Shopping

I'll start with the construction update... I think I will publish at least the construction part of this blog in hard format so that someday, when the girls are grown and we are feeling nostalgic, we can flip through the pages and remember "way back when" the house wasn't even built yet, and what an adventure it was/is.  I feel so blessed to be living our dream! Although the process of starting with a bare piece of ground and converting it to a farm and a home is a lot of work, a lot of stress, and a lot of money, it is also very exciting and fulfilling.  I feel like we are embarking on a healthy and literally "down to earth" lifestyle, and I can't help but hope that knowing where their food comes from, and learning physical labor and job satisfaction will provide the girls with a solid foundation for whatever the future holds.  (I believe that this aspect in my own upbringing has a lot to do with who I am today... Thanks Mom and Dad!)
So, where are we in the process so far?  Well, we are still waiting for the concrete company to work us into their schedule to pour the house foundations, and with another wet weekend ahead of us, I am sure the delay will be helpful in allowing the pad to dry out once again, but it will be SO NICE once the foundation is poured, because then we can actually start counting days and get a real feel for when the house will be done.  The shop, however is progressing quite nicely.  The girls approved of the "shopping" that has happened so far (see pictures) which includes setting the poles in concrete.  Again, once the ground dries out after this latest downpour, the cement slab will be poured in the floor, then the walls and roof go on (a relatively fast process).  Once the shop is weather-tight, the electrician will come in and viola! we will have real, permanent electricity in the shop and the barn!
AdventureDad and I spent the last weekend picking up the remainder of the hay we cut the previous weekend (thankfully it was a dry week and we were able to leave it in the field!)  We picked up 5 tons of hay, so in addition to the 1 ton we already hauled to Gig Harbor, it is our largest cutting so far.  We actually left a lot of the field uncut this year, as hay is second priority to the house and other tasks (like putting in fencing/animal pens, building a chicken coop, and flooring the barn), but we got enough to keep the horses fed until next hay season, especially since they have a virgin pasture to go out on once they move to the farm. It should take them a month or two to mow that down!  It was a bit of a punishing weekend, because of course to put 5 tons of hay in the barn it means we have to both load it onto, then unload off of, the hay wagon, so we moved 20,000 pounds between the two of us (not to mention another 2,000 pounds in "re-bale" bales that resulted from some baler problems!).  Whew!  Then poor AdventureDad came down with a nasty GI bug that laid him out flat for the ride home and the next day too.  We will be having our Father's Day dinner this coming Sunday :-)
To wrap it all up, we added yet another furry member to the family (because I really needed another warm body to take care of!)  AdventureGirl has been begging us for a pet of her own, and finally saved enough stars on her chart to earn one.  So, hello Peter!  Our new 6-week-old little buck bunny.  Luckily he is pretty adorable, so it isn't too much of a burden.  Sigh!

Meet Peter

Exploring the Shop

Daddy's Shop Will be THIS BIG!

All Kids Really Need is a Pile of Dirt

Yay for Hay!

Making Hay While the Sun Shines!

