I've done the very thing that annoys me the most with blogs. I've taken FOREVER to write a new post.
It's not that I haven't been busy, because I have. That's part of the reason I haven't posted.
Along with getting ready to head back to school, we also moved my sister and her family to Minnesota. I think it is fairly correct to say that farm families are tight-knit. It was hard to see them move so far away, but it has been fun hearing about all of the things she and her family are experiencing in a different area of our country. And it actually rains there!
The kids were so excited to finally see their new house. The excitement lasted for about 30 minutes and this is what happened soon after.
My niece promptly found a book and buried her nose in it (she is her mother's daughter).
My nephew tried his hand at teaching my mom how to play video games...I'm not gonna say he failed, but I'm not too sure that he succeeded ;-)
The best part was sitting down and eating as a family. It was the only home-cooked meal we had while we were there. And it was scrumptious!
One last goofy picture before I left. I love these two crazy kids!
After I returned, it was back to the reality of preparing for school. I tried to put it off as long as I could. Part of doing that was doing some target practice with our prairie dogs.
Now, before you feel bad for the THOUSANDS of these rodents that run around on our land, take a look at what they do to the land. The drought has been bad enough, but the prairie dogs eat every last bit of grass they can find. Even before this terrible drought, it was very obvious where the prairie dog towns were because huge areas of our pasture had little to no grass remaining in those areas.
And don't worry, if I'm the one shooting at the prairie dogs then they are fairly safe.
One of the last "summer joys" I had before school started was canning some of my cucumbers. It took a long time for anything in my garden to really take off, but I did finally get enough to can.
Instead of just pickling cucumbers this year I also pickled banana peppers, green beans and okra. So, even though summer has left me, I can hang on to a bit of the summer clear through the winter and into the spring.
Have a great year everyone and I'll post again sooner than later ;-)
