A feckless moment!

Wednesday, in honor of my 14th anniversary, Wifey and I decide to go out to coffee together first thing in the morning. She was coming into town anyway to work in the office, so I told her I would take the kids to school, since I wasn't going in directly to the office; I wasn't in my usual hurry.  I got the kids all loaded up in my pickup and while giving them my usual schtick and jive, this time about not being able to find the way to their school, since I'd not taken them before, and hoping to not forget to stop and let them out, etc. I didn't hardly realize it, but the 2 youngest boys were eating it up, believing it. So after it dawned on me that they were believing it, I took a "wrong" turn, avoiding the highway, and went a way that they had never gone before.

This was a total blast because the boys were in the back, nervous as cats at a rocking chair factory, telling each other "Ohhh, I don't want to be late!" and "I just want to go to school!" and me in the front, pouring fuel on the fire: "hmmm, none of this looks familiar..."  and "This doesn't look right at all..."  and, of course: "I know what we can do; we will just follow the first school bus we find to IT'S school, and you can just go to school THERE!" The girls were hip, though, throwing in their own comments like: "I'm pretty sure I recognize that house from last time we went to Missouri..."  and "We are soooo lost!"

Anyway, we drove right there, maybe 5 minutes slower than they usually take, and by then I had them thoroughly convinced that we were approaching Wichita, and that I was going to push them out the door at the first school we found.  I thought the jig was up as we approached their school, but I guess they didn't recognize it since we approached it from the North instead of the South, the younger one sees all the kids unloading from school buses, and says: "Hey, Daddy, that school says 'Yoder!' Oh! Ooohh!"  (the realization dawns...)

Poor kids... But darn, I do love to be a daddy.

As a side note, here is a picture of my youngest after he walked into our creek that was completely covered in leaves.  He wasn't very happy about the picture...

a horrible place to wake up...

Heh; is there anything else really to say?  So, I'll say it again; Heh.  I guess on a chilly November night, one might be looking for somebody to snuggle with, but really?

Why do I do this to myself...

Sometimes I find my life really rewarding; sometimes I find it really overwhelming. I just came in from building 7 little 4X4 sheep pens around the places where I'm going to have fruit trees planted here sometime in the middle of the week.  The term "sheep pens" is something of a misnomer, though; they are going to keep the sheep out as the sheep like to eat small saplings and bark and leaves.  I spent all stinking afternoon out there, barely finishing before dark, and spent probably 25.00 per each on them, (yeah, not counting the stupid tree) between the panel fencing and the posts.  I bet I've planted (counting re-planting) close to 35-40 fruit/nut trees, not even counting the maples and Austrian Pines, and thus far received nearly nothing out any of them. So far, we've eating roughly 6 Apricots, 1 Peach, and maybe 5 Pears.  I've dumped Hundreds of dollars into these stupid trees.  I thought my turkey meat was expensive!

Someday, I'm certain, it's going to really pay off.  I'm sure that there will be a year that I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands, we will be close to starving, I've done a good job of taking care of the trees, it will have been a good wet year, there will be hardly any bugs, and there will be lots of fruit on them.  I will pick all this luscious fruit, can it, and we will all be full and happy and watch everybody else slowly starve to death around us, and we will just sit back and laugh and laugh and wonder at the cleverness of me...  Why else would one go to sooo much trouble just to have fruit or nut trees.  Jeez, it would be one thing if I had nothing else to do.

I think that I will issue a self imposed moratorium on fruit trees for my farmlet.  At least until I start reaping and benefiting from some of my labor.

Cider

A pretty good tummy warmer after a cold day:
Make a simple syrup (half cup of sugar, half cup of water) boiled with 24 half inch chunks of ginger and a long stick of cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of 90k cayenne powder.   Pour in one inch of Bourbon in the bottom of a half Gallon Mason jar, and add a half inch of dark rum. Mix in syrup with cider enough to fill to top of jar. Serve either chilled or warm.

The combination of all the warming ingredients produces a nice warming drink that will go down smoothly on any cool or cold day, without any overpowering flavors or too much heat. The Bourbon flavoring is almost imperceptible, just leaves a nose full of heady aroma.

catching up on blogging

Wow, so much has happened since I last blogged; it seems an eternity ago.  I don't think I mentioned that prior to the big rains, Hutchinson had some really massive hail, so we have just been swamped at work, which translates to swamped at home.  But I have managed to get a few things done around here; one was Apple Day! It was very similar to last years; a little less silly, but a lot of fun, anyway.  We actually had 2 Apple Days this year, we pressed 8 bushels total, and we had Aunt Karen here to help the first time, but I lost all the pictures of the first one.  Here are some pictures:

Swamped seems to not do it justice; just this morning, I noticed an email that I hadn't seen saying that I have been shipped 6 more fruit/nut trees that I ordered a long time ago.  I have been looking for them, and was going to dig holes for them so that I didn't have to do it in the dark after work, but I spent half the day at the chapel yesterday at a workday, so I will spend all afternoon today digging holes and building fences around them to keep the sheep off of them... Ugh.