Labor Day Weekend, Drilling, & September is Here

Nieces, Nephews & Dogs Ready to Go to the Pond!

I am certainly glad we don't have a party like this every weekend.  I am ready for some serious down time.  We had family staying at the farm all weekend and on Saturday we had lots of friends and neighbors over for a cookout and cornhole and general socializing.  Lots of fun.

We even had homebrew on tap.  

On Sunday, most of us headed up to the pond for some swimming and zip lining, while others (Sam & my brother Larry) worked on making cider from a truckload of apples brought over by friend Lee.

Sam is chopping up the apples (which Lee & Viktorija and I helped with later in the day while their 16 month old son played in the apple bin)





Larry is operating the crusher

Somehow I neglected to get a photo of the cider press.  In all, I think 10 gallons of cider was produced, and lots of apples were left for the deer.


Later that evening, a group of us enjoyed a "couple" bottles of wine on the deck at dusk along with cheese and Lithuanian chocolates (brought back by Viktorija and Lee from their recent visit) and after full dark we got the kids together and we lit and sent a dozen multi-colored paper "Trance Balloons" up into the night sky.  Great weekend.

Monday morning

I did not have a lot of time to keep up with news on the Rim Fire, but my son called on Saturday afternoon to say he was in Sonora, CA waiting to hear when he could move back to the lodge.  He said he was tired of moving around and camping and had had only 2 showers in the past week.  Updates from the lodge Facebook site say they plan to reopen soon.  Just waiting for roads to be opened.  I hope to hear more soon.

Our weather has been gorgeous.  It did rain on Saturday morning, but was clear and dry by 11 am.  The weekend was warm and muggy, but then a cold front came through and it has been around 80 for a high and dipping into the 50's at night.  

Another Saturday happening was the arrival of the big drilling rig on the drill pad just above our hayfield.  This is the big one that will drill over 8000 feet down into the Utica shale formation.  It is running pretty much 24 hours a day.  I think they will drill 6 wells on this pad before they move it to the next site.  Fortunately, even though we can see the drill from the flat just above our house, there is a hill between it and us that helps to deaden the sound a bit.  But there is a constant roar and the sound of back-up beepers on equipment at all hours.  I think we will be hearing this for some time.

The garden is still doing well.  We actually had corn the other day!  It could have done with a little more time on the stalk, but we got some before the raccoons did.  There is still a lot there.  We planted it really late, kind of as an afterthought.  It was so good.  I think we will have more tonight.  I am planning to can up some tomato sauce later this week using a new to me technique.  I'll let ya know how that goes later.  Meanwhile, Sam made salsa for our party and we have eaten some more acorn squash and I sent Mom home with squash as well.

I am ALMOST finished with the second sleeve of my sweater.  Hopefully next week I will have  a photo of the finished object, or FO as this is known in the knitting world, which is different from a UFO (UN finished object) or a WIP (work in progress).  I also plan to do work some more on the batts I am carding in preparation for the Wool Gathering, which is only a little over 2 weeks away.  I am really looking forward to that.