Whats new on Sinkhole Acres? Nothing very noteworthy. Nothing to blog about. I am enjoying my birdfeeders. This one is attached to the kitchen window with suction cups and I have Niger seed in it for the Goldfinches. Here is a male and female, the male is in his winter plumage. I just learned something this week. I didn't know that the male goldfinch changed his color in the fall! In the summer he is lemon yellow all over. Now he is a dull olive like the female. I love to watch them, especially this close up! Aren't they pretty?

I have 14 gallons of mulberries in the freezer that I am starting to make into jelly. The guy that I used to work with on the horse farm, Enrique, picked them and put them in his freezer. He asked me months ago if I would make them into jelly for half of it. Said he would pay for the sugar and jars. So now I have to get this done before Christmas. I have some of it thawed out and ready to cook today, about 4 gallons of berries. That works out to about 6 batches of jelly.

On Friday evening we attended the Christmas party for the company E works for. It was held at the American Legion here in town. It was interesting to watch some of the people dancing when the band was playing. Especially one older couple. He was using a walker, but he also wanted to dance. They parked the walker, his wife took his arm and they slowly circled the dance floor. He kept time with his free arm, but his feet were too slow to keep up the beat. He danced several dances with her like that and looked like he was thoroughly enjoying himself! Since I don't dance, I just enjoyed my steak and watching everyone else.

Ok, gotta go and get started on my jelly.

Here are my little guys. Aren't they cute? They are just so huggable and such fun to be around. I took these photos on Wed. so they are current. It has been a while since I posted any photos of them. They are getting to be such big, little boys!

One day early last week this bird was sitting six inches from my kitchen window on this twig. It was a wet cold and raining afternoon. I suppose it was sitting here fluffed up, napping and trying to stay warm. When I made a small noise it looked at me, startled and flew away. 

Balls of Fluff

Last Saturday E found these cute babies when he went to a farm where a friend of his stores his shelled corn. There are no houses in the area. E was filling his bag of corn to feed the deer, when these babies came running up to him! They were glad to see a human! He brought them home and we had them for several days, until we could locate a foster home for them through the local Humane Agency in our county.

These little buggers really did some damage to my house plants. They tore off the leaves of my philodendren and dumped over the pots of some of the others. I thought I had moved them out of the way! No way! They were all over the living room, climbing up on anything that would hold them, streaking around the furniture, and attacking each other with vicious baby kitten ferocity! Then, collapsing in a heap to sleep and regroup for another all out attack on the living room!

These babies were tiny, probably no more than 4 or 5 weeks just fitting in the palm of your hand. Barely eating dry kitten food. They were so soft and cuddly. And as little as they were they would purr when you picked them up to cuddle them! But alas, we couldn't keep them, so we found a foster home for them through the Humane Society in our county.

Our Thanksgiving

We got up early and ate a quick breakfast of cereal for me and Peaches and Cream oatmeal for E. Then I made two dozen eggs that I had cooked the night before, into deviled eggs. We stopped at Rural King in Martinsville to purchase a couple of Christmas presents for the grandchildren.

Then, it was off again to Lebanon to the familys pitch-in Thanksgiving dinner. We were told that no one was bringing deviled eggs, but two more people did anyway. So there were LOTS of eggs. There was plenty of food to go around, as several brought more than one dish. There were about 30 people, some of which after 10 years of being in this family, I still have to ask E their names! Some of them I only see once or year, sometimes less than that.

It was a good day, warm, sunny and unusual for mid November. We drove home, a two hour drive, and fed our horses, chickens, dogs and cats and called it a day. We brought home enough leftovers for another meal or two. Yes, I'm ashamed to say, I ate too much. My bad!

Boxed Puppy!

This is Missy. She has decided to be an indoor dog this winter. Since she didn't have a bed of her own, she took over the cats bed! Does she look comfy? Well, we did go and buy her a bed of her own and she loves it! But I thought this was cute.

Here are the photos from McCormick's Creek State Park. I could not get them to load for the last two days! Arrrrgh!!

McCormick,s Creek State Park

Saturday was a beautiful day. The sun shone brightly, the air was sharp and clear, the trees were in their fall glory!
E and I went to McCormick's Creek State Park for the first annual "McCormick's Flavor", an event to celebrate the joys of outdoor cooking. But...we couldn't find it! Then discovered that I didn't check the date! It is NEXT weekend!!! Since we had already paid our 5.00 to get in the park, we drove around the park and took photos. It is truly a beautiful park, and it is 5 miles from our house!

