How about Friday bullets on Saturday?

November 03, 2018

So I plan all these art projects, thinking everyone will enjoy them. In reality, there is usually one person who gets upset and stomps away from the table. Yesterday, I had a new record: two in tears and one who was so frustrated she was growling. The art project wasn't even that hard. I don't know what that was all about.
I have now met Emmy's farrier, and we are on his schedule for December, here at our house. Boy, the barn better be done by then! Emmy is barefoot, and stand very nicely for the farrier.
The P. family gave us a small greenhouse that was given to them, but they never used. It has been sitting in a pile by the side of our house since we moved. Last weekend, we finally got around to trying to figure out how to set it up. We made it work! Now, I need to get out there and plant a new crop of cold hardy vegetables.

I have found a new sewing store in nearby Geneva, that I am madly in love with.
The Halloween candy that was collected this year is now nearly gone. Thursday was spent by the masses in sorting and trading and looking at the stockpile of sugary goodness. But look what they set aside for me?

They also made a container of candy labeled "Big Kids Candy" for the older ones who didn't go trick-or-treating.

The lines for the trenching to bring electricity and water out to the barn are spray painted on the grass, as are the fencing and gate lines. I'm told the trenching will start Tuesday or Wednesday, and the barn parts are due to be delivered by the end of next week. There is still a part of me that doesn't quite believe that this is going to happen, so I'll believe when I see it when all this starts.
My kombucha worked! I now have a SCOBY hotel, a new batch of kombucha brewing, and my first batch is doing a secondary brew with cherries for flavoring. I even managed to get J. to taste a little bit, though he has not been overly enthusiastic about my kombucha experiments.
Today, some older children and I walked down our street to a house having a yard sale. Not only did I buy some cool vintage sewing patterns (in sort of my size) for less than 50 cents each, but I got the scoop on some local history. We discovered that there is an old cemetery on our street, and we had no idea at all. We stopped by it on our way back home. It made me feel a little bit like Anne of Green Gables.

This is what it looks like from the road. Do you see that small wall down there across the grass? That's it.

Here is what it looks like inside.

Look how you get into the walled area. See those steps? You climb up one side and then down the other, with tall steps like these on both sides.

The graves are all very old, and many are so worn you cannot read what was carved. This was one that we could read, and we were a little fascinated to see that this man lived to be 102. This means he was born in 1771, five years before the Declaration of Independence.

We were a little fascinated by him, so M. did some quick Googling while we walked home. It turns out that William Lance was the first white settler in the area, moving here is 1834. It was fascinating to find his grave just down the street from our house. I love history.

Some of you on Facebook have seen this picture, but I wanted to share it with everyone. One of our chickens laid a crazy huge egg. The other egg is a regular sized chicken egg. K. ate it; it had two yolks.

I didn't put a picture of Olive's Halloween costume.

The appliances are all still working. The new (to us) range even has a burner that flips over to hold a wok. That was a pleasant surprise.
Finally, I got a couple of better pictures of Emmy. It is killing me a little bit to now have her here, as it's difficult for me to get up to her very often. I keep telling myself that three more weeks will seem like nothing in the long run.