Relish, Jam, & Vegetable Bucket

Carol got everything ready for making relish.  After breakfast we started.  I shredded the onions, peppers, and cucumbers.  The onions and cucumber were from our garden.

It made nine pints and one half pint.

There has been a leek in one of the irrigation pipes west of the hen house. It has been a breeding place for mosquitos.   I turned off the water and then unscrewed the hose bib stem.  The photo shows the water draining out of the pipe.

I put the hose bib stem back in and turned back on the water.  I have to walk up to the south east corner of our yard to where the well is to turn off and turn on the water.  With the water on I can find the leak.

Just above the arrow, I found the leak.  With a large pipe wrench, I tried to unscrew the leaking part.  I couldn't turn it.

I cut out a section that was leaking.  While in Fillmore I bought some replacement parts.  It was raining lightly when I put it back together.  I walked back to the well and turned the water back on.  There was a small leak.  I screwed the hose bib stem more and stopped the leak.

Here is the finished project.  I will back fill tomorrow.

The photo should have been in yesterdays blog, but I took it today, so here it is.

We drove to Fillmore for some more bottles and pectin for apricot and pineapple jam.  We also took a bucket of vegetables for Kim Christensen.  It took me a couple of hours to prepare the vegetables.

We made two batches.  There was a little left over for a bread and jam treat.  It was really good.

 We planted corn last Thursday, a week ago tomorrow.  It is coming up.

 I had an hour or so to work in house six.  I pruned off some branches on the tomato plants.  I also, pruned off some of the leaves.  With the leaves gone, it is much easier to see the tomatoes.

There are a lot of spoiled tomatoes.  Some were touching the ground, others cracked and aloud an opening for sap beetles to enter.

There were some that had partial defects.  I took them to the house and cleaned them up.  I ate some of the for a late evening treat.

Comments and questions are welcome.

The Most Unusal Day

This has been a different day than we planned on we started this morning at 9:30 on our way to Linden.

I worked some this morning in the west garden.  I dug up the peas that were growing on the east side of the hoop.  There were  a lot of wild lettuce growing in the peas and some of them were growing in the hoop with the pole beans.  I dug them out.  The brick in the above picture is holding the hoop out of the ground.  One lettuce plant was growing through the hole in the brick.  It took a lot of digging with the shovel and a short handled digger.  I finally got it out.

I picked a lot of cucumbers and tomatoes in house six.   The pepper plants on the west end of the row are infested with a lot of small snails.  I put one in a bottle with some pepper leaves and am going to watch it to see how much larger it will get.

Last night I captured six yellow jackets/hornets in the quart jar.  I wanted to know how long they would live.

I saw this can of powdered beets in the pharmacy section at the Payson Walmart.  We grow a lot of beets.

We came upon this rear end crash in Orem.  I cot the picture through the front windshiels.

This is a view of the vegetable that we gave to Nyleen and Miles.  Tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants.

The tire pressure symbol on the dash came on a couple of days ago.  Drove to Manti and back on Tuesday.  Yesterday,  I took it to a tire place and the adjust tire pressure.  Today, we drove to Linden.  We made several stops on the way.  After we had lunch we drove to Miles and Nyleen's home.  We parked in their driveway.  Miles cut my hair.  We visited awhile and then went out to the car.  The front tire on the drivers side was completely flat.  I called triple A.  They sent someone to fix it.  It took them about forty-five minutes to get there.

I got tired or waiting and decided to remove the flat and put on the spare tire which is the doughnut tire. The tire had a small hole in it.    They removed the flat and put on the spare.  They were here for about fifteen minutes.   We looked for a tire place to fix the tire.  We found one tire place and they said it would take a couple of hours before they would be able to fix it.

Delay in Getting Home

We were a little late leaving the Manti Utah temple today.  We stopped at Miller's in Manti, where we bought two chocolate ice cream cones.  That is the first time that we have stopped there.   We took the short cut that bypasses Gunnison.  Several cars in front of us were stopped because highway 89 was being chipped.  I don't know how long we waited.   

The cars and trucks went past us.  We waited and waited and waited.  The person directing traffic let us to the south.  The twenty miles an hour for miles and miles.  We got gas at Maverick in Salina.

Yesterday we got a half bushel of apricots from Carol's sister in Linden,  Carol worked for a couple of hours bottling them.

We got twenty half pints.  I helped some.

One of our kittens has been missing for nearly three weeks.  Surprise.  It showed up.

Comments and questions are welcome.

When it Rains, it Pours

I was able to read a chapter from the Book of Mormon this morning.  I drove up to the irrigation ditch two times  and no water.  The third time was the charm.

Two CSA Buckets

First thing after breakfast was to make cucumber relish.

It took about forty-five minutes to shred the cucumbers.    By ten they were in the bottle.   Twenty bottles of good relish.

I worked until lunch pruning and hanging tomato plants.  I worked some more after lunch.  Then I picked tomatoes, eggplants. cucumber, salad onions, and leeks for two CSA buckets one was for Kim Chistrinsen and the other for Becky Gross.  I didn't take any pictures of this whole thing.  I did most of the cleaning on the patio and cleaned the tomatoes in the kitchen.

A little after four we drove to Fillmore and made one drop at Dr. Gross's office for Becky and met Thayne at the southwest corner of Maverick.   Carol bought a few groceries while I took the car to Auto Quest to check the air pressure in our car tires.

There is an modified pallet that was in the way. I took off the 2x4's on each side.  That made it much easier to bring out the irrigation pipes.

I drove to the head of our ditch.  There are some small grass weeds growing in the bottom of the ditch.

There were some weeds in the bed by house five.  i got the shove and dug them up.

Some corn seed came today.  I decided to plant them before we get the water tomorrow.


Comments and questions are welcome.

Good Company & Parade's Over

We started early this with the finishing touch of our truck/float.  First things first.  I blew of all the dirt and leaves in the back and also in the cab.   I washed the truck.  I wore a pair of cotton gloves.  I sprayed different parts of the truck and then rubbed it down with the wet gloves on my hands.   I washed both sides and then the hood, and then I climbed on top with the help of a ladder and washed the top.  It was filthy dirty.  We have had this truck for over twelve years and this is the first time that I have washed it.

Here is the front view of the truck.  I could not get the sign straight.  The sign was stapled and clear packing tape to hold it.  One side was higher.  I had to remove part of the sign and lift it up.  

Here is how the back looks when finished.  The balloons were in the car all night.  We did the top balloons first.  Carol would bring them to me and I tied them to the top board.  Three white ones in the middle and two blue ones on each side.  The two signs were one each end.  I stapled them.

This is how we were riding.   Jim Masner drove and it was a little shaky at times.  We threw out salt water taffy.  We had a lot of it and it was gone before we had finished the parade route.  Different families made their own floats.

 Emi and Skyler are tying little pieces of grass on Eric's shoe laces.  The must have been pretty board.

It took me about an hour to take all of the truck decorations down.  The balloons are in the kitchen, and the signs are all shredded.

Comments and questions are welcome.