Here is a couple of photos that I took while we were in the park.

Hiking In Autumn

Last Sunday my baby sister and I went to Greens Bluff Nature Preserve and hiked down a beautiful narrow trail to the Bluffs. There are large hemlock trees growing on the face of this huge cliff, overhanging the creek. Here are a couple of her photos. The trees were just starting to change color so there isn't much in these photos, but it was a quiet, restful, beautiful place. Come and go with me, and we will do it again, now that the trees have really changed. We can walk her from my house. It is about a 30 minute walk, maybe a little more.

Stinky!!

A couple of summers ago, I went to a plant sale put on by one of the churches in Bloomtown. I spent all of 50 cents! I bought a 3 inch, single stem, rooted cutting of a Carrion Flower.

It has grown very well, and recently it sprouted 5 flower buds. Two of them actually developed into flowers. Here is a couple of photos that I took within the last 3 weeks. The flowers just opened today. They are 8 inches across.

Why is it called the Carrion Flower? Well, if you get your nose within a couple of inches of the flowers, it smells exactly like 'road kill' ! I suppose in the wild it attracts insects for pollination.

I think this was my favorite view of the lake. In another week or so the trees will be in their full colors! I want to go back and take more photos, and just enjoy the scenery.
This isn't a large lake, but is was beautiful. The water was clear, and the trees are just beginning to turn colors. A walk around the lake was so relaxing and peaceful.
The Bloomington Photo Club, of which I'm a member, had our annual Club picnic in Brown County State Park, yesterday. It was an absolutely beautiful day!! Here are a couple of photos that I took of Strahl Lake, where we picniced. And I didn't even know Brown Co. had a lake!!

Here is the chute that Ed made, for us to be able to unload hay, with just the two of us doing it. The other end of the hay elevator is up on the loft floor, and I stand on the trailer and slide a bale down the chute and he catches it at the top, and stacks them. Wasn't he clever? It has sure made a hard job easier! We load the trailer with 80 bales, and put 20 in the back of the pick up truck. This week we hauled 204 bales of hay from the farmer and put them in the barn. We have approximately 55o bales of hay for the winter. That is one job that I'm glad to see done for the year!!!

An Afternooon Trailride

I liked Ruth's idea to include us in her early morning walk with the dogs. I ride Katie 3 or 4 times a week and thought I would take you all on a trailride with me. In the photo above we are just leaving the barn area. We will ride down the hill, (in a wide zig zag fashion, as it is easier on the horse than walking straight down). We will enter the woods at the red arrow.
Here is where we enter the woods at the bottom of the hill. The weeds have grown all summer and some of them are 6 feet tall! There is a deer trail that we follow. We are heading for that open field in the distance, through the trees in the photo below.

An Afternoon Trailride

As we come out of the woods into the neighbors hay field we make a right turn and walk a hundred yards or so and make another right turn and climb up this winding trail in the photo above.

We come to a Y in the trail and which way will we go today? Hmmm, OK, lets turn to the right, and see what little surprises we discover today.

Just a little way along this trail, if we look to our left, we see a green scummy pond. In the summer there are turtles sunning themselves on the fallen logs that are in it. There is almost always a few frogs that jump in and startle the horse! This pond always has water in it.

As we continue on our way, we walk under this scraggly looking, small tree, and hanging in its branches are lots and lots of wild grapes!! I think I am seeing some grape jelly here!! Hmmmm! Gotta tell Ed about this!

We pass under the 'grape' tree and follow the trail that a neighbor bushogged for another neighbor, so she could ride her horses. (She has 3 horses but never rides them). When we get to the far end of this little meadow, we will turn left again, and

turn into the deep forest. This is a Nature Conservancy of about 200 acres. We can walk in the woods, but that is all. There is no hunting allowed, or anything else. It is just for enjoying nature.The trail meanders along twisting and turning and following gentle grades up and down the ravines. As you go along, look to your left,

and you will see some long deep ravines that seem to have no bottom. They are full of mature trees and fallen trees that have rotted over the years. Here and there is a trickle of water going toward the bottoms. It eventually ends in the river.

Here is another trail that goes off to the right. We will explore that one another time.

