hodge podge

We recently learned that our Amish friends, Sam and Fanny are expecting their first child. They have been married seven years. We found out through the grapevine….news does travel relatively fast in our rural community. Last week when Coop stopped by their home to get eggs and milk, he congratulated Fanny. She happened to have a young girl of about 13 with her, helping her out around the place since she had not been feeling well. She spoke something to the girl in German and the girl left the room. Once the girl was out of hearing range, Fanny explained that they do not speak of such things around children or those not yet married. Coop of course apologized, but Fanny said there was no need for that since he hadn’t actually made known what he was referring to. Having lived around the Amish and taken their presence for granted the better part of our lives, Coop and I both have developed a bigger interest in their ways. Again, something new we’ve learned about their customs.

Yesterday I cooked up a pot of rice and veggies in chicken stock. Nothing better on a damp, windy day than a bowl of hot soup and a chunk of wheat bread.

There are no hard and fast rules to making this. Just start off with a pot of chicken stock, add some chopped celery, onion, carrots, and cook, seasoning with a little parsley, savory, adding salt or bouillon to suit your taste. Add some brown rice (we like Basmati best for its nutty flavor) last and cook until tender.

Today is a beautiful day and much of it I have spent outdoors. The past few days have been windy and wet, keeping me from planting my lettuce patch. I decided that instead of flowers in the bed at the front of the porch I would grow my lettuce there…very convenient. So today I seeded that bed with Cimarron, an heirloom red romaine.

Coop has tilled up what many years ago used to be the area where we grew the root vegetables, and then later a strawberry patch. During the years since we’ve been away from this place, Arnold (the previous tenant/owner) had turned that area back to yard. I believe now that it is additional garden space I will plant my beets there and perhaps some cucumbers or squash.

I also spent some quality time today with my seedlings by transplanting the extras. Some pots had one or two additional seedlings that came up so now they are all in their own pots. Total plant count is as follows:

39 Brandywine tomatoes

24 Purple Russian tomatoes

20 Duggin White tomatoes

6 Green Sausage tomatoes

16 (or possibly 24 since I’m not sure if the other 8 are the same or not!) King of the North sweet peppers.

12 Romanian Hot peppers

15 Jalapeño peppers

Keep in mind I’ll be sharing some of these plants with my daughter…who by the way, seems to be doing extremely well on her natural path to overcoming c. diff. Yay! More on that in due time.

Coop busied himself this weekend putting together a work bench in the garage. The top part came out of the ranch up the road. The rest he constructed from scrap lumber. Photo was taken yesterday before he finished things today by bolting two vises to the top, one on each end. Why two? Simply because he had two. :)

So, how has your weekend been?