Some Pictures From Around the Farm

I took a few photos of how things look right now around here.  Things seem to be growing nicely, except for the grapes.  If you recall from a previous post, we were thrilled with this year's grape crop.  However, we got that dreaded fungus on our grapes again.  We have had very rainy weather, in fact way too much rain - and that is responsible for the fungus on the grapes.  

A cluster of grapes with the dreaded fungal disease.

We will still have some grapes, but we have lost a great many clusters due to fungus.  It doesn't help either that the deer have eaten a lot of the grapes also!

We may not have grapes this year, but we will certainly have apples!  Our tree is so loaded with apples the branches are just sagging with the weight.

Just look at how every branch is loaded with apples!  The back side of the tree is just as loaded with apples.   There are hundreds of apples to pick later next month!

The apples are about half the size they will eventually be.

My zinnia patch - so tall and pretty!

This year I also decided to grow statice flowers for dry arrangements for winter.  Next year I will grow plenty of these flowers, as they are so pretty in a container, and dry so well into bouquets for lasting arrangements.

A bunch of statice in an old enamel coffee pot on my porch.  I think they make beautiful dried flowers!

Things are growing nicely in the greenhouse, too.  The carrots on the left will be harvested for market tomorrow, as well as the parsley and romaine lettuce.

After lunch today, we gave the cats the corn cobs to chew on.  They just love it!  They like to eat whole corn, too, when the corn harvest is ready.

Several of the farm cats enjoying some corn.  They love to chew on the buttery bits of corn left on the ears.

Here are a couple of pictures of new farm kittens:

A kitten born in May thinks a cement block is just comfy!

A camera shy kitten hides under the porch.

Earlier this month when my son Kelly was visiting us, there was a big thunderstorm and a deluge of rain.  About 1:30 a.m. Kelly was outside enjoying some quiet country and fresh air after the storm, and heard a kitten crying and crying.  He called me outside to help him find where the kitten was.  So I got dressed and together (it just started raining again), we found the kitten - completely soaked, nearly drowned in a puddle, very cold and barely alive.  I wrapped him in a warm towel and tried to find its mama.  All our mama cats were running around frantically trying to find their kittens.  I put the kitten next to one mama, but she just sniffed him and walked away, so I knew that wasn't the mama.   Nobody seemed to claim him, so I just left him in the warm towel and put him in his cat house until morning.   Next day I expected to find him dead, but he was alive and well fed and dry.   Here he is today.  I call him Thunder, because he had quite a loud voice in the rainstorm!

Here is little Thunder, the kitten rescued from a pounding thunderstorm!

Finally, let me show you what I did to my favorite straw hat.  I have had this hat for about 10 years - it's almost a part of me.  But it was falling apart.  So I sewed some patches on it, and made it look like a real "hayseed hat"!  I even added a daisy for good measure!   Now my hat and me can enjoy a few more years together!

I just couldn't give up my straw hat!  When it started falling apart, I decided to fix it.  Now it's a real "country hat" don't you think??