Whew!  The AdventureFamily was at it again, packing a whole week's worth of activities into a few days.  AdventureDad was able to get a few days off, so we headed out to NineTrees to take advantage of the wonderful weather and truly make hay.  Sounds pretty straight-forward?  Oh no!  Of course the weekend couldn't be that simple!  (We have yet to have a disaster-free hay season.  That may be an oxymoron we are not aware of yet!).  I do have to mention, however, that we arrived at 11 PM Thursday night to find that we now have POWER and WATER!!!!  No more hauling batteries and jerry cans full of fresh water for this family!  WooooHoooo!!!!
Our first scheduled activity was to drive to Richland to pick up AdventureDad's new (and last, for a LONG time!) tractor.  This would be the fourth tractor we have purchased in as many years, granted that one of the aforementioned tractors was ANCIENT and one was merely old.  However, living where and how we do (will be), we need a reliable way to clear snow in the winter (the county won't commit to maintaining our road yet), not to mention till the garden and fields, make hay, drill post holes, move, and lift all things farm-related.  The old tractors were just not reliable enough, so we finally finagled our finances enough to get a new one.  On our way back to the farm with the new tractor in tow, not to mention the new disc mower and snow blower to go with it, we had a blow-out.  One way or another, we have neglected to get a spare for our utility trailer, so we were at the mercy of the Les Schwab service team.  It was a busy day for them, so after waiting an hour or so in the sweltering heat, we finally got a temporary fix and headed back to the tire store for a set of new tires.  We had the tractor in tow, so we took the opportunity to add ballast (liquid weight that goes in the tires for added traction and momentum), and yes, saved one of the old tires as a spare.  Once again on our way, we finally arrived at the farm at almost 8 PM, approximately 7 hours later than we had planned.  So much for mowing hay that day!  AdventureDad decided to set up the mower so that he could get an early start the next morning, but it was a new tractor and a new mower, and Murphy being omnipresent where farm equipment is concerned, something was bound to, and did, go wrong.  While lifting a part of the tractor, it managed to hit part of the hydraulic system, and stripped out some vital threads.  After a gush of hydraulic fluid, we were left with a crippled hydraulic remote (that runs the arm that lifts the mower up and down).  Luckily, the mower was already in the proper position, so the hay cutting could commence.
Second on the list... we put a floor in a section of the barn to give us somewhere dry and level to stack the hay we were about to cut.  This project was actually much quicker and easier than we expected, and a good test run for the rest of the barn.  Yay us!
Our third scheduled activity was the cutting of the hay.  This too had a hiccup, as we were mowing a new part of the field.  AdventureDad found a ditch the hard way, and the impact broke one of the brackets that holds a piece that steadies the mower.  Luckily for us, we have an incredibly helpful neighbor who is also a proficient welder, and he fabricated a new one for us and welded it into place while we were in town looking for hydraulic parts.  Amazing!  Hiccups notwithstanding, the new mower did an amazing job, and AdventureDad is pretty tickled with the whole setup.  The raking and baling went surprisingly well, and with the help of the hot weather and breeze, the hay dried beautifully.  We cut 5 tons of hay, and hauled about 1 ton home to feed to the horses. Not our biggest cutting (we kept it small on purpose this year), but the best quality we have put up yet.  While AdventureDad was baling, I also broke out our small tractor and got our campsite mowed.  Considering that the grass is 4 feet high and the girls can get lost in it, this little detail made life a lot easier for us!
Last but not least, we met with the foreman from the construction company and got the go-ahead for our
foundation!!!  Hopefully the foundation will be poured before the end of June.  There is still hope for an October move-in.  Fingers crossed!  In addition, the crew that is putting up the shop got the holes drilled for the support posts.  That means we will likely have a completed shop before the end of the month... fingers crossed again!  It is so exciting and wonderful to see things progressing, FINALLY!
So, tired, sunburned, filthy, but satisfied, we limped home for a short week of "normal" life here in Gig Harbor before another weekend of "fun on the farm"  this coming weekend.   Catch our breath?  Nah!

Taking the New Hay for a Test Drive

AdventureDad's New Wheels

Temporary Water

The Beginnings of the Shop

Power!!!  Meter is at 0, but not for long...

A Whole Lot of Hole!

Wow, did we have an exciting weekend at the farm!  The pad has been excavated for our house!!!!  Our plan was to get the hole dug, then allow the still damp soil in the bottom to dry in preparation for pouring the cement foundation.  Alas, as usual, things didn't work quite as planned.  Less than a week after excavation, the heavens opened and promptly turned it into a mud bath.  So, now we wait a little longer for that foundation.  Once the cement is poured, things should be able to progress a little more smoothly, but until then it is a waiting game.
In addition to the house progress, the pad for the shop is also going in (again cement-weather dependent, although slightly less so), the driveway has been gravelled and compacted, and wonder of wonders, we got an official county address pole.  We are officially on the map!!!! Woohooo!!!  Also, the meter box should be going in as I type, and that means we should have actual, real electricity before we go out there again.  Talk about a game-changer!  We are rapidly moving from the stone ages into civilization :-)
While we were out there, AdventureDad and I also repaired the much-needed wind break for our baby orchard, and did some heavy-duty tractor shopping.  We live in a remote enough area that the county will not commit to plowing the road in the winter, so the tractor (with snow-blower) will be our link to civilization during the winter.  We made some great progress, and I am sure I will be posting more on that in the future!

