On Sunday, we picked several gallons of purple hull peas. Since the boys had a dentist appointment early Monday (we LOVE Alabama Pediatric Dental Associates by the way...post for another day), I decided I would just swing by the Farmers' Market and pay the small fee to have them shelled.
Long story short, the shelling machine was down, so I put the farmhands to work that evening (ie, the slave labor I call my children).
They're thrilled on the inside I'm sure! Being boys, they turned it into a major competition. They spent most of the hour adding new rules and a whole point system and then trying to steal each other's beans. It really was a fun evening. And we ended up with about 18 cups of now-frozen peas for the winter.
So fast-forward to today. I got out to the garden early to pick green beans with plans to can up some quarts in the evening. I picked a two-gallon bucketful (about half the beans), and then got called into the house to referee a quickly-escalating WWE match. Another long story short: I got distracted (details following momentarily), determined to pick the rest of the beans in the afternoon, left the house for the day, and never thought about the already-picked beans again. Well, that is until Brandon came home and discovered I had left them outside and they had shriveled up and ruined. I despise hardwork for the sake of hardwork (ie, for nothing!). Thus, Part 1 of Bad Homestead Day.
Part 2? you ask. Well that was the distraction that caused Part 1 to occur. I went to get a bucket from the barn and noticed the barn gate was swinging wide open. I wasn't too concerned initially; we leave it open often during the day to encourage the chickens to free range. But when I went in, I saw a pile of feathers and feared for the worst. After a quick chicken count, I discovered FIVE chickens were missing (one later showed up for an actual loss of four chickens, but still...not good.)
Not much later, as I was getting ready to get us all out the door, the boys ran to me in a frenzy because a chicken leg had been discovered on the back patio. The discussions this leg caused were quite comical and the story of the poor slaughtered chicken continued getting more and more dramatic. By the end, Mason had "heard" screeching and "seen" blood every where. Ewww! Boys and their imaginations!
All-in-all, a bad homesteading day, but at least I got some good blog material.
So fast-forward to today. I got out to the garden early to pick green beans with plans to can up some quarts in the evening. I picked a two-gallon bucketful (about half the beans), and then got called into the house to referee a quickly-escalating WWE match. Another long story short: I got distracted (details following momentarily), determined to pick the rest of the beans in the afternoon, left the house for the day, and never thought about the already-picked beans again. Well, that is until Brandon came home and discovered I had left them outside and they had shriveled up and ruined. I despise hardwork for the sake of hardwork (ie, for nothing!). Thus, Part 1 of Bad Homestead Day.
Part 2? you ask. Well that was the distraction that caused Part 1 to occur. I went to get a bucket from the barn and noticed the barn gate was swinging wide open. I wasn't too concerned initially; we leave it open often during the day to encourage the chickens to free range. But when I went in, I saw a pile of feathers and feared for the worst. After a quick chicken count, I discovered FIVE chickens were missing (one later showed up for an actual loss of four chickens, but still...not good.)
Not much later, as I was getting ready to get us all out the door, the boys ran to me in a frenzy because a chicken leg had been discovered on the back patio. The discussions this leg caused were quite comical and the story of the poor slaughtered chicken continued getting more and more dramatic. By the end, Mason had "heard" screeching and "seen" blood every where. Ewww! Boys and their imaginations!
All-in-all, a bad homesteading day, but at least I got some good blog material.
Oh, the adventures of farming 😀
ReplyDeletePS: A certain friend of yours LOVES purple hull peas (Wink, wink.)