An evening at the County Fair
Every year we say we are going to go to the fair and see the bullriding competition. This year we finally made it. We went early, visited our friends who were showing their llamas in open class, had a look at the goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits and cows, looked at the exhibits in the fiber sections, avoided a clown, ate deep fried dinner while watching teen-age boys showing off to teenage girls by doing back-flips off of a garbage can, and finally settled down at the grandstand with some roasted cashews and a bag of carmel corn to watch the big event…
When the ambulance showed up, and parked with it’s doors open and ready, we knew we were in for a show!
The bulls are HUGE, and some of them are quite angry! Even after they had disposed of their rider they ran around looking for someone else to rough up – maybe a clown or one of the ropers in the ring. It was great watching the guys scurry up onto the fence as the bulls came by looking for someone to ‘hook up’ with 🙂
As the evening wore on it got dark, and the lights from the midway were beautiful. The weather was perfect and despite the clouds it was a warm summer night.
Afterwards we walked the midway and enjoyed the whirling lights and watched the people staggering off of the rides. There is a ride called the slingshot that shoots people on a bungie cord high into the air – like ten stories or something – it’s insane!
And there are the regular tame rides like the giant ferris wheel. I’d love to see how they set it up and take it down. It doesn’t seem possible that in a week this will be a big empty parking lot for another year. I’m glad we took the time to go enjoy the fair(usually I just do the 4H stuff and go home) we had a great time!
My boy, the card shark
We brought home a deck of cards from our trip to Vegas a year or so ago, and left them on the table in the front room where Barclay discovered then. Once he’d devoured one card, the deck was ruined, so there was nothing to do but leave them there, and he regularly steals another one to chew up, or he’ll fetch one so he has something in his mouth to greet us at the door when we come home.
Oh, a 2, you’ll never win with that one…
Happy boy!
German oven baked apple pancake
I made this for breakfast this morning, using the instructions on this blog post
http://athomewiththefarmerswife.blogspot.com/2009/08/german-oven-baked-apple-pancake.html
So easy, and so delicious! I recommend giving it a try 🙂
Five Star Farms
I did a website for Five Star Farms in Brush Prairie, WA. I advertised earlier this year that I wanted to do website work for small farmers and they could pay me in produce (I knew I wasn’t going to be doing much gardening), and this is the only person who took me up on it. So she paid me with a basket of veg last weekend – tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, onions, red and BLUE potatoes, beets, peppers, baby carrots, and probably something else I’m forgetting. All fresh and from her farm or her partner’s farms (they’ve teamed up to provide enough variety to keep customers happy. So this week I’ve had tacos with peppers and onions, lettuce and tomatoes, BLT sandwiches, homemade pizza (hand made crust with fresh tomatoes and basil from my garden), homemade spaghetti sauce and pasta with steamed baby carrots, steamed green beans, I just can’t hardly figure out what to do with it all!
It all tastes so much better than the stuff from the store – the tomatoes taste more tomato-y, the carrots taste more carrot-y, the green beans taste more beany! It’s all so good! I wish we could eat fresh produce year-around. The growing season is too short!
Around the chickenyard
We had a little incident yesterday with our ‘escape artist’ chickens. I didn’t notice one had got out and we went out with the dogs, and Dioji ran into her, so he and Barclay cornered her under the bushes and it was all I could do to hold Dioji back. Meanwhile Barclay had her by the tail and she was screaming and squawking, and Jack was trying to get in on the action. Dave heard the commotion and came out to help, and I put her in the extra chicken tractor in the other part of the backyard away from the dogs, then I added another runaway this morning, and her sister who was broody and needed to get off the nest anyway. So I have three hens in this tractor. Hopefully there won’t be any more dog incidents.
Inside the orchard fence, the other tractor is a nursery.
Big Red and her ten happy chicks. Occasionally one escapes and runs around the tractor peeping because it can’t figure out how to get back in. So I’ll catch them (a big fishing net helps) and put them back. I’m hoping they’ll outgrow the holes they are sneaking out through soon!
Baby rooster on the chair
Working on his cock-a-doodle-doos 🙂More Dioji
Dioji is doing well with these strange creatures we call ‘cats’. Obviously they aren’t afraid of him.
Lots of roughhousing. Barclay loves it!
Houseguest – Dioji
Our friends Brian and Merilee had a family thing to go to this week, and Dioji the Golden Retriever needed a place to crash, so we said ‘bring him on over!’ He’s a sweetie, and since all the dogs are friendly (except Alki, who sends out bug-off vibes just fine) we figured they could have fun playing together. Seems to be working out fine so far 🙂
Barclay likes to chase and be chased, and wrestling. Dioji wasn’t sure how to play with him, and he even scared Barclay a couple times by barking at him (sending him running back to me until he felt brave enough to go play again). But Jack and Barclay gave him a demonstration of their favorite play style. You can see him studying them intently! And they had a couple scuffles over toys. They’re like teenage boys – one minute they are partners in crime, next thing you know someone is howling because they got punched. But overall it’s been great and everyone seems to be having a good time.
Sunset Falls
On Sunday Barclay and I took a drive out to Sunset Falls. Sunset Falls is the closest NFS campground, and I was wondering if it would be a nice place to take the trailer to for a weekend, since it’s only about 20 miles away. Because of the economy we haven’t had the trailer out all year! Barclay enjoyed wading in the cool water, and even stepped into an unexpectedly deep pool and had to paddle a bit. Unfortunately we didn’t have the place to ourselves.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to find tons of people, car alarms going off, radios blaring, basically all the things you head to the forest to get away from! Still, people can be interesting sometimes…
In the fall we have been here and watched salmon jumping up this waterfall. Now in the heat of summer the waterfall was much smaller, and people were wading around and jumping into the pool below.
Wheeeeee! File this under ‘things I will NEVER do’!(though there’s a part of me that wishes otherwise)
Straight across the pool was a steep dirt path people were also using to run down and jump into the pool. This guy got a pretty impressive canonball going.
The rocks were very pretty with the water rushing by.
I liked this leaf and it’s shadow in a still pool.
Steff Does Stuff! 