Back home in Gig Harbor, I had an exciting day today when my first chick hatched.  Yes, the craziness has progressed to me incubating eggs in an attempt to get some chickens of a hard-to-find breed (in general, hatching eggs are easier to come by than chicks, but the outcome is far from certain after they get scrambled by the post office during shipment!)  It is nerve-wracking, but a lot of fun!  Yes, I am now officially chicken crazy!
O finished her last day of school today in true NW style...  a picnic complete with rains slickers and galoshes.  M's Kindergarten goes until June 18, so we have a little while before summer break officially begins. 
The baby horses are growing like weeds, and I have made pretty good progress halter breaking them, although I am dying for a round pen to work them in.  It is much harder when I have to chase them in and out of all of the nooks and corners in their current pen!  The AdventureGirls are becoming more and more interested in the horses, which makes my heart smile.  I have been reluctant to push them, as I don't want to overdo it and ruin the fun of the horses.  I am hoping my strategy will bear fruit when I can get a nice calm kids horse once we move to the farm!
AdventureDad is literally counting the days until he is done physically with the Army.  The plus side of house construction getting off to a slow start is that our time apart will be much shorter.  Now, we will likely be in the house less than a month when he can come join us at the end of November.  Yay!

I think that is it for now.  Enjoy the photopalooza!!!

Another Use for the Hay Rake

True Robin's Egg Blue!

AdventureGirls in Their Element

The Hole

Windbreak Mark 2

It's Official!

Off to a Slow Start

This spring the major focus for the AdventureFamily has been the construction of our "Someday House".  This is a term lovingly and longingly adopted by a group of fellow military families while discussing our hopes and dreams of someday settling down and belonging somewhere, owning a home we would live in for more than a few years, and generally enjoying the lives we have been working toward, well, all of our lives! 
I think I left the saga with the drilling of the well and praying for our home loan to come through.  We are still waiting, although the wheels have been slowly turning.  We have to get our building permit in order to close our construction loan, and the process has been long and arduous, with the expected errors and delays slowly accumulating.  I think we have all of the knots untied for the moment, so now we wait for the permitting office to do their thing, so that we can do our thing and finally close that loan.  That will be a wonderful day!   It is a little nerve wracking having such a large detail unresolved... it's hard to build our someday house without money!
This last weekend we towed the camper out to be our home base this summer.... Camp 9 Trees has been established for another (and hopefully the last!) season.  We had surprisingly little work to do, although AdventureDad did get some weeds sprayed.  We had a lovely drive home through the blooming apple orchards in the Columbia River Valley, and a beautiful wildflower show through the desert around Hanford.  We ran into a little surprise on the way home with a snow storm over Snoqualmie, and arrived to sun in Gig Harbor (something we never take for granted!). 
Here at home the excitement has been the arrival of the spring chicks.  We started out with the 3 that we had planned.  Then, I discovered that they had given us the wrong breed for one of them, so I went and got one of the right breed (it was one I really wanted to try), so then there were 4.  Just a few days later, Marshmallow, one of last year's hens, became broody.  That means that mother nature was telling her she needed to sit on some eggs.  The problem is that we don't have a rooster, so our eggs aren't fertile.  A broody hen will sit on the nest, not laying and eating and drinking very little, until a chick appears.  That left us with two options;  1.  Employ a "broody buster", a bare wire cage up on blocks with no nest or cozy spots that makes it impossible for a hen to nest.  It only takes a couple days to convince them that being broody is a bit too tough.  2.  Give her some fertile eggs to hatch.  Guess which option I chose?  No, I could not resist the temptation to watch instinct in action and allow her to hatch some eggs.  We have been wanting a Sussex rooster anyhow, so what better way to get one?   So, I drove to the farm where we got Marshmallow and bought 3 Sussex and 1 Orpington egg (another breed I want to try), in hopes that one of them will turn out to be a rooster (the story of egg choice is a bit more complicated, but I will spare you the details!).  So, Marshmallow is now happily installed on her nest full of eggs, and we have 14 more days to go to see how successful she is as a brooder.  If she is a good one, and we end up with a rooster, our days of buying chicks are over :-).  So, instead of 3 chicks, we have 8.  The story of my life!

