End of summer is close

Fred likes to attend the Mennonite auctions that are near our farm. When you bid, it is on a pallet full. The grocery stores are there bidding against you, so you rest assured you are paying wholesale. The local farm wives have decided to buy their vegetables for canning at those auctions. Well, me too... next year.

I heard Fred had gone to the auction last Saturday, so I made a call to him to bring back mums for fall planting. It is a good thing his friend's mother in law was also interested in mums. She took 2/3 of the pallet and I got 1/3. It was lovely to see Fred drive in with a pickup load of blossoms. 12 huge mum plants. I had to take two photos to get them all in.(well, only because the sun was on the East side so most of the plants were in the shade.)
I think I am finished canning green beans. I made some dill green bean pickles, too. I hope they are as good as my mother in law's. My mother had never made any, so they were new to me. We had to rip and pillage a lot of our wild plum bushes when we put tile in that part of our farm this spring. So I made 'enough' plum jam for this year, and did not feel guilty for letting extra plums go to waste, there weren't any. I could not resist taking the photo when the morning sun flooded my counter top this morning.
More goodies brought in from the garden. The trees are starting to turn bright colors, as well.
The neighbor to our scrapbook shop told Donya and Michelle to help themselves to the pears. They were starting to fall off her trees and call flies. I plan to can them as soon as they get ripe.

A funny story: When Don and I were married 3 short years, we made a trip to the "Western Slope" in Colorado to get tree ripened peaches (they are the best! yum). I also wanted to get some tree ripened pears. The orchard farmers got a good laugh at me for that. Said there is no such thing as a tree ripened pear. They fall off before ripening. Besides , there is absolutely no way to transport ripe pears.

Highway 127 2009 adventures

Don can not help himself, he is attracted to 'junk'. He ran onto this pickup that is for sale, sitting near a few yard sales. He was tired of looking at my kind of 'junk' but got a kick out of this one. This is the good side.
This was the other side of that pickup. It was turned toward the trees, so the only way you would see it was to get out and walk around the thing.
Don spent a lot of time just watching people. He is the only one of us that did not carry a cell phone. I made the girls hunt him down when we were ready to move on. I wish he would agree to carry a cell phone, but he a stubborn old farmer. He sure counts on mine when we travel together.
There were quilts for sale. These were hanging on a porch rail.. and if you look closely you will see the kitten laying on the porch floor below the blue skirted girl quilt. The quilt makers were sitting in a row on the porch behind the quilts. They were looking at us, while we were looking at their quilts.
Donya is a gourmet cook, and has made the best pizzas on our grill at home. She brought all the makings for a couple pizzas, but had to experiment with cooking them on Fred's tripod over a camp fire. The first one came out a bit dark on the bottom side but still tasted great. Rhonda stood over the second one and it came out perfect.

It was a nice end to a busy 'sight seeing, shopping yard sales' day.

More highway 127

Just look at those lush trees. Anywhere there was a vacant place to put your stuff, someone would open their trunks or unload their stuff from their pickup and they were in business. Donya was thrilled to find a game she has been wanting for years. She was almost ready to order it from Amazon for $50. $2.50 at this yard sale. It was like new... Scrabble on a turntable.
The oddest thing we found for sale was a mounted pig. Not just the head, but half the pig.How would you like to have that hanging over your fireplace?!! We did not even check to see how much they wanted for it. Afraid they might think we were making an offer.
The antique fire engine made into an ice cream server was a hit with all of us. They made the ice cream right on that truck, put it into a bowl and slid it onto a conveyor belt that brought it through a trough to us. Yep, India had peacock blue hair in honor of the yard sales.
Donya was a good little shopper. She is collecting white firestone dishes and cookware. She found many to add to her collection. I think her favorite was the small tea cups and saucers that were at a booth where a nice man had an East African accent when he talked to us. We were not sure if it was New Zealand, but it not quite right for that.. we will always wonder.
Donya rode with Don and me, while Rhonda, India and Mike were in her van. (She had a pretty full van when she headed home.) This is the back seat where Donya had her nest. Fred had put a storage (or huge tool) box with a lid in the front of our pickup bed. It did not interfere with the 5th wheel hitch for the camper.. and we filled it. And we filled out camper... but not so full that we had to rent a motel on the way home. We heard there were shoppers that did that very thing. More in the next post.

Highway 127 yard sale

We did it !! We finally took the trip to follow highway 127 for the yard sales. We did not go the complete 640 miles, but did cover 135 miles. We went as far South as Chattanooga.

Rhonda, husband Mike and daughter India,(from Kansas) met us at Wallyhoo campground near Crossville TN. Don, Donya and I had camp set up by the time they arrived. Not the best campground in the area. Could have been, but the owner/operator bought the campground and moved from Michigan about 3 or so years ago. He is letting it run down something awful, and cares not for his campers comfort. He opened the office about noon IF he felt like it. The only way to get wifi was to sit right outside his office, in the sun, and try to see the screen on your laptop. Swimming pool was out or order along with all the other things promised on the web site. The shower and bathrooms were in great working order and kept clean. We will choose a different campground for next year.

Yep, we had so much fun, we decided to go next year. The food was so much fun. India and Donya had real fried green tomatoes. I missed those. But the cajun boiled peanuts were done to perfection. Home made ice cream, fried pies, beans and corn bread, smoked chicken and ribs. yum !!! One of the best hamburger and french fry plates I have ever had.

