8/3/09 – Monday

So, over at her site, Nance has been taunting everyone about the super-secret project she’s been working on. It’s something we started last year when I visited the weekend after Thanksgiving, and then we let it lay ignored for months and months. When I visited last weekend, we finally got our asses in gear, worked on it, and then she and Rick worked their butts off and got it launched.

(I did a little bit of fiddling around with the site itself, too.)

We’re proud (? embarrassed? horrified? amused?) to announce the launch of Dumbversation.com:

Check it out here.

Let us know if you’re having any problems seeing anything. Just keep in mind that it was late at night after a very active day, following a very active weekend, and we were both very very tired and not terribly coherent.

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New month, new banner! This was created by the wonderful Aly, who’s created so many of my banners in the past. Considering how much time I’ve spent in the garden lately, it’s perfect.

Thanks, Aly!

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Happy birthday, Jane!!!!

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So, this weekend was a pretty good one, if not terribly productive. Fred decided to take Friday off, and we spent part of the day pondering what the hell to do. He ended up mowing the lawn, then we went to the co-op so he could buy the supplies to make the yard where the turkeys are a bit bigger, and then… I don’t know. I think we got some groceries, and went by Lowe’s to look for a wall lamp for the foster kittens’ room (we didn’t find one, unfortunately), and he looked at riding lawnmowers, and ended up buying a part for the lawnmower we already own.

(I tried to convince him that we need a zero-turn mower because the mower we have has to be serviced, I shit you not, at least twice a month, and I think at this point that it’s such a money pit that we should just get a new one. He’s not willing to give up on it yet, though.)

Near the end of the day, he went out to dig holes to put fence posts in, and discovered that the alternator (I think) on his tractor had gone south. It seemed to fix itself for a bit, and then un-fixed itself. We ended up having to make a run to the tractor place to get a new alternator before they closed.

Saturday, we left the house and went to the flea market at Lacon. This time, we didn’t really even try to pretend that we were there for any reason other than looking at livestock. We parked and made a beeline for the people who were selling poultry, and found to Fred’s profound dismay that no one was selling turkeys. So we went home, and he worked outside and I puttered around inside, until mid-afternoon when he asked if I’d go out and pick tomatoes and green beans.

It was while I was picking tomatoes that I decided tomorrow morning (I have plans for today already) I’m going to haul my ass out to the garden and yank up some of the tomato plants. They’re so huge and bushy that it’s impossible to properly pick tomatoes – you can’t get in there to get them, and they end up rotting on the vine. And next year, we need to plant those fucking things about twice as far apart as we did this year.

I was picking green beans when it started raining, and so we came inside, ate dinner, and started watching TV early.

Sunday morning, it was raining when I woke up, so I assumed we wouldn’t be going anywhere.

I assumed wrong.

We went to Dog Days, the flea market up in Tennessee, with the intention of looking for turkeys around the age of ours (6 – 7 weeks old). We had three (started out with four, but Fred had to put one down while I was in Pennsylvania), but someone who is not me decided that three turkeys? Not enough.

We could have gotten 7 baby turkeys for $25, but Fred wanted to get ones that were closer to the age of ours, so we ended up getting three that were a little larger than ours. And home we went, with turkeys in carriers in the back of the car.

I wondered how the introduction of the new turkeys to the resident turkeys was going to go, and it went just fine. The biggest of the three we already had did a little dance to show who was the head turkey in charge, the new guys looked less than impressed, and then they all went in search of bugs and grass to eat.

(I think I forgot to mention that Fred got the turkey yard enlarged on Saturday. They now have a yard three times larger than the yard they had before. When we move them in with the chickens in the back forty, we’ll be able to take down the fence between the maternity yard, which will make the maternity yard about twice the size it is now. We believe in letting our chickens have plenty of space to roam!)

The best part came when we went out around 8 last night to lock the chickens and turkeys away. We’ve had to pick up the turkeys and put them in the coop before we lock the coop every night since we got the turkeys two or three weeks ago. They just didn’t seem to understand that when it got dark it was time to go into the coop. Last night, all six of the turkeys were in the coop. Apparently we got some smart ones who taught the old guys that dark = time to roost!

Fred finished mowing whatever he’d been mowing when it started raining on Saturday, then he spent some time in the garden picking things for me to deal with.

And then I took a bunch of the green tomatoes I picked while I was pruning the tomato plants last week, and I made fried green tomatoes. I mean REAL fried green tomatoes, fried in oil in a pan, not the oven-fried green tomatoes. And lo, they were fantastic.

Last night for dinner: pork roast and fried green tomatoes, all grown by us and all tasty as could be.

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Stuff I baked over the weekend:

Friday, I made Chocolate Zucchini Cake. And once it was made, I said to myself “There is nothing on this earth I want to eat LESS than this Chocolate Zucchini Cake.” So the pigs got it all.

Then on Saturday I made the Best Birthday Cake, because with a name like that, you really are forced to give it a try, aren’t you? I mean, that sounds like a challenge – you HAVE to try the recipe so you know, right? I made the cake and the frosting, and I have to say that the cake is really, really good. I mean REALLY good. I will definitely make that cake again in the future. The frosting, however, was not my thing. It’s got sour cream in it, and it tastes like it’s got sour cream in it, and I just didn’t care for it.

In the future, however, I’ll likely make the cake and use a chocolate buttercream frosting instead.

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Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: Questions answered.
2006: I’m sorry, but my Aunt Fanny am I a size 40C.
2005: I suspect people as beautiful as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have to be a little bit nuts, anyway.
2004: WONDERFUL.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: A Day in the Life of a Bitchypoo.
2000: Maine recap.