The stakes marking the house site

The Stakes Marking the Shop Site

The View From Our Future Great Room

Marshmallow Brooding

A New Year

Hello 2013!
The AdventureFamily wrapped up 2012 with a Christmas at home, which was lovely, although tinged with a lot of worry as Grandpa ended up in the ICU following emergency cholecystectomy, renal failure, and pancreatitis on Christmas Eve.  Nana had a short stay in the room right next door with a bowel torsion as well, so it made for a bit of a cliff-hanger.  Thankfully Grandpa is well into his recovery now, Nana is working her way slowly and painfully toward medical management of some motility issues, and life at the Grandparent's is slowly reaching an even keel.  Whew!  It made me realize that this is the first time that I can recall Grandpa ever having been hospitalized, ever.  Pretty good for a guy who is turning 75 in a few days!  It was also the first time that I have truly feared for his life, which is not a nice feeling.  Similar to when Nana was diagnosed with breast cancer, it really made me reflect on my relationship with my parents and brother, and how close we all are as a scattered but loving family.  We are certainly not ready for anyone to go, and with this behind us, it should be a good long time before we have to face "any of that".
One bright side of the tumultuous holidays is that Grandma Honey has once again joined our family for a prolonged stay.  She made an expedited trip out here to pinch-hit for me if I needed to make a rush trip to be with Nana and Grandpa, and agreed to stay to help me through the recovery for my knee surgery.  That means that we celebrated New Year's Day with Grandma Honey, as well as a wonderful visit from AdventureDad's brother Michael and his family.
So we in the AdventureFamily have also had a medically active New Year.  AdventureDad found out early in January that he needed several crowns and some other dental repair work.  He HATES having dental work done, and unfortunately for him, a lot of it has been done in foreign countries or in temporary circumstances that became permanent, so now it is time to fix it up for good.  Of course in the military system, why do in one trip what you can do in three?  so the frequent visits to the dentist began.  He showed up expecting a crown, and left without a tooth after it disintegrated while they were exploring.  After a really rough extraction due to all the pieces embedded in his jaw (thank goodness he was sedated), he was sent home to recover, looking like he came out on the wrong end of a boxing match.  After the site heals, it is back again, and again, and again (I think we totaled at least 6 visits coming up) for the other crowns (hopefully no further extractions), a post and implant, and filling repairs.  Poor guy!  Oh yeah, and they still haven't done  his cleaning!
The AdventureGirls both caught a nasty cold a week ago, which then spread to myself and Grandma Honey (GH from now on).  GH and O are on antibiotics now, while M and myself seem to be recovering.  Thankfully AdventureDad was spared, because he has been working extra hard during my recovery.  That leads to me and my knee.  I ended up getting my ACL reconstructed using a piece of my hamstring tendon on Tues.  This is a very common and straight-forward repair involving drilling a hole in the femur (above the knee) and the tibia (below the knee), then threading a piece of harvested tendon through the holes and securing it there with a button on top and a screw below.  They are able to pull and tunnel the hamstring tendon out through one of the drill incisions when they harvest it, so there is a minimal number of cuts in the skin.  They also removed some bony scar tissue developing on my patella.  The good news is that the meniscus looked great, which made me happy I did the surgery now, since it risks tearing every time my knee goes out.  So, now I am four days post-op (I won't even talk about the first two, which were pretty awful), hobbling around when I need to and elevating/icing the rest of the time.  I start physical therapy on Monday, and I am looking forward to the day when my knee is a bit more recognizable and a lot more functional!
Of course dispersed through all of the medical mayhem, we have been making progress on Nine Trees.  We met early in January with the owner of the company that we chose for our house construction and staked out the house with him.  Now THAT felt like progress!  It was our first visit to the farm that time of year, and was only possible because our wonderful neighbors had cleared the road of the three-foot drifts that had piled up.  Life is certainly going to be a lot more "elemental" when we live on the mountain!  We also got conditionally approved for our construction loan, which, while not yet a sure thing, is a huge step in the right direction!
We also added two new horses to our herd, while losing one.  A dear friend has been in the horse rescue field for a long time, and had built up quite a herd of both rescue and owned horses.  With the poor economy she has been unable to do enough work to support them all, and was faced with rehoming as many as possible before her hay ran out.  Lisbonne and Seville were two babies born last spring, that are half arab, half mustang (my dream mix!).  They are still a few years away from rideable, which is perfect for me and the ages of the girls, and in the meantime I can do all of the groundwork and gentling and have them ready to ride when the time comes.  So, the little ones (which are hard to find homes for because they can't be ridden right away) came to me, and Apple went back to Aunt Jess's.  (Jess was the one who initially enabled my getting Apple all those years ago, talk about a full circle!).  Apple is a stubborn girl, and not kid-horse material, and she will stand a much better chance of finding a good working home in that part of the country.