As we near the Y in the trail, near the beginning of our ride, we can turn left at the Y and come out on top of the hill under the Power Lines. The Power Company that owns the lines keeps this part cleared.

As we stand under the lines, we have to decide, do we want to go down that steep hill today? I don't think so, Katie and I have had enough exercise today. We will do that hill another day. I hope you have enjoyed our ride. I enjoyed having the company and sharing the sights with you.

And a good time was had by all!

Yesterday, E and I went to the Paragon (little town) Homecoming. It is mostly just a town wide yard sale. The streets were blocked off and there were yard sales all over the place. They had food venders and bands, etc. It was nice, and the weather was good, 70 degrees and partly cloudy. I enjoyed spending time with E, just walking about and talking.

We went to a large flea market near Columbus today. I found a nice big wooden birdfeeder for 2.00. The birds will eat well this winter. It was a fun day. Now it is back to work. We are trying to make a 'sawdust stall' in the barn. We have an area that we put sawdust in, in one of the stalls. But it needs fixed so we can fill it up and not have to go and shovel a pickup load of sawdust every two weeks. When we get this done, it will hold a lot of sawdust. Tomorrow we are going to Lebanon, E's dad has an elevator that E wants to use so we don't have to shovel the stall full. The elevator should unload the sawdust into the stall and we can get a lot more in it. Lets hope it works!

We have had some very nice cool, cloudy weather, thanks to Ernesto. I am enjoying every minute of it! After all the heat and humidity of the summer,IT IS WONDERFUL!!!!
Here is a scene I saw today when I looked out the window, while feeding the boys their lunch. Isn't she a beautiful doe? This photo was taken through a window with a screen on it, which gives it the out of focus look. This doe has a fawn that was still in the woods, out of sight.

My boys' mother has returned to Germany, so we are on our own again, and they are happy and doing wonderful. They are beginning to walk all over the house. Last week they started taking a tentative step or two, but now there is now stopping them!

Here is the website that I tried to send in a previous post:
www.heritagestonework.com . It was up and working today, so try it again.

Ok, don't know what happened, but here are the pictures, hopefully.

The boys were eating a cookie!

Here is one of our triplet fawns. I finally got a photo of them even tho it was a long wasy away. Here, it is cropped and enlarged quite a lot.

Hmmmm, I can't get the link to work today either. But I will keep trying and post it when I can.

Tomatoes, tomatoes!

I picked all the ripe tomatoes I could on Saturday morning and spent most of the day Saturday and all of Sunday making Spaghetti Sauce.
I planted the Paste tomatoes in my garden just to make into sauce. We do love spaghetti and toasted garlic bread.!

On Thursday the man we buy our hay from called and wanted us to come and get a load (one hundred bales) on Friday evening after work. We told him we would be there around 6:15. Our next door neighbor had asked to borrow the horse trailer so she could go and pick up a new horse she had just bought. She was to pick it up around 1:00 or so on Friday. When I got home at 4:00 and the trailer wasn't in her drive way I thought, Uh Oh, something 'aint' right here!(We needed the hitch that was on the horse trailer to haul our hay trailer)!!! About a half hour later she called me and asked if I could come and help them catch and load their horse!
I called Ed and told him what was going on and left with her and a couple of other people she had to help. On the way there she told us what happed the when they tried to load her the first time. It seems that she decided she wasn't going to get on that trailer no matter what. The woman that bought her ended up being dragged for 5o yards down a gravel road because she wouldn't let go of the horses' rope! The horse finally got loose anyway, and ran into another neighbors barn lot, so they closed the gate and left her there and came to get reinforcements. But it didn't help any, because no one could get close enough to her to get a halter on her, to then try to load her on the trailer. Finally after trying to catch her for an hour, she called it quits and said she would get her money back. GOOD PLAN!! That horse had an ugly attitude. I got home about 7:30 and we hurried over and got our load of hay. But it was 9:30 by the time we had it unloaded and put in the barn. And I got two blisters on my fingers to boot!!

Here is a photo of a surprise that Jake made for us. If you want to see what they do, the people that I work for here is a link to their company website. Check it out, they do some pretty pieces: www.heritagestonework.com. I am going to plant some flowers around it.

Here is a photo of my boys. They turned 1 year old this month.

