It’s been a long time since I wrote on this blog.  The time literally has flown by!   This visit will be short for now.  Our three older girls took a nice trip out to Wyoming with Jess and Luke and boy did I ever find out how hard they work!  Fred and Caleb took over the milking which turned out great.  Silvana was afraid they would “untrain” her cow but that didn’t happen.  Anyhow, they had a great time and I was happy they had such an opportunity to travel.  It was fun cooking for a small family of five and spending time alone with my youngest three.

Below is a photo of the girls out in Yellowstone which Jess sent home via her phone.  Also, a photo of the girls with Luke and the grandchildren near Clark, Wyoming.

Most of the canning is finished.  We still are getting tomatoes so I think more will be put up.  The squash is on the porch with the onions.  Tonight is the first night Fred lit the outdoor wood stove to take the chill out of the house.  Since we have not yet had a frost, things are pretty much alive.   The honey is harvested and school now takes up most of the day.

The other day I watched a video on YouTube of an outdoor pizza oven that was made without mortar or real fire bricks.  It was a portable oven.  So entertaining  was it, that I asked the boys to build me one.  One of our neighbors had helped us acquire a whole pickup load of real fire brick the day before!  I couldn’t believe how fast they assembled the new pizza oven.  It took two half days to complete.  We tried it out last night and we were very pleased with the pizza.  Almost sadly I have to admit I like it better than my old redneck pizza oven!  It’s a whole different ballgame learning to cook with a “real” pizza oven but the results were delicious.  The guys told me that it was no big deal if I don’t like it they will knock it over and start again……….so we will see how long I like it.  I took the photo of the oven above, in the dark, the next morning while the mortar was still wet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1QToDg3Ow0   Click on the link if you would like to build something like this.  Even if you don’t want to build an oven, this man was funny.  We took his idea and changed things to fit our plans.

I should mention, we were busy packaging this Longhorn steer while we were testing the oven.  Caleb and I kept running over to test the stove while we were cutting and wrapping the steer.  Above is our son-in-law Luke Dougherty helping us out.  The steer belonged to a friend of ours and naturally we asked Luke to help since he’s done more cattle than we have.  I took this photo with his mom in mind and asked Luke to smile for her.  This is for you Beth.  Thanks for raising up such a wonderful country man for Jessi.

That’s all for now folks.