I am sure I have missed oodles of things, but that is the major-item summary of the year so far.  Happily for us, things are unlikely to slow down as progress on the house picks up in preparation for construction this Spring.  AdventureDad has an important job interview coming up in February, so keep your fingers crossed and I will hopefully have something to report on that next blog!

O and Lisbonne meeting for the first time

Left is Lisbonne, 6-month filly,  Right is Seville, 8 month colt

Meeting Apollo

Fuzzy winter coats.  This is a heat-wave for them!

The monster that ate my knee

Good Night Nine Trees (and Halloween Pics)

Time has once again flown by in its usual way.  Mid-November has arrived, and is emphasizing the difference between our farm in Eastern WA and our home in Western WA.  Here in Gig Harbor, the trees have mostly lost their leaves, a few hard frosts have arrived, and winter seems to be tapping at the door.  On the farm, winter has "done ready come".

We made our last journey to the farm for the winter (delayed by a few weeks while AdventureDad was playing in "the box" at Yakima), and put in a very productive four days.  The bulk of our time was spent putting French drains around 3 sides of our barn, in an effort to keep the dirt floor inside a little drier and channel the run-off from the roof (no gutters).  AdventureDad got to put in a couple hours running and excavator, which always makes a fun day for him.  The fun pretty much stopped there though... we worked in a driving snow storm as the mud got goopier and goopier, as only clay can.  However, we got the ditches dug out, and the gravel and pipe laid in, so we will see how effective it is in the spring!   In addition, AdventureDad winterized the tractor, and I tucked the orchard in for the winter with some dormant oil and burlap. 

It is funny, because despite how filthy, cold, and tired we were, we still enjoyed our time on Nine Trees.  (The girls are already begging to go back!)  It was amazing to see the storms come in.  We are on a high ridge in the foothills, so we can see the clouds sweep up the valley, and suddenly, they are around us.  This time it was an almost solid demarcation between storm and no storm.  One minute we were in the sun, and the next we were in the middle of a fleecy cloud with 5 feet of visibility and driving snow.  Pretty awesome!

Another awesome thing was seeing the well sitting there.  We ended up having to drill 890 feet, which is very deep for a well.  Most in the area are closer to 750 feet (still very deep), but we didn't hit much flow.  As I insinuated in my last post, we were pretty stressed.  With a well that deep, we were close to the end of our available funds, and the flow of 4 gallons/min was barely enough to claim a viable well, much less run a household.  However, the traditional method of measuring flow via pressurized air displacement is not as accurate in deep situations, so we opted to pay for a more expensive pump test.  Boy are we glad we did!  The pump test yielded a flow of 15 + gpm (probably over 20 but the driller's generator went out).  More than enough for a household.  Yay! and HUGE sigh of relief.
To wrap it all up, we hauled the camper home for the winter, where we can winterize it better, and I can clean it more thoroughly with the amenities of power and running water.  We felt really lucky, as this was probably the very last weekend that we could have gotten our work done before things freeze solid.

Of course before our jaunt to the farm we celebrated Halloween.  AdventureDad was able to come home 2 days early from his training exercise in Yakima to celebrate with us.  It was a pretty big deal, since he has only been home for 3 Halloweens (counting this one) since we have had kids due to deployments.  We had two little mermaids this year, which was incredibly adorable.  The city closes Harborview drive here every year, and all of the quaint little businesses stay open to hand out candy to the kids and cider, cocoa, etc. to the parents.  I will really miss this tradition when we move. but I know we will make new ones.

