Rambles and Brambles

We have heard rumors of a large, wild blackberry patch outside the boundaries of our property.  We have been enjoying the pickings off our 3 small blackberry patches but there has never been enough at one time to make pies or jam out of and not enough self-discipline to deny ourselves the instant gratification of popping a scrumptious, sun-warmed berry right into our mouths. 

Our Cows Will Never Be the Same Again!

This post happened just before we moved, but I wanted to record this mile-marker in our cowie adventures. 

Warning!!  This post contains graphic pictures depicting the process of dehorning and castrating!  View at your own risk if you are squeamish!

Herr Riesentraube

Remember our winter sowing experiment?

Gooseberry pie!

Emily and I took a mother-daughter hike down to our creek.  We had a lovely time together being able to talk without any interruptions, allowing our conversation to ramble and roam and go wherever we liked just as we did with our feet.  Between the two of us we found over 50 ticks on our persons, but an even better find than that was the discovery of gooseberry bushes!  We picked some leaves and a berry and brought them home to identify them using the internet and were so happy to find they were indeed gooseberries.  We all planned that we would keep our little secret to ourselves and bake some gooseberry pies to surprise Daddy with.
 

A Baleful Hayday

We had a full day this past Saturday.  We had an outdoor workday planned and everyone had plenty to do.