see the look on her face where she missed with the rope.

 (what happens without the flash)

 Even the pros wear helmets now in bull riding.

 One kid walked "drunk" for a while after his fall.  Another got taken away on a stretcher.  He appeared OK, so I don't know what happened to him.

 This one's funny-everybody up!!  Whenever it would come their way, up they went and fast-hilarious!

 Marcus really enjoyed it, you can hear him some in the vid.  There was one really funny one, although I'm sure the guy did NOT find it amusing.  When you catch the calf, the horse it to pull back on it to hold it so you can tie it's feet together.  His horse kept walking real slow like letting the calf run off.  He finally got up and cussed him horse out-funny!

Time for talking

It's one of those blog entries with few pics and lots of words...ahhhh..you know you love it :)

Seriously, poison ivy is impossible to kill.  I have cut and pulled by hand in Knoxville vines over an inch thick that ran for several yards, but here I have used a multi-insane strength Round up.  All plant known to man around the ivy falls over dead while the ivy might lose it's luster.  So I spray, and spray

and spray

sigh and spray

every day for a week until....tuh duh.. we have lost the ivy's luster.  Another week passes and it finally curls up and turns brown although I am not too sure it's completely gone.  It most certainly isn't gone like it's neighbors were a week ago.

We have potato beetles and now cabbage worms and I'm sick of it.  Is it not enough that I plant, hoe, weed by hand, harvest and spend hours a day every day out there to torment me with more pests!!??  How did the ancestors survive?  Some say guinea hens, but they're originally from Africa.  So, I find it hard to believe that my ancestors fought the Colorado potato beetle on a plant originally from South America with a bird from Africa.  Btw, Sevin does not work on them, and has in fact been banned in almost every major country except the US.  It also killed thousands in one of it's third world country factories when there was an explosion several years ago.  So I spend hours a day picking the blasted things by hand.  Unfortunately, I got sunburned on my back doing so, even though I was being extremely careful, and the burn is getting worse, not better, so I haven't worked outside in two days.  The weeds have overtaken it all, and I feel horribly behind and lazy. 

sigh

But, we have gotten something done.  The root cellar has been put off even longer for various reasons, and we have bought an old fridge that we turn down to use until then.  It is on the back porch with the deep freeze and....OUR NEW ROOF!!!

We finally got our back porch roof put on.  It's cleaned up quite a bit, but there's still a bit more to go as you can see.  We still have to put the rest of the metal over the end of the trailer and tie it in to everything.

We'll store our cheese in it too as it ages.  I'm waiting for the end product to post, but I have made two kinds of cheddar and several mozzarella batches.  The mozz of course doesn't age, and, in fact, still requires some perfecting.  Once that is done I can edit my original post and it will be very handy for those not wanting to use cultures or any other additives but raw milk and rennet.  Nice huh!

Our diet has become pretty meatless of late.  With the lettuce going to seed I harvest a new plant every few days.  We munch on lettuce, homemade cheese sticks/balls, and cheese pizzas, milk, eggs, etc.  We eat actual meat about twice a week maybe.  We'll make up for it later I'm sure.

Got my first tomato today!  Yellow.  The potatoes are also humping up quite a bit and will be ready for harvest with the onions soon.  Now, I must ask an old friend for a recipe as I must harvest my beets tomorrow.

Garden update

Thought I would update the garden.  As usual, these are all a bit out of date.  They SAY they were taken on the 30th, but I'm not sure they're that recent.  If so, it's been even busier than I thought!

Our crow deterrent.  It worked rather well.  It's down now as the corn is tall enough they are no longer interested in it.  We have just enough time in the year, in fact, to plant another bit of corn, so the net will be placed in a new location with more corn.

My peas were REALLY good this year, but the trellis needed to be better, and it has gotten too hot for them.  The peas are dying off now, so I have forgone any harvesting in order to utilize the rest for seed by letting them dry on the plant.

 Marcus just isn't very good at some things, so I have given him the chore of weeding my flower beds since I just can't do it anymore-not enough time.  I think he's doing really well so far, don't you?

 One day's harvest of potato beetles.  Potato beetles are not only resilient to Sevin now, but I also discovered that Sevin is banned in every major country but the US, AND it caused thousands to die in the factory it has in a third world country overseas.  Hmmm...

 The koles are doing very well.

 Red cabbage

 Regular cabbage

 Buttercrunch

 Romaine-the lettuces really went wild recently.  We have stopped the outer leaf harvesting and are pulling up entire plants as they are going to seed.  I'm leaving one or two to use for seed for next year.

 Red lettuce

 Red romaine

 I have zucchini growing now-won't be long!

The dying peas

 The onions are going to seed.  The onions I grew from seed this year are doing so well, that I will save some seed from these for next year.

 If you're really good, you can see my onions here.  These are the ones from seed.  Suffice it to say, I am the only one able to weed the carrots and onions without pulling up actual plants.

 Leeks

 The cabbage we grew from seed.  Don't appear to have much difference between these and the transplants!

 Left to right-beets, beets(different kind) carrots.  Again, you can see why I'm the only weeder of the carrots

 Pole beans and melons

 Potatoes, lots and lots of potatoes.  It takes me 3-4 hours to bug these.

 Some of the corn that made it

 Our tomatoes are doing well

Gone fishing

 There are some really big fish below, the pic just didn't capture them.

 That's a big grub!  It bit Arlis when he reached in the bucket.

 Our compost was just full of goodies for bait!