Fair and Farm

Well, this week at the fair has been fun. I haven't won any of the cooking contests, but have had a great time participating. The children have had loads of fun and the little one is plum worn out. They have seen all the shows at least twice. Next year we hope that maybe the little one can show a rabbit. We will see. I also found out yesterday that they have a goat costume parade after the dairy goat competition. Now which one of those neurotic little buggers could I get to wear a costume! I have a year to work on that. Actually, that probably won't happen as I don't like to expose my goats to outside goats. I keep a closed herd for a reason...disease control. But the cow costume parade was so cute that it is tempting to see how cute little one would be in costume leading her goat also in costume. We have been mostly consumed with the fair, but have managed some work in the garden. I had been neglecting to pick peppers lately ( mainly because I am sick of peppers) and there were some monsters out there. Today we are having cheese and bacon stuffed peppers for lunch and tomorrow I will stuff them with something else and serve with a side of salad. I might use up some of my sausage that I seem to have an excess of since I made it a little too spice. Sausage stuffed peppers with ranch dip....hmmm might be good. Or a queso dip...ooohhhh the possibilities. Anyway, the fair is almost over thank goodness. It is a week load of fun, but exhausting and we are glad to see it gone for another week. We will do one more cooking contest tomorrow and then be finished. Meanwhile in the garden we are mulching, weeding and adding compost to beds that aren't in winter production. The winter crop is coming along nicely and looks like it will be well established by the time frost gets here (late November). I do have a few things to re-plant thanks to the fire ants. One thing that I have learned is that if fire ants move into your nice garden beds while seeds are germinating then you will lose that germination. I don't know if they eat the seeds or what, but nothing will grow there. I killed ants yesterday so should be good to go today to replant. Fire ants have been terribly this year and it seems like it has been non stop killing the beds. I hate having to do this since it involves some pretty potent chemicals, but I have yet to find a natural remedy to fire ants. Grits don't work, boiling hot water doesn't work, vinegar doesn't work, neem doesn't work and they laugh at diatomaceous earth. If you don't kill them then they just move the nest down a little bit away from whatever annoys them. After this summer and the battle with fire ants in the gardens I now have scars from their bits on my arms and ankles. I can't tell you how many times I have been pulling weeds and pulled up a handful of fire ants. And it is deadly to let a pile of weeds sit overnight without taking to the compost, because that pile will have a brand new nest in it the next morning. The scars on my arms tell you how I know this. So needless to say I have been waging war all summer with the ants. So we are busy playing catch up with the garden and have everything that is not in production put to bed for the winter and ready to gear back up in February. We have added several new areas to the garden so next year it will be bigger. Hopefully, we will be here to get the benefit of all this hard work. We are still looking for suitable property since we don't know how long our situation here will last. Sometimes it seems like there is a never ending to do list that keeps us from doing what needs doing most. Now the freezer is going to have to be replaced. I was hoping to wait until spring to do that, but it doesn't look like that will happen. The door fell off of it yesterday. We got it back on, but it is just barely there. So we are looking for a used freezer and if we can't find one in the next week then we will have to break down and buy a new one. Everything is still frozen and we are trying to keep from opening the door until that point. Oh well, I think we paid 30.00 for it and we have had it for about 5 years, so we got our moneys worth out of it. Things are moving along pretty routinely these days...working on fence, looking for a freezer, working on fence, gardening, working on fence, deep bedding the animals for winter, working on fence....you get the picture. Just typical life on the farm. Well, I had better get to it. Blessings, Kat