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.