Cutting corn, Gospel music festival, Butchering chickens, Trip to town, Apples

Finally, back to my blog! There has been lots going on and I've enjoyed every bit of it, so the blog got pushed aside for a while.

We picked our first harvest of sweet corn about a week ago and we spent an afternoon cutting it off the cobs and freezing it. We staggered the plantings of the corn so that it wouldn't all ripen at the same time so there is more for us to sell later on. We got called up by the owner of the Birchwood restaurant asking us if we would provide 70 cobs of corn for a cookout they are having there, and also asked if we would set up and sell fresh garden produce like a farmer's market for the group attending. That is scheduled for a week from tomorrow, so I hope we have ripe corn!

A week ago, Jonathan and David and I went to the Peace Gardens to hear some of the International Gospel Music Festival. Some friends of ours were performing there in the afternoon so we went after lunch and came back just in time for evening chores. We did get to jam with them after they played which was a lot of fun! We rarely get to play music with anybody so it was really fun. It gets us motivated to learn to play better when we hear other bands do so well.

Tuesday morning while we were doing chores, Dad fired up the scalder and we began butchering chickens about 9:30. Jonathan put together the "whizbang" chicken plucker from a kit and we tried it out for the first time that morning. It didn't meet our expectations at first because the belt was too loose and the pulley would slip, but it did wonders when we got it running right. After a good scald, the chicken would be dropped into the whirling plucker and in less than 20 seconds it would be plucked free of feathers! Sometimes the tail feathers would need to be pulled by hand and we had David check it over and get the pin feathers with his Leatherman, but it did a very clean job of plucking. We did one chicken at a time in it because most of them ended up dressing out at 7-9 lbs. They would make the belt slip if we did two or more. It probably can be adjusted somehow.

The next day Dad and I went to Minot with the pickup to pick up the soffit material for the house and do some other shopping. I did the driving in town and on the way there, and Dad drove home. I can get my full driver's licence anytime, but I don't drive very much so I haven't made it a priority. We are working on finishing the upstairs bathroom and making it into a milk room until we move up there. We needed a few things to be able to continue on the sheetrock and we brought back flooring and a door to close it off. When it is finished, I'll be able to keep all the things I needed for milking and cleanup along with the refrigerators and a freezer and the dishwasher and the soaps and all the cleaners up there. Then the kitchen won't be so cluttered and customers can come in and pick up their milk.

This afternoon we started on the apples that are sitting in the living room. David and Jonathan went to town for a garage sale and stopped at the person's place that we picked apples at before and they let us take them again this year. They have two trees in their front yard and the apples were already starting to fall off so we got them at a good time. Mom is using her new Champion juicer for making applesauce with them and we will probably dehydrate some and can some chunks. The apples are a little sour but they taste good if that's all we have! Our young trees have some apples on them this year but they are not producing very much yet. I was out in the orchard today weedwhipping, and saw that we are going to get plums off of some of the trees and grapes on the vines too. There were a few ripe cherries that I ate. Yum!

I guess I'll go back to apples for now. Peter