Our Yankee Doodle Dandy

What could be cuter than a half dozen classes of second graders wearing red, white and blue and singing patriotic songs?

Not much, I'm sure.

What fun to watch, some of them relishing the attention, some fidgeting and goofing off a little, and some preferring to blend into the background.  

But I'll bet most of those kids will remember the songs they performed tonight when they are my age.

Heck, I remember most of those songs from my childhood, and I still enjoy singing them...Yankee Doodle Dandy, America the Beautiful, God Bless the USA. 

I can get misty-eyed over them about any time, but when eight year olds sing them, they are even sweeter.

Watching our Clay-bug have a good time with his friends, I had a fashback.

Eight years ago.

He had just come off the ECMO machine a few days prior.  He was a little better but still a very sick baby boy, very fragile. 

Tubes and wires helped sustain him, and he would be on a ventilator for years to come.

And, he would give his family and the medical staff at UK NICU several more scares in the 8 months  that he'd spend there before he got to come home.

That all seems like a bad dream now.

I don't think any of us really like to dwell on those days, but we can't help but revisit them from time to time. As we should. 

I certainly don't want to ever forget how far our Clay-bug has come. It's almost easy to, though. And at one time in our lives, I never thought I'd ever say that.

So, yeah. What a treat to watch those little Yankee Doodle Dandies, our little Yankee Doodle Dandy. 

Thank you, Lord.

There's beauty in the simple things

What a pretty fall day we've been privileged to experience!

Because winter seems determined to arrive early this year, I've been foraging-again.

Today I helped Dad gather in greens for Mom to can. He wanted to harvest some before the temperatures plunge below 20 or so. They can withstand a lot of cold, but not that much.

Dad's knees have been bothering him,  so I offered to help.  

We spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the bright sunshine, picking mustard and turnip greens and just talking about lots of things.

I brought some home with me, and they'll be a real treat if we're stuck inside this weekend.

My family loves greens, boiled tender and seasoned with bacon grease. That's how Mom cooks them, but I sometimes just give mine a quick saute in some olive oil. Either way, they are tasty!

Isn't this turnip top pretty with that ladybug perched up there? 

What a turnip patch...plenty of mustard greens too.

The cool of the evening

There's something peaceful about the sight of a herd of cattle resting just before dark.

Tuesdays are busy, busy days at the paper.  

I typically arrive at the office an hour early to finish revisions and edits. Sometimes I type up the previous night's government meeting.

Then it's time to crank out the pages, keeping an eye on the clock.

This week, we had a B section, and the deadline for it was 11 a.m. 

These days really put some tension in my neck and shoulders. I've had a nagging headache all afternoon. 

After work, I thought it might do my noggin some good to get some fresh air.

I walked, and the hubs drove the pickup down in the pasture. We took turns picking up walnuts with the handy dandy gadget we found at the farm auction.  The roller is so much faster than picking up walnuts by hand! 

In an hour's time we gathered a sizable pile of walnuts. (Now, who wants to crack them?)

We got hungry, and it was getting dark anyway, so we headed to the house.

On the way out of the pasture,  we passed our little herd, resting peacefully near their hay. They chewed their cuds quietly while the half moon smiled down on us. 

Back at the house, we ate some leftovers, and we are now awaiting election results. 

In a short while, it'll become clear who will be celebrating and who will be feeling deflated.

Whatever the results, life goes on! 

What to do with all these peppers?

So what do you do if you have a bucketful of banana peppers? 

Our favorite way to eat them is to stuff them with cream cheese, then wrap them in bacon and bake. 

It's a simple procedure, but the results are delicious. 

There's no telling how many of these I've made over the years!

Here's how I do it. I wash and drain the peppers, slice them lengthwise, and scrape out the seeds.

I spread the pepper halves out on an oiled cookie sheet, then I spread a teaspoon or two of softened cream cheese in each half.  

I open a pack of bacon, and slice across the whole bundle, dividing it into halves or thirds. 

I separate the short slices of bacon, then lay the pieces on top of each cream cheese-stuffed pepper half. A lot of bacon is good, but it really doesn't take much to impart that rich bacon flavor.

The cookie sheet then goes into the oven, preheated to 375 degrees.

The peppers need to bake for about 25 or 30 minutes. I know they're done when I start to notice some browning on the bacon and at the edges of the pepper halves. 

The peppers smell so good as they bake! They are always a favorite at potluck dinners. 

If there are leftovers, I like to add them to ham or turkey sandwiches on sourdough bread.  So, so good! 

Note: These aren't pretty, because I quickly slapped them together. If you want them to look a little fancier, you can wrap slices of bacon around the pepper halves. 

What I like about Sundays...

Just look at the reflection of the mountain on the creek.  It's been such a beautiful fall day!  

Yeah, that title is a line from a country song too.  

I really like the song, because it's about a very familiar-sounding way of life.   

Singing hymns just a little off key, Sunday dinner at the parents' house, followed by a Sunday stroll along Station Camp Creek with the girls, the grand babies and my sister. 

How many seasons of life have we Sunday-strolled through by the same creek?  