Overlapping all of this was an unfortunate knee injury for me.  I was washing our little horse trailer before parking it farther away for the winter.  I stepped off of the fender, as I had done several times already that day, but apparently my trajectory was wrong.  I felt my knee shift, heard and felt a loud pop, and fell the rest of the way to the ground.  I immediately knew something was very wrong, but all I could do was lay there for a few minutes and gather myself.  Livvy was cluelessly playing a few yards away, M was in school, and AD was in Yakima.  Needless to say my mind was racing as I suddenly felt very helpless (our house is in the country and isolated from our neighbors), although I had a feeling that I knew what had happened.  I managed to limp to the house (with Livvy solicitously and adorably holding my hand), take some ibuprofen, tuck her in for her nap, and rack out with some ice and an ace wrap.  This was only 2 days before Halloween and AD's return from Yakima, so I roughed it out until then, with my knee looking like it ate a cantaloupe for breakfast.  Of course as soon as AD returned from the box, he did an expert knee exam (one thing he's seen plenty of!), and confirmed my fear that I had done more than just sprain it.  An MRI early this week seconded it; a completely ruptured ACL and MCL, and compression fractures to my upper tibia.  I am currently impatiently working the military medical system with AD's help, which started with getting my robo-brace today (thankfully, as my knee has randomly and painfully been going out).  Next comes physical therapy and an orthopedics consult to decide when surgery will be (the sooner the better as far as I am concerned... I really want to just start the healing and rehab, a 6 month process!), but knowing this system, I doubt anything too exciting will happen until after Christmas.  Of course full updates will appear here :-).

And that is about that.  We are preparing for a much-anticipated journey back to Nana and Grandpa's house for Thanksgiving, where we will be sharing our thanks with my parents, my brother and his family, and in an extra-nice surprise, my Aunt and Uncle that I haven't seen for several years.  Of course more posts will follow that adventure!  Happy Thanksgiving to everyone near and far.

The Mermaid Sisters

The Start of the Snow on Nine Trees

Falling into Fall

With our first days of torrential downpour, fall has officially arrived in the Pacific Northwest.  The push to get things done before winter is here, and I am woefully behind on all of those things I meant to do before it got soggy and muddy again, but here it is, ready or not.

October has been a delightfullly busy month for the AdventureFamily.  Early in the month we spent a wonderful long weekend on 9 Trees.  AdventureDad got a new layer of grass seed planted in the hay pasture, and we met the driller and started the well drilling process (it has turned into a bit of a saga, but I am waiting until it is all done before I divulge more... look to the next post for updates!).  This is huge for us... where we are the wells are incredibly deep, so it is an impressive investment in the farm.  It is also necessary to have the well so that we can get our building permits in the spring.  The thought that next year we will have our very own running water is awe-inspiring at this point.  Yay us!  We also took a "break" from work immediately on the property, and did some work clearing out the easement that accesses the bottom portion of our property (our acreage is almost 1/2 mile long, down a steep canyon, so an access easement comes through the neighboring lots to reach the bottom).  We hacked foliage, sawed trees, and cleared obstructions until we were exhausted, but we also got to spend a day in the woods, which the girls loved.  We also found A LOT of bear sign, re-confirming that the presence of black bears will be a part of our existence there.

After our sojourn in the farm, it was back to life on the wetter side of the state.  We went to a pumpkin patch as a field trip for Livvy's preschool, and then carved the pumpkin that evening before celebrating Livvy's 3rd birthday (AdventureDad had to leave the next day to be in the field for awhile, missing Halloween, so we did it a bit early).  My sweet baby girl is 3!  I can't believe how much life this happy, opinionated, silly, serious, loving little being brings into our lives every day.  There is no vestige of baby left in her, as she easily holds her own with her big sister and the rest of us as well.  Sad for mommy, but part of life, and it is a joy to witness her discovery of the world.

Last but not least, fall brings the close to my vegetable gardening season.  I am still hoping that a few of my heirloom tomatoes will ripen (although I did also do an early harvest and we had some DELICIOUS fried green tomatoes a few nights ago), but in general the crops are coming to a close.  The cool, wet weather invites mildew, and between that and the cool nights I am slowly losing the battle.  So, time to bring in the last few green beans, the last cuttings of broccoli raab, and the last zucchinis.  The brussels sprouts are swelling, the carrots are sweetening, and the potatoes are waiting patiently for me to dig.  I was hoping to store my parsnips in the ground a while longer (frost can mellow the flavor), but a suspicious wilting of some of the chard (as if the roots were gone), followed by a tell-tale hump in the dirt made me do a little exploratory digging, and I discovered that a busy gopher has been helping himself.  Most of my biggest parsnips fell victim, but I still harvested about 10 lbs worth... not bad for a square yard of ground!  (Parsnip is one of my very favorite winter soup ingredients, yummmm!).

Gathering Pumpkins is Serious Business

M's Pumpkin Was Easier to Subdue

The Family Lantern

Let the Drilling Commence!

As Three As Can Be!

The Parsnip Harvest

Apparently gophers don't like the skin...a perfect parsnip shell was left behind!