Where did summer go?

Here I am back to my woefully neglected blog. Last time I posted was the middle of summer. My husband wonders why I even have any followers left. Didn't bother explaining to him that it would probably take more effort to remove somebody than to let them just sit there doing nothing. But nevertheless, I'm happy to see that nobody removed me from their blogroll. So I'm back now and will try to make my posting more regular again.

Here's a quick (thought I could be quick, but turned out, I couldn't) re-cap. We did our first real garden this year, and it did surprisingly well! We canned potatoes, salsa, hot pepper butter, and pizza sauce--maybe some other things too, but that's all I can think of right off the top of my head. Oh, pickles! We had yummy fresh cucumbers for weeks. I miss them already. I have never loved a cucumber like I loved those! And my picky boy, Finn, would just gobble them up.

We sold Bambi's boys (above) and because of several issues, I didn't manage to ever get her milking. Hopefully next year. We kept Betty Bob's doeling, Star (on the right below). I am milking Betty Bob and Bella and getting a little over half a gallon most days just milking once a day. Plenty for our family, and it leaves us enough to try cheese making and plenty of puddings and yummy stuff.

We sold half a dozen of our pullets, but we are still getting around a dozen eggs a day. The guineas are all grown up, and I'm pretty sure they are both females. Kind of bummed about that as I was hoping we would get a pair so we could have little keets next year. We hatched a duck out over the summer that I called Uno because it was the only egg that hatched and Ivy called Sparkle because I think she wanted to embarrass it, but one day it just disappeared. (I think this may be the only picture I got of it because my camera apparently decided to take the summer off with my blog--see it right in the middle?) No clue what happened to it--just totally gone without a trace. Also down one chicken like that. I managed to convince myself we were down another chicken and spent a few days counting and recounting chickens until it finally dawned on me that the one I was looking for was one of the ones we sold. Feel free to share the long laugh I had at my own expense.

We have two pigs that are ready to head to market. I don't think I have any pictures of them. Sorry, will take the camera up there in the next couple days. Along the lines of not naming your food, these two never did acquire names. We put them far, far from the house because we had many, many people telling us how they would smell, but they really aren't that bad. Yeah, you can smell them when you stand outside their pen, but they weren't all that people made them out to be.

I've been doing a bit of sewing lately and have some things to share over the next few days. But here's a little peek at a pattern I was delighted to be given an opportunity to test for Whimsy Couture. I am really liking her patterns. This is the third one I have made up and have more to try. I'll post a bit more about this pattern in the next few days.

So to end things up, here's a shot of Holly and Finn that I really love. They were sitting together on the couch like this the other day, and I actually managed to get to the camera in time. Nobody told them to sit like that. I was doing things in the kitchen and looked over and there they were. So cute! Can't believe how big they are getting.