gourdacious grounds and then there's more.

Saturday: 5 pints tomato/spaghetti sauce. 10 jars (1/4 pints mostly) sun-dried tomatoes. Two more batches in the hopper.

Sunday: 6 pints salsa - combining the stuff I made a few days ago but didn't can, with the hot mix I did today. EXcellent flavor combined. Salsa fresca and cooked salsa together.

On Saturday, I put compost on a bunch more gourd plants. The gourd society here is pretty picky about their gourds and if I don't get them thick enough, I'll be run out on a rail. Which is what happens at their meetings, and which is why I don't go to them any more.

Most of the plants are doing okay, but the ones in good soil by the house and in the garden (where they shouldn't be) are so healthy that I know the gourds need this extra boost of compost. I also took a smelly, maggot-infested container of natural fertilizer that had been soaked with rain and will add a bunch more water to it, then sprinkle the fields with it.

Mike cleaned out the barn on Saturday and fixed a few things like the front-yard-gourd-area-to-the-street-fencing. Then we were able to move the orange portable fence out further and watched the goats go nuts over the new area to browse and eat.

On the ground, underneath where the broody hen was nesting (she had only one egg this morning, but about ten the day before - which means we need to set our trap again and catch the possum or raccoon that's been getting them), Mike found a snakeskin, probably from a rat snake or corn snake. We have a few snakes around these parts.

Today, Sunday, I've made a cooked salsa by throwing things in that I know go with it. I also look online for recipes, but never use them, only cooking times, ideas about what goes in them and general prep instructions from many sources. This is how I think the Internet is most useful. A ton of ideas from which to create your own unique flavors. Also making lemon bars and since baking is much more a science sometimes than an art, I use a real recipe and just one.

Mike is making tomato bread (what else!) and smoked some tomatoes on the grill, then let me have them to dry. They smell wonderful and fill the house with the smell of oak wood.

One of our little goats, Thirty, which is Ten's kid, is having problems with worms, so Mike and I wormed it. Mama goat, who we thought we gave a good dose of worming stuff to before, seems to have worms again. Poopy butt, swollen jowls, lethargy. All signs of an unhealthy goat.

In the afternoon, we got another fifty feet of fencing installed, pulling down the old field fence and attempting to put up newer stuff. This ridiculous neighbor ( a mile down the road a bit) stopped by -- mind you, many people stop by to give us reports like "I've been here 27 years and never seen nuthin' lahk it.." or, "this flood was really unusual". All reports amount to the same thing -- that the flash flood we had wasn't typical. But THIS lady... "this fence goes down every single year..." Uh. Huh. Mind you, we've been here three years and only once has this happened and everyone else says it hasn't happened for a long time. The lady had expensive hair, a nice car and one of those really fake smiles that say, "I don't belong in the country".

We are both exhausted, but managed to go to Home Depot, to the grocery store and to Tractor Supply to pick up some goat feed. Mike is making chicken wings for dinner and I just don't know how he has the energy to do it.

On the way home, heading down the driveway to the house, we watched the goats. They have access to the area we set up that goes beyond where they were able to eat but have not gone out there all day. This is probably because they don't have to go far to eat grass. But they were, at the end of the day, in this newly created area. We think that because they weren't allowed to go into it until yesterday late in the day, they just didn't go there in the morning. Creatures of habit, they are.