We took advice from people who have been going to this event the 22 years since it was started. Take plenty of water to drink, toilet paper (those portapoties run out of paper, then what?) and baby wipes. You put your hands on grungy and sticky stuff, while sorting for the 'good stuff'. And then you sometimes get sticky eating the fried pies and ice cream. Baby wipes are a must have.

I was happy just to have a nice vacation, go camping, be with family and see some great scenery. It was spectacular, looking off across the hills and into the valleys. We went down some very narrow roads in search of another yard sale or two. Some were very memorable, and funny. We made sure to buy at least one thing, if we were the only shoppers down that lonely road and at the yard sale. Sometimes it was difficult to find at least one thing that you would even load in your truck. Other times we needed a trolley to haul all the good stuff back to the truck.

Don was hoping to find Alles tractors, instead he found a farmer that told him there were no Alles dealers in the area.. so it would be rare to find one. Don did find one, imported by that same Tennessee farmer, from Minnesota. The farmer said he drove up to get it after making the deal for it on the internet.

I have a couple regrets of things I saw and did not buy, but I really did not go to buy a lot of things. My place is too full of things as it is, but boy!! that sure was a pretty tea set I didn't buy. And those Christmas dishes (service for 4) were just perfect for the barn. Had there been place setting for 8.... they probably would have come home with me.

Want to see what I did bring home? Well, here are a couple things..
This little wooden box is covered with leather. Not sure what kind, but the wood is very aged and looks a lot like the Belgian cabinet I bought from an antique shop about 15 years ago to use as a china hutch. Paid $900 for the cabinet (a new china hutch would have cost more then $1500) and later discovered it was valued at $3000. I love it and would never part with it. I gave $4.00 for this box.
I'll bet you would like to know what it is. So did I. I had no idea what it was or what it was used for. Rhonda told me it was a Samovar. I still did not know what it was. The instruction book is in Russian. Donya studied Russian when she attended OU. (Oklahoma University) and translated a few of the words in the booklet. The seller did not know what it was, so they were no help. But I thought it was very pretty, so bargained them down to $30.

It is a Russian Samovar, used in tea making. You make a very strong, usually sweet fruity tea, in the little teapot on the top. It sits on the 'chimney' and stays warm, with hot water in the bottom of the pot(that big round part at the bottom). You put a little of the strong tea from the little teapot in your cup, then run hot water out of the spigot in the bottom pot to dilute the tea. That way the tea in the top pot does not get bitter and strong by boiling too long.

This pot is electric, but the antique pots have a tube that goes down the middle that charcoal is put into and kept burning.. to keep the bottom water hot. I will need to get an adapter as the electric is for European outlets.

I'll show you some more 'stuff' on the next post. Lots of our stuff is still in the camper. Got to find somewhere to put our treasures before we can unload them. Hope we find the 'place' for them before we go next year, or the camper could get a bit crowded. heh heh

July 09 quilt reteat

Material Magic, New Hampton Iowa, held their quilt retreat at the Dairy Barn Bed and Breakfast. The 3 days seemed to fly past yet many of the quilters completed their projects. Table runners, quilts and purses were on the agenda this year.

Some of the photos (45) I took are in the album. I had a quick lesson on loading photos in an album that I could attach to my blog. Hope it all works right.

Cold July 09

Out side my front door... flowers and weeds. Don is Mr Chemical Man and got out his sprayer and took care of the weeds in the rocks and between the cracks in the patio. Donya and Don went berserk at the Mennonite green house this spring, and we have lots of flowers across the front of the patio and in containers everywhere. Alfie has been ever so good as to not dig them up. If we were having normal hot July weather, I'm sure the story would be much different.

This is a record setting cold July for Iowa. The high was only 61 degrees a few days ago. The flowers are huddled up trying to keep warm.

I am preparing for another quilt retreat, getting menus made and food prepared as much ahead of time as is possible. Discovered I had forgotten to buy a couple items when Don and I went to town yesterday. It is a pity that we drove 50 miles to the store and forgot 2 important parts of our meals. grrrrrr This retreat starts Thursday and ends Sunday afternoon.

Summer on the farm

After healing from the terrible antler scruffing a deer gave our baby Linden tree,(Don announced he did not think our Linden tree was going to make it, due to all the bark being 'eaten' off by some animal) it survived and was loaded with the sweetest smelling flowers this summer.
I did not have time to make tea with the blossoms this time, but look forward to leisurely cups of tea next season. Woo Hoo! I no longer have to make hay. I guess that is one thing good about getting old.

Fred collects Alles Chalmers tractors, and likes to play with them in his 'big sand box'. He was cutting and baling our water way grasses, and several farm folks with small bits of hay and grass ground asked him to cut and bale their hay. Large operators want no part of dinking around with small patches of ground, so Fred has found a nitch to play around with his old equipment.

He feeds some of his hay to these guys. Perhaps they will be big enough for the freezer late this fall. He feeds some of the hay to our (his) 4 horses. But he seems to have a little left to bargain with. It is a nice hobby and would be better if he did not have hay fever.

During our farming years I really hated hay making for the herd of Brown Swiss Dairy Cows. It seemed a lightening and thunderstorm would come up as we had all the wagons loaded with baled hay. No way could we leave them out in the yard to get rained on. Many times I would be on the wagon, throwing those bales into the conveyer with lightening much closer then I had ever wanted to see it. Yep, I am ever so glad those days are behind me, and I survived.