Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Almost Wordless Wednesday


We have our own chickens, as I'm sure you gathered from my last wordless Wednesday. 
Well, during the summer my girls lay 9 to 11 eggs a day. That's a whole lotta eggs to keep track of. As I'm boiling eggs this morning as I do every week, (Hubby likes to take them in his lunch and we adore egg salad around here) I was reminded of my hubby telling me a story about his grandma dumping the eggs in the horse tank. Weird? Maybe, but why did she do this? To see if any were bad. The way I can tell if one of our eggs has been sitting in the fridge too long is because it will float in water (eggs should sink). Not sure if that's scientific, LOL, but that's what we've always done around here.
Have you ever heard this?

Monday, September 20, 2010

Oat Thrashing

This weekend I was supposed to run a half marathon, however my husband's family planned our yearly oat thrashing on the same date...so, this is what I did this past weekend!








I know the pics aren't great, I took them with my Blackberry. Basically, they bind the oats into little bundles in the field. Then, the draft horses or old tractors pull the wagons with people out to the fields to load the oats. The oats are brought back and fed into this old fashioned thrashing machine powered by an old fashioned steam engine. The thrashing machine then separates the oat tops and shoots them out into an old fashioned truck, while the straw is shot out onto the ground (where the kids generally jump in it). I love that they still do this the old way, plus, it's a great reason to get together. We roast a pig, everyone brings a dish, everyone works, everyone plays.  I love that my community still gathers for such things...things most haven't even heard of! So...I didn't run 13.1 on Sunday, but I had a pretty great day anyway.