New Eggs

Finally, most of my chickens are laying eggs now. It's still not as many as I would like, considering we have 19 layers out there. We are getting 6-8 eggs a day, in varying colors. One day we had a larger than normal one which ended up being a double yoke.

Cotton Harvest Festival

I'm just now getting around to posting a few photos of the festival that happened several weeks ago. This year we decided we'd participate in the morning fun run. I could only manage the 1K walk, while the rest of the family made a strong showing in the 5K walk/run. We were amused that we all got medals for being the best in our age category. Obviously, there were lots of age categories and lots of medals given out.

The festival celebrates the local cotton harvest.

I'd guess about 100 people turned up for the morning fun run.

For $20 you can enter the race and get a t-shirt.

The runners were stretching.

Since I was walking, I was at the back of the pack.

My finishing time was just a few minutes before the 5K run winner.

Yes, we were all winners in our categories!

We still don't completely understand the tractor pull, but it was fun to watch.

There was a new Big Tex inflatable.

This pickup was my favorite of the old cars on display.

There were many choices for fried food.

We went back in the evening to ride the Ferris Wheel.

Friday Night Lights

We decided to go to all the home high school football games this year. It wasn't that hard because there were only five home games. We even managed to go to one nearby away game.

We tried to sit roughly in the same spot each time (except for the away game), around the 50 yard line, mid way up the bleachers.

Here are a few photos.

August 29

September 5

September 12

October 10

October 17

October 31

New Lettuce

We have more lettuce again. The hydroponic towers aren't good for everything, but they are particularly good for lettuce. I tried to space out the planting so that the lettuce would be ready at different times, but somehow it's still all ready at the same time. It's mostly romaine with a little round and red thrown in for variety. I've found that the lettuce will just keep growing if you just snap off individual leaves - rather than taking the whole head. We usually have more than we can eat and start giving it away before it shoots up with seeds. We like it best as a Caesar salad.

More Wood Chips

When grass (weeds?) started appearing in the wood chips, Guv'nor decided we needed a thicker layer of wood chips. So when the landscape company phoned the other day with a good offer, he accepted it.

What we didn't think about was that it had rained the day before. So when the truck arrived, it, of course, got stuck in the mud. Thankfully, we can now offer help with our tractor.

Over the course of the next few days, Guv'nor was able to spread the wood chips and more manure on top of the existing pile. He read somewhere that cardboard boxes are a good weed barrier, so he put as much as we had under the wood chips.

Now we are growing mushrooms.