Garden bounty , wild flowers and It happened again...

These watermelons are from the garden along with squashes , tomatoes, beans, cucumber and bell peppers. So I decided to can some of it. The vegetables need to be canned under 10 to 15 pounds of pressure in order to kill all the bacteria that can kill a person if the vegetables are not canned this way. My canner will process 7 quarts , I have found this to be a manageable amount to process at one time.












The sky rockets are in full bloom, they always amaze me!!! Each year we collect the seeds and throw them out in the early spring, we got these seeds from the side of a road that had thousands of them.





On the fourth of July, just after I got back from a trip to Oregon, I was in the Chicken coop and turned , starting to walk out of the grain room and tripped on the door threshold falling HARD against the opposite door . I was in a lot of pain and my shoulder was bulging out. I could not move my arm , it was locked into a weird position. I knew it was dislocated and was hoping I could somehow with Richards help put it back into position, but it just hurt too much and I could not relax it at all. So we headed to the emergency room after calling around to see how much it might cost. I was told about $500.00 . That is a lot of money for us
at the moment but I didn't have a choice.
When we got there I was the only patient around, so I went right into the treatment room. I received an X-ray and lay there a while until a nurse gave me an IV of what they call a "conscious sedation" WOW I was in LA LA land because I do not take any drugs or even drink coffee so I was WAY OUT THERE!!! AND SOOOOOOOOOO RELAXED!
After a while the Doctor came in, had someone hold me from the top and he pulled on my arm slowly and firmly and my joint popped back into place in a second because I was so relaxed and had no resistance to do other wise. It felt so much better , what a difference! They told me to come back in two weeks to make sure I was healing, but I went to my acupuncturist and he helped me out more than anything.

I am being very careful, holding my arm close to my waist until it feels strong enough to start exercising it to get back my strength. This last picture was taken the middle of June, it was the only one I had showing my pick of the day, but the first picture of me in the kitchen was on the 8th of July, you can see the strap of the arm brace if you look close.

The chicks arrive!!!

The baby chicks arrive and more work to do on the coop. They are still small and need a very small area and heat until they get their true feathers. Right now they are pure down right now and have no way of regulating their body temperature, there for they need a lamp with a 60-75 watt bulb placed inside a brooder box which has 3 sides of plywood to keep out the drafts, and one side of 1/4 inch hardware cloth to keep out the varmints and on half of the top a hinged door made of plywood with hardware cloth on the other half of the top so a metal bell clip light could be placed on the wire to create a heat source for the chicks.. The only place we had for them was up on the covered slab we had poured years ago. We set them up on a table with a light. Luckly it was warm already so it wasn't a problem.


So on with the coop..... the sides start to go up. We framed out a stationary window on the back for added light into the grain room. We dug a ditch about a foot from the siding and but old fencing roll up in it to prevent varmits from digging their way into the coop.

We already had the front door , which we had to make some minor adjustments to. Richard made the other two doors so they fit tight . We planned the door to the feed room so it would be a door that closed off the main room when it opened from the feed room. It really works well!

The perches are 4X4 posts with 2X4s , edges rounded, attached to the sides at the top.

Tree removal

In preparing for the building of the shop we needed to remove a tree, stump and all. This is where the use of a bobcat REALLY COMES IN HANDY!! I think it would have taken us a month to chop down and remove the root system if we could have done this at all! It took our neighbor about 10 minutes to do what you see here... AMAZING!!!
We did have to chain saw the trunk and limbs, which took half a day and the rest we burned. End of tree...by the way turned out to be hollow, one less tree to have fall down!