Pam and I have taken countless walks along this narrow road, joined over the years by our kids as they came along.  Now we are accompanied by grandkids--and, usually, about a half-dozen family dogs.

I wouldn't have it any other way.  It's comforting to go home and just visit and sit around and eat and take a stroll on occasion.   I'm thankful we still have our parents to "go home" to. 

As life apparently gets busier and more complicated with every year that goes by, it's hard to make time to just visit.  

When I do though, life feels more grounded, more at ease, and I am better equipped to face the week.  

So, how's your Sunday going?  How do you charge your batteries for a busy week? 

Raising another generation of Sunday strollers, we hope.  

"Well, I went down to the Lincoln County auction, where I found something I just had to have..."

...Or something like that.  

Remember the old John Michael Montgomery song? 

That was the tune rattling around in my head as the hubs and I headed to the fall Amish auction this morning.   

We got that promised hard frost, but I couldn't help but admire the way it gilded the tattered ironweed at the edge of pastures, like old lace dusted with diamonds! 

When we arrived at the sale, the sea of vehicles looked more like Rupp Arena parking lot than a field out in the countryside, only there was a much higher ratio of pickup trucks and horse-drawn buggies than you'd be likely to find at Rupp.   

We picked up our bidding number, then strolled around eye-balling all the stuff for sale.

If you've never been to one of these sales, let me tell ya, there's a little bit of everything: Farm equipment, lawnmowers, gates for fences, hay wagons, hay rings, weed eaters, chain saws, several varieties of chickens, turkeys, ducks, quail, rabbits, commercial kitchen equipment, bags of apples, fruit, furniture, and every kind of old and new tool imaginable.  

Besides the sights, there are the sounds: roosters crowing, murmurs of conversation and the chatter of several auctions going on at once.  One group of auctioneers sells fowl and rabbits, while another sells farm machinery, and another sells smaller tools, etc. 

(Just look at these quail.  They'd be hard to spot out in the field, wouldn't they?  
One little Bantam rooster kept escaping his cage.  He was the cutest thing! But someone caught him before I took his picture.)

How's this for a quick homemade chicken coop?  Pretty clever! 

Then there are the smells of grilling hamburgers and hotdogs, smoking meat, and fried pies!  Yum!  

We rounded the corner on a small tool sale just in time to see a fellow hold up what I immediately thought looked like a walnut picker upper.  The auctioneer was earnestly trying to get 50 cents for it, and I told Robin, "I want that!"  

He whipped out our number just in time and got the contraption for a dollar. Apparently hardly anyone knew what it was. 

We carried it around for the rest of our time there, and if we were asked once, we were asked 20 times, "What is that thing?"  

Anyway, I was pretty proud of our find, because we've got lots of black walnuts around the edge of the pasture, and I'm short on patience when it comes to picking them up by hand. And besides, it's hard on the old back. 

After we got home, I walked down in the field, my prize in hand, to try it out.  

It worked amazingly well! In minutes, I had a bunch of walnuts in bags.  

Robin googled the picker-upper this evening and found one just like ours for right at a hundred dollars.  Whaaat???

No way I'd pay that much for one.  So yeah, it was worth the drive, I reckon.  Annnnd, we bought some smoked on site chicken with sides of Amish-made cowboy beans and potato salad.  

A pretty sweet haul, I'd say!  

It's National Blog Posting Month--and it's the gathering season!

November 1 has arrived, and I'm once again taking on the "post a blog every day this month" challenge.

This is my eighth year of attempting it (I met my goal a few years), and while I'm sure I could find other productive things to do on November evenings, it's beginning to feel like habit to do NaBloPoMo, so here goes...


Wednesday was the perfect kind of day to be tucked away in a dry, cozy home, surrounded by peace, quiet, books--and the occasional drumming of rain on our red tin roof.

Some days, I think that from my office while I'm at work.  That day, thank goodness, I was thinking it from home!

Honey (our German Shepherd) and I began our day with a nice long walk. As I soaked up the sight of  browns and gold and oranges in the landscape, I felt a little melancholy that the growing season is about to come to an end.

Regardless of the fact that we enjoyed a nice long summer and managed to get through October with no "killing frosts," I'm still sad about all the cold is about to claim.

There's my dahlias, that look better than they have all summer.  Almost as big as a dinner plate--seriously!

Our tomato plants, in the hoop house, mind you, are loaded with green fruit; some are still blooming.
My pepper plants have been bearing abundantly, and the swiss chard is loving these cooler fall days.

But there's an end to every season.  And if the weather forecasters get this one right, the end of this one is in sight with lows predicted in the twenties this weekend.

So, for the past couple of days, I've been gathering as much as I can.

Tomatoes and peppers and pears and potatoes!  So much abundance.

While the thought of a killing frost is sad, I'm also grateful for the fruitful season we've just experienced.  There's been so much to enjoy about it!


Daylight Savings Time will end early Sunday morning. That means dark evenings will force us inside the house, and, to a certain extent, inside ourselves.

I guess it's time for that.

There's a time for everything, says the Good Book, and that includes long nights with more time to read and dream about future projects around the farm.  More time to cook better and eat better.  More time to rest...maybe.

More time to blog!

Ecclesiastes 3

 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.