Catching Up, First Installment

When Zephyr got sick on Aug. 28, I was already behind posting pictures here.  Obviously nothing happened with "Adventures on Zephyr Hill Farm" while Zephyr was so sick in the hospital.  Barely over that crisis, Tropical Storm Lee hit us and took out our power for 42 hours.  Oh, yes, I counted every single one!

Hopefully, adventures of that magnitude are over for awhile, and I can catch up on some of the smaller, everyday happenings that we prefer our adventures to look like:

This is catching up reeeeealy far back if you remember when we were remodeling in the spring.  The shelves were built and the room painted by the end of April.  In May we enjoyed the fun of unpacking our book-friends for the first time in 2 1/2 years!  Then gardening season took over, and I forgot about sharing pictures until recently.  The sun bathing my favorite reading nook caught my eye, and I remembered what I'd forgotten.

I love this old chaise longue that belonged to my dear father-in-law.  My cookbooks are right there within arm's reach.  Farming and gardening books require me to move a bit.  Children's story books are on the bottom shelf where Charis, and soon Kol, can reach their favorites.  Charis and I have already enjoyed story time in this spot, so easy for a little one to climb up on and thence to Mimi's lap.

This was taken Aug. 24.  We still had so much wasted pasture below Kara's house, and with the drought we realized that we really need it fenced NOW.  We were blessed to find Ken Ray and his excellent team to come in and knock it out for us in a matter of days.  (It took Herb months to fence in the Home Pasture by himself.)  Ken Ray had the brilliant idea to tie into existing fences and put gates across the roads that cut through our pastures.  That saved thousands of feet of fencing, something we could never have afforded.  Mr. Ray also brought his skid steer to dig post-holes through the concrete-like clay that would have stymied our 30 HP Kubota.  Stay tuned for a tour of the new pasture coming up soon . . .

 On August 27, Jenny and Jean-Marc arrived with Tai, heading out of Irene-threatened Virginia to the (relative) internet bastion of Zephyr Hill Farm so Jean-Marc could continue to work uninterrupted.  They helped us out more than we did them, helping me get Zephyr to the animal hospital, encouraging me and visiting her, making meals, cleaning up the kitchen . . .  It seems like every time they come here, something crazy happens--animals get out of fences, horses getting stolen, etc.  We told them that next time they want to take a trip, they should go visit Aunt Barbara in Virginia!  :)  They know we were kidding--we couldn't have made it without them!

 Misty wouldn't have made it, either, with her only playmate in the hospital, but Tai came to the rescue.  Sometimes Misty came out on top, sometimes Tai did, but you can see from Misty's expression here that she was eating it up!  The fun, that is, not Tai!

Thanks to faithful watering by Herb, our fall garden made progress.

This descendant of last year's garden spider stayed on the farm.  This is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Charlotte--that's a grasshopper she's eating!

Before Jenny & Jean-Marc left on Sept. 3, we took them to eat at the Wildflower Café in Mentone on Lookout Mountain, Alabama.  We have a new favorite restaurant, well worth the 45-minute drive for Chef Ben's natural, hormone-free, humanely-raised food.  Did I forget to say "delicious"?

 "The Dog Days of Summer," by Jenny.  (Title by me.)  They miss Zephyr!

Pig food.  No, we are not desperate for adventures here.  I consider putting together the pigs' daily "slop" as an adventure!  This time it's cucumber peels and ends, over-ripe cucumbers, a bug-eaten pepper, and the leftover whey in a large carton of yogurt.  It's different every day, and I love it every single day that we are treating the pigs well and they are converting our waste (granted, we could compost it) into bacon!

Sept. 4 was our church's 122nd anniversary.  Besides the Hoot 'n Holler Whiskey Cake (which I thought was fun to take to a church supper--after all, we're Presbyterians), I took a huge bowl of our cucumbers made into my Grandma Tritschler's Sour Cream Cucumbers.  The borage blossoms topped it off, matching the bowl perfectly.  No, the sour cream wasn't ours; neither was the whiskey!

This is how you know when it's hot--when a pig walking a fence line raises a cloud of dust.  Not a drop of rain in over six weeks.  We are praying for rain, believe me.