Mid August to mid September

Rose chopped up and froze a bunch of tomatoes already. 

We've picked 17 tomatoes so far from our 3 plants. 

Our apple trees have apples on them this year, just enough rain I guess. They're starting to ripen

All the birds have now left their houses, a couple of the Sparrows raised 4 broods, Bluebirds one brood each, and our Tree Swallows had a single brood as well. 

The birds are quieter, the landscape is tired, they're calling the first day of Fall... 

We worked on the last side of the run in shed removing the rotted boards and replacing them.

The U.S. Faces A “Historic” Cattle Shortage As The Size Of The U.S. Herd Shrinks To The Smallest Since 1951 

One week, coffee causes cancer.
The next week, coffee prevents cancer.
A month later, somebody announces that butter is deadly. Six months after that, another study insists butter was misunderstood all along.
Sound familiar? 

We've met with a few roofing contractors to get a quote on a new roof.

We're off to Home Depot today to pick up stuff we need for various projects here.  Concrete, gravel, 2x4s, roof panels, screws, etc.

We put a new deer block out in the winter deer yard on Sunday

The apples are starting to ripen on the trees in the orchard, we'll be picking soon.

Rose is working on the tarp door on the run in shed this week.

We ordered 3 pallets of pellets, they'll be delivered on Sept 4th 

Our roof will get replaced the week of Sept 14th! It's time, the current roof is 30 years old! We'll have to start clearing the yard, take down the cabana, and the arch trellis and anything else that may get in the roofers way.

Jason is coming home this week!  He'll be back up here on Thursday 8/27

Here's hoping it's not cloudy! Spoiler, it was cloudy!  Bummer.

Rose has been clearing around the house so the roofers coming on Sept ~14th will be able to get all the old shingles off. 

We took Bullet our new German Shepherd to the Vet last week so they know him and get hartgard and a couple shots, they called Tuesday to say yup he has Lyme, disease so Rose'll pick up Doxycyclene for him today.

We're still picking tomatoes, though the plants are looking bedraggled!  

In denial it’s already September and we’ve already started prepping for winter days here on the farm. 

We picked blackberries on Wednesday not a lot ~3 cups.

Saw this quote Friday, We have enough. We will make it through another winter. We will see the spring. 

It's been great seeing James and Jason last week! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In August, ICE arrested 50,925 illegals, breaking its record for the third straight month. 

89% of Americans see widespread corruption in government
A Gallup poll published on Wednesday found that Americans believe corruption in government is widespread, hitting a record 20-year high. 

“. . . the worse they become, the more they blame you for it.” —El Gato Malo on the Lefty-left

• As the Democratic Party pulls out all the stops to make itself ridiculous, their proxy warriors in the federal judiciary play chicken with the executive branch on sane, uniform standards for mail-in ballots. The Democrats don’t want sane, uniform standards for mail-in ballots because they are insane. They want to “defend Democracy” with mail-in ballot chaos. Democracy is their flabby rubric for any artifice or subterfuge that beats a path to power so they can continue their racketeering operations. Yes, it’s that simple. 

In March, the president issued an executive order instructing the Post Office to work with the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that mail-in ballots were delivered to U.S. citizens only. California and other Democrat-led states sued to block the president’s order, which is revealing by itself.

• A left-wing federal judge appointed by Barack Obama issued an injunction blocking the president’s order. But in a 6 to 3 decision, the conservative justices lifted the lower court’s injunction, ruling that the Democrat states lacked “standing” to sue. 
• We can thank President Trump’s tireless efforts to restore confidence in our voting systems. He is not the one undermining confidence in our elections. Democrats are undermining confidence in our elections by resisting every commonsense idea, including voter ID and proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. 

Sadly, Democrat racist smears are typical of the “tolerant” and “progressive” Left. 

