June 15

And it is Friday.  Two days off.

Tomorrow we are driving down to Betty's and taking her Patsy's cow bell and taking her books back to her.

George will be glad to have an excuse not to dig in the yard.  He has it about half way done.  I don't think he did any digging on it today, but he can't ever get started on anything until noon.  That makes it really hard to do things in the summertime.  By noon it is way to hot here in the summer to do much except take nap under the air.

No more goats.  I am beginning to think we are not going to have more babies but the two brown ones sure look big and round.  Two more weeks and the story will be told, one way or another.

June 14, Happy Birthday Betty

There was an old woman who lived at a school,

Till she decided it would be cool

To be an old woman who lived at home,

With a dead snake under a stone.

June 13

If you look back at my blog a year ago, you will see that on June 15th when George and Kenneth were doing the hay, they saw two sets of twin fawns in the hay field.  George told me  Clayton said he saw a mama and twins in the field by his house this morning.  George says the fawns have a hard time getting into our field now because we have repaired several places trying to make it goat solid.

And, Clayton saw the two turkey hens this morning the same place we did yesterday.  And, we saw them again tonight in the same place.  We think they might be setting on eggs down in the ditch on Dan's.

That's about all I know.

Happy birthday to Betty tomorrow.  Today was Aunt Betty's birthday.  She would have been old.

June 12

Two turkey hens this evening down on Dan's just across the fence below our pond.  Sunday evening we saw one in the field on our side of the road.

Our bird fountain, working again.  We got this on clearance 2 years ago when we bought George's lawnmower.  It cost about $45 and we and the birds have all enjoyed it immensely. This is the second or third replacement pump we have bought for it.  We bought one earlier this spring which got broken or something.  But we enjoy it so much, we just bought another pump last weekend.  I hope this one makes it through the summer.

Splish, Splash, taking a bath.  This is one of those dark bluebirds that Betty calls Mountain Bluebirds.  I do not know if that is what they are really called, but I doubt it.

We only have a few hummers so far.

And, George is digging a hole in the yard.  I wonder what he is going to bury. 

June 11

Glory, glory, glory.  We got rain.  About 3/4 inch.  Everything is now clean and fresh.

I was breading all weekend.  I decided to try my hand at sourdough bread.  I have never like the hard, dry, sour sourdough bread that you find so often, but for my birthday, a friend at work bought a loaf of wonderfully fluffy sourdough bread from the Mennonite bakery.  It was melt in your mouth wonderful.  Not at all hard and dry.  So, I stopped off at that same bakery last month to buy some of that same bread.  They had nothing anything like the first bread.  I bought a couple of loaves that looked like the might be good but they were not even as good as the walmart bakery bread.  So, I read up on sourdough on the net.

Thursday after work, I made the starter.  Then, Saturday evening, I made the two loaves above.  The recipe I took the hints from said to let the dough rise once, them make it into loaves, put in well oiled pans and put it in the fridge overnight.  After 12 hours, place it in the cold oven, turn to 375 and bake for 1 hour.  

About that recipe hint thing.  Helen told me just recently she had read that the difference between a baker and a cook, was that a baker measure ingredients precisely, and followed the recipe exactly.  I do not remember what she said a cook did, but I know that she was saying I do not follow recipe measurements or instructions.  I has recipes are just helpful hints.  For example, nearly all the sourdough recipes I found call for four ingredients; flour, water, salt and good luck.  Well, good luck getting a good bread with that.  If you leave out the salt, you have glue.

I added some whole wheat flour, honey and sugar [the recipe did have sugar in it], and margarine.  It was really, really good, but it did not taste sour at all.  I think that may be because my starter had not aged long enough.  I am going to try it again without the whole wheat flour, with older starter [like maybe about Wednesday or Thursday] and let it rise a second time right away instead of putting it in the fridge.  But, just the same, my bread was really good.  It was just not at all like the bread I was wanting, but then, I knew when I used whole wheat flour it would not be like that.

    

A weed by any other name is a flower.