HICKORY TREES

We found that we have about 5 Hickory Trees and the Hickory Nuts are great. They taste a lot like walnuts only milder, a little sweet and no bitterness like you have with walnuts. So we are in the process of gathering them and trying to get the nut meat out. They aren't as easy to crack as a walnut but boy are they delicious. And the best part is that they are free. We not only are going to be planting fruit trees but also nut trees in the spring. It is nice to know that we are still able to eat no matter how terrible the economy. It may not be exactly what we want but we will never starve. To finally live in our own home and be able to start being so much more self sufficient is wonderful. No one to raise our rent or decide that they need the house to rent to someone else. We have wonderful neighbors and a true sense of community here. Even though we are new to the area, we have been taken in as if we had lived here all our lives. As time goes on and money a little easier we will be setting up using lots of solar power.

DON'T PLAY "CHICKEN" IF YOU ARE A TURKEY

We had a week of wonderfully cool weather, but now we are back to 80 degrees in the daytime again. I LOVE the change of seasons. It is still nice and cool at night mid 50's.

Our foul like to play, "chicken" with LuLu, our black Lab. Well a few days ago one of our "tom" turkeys got too close and wasn't fast enough and LuLu took out a huge chunk of feathers, skin about the size of an open hand. Poor tom, he seems to be healing just fine, but we weren't sure there for awhile. Of course in another month all 5 of our turkeys will be in our freezer. I wish there were extra money because I would use dry ice and overnight a turkey to each of our girls for Thanksgiving.


We are giving our mailman 4 of our guineas. In exchange he is giving us steaks from his cows that he is having butchered. I love it here where we barter our excess things to others for their excesses. We are going to be getting fresh pork from our next door neighbor when she has her pigs butchered in exchange for one of our turkeys. We are getting rid of the stray white guinea that showed up here a few months ago and the 3 older guineas that are all male. That will leave us with 2 males and 2 females of our new guineas. We were going to butcher them anyway when we do the turkeys but we knew the mailman had only 1 guinea and he wanted more so we were just going to give them to him but then he offered to exchange them for some of his beef.

Well we had a small circus come to Buffalo and so of course Alex went. Enjoy the pictures.

What is entertainment without munchies?

How many hula hoops can you twirl at once?

ALL GROWN UP, READY FOR THANKSGIVING

Well our turkeys have all grown up. We have 2 Tom Turkeys and 3 females. We have decided not to keep a tom and female over winter to breed in the spring. They cost us a fortune in feed. In the summer they have lots of bugs and grass to eat and still eat the feed like crazy so in the winter they would be so cost prohibitive. The cost of their feed has almost doubled since last year.

When we first started taking the pictures this one turned around and I believe I heard him say, "kiss my butt"

One of our groundhogs. I took this picture inside my bedroom window looking out through the screen. They haven't bothered our garden or our chickens and they love eating the clover the grows thick all over the yard.

WONDERFUL RAIN

I love this kind of rain. Steady small drops. It is warm outside but overcast, the windows open and the smell of rain. A perfect day to lay around and read. I love the seasons. I just get tired of one and it changes. I saw my first golden colored leaves a couple of days ago and already there are leaves falling. Our turkeys are getting huge. I am again "snapping" beans from the garden to get them ready for the freezer. I am already thinking about how great they are going to make the green bean casserole taste and there will also be one of our turkeys on the table this Thanksgiving. Clay made up some more salsa. Next year we are going to go crazy with tomato plants so that we will have lots to make salsa plus we will cook up batches of pasta sauce to freeze or can. The garden is so great. We don't even put near as much time into it that we should but yet we have such an abundance of food.. We haven't really had any trouble with any insects or animals raiding our garden so that has been really nice.

Well we are so proud of Alex. He is a couple of weeks into potty training and he is probably 75-80% potty trained. He is so proud of himself and he wears, "big boy underwear" now. We got a product called "thumb" for nailing biting and thumb sucking and used it for about a week and now it has been a week and he doesn't suck his fingers anymore. It was just a habit that he couldn't break and that stuff helped remind him to not put them in his mouth. His finger sucking had really started effecting his teeth.

Well that's it for now. Will try to get some pictures taken and get them posted. We are just working really hard around here to get things prepared for Winter with an eye on what we need to have done in time for Spring.

angela, how about?

could you please set up maybe a gmail account and send an email to me with the new account to see if emails can get through this way? i miss you.

ANGELA

If you see this, PLEASE, PLEASE, get in touch with me. I am worried sick about you guys. I've tried every way that I can to get a hold of you with no luck. I love you and am so very concerned. Love, mom