PANIC in the CNN Control Room over NEW POLL on Democrats & the Economy Harry Enten just dropped the bombshell on live TV: White non-college voters still trust the REPUBLICAN PARTY over Democrats by a massive +16 POINTS on the ECONOMY… and another +16 on INFLATION!  “Look at inflation… the Republican Party is STILL trusted more by 16 points! The Democrats are NOT trusted on this!” This is seismic. Michigan. Ohio. The entire Rust Belt. These voters decide elections — and CNN just admitted the GOP still owns the issue that matters most. They can spin all they want… the numbers don’t lie. 

Anthony Fauci refused to sit down and honestly testify about the COVID years. He will not explain why the FDA fought to keep Pfizer's trial data hidden for 55 years, then 75. He will not explain the preemptive pardon that shielded him from criminal prosecution. The endless legal maneuvering is not a defense strategy; it is a confession.  

“The left are incompetent biotrash who purge everyone too attractive, too capable or too intelligent to uncritically accept their retarded worldview.” 

And so, all of a sudden, having failed to subvert or assassinate the president they abhor, and foil his attempt to repair our country, the combined forces of the Democratic Party, the seditious news media, and a traitorous government bureaucracy resort to communist jihad in their crusade to wreck the USA. 

So, while the last summer breeze still wafts over the barbecue in the air, and an unnerving stillness persists, forces are moving and roiling under the surface. Enjoy at least the appearance of calm seas while you can because it’s going to roughen up in the weeks ahead.  

Just in case you missed it, Massachusetts, which is a rich, liberal enclave in North East America, just signed into law a bill which permits abortion at the point of birth. Reflect on that. At. The Point. Of. Birth. As in, kill your baby as you give birth to it. There's no nuance here, no grey area, just sheer demonic infanticide. 

The White House Government Transparency Task Force on Tuesday released the documents, exposing a counterintelligence operation codenamed “Round River.”

• The Round River team allegedly formed in December of 2019 “to gather any/all derogatory information reported by confidential human resources on Joe Biden’s corruption and other Ukraine related information,” to red flag the info as “Russian disinformation.”
• The topics targeted by FBI analysts included Burisma, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
• The FBI operation divided the characters involved in Biden’s corruption scandals into two categories, those complicit in the scandals, and those exposing them. The operation sought to defend complicit Democrats and discredit Republican journalists and politicians as conduits of “Russian disinformation.”
• A long list of Democrats, including Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, George Soros and others, were portrayed as victims who were “targets” of Russian disinformation.
• Conservatives like Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo, Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson, Jim Jordan, Fox News, Greg Jarrett and John Solomon, meanwhile, were branded “conduits” of Russian disinformation. 

 

July and August and it's HOT

July 22nd Mom's coming home from the rehabilitation place today!

One of our Birch trees came down in the Winds on Wednesday

I went out Thursday evening to feed the deer and stopped to look at what was left of the Blueberries, not much I picked another 2/3 of a cup and headed inside to wash them and get them onto a tray for freezing.

The earth belongs to God 

Now the ground resists our assignment to tend it. Labor still produces fruit, but it also produces frustration. The shovel hits stone, the calf gets sick, the fence post rots, and the tractor refuses to start on the one morning you need it most.
Every homesteader has heard the ground whisper the same message:
Something here is no longer the way it ought to be.  

So, no matter how many acres we own, we cannot purchase our way out of death. No matter how large the barn, how full the pantry, or how carefully written the will, our bodies return to the dust from which Adam was made.

Every garden bed reclaimed from erosion is a small act of stewardship. Every compost pile, repaired fence, planted orchard, protected creek bank, and rested pasture declares that the earth belongs to God and must not be treated like something disposable. 

Rose pretty much has the dog house repainted, 20+ years had dulled the paint allowing wood to rot in places.

