I could come and just bake. Think what I could do with no cow interruptions.

I know you go on vacation, and it's great you make it possible for others to get away. It's really hard finding dependable people AND someone with common sense!

She really is getting a deal if you are filling her freezer with baked goods, no easy chore that, either. I know when you do it all the time it seems easy, but try to explain that to someone who doesn't bake. But you sure made me hungry. I LOVE the desserts and I bake but I cannot get motivated to do any lately, not even for myself. By the way, I know what you mean about not having your Kitchen Aid mixer! All my kids got them so when I come over, if I'm going to bake for them I don't have to put up with a weenie mixer! now, baking sheets/pans is another story.

I do not have any experience milking except a couple times a goat for my son and that was enough. I prefer the gardening stuff.

Nice that you can make an enjoyable time of your work as well.

It is finally hot, just in time for summer.

Stan finished and Marc (SIL) started first cutting yesterday. The big round baler didn't work right on it's first outing Friday, so it spent overnight at the dealership and is fine now. Stan lost one bale. There's a 100 foot drop on the edge of the field up on the hill and one bale dropped a little close and caught a dip and rolled to the rim and over into the gully. That one is gone forever as there is no good way to get anywhere near it. When they get done at Marc's, they will go up to Melissa's.

Friday night was graduation and Tom, the eldest grandchild, was Valedictorian of his class. His speech started out being about their years at school and the goofy things they did (and they are a goofy class), but then he talked about the people who had influenced him. The Superintendent at Clymer was murdered last September, one of the highschool teachers died of breast cancer in January and then he lost his Uncle Adam in May. He memorialized all of them in his speech and how their loss will influence his view of life, and how the memory of them will be part of him always. It was a lovely speech.

Sounds like a really memorable graduation speech, Kathleen.

Ah, yes, the Tenpas family continues its tradition of over-achievement. Congratulations! Clearly you folks are doing something right.

Got a milking gig starting Tuesday..............for 12 DAYS!!! Good thing the commute is only 3 miles or we'd go berserk in the getting there 2x/day. LOL Got a call yesterday from another gal that lives about 5 miles from us; wanting us for one Sat. night in Oct. Their daughter is getting married. Only about 30 cows, so shouldn't be a problem. They have a small parlor, I've never milked there before but was there a year ago to feed calves for her and the SU mixed feed and cleaned the free stalls. She did the milking; she just didn't want to be there alone in case something went wrong. So, I helped in the parlor a little but didn't have to do any myself. That's why I don't remember any of the procedure there.

After a drier than normal winter and spring, with snow pack in the mountains at about 75% of normal, we got 1.6 inches of rain here and quite a lot of snow in the nearby mountains that will melt and be irrigation water. 1.6 inches does not seem like much rain for most of you, but it is for us! Normal rainfall for a month is less than what we got as a nice slow soaker in about 36 hours.

Mary, we are having a very wet summer, about 12 inches of rain a couple of weekends ago over a 3 day period and rain off and on (mostly on) since. Makes haying an interesting proposition. Do you mow, or do you wait. If you mow, it will rain. If you don't the rain will stay 3 states away or run up and go over Canada. Marc has chosen to get what he has down baled and to his hay customer. Stan is brush hogging pastures at his brother's up on Clymer Hill and moving big round bales around.

I made rolls for lunch expecting 7 people, but it looks like I may be down to 3 or 4. The little kids went down to an impromptu birthday party for Marc's brother's daughter and Jess will be going down when she gets the rotten silage all on the spreader. That leaves me, Stan and Kelly and maybe Marc. I pretty much plan for ravening hordes, and if the numbers are down, more for tomorrow.

So far this year we seem to be having "normal" rainfall - whatever that means these days. However we have not recovered from the drought as rivers and lakes are below what they should be.

My shredding has been interrupted as the favorite tractor is in the shop; the lift wouldn't hold. So I've been fixing fence, doing minor chicken coop remodeling and replacing the annoying leaky water troughs.

The sky is leaking again. It seems that with about 5 projects in progress, there is always something to do instead of whateverwe can't because of ? reason.

Looks like we're gonna get another onslaught. Thundering now, crappy looking off to the southwest. Yuck.

I made my little hedgehog "planter". Isn't it just too cute??

Superlatively cute! What plant is his fur?

The ID stick said some kind of sedum. Well, it didn't say that exactly............ I can't remember the correct variety.

Tom's grad party is today and I've been baking brownies all morning. I had to stir up a batch and a half for each as the aluminum pans are a bit bigger than my nice glass brownie pan and they are each a different color. Two are pretty much the same shade of chocolate that my brownies usually are, one is very light and the other very dark. 'Twill be interesting to see how they all taste! I woke up with a screaming headache, so I'll use that and the extra 1/2 batch of ingredients as my excuses.

It rains on. We are having the party up in Melissa's garage. I think she wanted it there to add a cheerful note after the somberness of Adam's wake, although even then, there was a good deal of joyful remembering. Stan took the base he built for her (his) hay elevator up last night. I got the task of following up the big hill - nice and slopey near the bottom, a brief more level spot and then what feels like straight up. All went well and the Trailblazer chugged up in low gear quite nicely for all it's 10 years old and rather abused.

It's almost 7 PM and still 103 degrees (down from 107). Did morning chores and ran errands this afternoon, but I was planning to shred the south paddock - maybe a little later...

We had a pleasant afternoon at a wedding at a pretty reservoir in the mountains where the temperature was about 77 on a sunny day with a nice breeze. Then we came back to town for the reception/buffet dinner which was very good. The reception took place in an air conditioned community center. The temperature in town was something over 90. In the next 3 days we will have increasing temperatures up to 103 on Tuesday and cooler again after that.

There is a nice brisk breeze and the temperature is cooler than the house temperature, so we have the house open to let the air come through. We close it up again just after sunrise. We've never had AC in a house, only in vehicles.

the preachers at church are on vacation, so so are we. I walked down to the evergreen plantations and found a little muscle wood tree to come home with. I sat down by the little pond on the way back and listened to the bullfrogs solos and the duck chorus. The ducks are some that Adam bought the kids early last spring. Melissa decided that they would do better here on the little pond than there with the adolescent border collie. We don't have any intentions of raising ducks, but they have cleared out the duck weed. We started with 7, but 2 disappeared the first night - there's a fox in the neighborhood. Another disappeared awhile later. Now there are 4, but we'd only seen 3 on the water the last few days. While I was sitting there, I heard ducky noises coming from the high grass across the pond where Stan had put a cleaned out soap barrel for a shelter. Is it possible that we have duck eggs? Two of the remaining ducks are larger white ducks, Pekins? The other two are smaller brown ducks, Rouen? I assume the little brown ducks are female and it is one of these that is over in the grass.

Oh, how cool if you get to have little duckys on your pond. I love ducks.

Nothing much cuter than ducklings.