Visits as summer wanes

Brother drove up again to go shooting at our favorite, roomy spot. Another old friend, Dave, was also visiting and as a professional photographer gifted us with many pictures of our outing. Notice Joanna showing off her beloved 10/22.

Here Dave fixes the AR-15 to suit him. My brother has it adjusted so well that it's hard to miss the target.

Just point and shoot. The day was in the mid-80's and proved to be quite toasty down in the gravel pit.


The new truck held all our gear quite nicely as J takes a moment in the shade it created. Next time we've decided we'll bring the BBQ and just make a day of it.

The world's most powerful handgun... well not quite.

But J still practices her Clint look.

We had a great time with our visitors, including the trip shooting, and look forward to when next we all meet. In the meantime, harvest carried on back at home. The Centennial Hops were very ready and needed attention. Notice the cat foreman, Crichton overseeing this task as he does most all tasks inside and out.

Another bonus from our kind neighbors as our young Italian plum trees aren't yet producing. These will either be eaten fresh or dehydrated... the jar contains dried exactly what the bucket does fresh.

And speaking of buckets... I'd no sooner set the pick bucket down on the back porch after emptying it, when I next passed by it was already occupied. At first glance, I thought I missed a leaf, but it was a small tree frog who decided it was a nice place to hang out.

Once noticed though s/he headed to points "up".

Not sure if you can tell, but high up at the top of the back porch is a second frog who our bucket frog joined. Did froggy go a-courting??

The back porch now appears to be a favored frog hang out as we either hear or see them there these days. Maybe they like that we replaced the leaky porch roof this summer.

It gets dark earlier and light later now, so we have installed lights on timers in both of our mini coops for the chickens. Today was an egg record with a total of 21 laid!

Strange Ordinance

While on vacation we visited a local gravel pit in order to do some shooting. There we found this strange ordinance... someone's bottle rocket special with a shotgun shell finish. Just hope no one was below if it really went off!

We also ran into this melon bandit...


Guess he tried to rob the wrong bunch of hombres.


Returning to life on the farm... this is the 2nd best of the two barred rock roosters we have from the spring chicks, also known as "Number Two". We placed an ad in the local Craigslist for him [there can be only one], and he went to a new flock elsewhere for the tidy purchase price of $10.00. Who says a farm can't be profitable! We just probably won't be quitting our day jobs anytime soon... sigh.



And the painting project continues. Here J is at the midpoint on the front exterior wall. At this point we now have the house competely washed, calked and nearly the entire first coat on the outside walls... second soon to follow. After that it's just the trim paint. New gutters are also on the horizon, when the budget allows as we'd much prefer a color that matches the darker trim over the current white ones. The old gutters will probably get recycled for use on our run-in, and the remainder are spoken for by a neighbor who'll use them on a shop.

Here D screws off the last flashing on the renewed back porch roof. We tore off all the aged, badly installed panel roofing that leaked, reinforced then painted the framing, and installed clear polycarbonate "Tuftex" roofing. The rain was just starting to fall, so job was finished not a moment too soon. Eventually, the back porch will be enclosed to be a bit more user friendly in the winter months. You can see more old white guttering here that simply has to go, especially once the fascia has the darker bronze paint.

We took enough time out from house repair to do a garlic harvest. This year we managed almost 60 plants at harvest, so we could nearly go the year if we didn't use too much over a full bulb per week. Not too shabby. Some of these plants were, simply put, huge! We placed them in an area manure was piled during the winter, then left to compost all summer. By last fall when we sowed garlic, the pile had turned into some dark uber-rich soil. We'll definitely have to use this method again.

Of course no post at Seven Trees is complete without some kind of critter pic. Here Crichton demonstrates the proper form of "sleeping in". Thanks, Crichton!

Vacation - A visual...

Magnus waits for Mercia...