My little pony...

Danni passed vet today, with flying colors! I wrote the check, and now she's mine! She's a Dutch warmblood 2-year-old, daughter to Idocus, granddaughter to Titan. She's downright magnificent in motion. Sweet, smart, and BIG. She'll mature to probably 16.3 or 17 hands. I've had her here long enough to teach her several things---loading and unloading, standing still for grooming, how to pick up her feet (but not how to hold them up!). She learns quickly and wants to please---a great combination! Everyone who has seen her falls in love. Because she's a beauty. And now she's mine.

The Start of the Harvest

Up the fruit highway this morning, we found apricots, twenty dollars a bushel---that works out to about 30 cents a pound. But what do you do with a half bushel (30 pounds) of apricots?! Dry them of course! A new use for the greenhouse, and we get to put the food dryer that I made several years ago back to work.

What will we do with all those dried apricots? Chop them up and use them in homemade granola, snack mix, breakfast yogurt made from milk from our goats. Mix them into ice cream, smoothies, scones and biscuits. Eat them out of hand to kill a craving for sweets. Dip them in chocolate and give them to people at Christmas time.

Maybe we'd better go back and get some more...

The Garden in August

A view from the back of the house. The vegetables are finally taking off, and we're only a little afraid of the pumpkin vines that are taking over the world!