I trimmed up the Forsythia, the Quince that was threatening to grow through the roof of the garden shed.  Then down to the driveway to trim up the weeds there, I headed for the pond there was some wild rose taking over the paths I used when I needed to get to the pond taking over.  Rose is using the trailer so I'd pick up all the trimmings I'd left laying on the ground Sunday.  Two trailer loads did the job, I mowed the deer yard and road out there.

We made a trip to the barn to put a bunch of stuff in storage. 

We made some adjustments to the flagpole in the field, took down the 250th flag on the side of the house and changed the flag on the barn.

I'll start calling roofing contractors to replace our nearly 30 year old roof.  We'll price out standing seam metal roofing as well as conventional shingles.

We'll walk the property looking for Purple Loostrife this weekend

The horseflies are bad this summer, there'll be 4 or five swarming the car as we pull into the yard.

There were two opossums out in the deer yard on Tuesday

Our tomatoes are still coming along, not as many as last year, soon enough we'll have ripe ones. 

I walked over to check on the blueberry bushes, they were all gone now. 

Friday night a large raccoon came into the deer yard 

Holy cow, has it been hot and humid, you sweat buckets just walking around. 

Saturday was HOT and HUMID, and it's a work day at the house, we demo'd the run-in shed wall and replaced the side wall with 5 new 1"x8"x8' rough cut boards, installed two new shelves once the wall was complete, putting everything we'd removed back in. Cut up the old wall boards so we could reuse some of the good pine boards and off to the burn pile with the remainder of the rotted boards.  I mowed the deer yard and the main road.

Rose and I walked through the start up process and tested the generator, it fired right up! 

Sunday we're doing a meet and greet with a rescue a two year old German Shepherd dog that had been passed around house to house, we'll see how it goes, if we agree we'll bring him home today. We're hopeful he'll fit in. 

So far so good, meet "Bullet" he was already named, we brought home, fairly well trained, knows to go slow down the back stairs on a leash, is house trained, sweet soul, so far he is fitting in well.

It's damned hot and humid this week, ugh! Our tomato plants love the heat and humidity, us not so much.

Wednesday evening, I picked up a bunch of fallen dead branches in the side yard, cut the front lawn, and pulled two big piles of weeds from the front beds.

We'll have tomatoes by Sunday evening I'm guessing! 

Your homestead is no longer just a quiet place to live. The garden, pantry, barn, workshop, woodpile, and skills passed around the dinner table form a living insurance policy—one no distant war or shrinking dollar can completely take away.

And with every new row planted, every jar sealed, and every skill passed down, that policy grows a little stronger.

Saturday morning it's gonna be another Scorch'a, Rose is doing some sanding on the run in shed this morning.

I do love me a good nap. 

Sunday another unbearably HOT day, we keep the living room air conditioned but the remainder of the downstairs gets as hot as it is outdoors.

I should be picking the first of our tomatoes today Sunday.  We went and did some food shopping Saturday evening and picked up some sourdough bread for tomato sandwiches!

This is August, and the days are HOT. (90+) with 200% Humidity.  HOPE is on the horizon, the remainder of August should be in the mid 80s!

We need to check the blackberries to see how they are coming along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CNN Poll says 1/3 of Democrats identify as socialists, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has arrived at the party.

Bananas still have to be bought. They still have to be shipped. They still have to be stocked. Someone still has to pay for them.

• A politician can announce cheap bananas.
• A warehouse still has to supply bananas.
• A truck still has to bring bananas.
• A worker still has to stock bananas.
• The price at the register can be lowered through subsidy or policy.
• The bananas themselves remain stubbornly attached to reality. 

A government can own a grocery store. It can subsidize a grocery store. It can even operate a grocery store more cheaply under certain conditions. But eventually, the same economic question appears: What is the actual cost? The answer cannot be negotiated away.

The great illusion of political arithmetic is the belief that numbers can be persuaded to serve a preferred conclusion. Costs can only be reduced, absorbed, delayed, disguised, or transferred, but the grocery receipt eventually arrives—and when it does, someone always pays.