Cats don't like baths, and other useless info

The fleas have started early this year. Usually i is high summer before things get bad. But it has gotten bad, so I threw my cats into the bathtub. (and threw is a figure of speech. I could just picturing me spiking those cats though)

1/2 part dawn
1/2 part vinegar

equals a bazillion dead fleas.

The you get to walk around with a spray bottle with a vinegar/ water mix and spray ever single surface of the house.

Cats scream while getting bathed.

Betty (goat) keeps getting her head stuck in the fence. Ni (goat kid,) takes this opportunity to practice being a man. Betty beats him up rather well once her head has been removed. (from the fence, not her body)

Husband is now the Official Turkey Master, not to be confused with turkey baster. He opens the pen and they follow him around all day while he is working. if they get distracted and lose him, they call out. When husband feels like it, he calls back and you have 8 small turkeys running like their lives depended on it.

If the school finds a tick on your child, they pull it off and tape it to a piece of paper to be seen by you.

Now for a couple of items that are not useless info;

I have decided to raise money for the Downed Bikers association for this years blogathon. If you wish to advertise on my blog, please donate an item to be raffled off during that time. I will have a full information page about this very soon.

Also go check out The Unusually Unusual Farmchick. She is taping a series about homesteaders. 100 Acre Wood is the subject of today's video.

This might be important

Rescue local and organic farming in the food safety bill

In the next few weeks, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a sweeping overhaul of federal food safety law -- S. 510. The House food safety bill passed last year (HR 2749) included several measures that threaten small-scale organic producers, including a registration fee of $500 and blanket application of complicated monitoring and traceability standards--regardless of one's farm size. Read more here>>>

Nanotech in our food?

The USDA National Organic Program's advisory panel, the National Organic Standards Board, will be meeting in California at the end of this month. OCA political director Alexis Baden-Mayer will be presenting testimony at the meeting. It is essential that we back up OCA's position to ban nanotechnology from organic production with as many letters from OCA members as possible. This is a huge public health and environmental issue. Will the USDA permanently ban nanotech ingredients from organic food and products, or will they leave the door open to this new, dangerous, unregulated technology, with the power to literally change matter at the atomic or electron level?

Read here>>>



The Boston Globe helps Monsanto with spreading lies


*The Boston Globe just printed a whopper: "Genetically engineered crops are more environmentally friendly than organic ones." This is the same lie we've been hearing from a long time, and it's coming from more or less the same source. In this case, the source is Elliot Entis, a former board member of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) - the biotech industry lobby group.

I know what this article says without reading it: organic yields less than conventional, GMO ag and therefore organic is worse for the earth. People who oppose GMOs and love organics are idealists who don't know the first thing about growing food. We need GMOs to feed the earth. And that is exactly what the article DOES say. None of it becomes any less of a lie just because the Boston Globe was hoodwinked into printing it. Honestly, this is outrageous and newspapers should be held to a higher standard. We expect them to give us the hard facts, not dumb lies. Read more here>>>>

From Hence Forth, It shall be known as WTF

White Trash Farms

With the flash flooding, the old farms, and a creek as well as a ditch running through the farmstead, we have accumulated a variety of items.

See something you like?

Have any repurposing ideas? Broken glass and rusted tin cans will be an issue

And my mother is asking; Those of you that use wood burning stoves, how does one go about keeping the ash from going all over the place.

I loath Trees

I know all the goody goody about trees, and could care less a this point, I hate them right now. They are literally the thorn in my side.

We chainsawed the tree limbs in the cattle run yesterday at the farmstead. It was my job to walk through and throw out all the limbs that I wouldn't die from touching, over the fence. Sounds easy enough. Some have thorns bigger than husband's middle finger!

I have holes in my side, they puncture and withdraw, my arms were bloody, and the back of my legs. I was a good girl, and kept working, with only a little cussing. But I broke. I will admit to you, I broke when the thorns slapped me in the face.

I cried like a little girl.

Bawling, mind you. Not a whimper of discontent, but good old fashion my life is over teen angst ridden my parents hate me bawling. And yet, through blurring vision, and a sniffing nose, I kept working.



And this gate has been buried for at least 20 years. It took us a bit to yank it up out of the ground



I think this should be my new masthead. Medium's foot.



And clean water from the windmill



the motor on the right, doesn't work.


more blue bottles, the small one on the left is a Bromo-Seltzer bottle




I have also updated the Dandelion Jelly post with pictures.