My Weekend

Today I canned 10 pints of Chili Seasoning using our tomatoes. In cold weather we eat Chili at least once a week. To make Chili using this, you brown a 1/2 to 1 pound of ground beef, (we use venison) and add a can of pinto or kidney beans. I hope to make a few more pints. I also want to make several pints of spaghetti sauce while the tomatoes are producing.

L, to answer your question, I blanch the whole ears for 6 or 7 minutes, cool in a clean sink of ice water, cut the corn off with a corn cutter like Mom has. Then I put 2 cups in a freezer bag and freeze. (there are only the two of us to eat it here). It doesn't have time to get any freezer burn. I sometimes add 1/4 cup of water to it to reheat it. It tastes like it just came from the garden.

The treehouse is built into a huge oak tree. If you can come up here and bring him with you, we will go to the tree house for him to explore to his hearts content. We will make it a picnic or something. It could be a 'field trip' for him.

E. has been using the bush hog to mow the pastures and twice now he has run over a yellow jackets nest and gotten stung. The first time he got 9 stings and the second nest he ran over he only got one, but it was on his ear, and the itching is driving him buggy. Oh well, one of the hazards of summer mowing I guess.

Nuttin New Here

What to write about? Things have been on a pretty even keel lately.
Here is a recent photo of my little boys.They had their first birthday this week.

I froze 14 pints of our sweet corn, and we ate lots too. It was so good.

Here is a photo of the treehouse at JW Jones Horse trails. It is something to see. I climbed up and looked out the windows. It is several stories tall. There is a room that is about 10 x10 at the top of the stairs. It is really neat. There are tie rails for the horses and a couple of picnic tables at the parking area at the bottom of the tree.

I made a loaf of Zucchini Herb Bread in the bread machine last evening. It has Italian seasoning in it and shredded zucchini. A tomato sandwich made with it is super good! Come and share it with me!

We had a nice weekend. It was hot and soooo humid outside but it was a slow lazy weekend. On Saturday I got up at 4:00 to go and meet some of the Photo Club members on the east side of Bloomington. We drove to Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge, near Seymour Indiana. We spent a good part of the day photographing anything that moved! When it got so unbearably hot, all the wildlife hunted for cover and so did we.

When I arrived back home, E told me that the grandkids and their parents were on the way to spend the weekend!!! Yikes! I didn't know they were coming, so wasn't prepared! E and I did some quick picking up and had everything presentable when they got here.

The boys are going to be 3 and 6 years old in October. They had a ball, hot and sweaty but well, it IS summer, and boys don't seem to notice! Dad brought the 4 wheelers and they went way back in the woods. The six year old was just thrilled to have so much space to ride his. His daddy drove the big one and Eli had one his size. He looked cute in his helmut. We grilled burgers and hot dogs for lunch just before they left to go back home, which is an hour and a half north. It was real nice to see them here. Eli love to come visit Papaw Wolfe and collect the eggs in the chickens nests.

These are the latest visitors to our birdfeeder! Do you see the fuzzy thing in the leaves? They have chewed holes in the feeder!

Was it worth it?

Chiggers! or Redbugs, or jiggers, or whatever you want to call them! They can sure make your life miserable! I have been going to JW Jones place, (where I trailride my horse) to pick wild blackberries, a couple of days a week. They are abundant there and so were the 'itchies' that I brought back with me. Were the cobblers worth all the chigger bites and itching? You betcha!!!

I picked black raspberries a few weeks ago and made a cobbler with them. I tried a new recipe and it was so good. I was surprised, it couldn't have been more perfect, and now that the blackberries are ripe I have been picking those too, and turning them into a yummy cobbler and putting the extras in the freezer.

Have been picking and canning green beans also. We have managed to can 43 quarts so far. I spent two Saturdays 'doing beans', when I wanted to be out riding my mare. E set up the little gas stove that I cook maple syrup on. We did all the preparation in the kitchen, then E carried the canner out to the garage so we didn't have to heat up the kitchen with all that steam. This is usually enough for the two of us for the year. Ed loves them. I can take them or leave them. I like broccoli better, it has a lot more flavor.

We have seen a Whitetail doe with triplets in our front pasture. The fawns run and chase and jump, then run some more. It is fun to watch them play with each other. How common are triplets? Don't know, but usually a doe will have twins in the years after her first fawn. Haven't had the chance to get a photo yet.

I could not get these to post with my blog so here they are.