Chasing Cows and Cats

Finally some good, dry weather and the yearling bulls and heifers are wild to get at each other. I chased cows out of neighbors yards three times last week. Even barbed wire won't sooth their lust.

The vet came to vaccinate calves and we backed out of the castrations. He convinced us to leave the boys intact. You may ask why I don't have the calves castrated when they are babies. The answer is simple. I don't know if I want to keep them as breeding bulls until they are almost a year old. I keep bulls as herd bull prospects if they are of good disposition and good body structure. Wild or difficult to manage animals are scheduled for slaughter to keep them from reproducing. 

This spring has produced only one bull calf and the rest heifers. That's good as I needed some replacement heifers. It's also good as I already have a buyer for the bull calf.

On the cat front, I am over run with them. A couple of months ago a little black cat with big green eyes started hanging out on the back porch, fighting my three tom cats and howling at me to feed her. I resisted for a long time, but finally gave in. I noticed she looked a little droopy in the belly like she might be pregnant.

Pretty soon another cat showed up. A tom cat with long hair. He runs as soon as I open the backdoor and hangs out in the bull barn. My three tom cats don't like him and fight him regularly.

Monday, while I was loading the tractor with hay and grain for the morning feed, I thought I saw a kitten in the bull barn.

This week on Tuesday I came home from work to find the little black cat with four kittens cavorting around the back porch. The long haired tom cat was with them as well. The little kittens are cute but ran for cover as soon as I opened the door. They all have long hair, so I guess that long haired tom is the "baby daddy".  They continue to hang around the back porch as a family - mom, dad and the kids. In my experience its very unusual for the tom to care for the kitten.

I put out a plate of cat food and a bowl of milk and the whole family chowed down. I'm going to have to move the food to barn.

Fleabane and Goldfinch

Last summer I allowed a clump of daisy fleabane to bloom in one of my flower beds. It repaid me by providing me a huge new crop of daisy fleabane plants all over the bed. I've been pulling these "volunteers" out by the arm load all weekend.  Unlike the lovely little forget-me-nots that gifted me with drifts of radiant blue flowers, the daisy fleabane is tall and scraggly in the wet weather. There must be a lesson in there somewhere, just not sure what it is. Perhaps I will be visited with a plaque of fleas this year.

I've been watching a pair of Goldfinch this weekend. Saturday they were in the field behind the house busy in the tall grass. This morning I spoted them zinging across the bull pasture with their distinctive roller coaster flying style. They ended up flitting around the the fences near the chicken house.  They appeared to be having fun just being together. Goldfinch don't nest until late in the season when the thistles bloom, as they like to use the thistle down to line their nests. This pair seemed to be having a lot of fun, but I am sure they are just checking out possible nest sites.

Plant Sales and Farmers Markets

This morning is the annual Lebanon Council of Garden Clubs plant sale. Members of the three Lebanon area garden clubs donate plants from their gardens and sell them to the public to raise funds for the maintenance of the Lebanon Station, home of the Lebanon Council of Garden Clubs. It's raining, of course, but that didn't stop the crowds from coming. I am a member of the Town & Country Garden Club and contributed Hosats, for-get-me-notsnettle, bergamot, iris, coral bells and a couple of Rutgers tomato plants.  All together the club members donated over 500 pots of plants to the sale.

While I was loading my car with my donated plants, I suddenly remembered the Saturday mornings in Indiana when my ex-husband and I were members of a little home grown farmers market. The market took place Saturday mornings from 7:00 am to 11:00 am in downtown Zionsville. We sold eggs and I always took a chicken with me every week to represent the flock. I had a lot of different breeds, as I do now, so I could bring a different breed each week. We were the hit of the market. We also sold flowers and vegetables.  Our day started at 4:00 am when we'd pick all the fresh produce and load the car. Most of us had pickup trucks or SUV's and just sold our stuff out of the back of the vehicle. It as great. At first we had mostly women up early before the rest of the family our buying. There was a coffee shop 1/2 a block away and one gentleman had a table full of homemade (actually baked in a church's kitchen) scones and breads. The ladies got their coffee and scones and shopped. Pretty soon they started bringing the whole family, including dogs.  It was just idyllic.

The Council of Garden Clubs owns a former train station and grounds. I am proposing we start our own Saturday morning farmers market at the Lebanon Station. It would be a good way to make extra money for the upkeep of the station. There is a bakery and coffee shop next door and the excursion train brings in loads of people. Perfect!  Now all I have to do is convince the garden club ladies to go for it - and fine someone to help oversee the Saturday mornings when I am  working at the museum.

Cookbooks for Brides

My niece is getting married this fall and that has started me thinking about cookbooks that I might give her for a shower gift. She’s already been promised my extra Kitchenaid stand mixer (left over from Copperfield’s Coffee Café) and I thought perhaps a couple of cookbooks should go with the mixer.

I didn’t really learn to cook until I was in graduate school and was so tired of chicken pot pies and canned soup that I decided to learn to cook some of the foods I missed from home. Just by luck I happened to purchase a copy of “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook”, eleventh edition.

The first thing I made was lemon pudding cake and it was just like my mother and grandmother made.  I started cooking other recipes from that cookbook and have never been disappointed with it.  They are always simple and easy to follow with no complicated instructions. I've purchased later editions of the  “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook” over the years but always go back to the eleventh edition. I love its good, old fashioned homey recipes.

Lately though I’ve been enjoying a newer version of the “Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook”. The recipes are also simple and easy to follow with a few updated ingredients. But mostly I like the nutrition information that comes with each recipe. 

When I want to challenge myself I get out my two volume set of Julie Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. When I was a kid we never missed Julie on the television and when I got my first real job and my first real apartment I invested in her cookbooks and a large enameled cast iron Dutch oven. I taught myself to make Hollandaise from Julia and a really good leg of lamb.

I miss “Gourmet” magazine, though I admit I rarely made any of their recipes. They were not always geared toward Midwest  food availability or markets. But I loved reading the magazine. We were subscribers for over 40 years, right up until it quit publication.

Vet Postponed

It was just too wet and muddy to have the Vet come to work on the bulls. Maybe next week. In the meantime I've been working on the garden. We've had a couple of days of no rain and I was able to get 17 broccoli plants into the garden. My goal is to have a freezer full of broccoli to last all year.  I also planted lettuce among the broccoli and weeded, weeded, weeded.

The strawberries are blooming and the asparagus has finally kicked in. Dinner tonight was another big helping of roasted asparagus. I can eat asparagus every night for the next six weeks. Like so many things, when you get to pick, cook and eat all within an hour, the vegetable will be so much better.  I hated Brussels sprouts until I grew my own. Now I try to have Brussels sprouts fresh from my garden on the Thanksgiving table. They are always best after a good frost and will usually keep producing through the end of November.