What's happening at the Nikkel's?
We are no longer building saddle trees, but we have two videos about how Western saddles fit horses available on our westernsaddlefit.com website.
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Well, the flowers are still blooming like crazy in front of the house and the shop.
The lawn has been cut. (That this fact rates a mention on here tells you something about the rarity of this event…)
In the garden, the peas and the beans are finished
and we are making inroads on the corn.
Meanwhile, the grasshoppers are making inroads on the carrot tops,
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not to mention the potatoes and onion tops. (Note to self – harvest these tomorrow before they get devastated any further…)
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We have been eating and freezing green peppers from the greenhouse, and the hot peppers are going crazy. Lots of hot salsa for Rod this winter!
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It is great to have as many cucumbers as we want to eat fresh, and the tomatoes are just starting to turn color.
The mint is drying in our home made dehydrator out in the back room of the shop. It’s not often I can walk into the rawhide room and say “It smells good in here...”
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The zucchini relish is made and canned for the year. (I like the yellow zucchini. You and see them and pick them before they turn into giant green monsters overnight…) And the freezer is filling up!
We have a few new inhabitants in our house. Bella the puppy is very cute and great fun, and she’s learning a few essentials, like the appropriate place to pee...
It seems that every 10 years or so we get the privilege of hosting a “kid” for a while. This decade’s resident is well and truly installed, having had a week of school already. Since she’s the niece who helped us put together Arnie, we’re going to have a lot of fun together this winter!
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She came equipped with a couple of budgies, and she introduced us to a pair of zebra finches as well.
There are four chicks in the nest, with one left to hatch! (And yes, a guest did comment that it sounds like a jungle in here at times, what with my two canaries as well…)
Out in the shop, Rod has just kept on trucking along. He rawhided the set of four trees he finished building earlier in the week – three Wades and a Buster Welch. The two on the end are older trees, including the Aussie tree.
Under the bench at the back are some trees further along in the drying process – all four of which happen to be Wades of different permutations and combinations.
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And today he got the next set of four all cut out and ready to go. (In contrast to all the Wades we have around now, these four are all metal horn forks – two barrel racer trees and a couple of different slick forks.) Then he got started on the bars for the barrel racers.
The scrap wood on the front of the woodpile is getting close to the max for the year. It gets added to all summer when we don’t need the wood stove, and is used up to start the fires long before the winter is over. I expect in just over a month or so we’ll be back to using it again…
Inside the house, at the desk, the big computer is once again dark and quiet (silly power flickers and surges…) so I am back to using the slow laptop…
And all of this “life” stuff this may, or may not, have to do with the dearth of blog posts lately…
