Yesterday we blessed Weston at church. We got Max to come which was the first time since we've lived here! In Weston's blessing, he was blessed to grow healthy and strong, to be instrumental in bringing others to the knowledge of the gospel, to be a good example to his brothers and sister, to be patient with his parents as they help him learn and grow, and to always be able to discern right from wrong with the aid of the Holy Spirit. It was a nice blessing.
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| Baby boy not so happy! He had just woken up. |
On Friday, I harvested a bunch of stuff from my garden and had enough cucumbers for a big batch of Bread and Butter Pickles. YUM! Jason introduced these to me when we were first married. I've always hated sweet pickles and thought bread and butter pickles were basically the same thing. Turned out I was wrong. These are more mustardy than sweet and have great flavor. My recipe is from the Ball canning book and doesn't seem to use as much sugar as I've seen a lot of other recipes use which I definitely prefer.
This is a pretty quick and easy canning project and I very much recommend it if you have a bunch of cucumbers. Note: Only use about 1 large white onion and not as many as the actual recipe recommends or else you seem to end up with a bottle of onions and only a few pickles. It is so hard to wait at least a couple weeks to let the pickles get good flavor! I want to open a bottle now! *sigh*
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| Beautiful cucumbers and onions from my garden ready to pickle! |
On the way home, when we were driving past our neighbors, the Secrest's house. Jason noticed one of their cows out in his field had just given birth to twins. We knew the Secrest's were in Hawaii for a couple weeks and Jason was worried the cow wouldn't take one of the babies, which I guess often happens when cows have twins. Jason has a soft spot for baby cows I have discovered. He used to raise them with his dad and grandpa when he was a kid.
On Sunday morning, on the way to church we saw that one calf was sure enough all alone laying in the middle of the field and the mamma and other calf was gone with the rest of the herd. After sacrament meeting and Weston's blessing Jason left to go get the calf before it dehydrated and died. He and his dad warmed up some whole milk, found a sheep nipple over at Leah's and force fed the bull calf. He didn't seem to like the bottle.
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| Poor, sweet, abandoned bull calf! |
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| Yes, that is a Mountain Dew bottle. The only bottle we could fit the nipple on. |
1 dog, 20 some-odd chickens, 6 pigs, 3 full grown cows and now a bull calf. Are we officially a farm yet??!! What could possibly be next?
Hey! You've got a lot going on over there! We would've come to WEston's blessing..... ahem. Just saying. And if you ever need a baby sitter for the bull calf, or Weston, we can do that too:)
ReplyDeleteJess, I'm such a dork! I just assume I'm so out of the way now that no one will want to come out this way especially for just a couple minute blessing. Sooo sorry I didn't say anything! Please don't hate me :) Come out any time.
DeleteFor some reason- my blog reader didn't show that you had any new posts! I was happily surprised to see the updates when I stopped by. I'm with Jess. We woul have totally come. I know what it's like to just assume people won't be able to make it, though. I still feel bad about not inviting anyone to Bre's adoption. :( ANYway- so COOL that you have a cow. And chickens! I want chickens. My kids would be in heaven there. We simply must visit.
ReplyDeleteConsider yourself included in the reply to Jessica. sorry sorry sorry! You're welcome here anytime. I should see you tomorrow, though!! Idaho, here we come. Wish me luck on a 6 hour+ car ride with just me and the 4 kiddos and one of them wants fed every three hours. We'll see how it goes.
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