Dumb Luck

Emphasis on the "dumb," because there's not much dumber than letting a three-year-old harvest mulberries while wearing a white t-shirt.

But I was too lazy to go ALL THE WAY UPSTAIRS to get him a different shirt, and whatever, the t-shirt was two bucks at the thrift store. I just didn't care that much.

Mulberry juice on the hands, face, and I think a tiny bit on the shorts. But the white t-shirt? PRISTINE.

And an entirely unrelated Cubby anecdote that I want to record for posterity: Early yesterday morning while he was mid-meltdown, I suggested possibly he had gotten up too early and should get back in bed to rest for a bit (HAHAHAHA--oh, the desperate hopes we exhausted parents cling to at 5:15 a.m.). In response, he wailed, "I can't rest in my bed because it's too wet from my tears."

We're expecting his Academy Award any day now.

A.P.D.--The Gross-out Edition

I think that in the unlikely event that I were to consult a guide to housekeeping rules--and were I to give a damn about those rules, which is even more unlikely--it would tell me to always sweep the kitchen floor after doing the dishes. But I always sweep before I do the dishes. And that is because I get really grossed out by sweeping a floor with any water on it.

I don't know if I'm just the world's drippiest dishwasher or what, but there are always little drips of water on the floor after I finish washing the dishes. And sweeping when there are drips of water on the floor leads to little muddy smears on the floor where the broom drags those drips across the floor. And worst of all is the way the dust and pet hair that collects on the bottom of the broom gets kind of damp and clumpy and OH GOD GROSS.

I know this is stupid. It's not as if I don't have a really high tolerance for nasty things*. This is just one small thing that is just irrationally nasty to me.

My sister (hi, sis!) has this thing with wiping up counters. She absolutely will not wipe little bits of food or whatever off the counters into her hand for disposal. Instead, she performs the most amazing long-distance wiping courses to keep it all in a continuous sweep to the sink. And this woman is a veterinarian. She deals with seriously gross shit on a daily basis. But the counter wiping is just too nasty for her.

So I know I'm not alone in my weird little aversion to something not too gross in the scheme of things, but repellent to me nonetheless.

And there's your question: What's something that totally grosses you out, but most other people probably never even think about?

* Considering a move to the country? You'd better not get grossed out by the sight of dead animals, parts of dead animals, decomposing animals, the smell of dead animals, or maggoty rotting flesh. You're welcome for the advice. Hope you weren't eating.

Haying. I Mean, Silaging

I don't think silaging is actually a word, but since what we did this past weekend was make silage, not hay, I can't say we were haying.

Just in case some of you were like me a few short years ago and have no idea what silage is . . . it's fermented plant material. Grass, hay, corn, whatever. It's chopped up and stored in airtight plastic, to ferment and thereby be quite digestible by cows*.

And sheep.

Sheep! We have sheep! We have no money for crazy-expensive hay that keeps getting more expensive every winter! So when the lawn tractor broke and we waited so long for the part to fix it that our grass grew into hay and then A. finally cut it and it was so thick and long the cut grass would have killed the grass roots if left on the ground so we had to rake it up anyway . . .

We baled it.

.

Welcome to the farm.

What we actually did was put the cut grass into a plastic-bag-lined garbage can, with A. getting right into the can to stomp around and compact the grass. Then, when it was compact and full, he tied it off, dumped it out of the garbage can, and there was a little round bale of silage.

I helped rake. Cubby was unaccountably THRILLED with this activity and helped rake, carry grass to the can, and compact the grass in the can. Charlie practiced standing with the aid of the finished bales.

It was bizarre.

I have no idea if this will actually produce food for the sheep in the winter, but we had nothing to lose by trying it, so stay tuned to see if we just made honest-to-God silage on our lawn. Or just left some cut grass to  sit around and rot in plastic bags.

I bet the neighbors are getting a lot of amusement out of this one.

* Edited to add: Thanks to Jen for letting me know that horses can't eat silage. I know nothing about horses (obviously), so I appreciate the correction.

Entertainment

Whatever could be making Charlie laugh so hard he's about to fall down?

Why, his big brother blowing a predator call* over and over and over and over OH MY GOD STOP IT RIGHT NOW.

Charlie was the only one who found it even remotely amusing, but boy, did that baby EVER find it amusing.

Woodchuck from birth, without doubt.

* It's for hunting. I think it's supposed to sound like an injured rabbit, to lure foxes or whatever, although it sounds more like a duck to me. A very loud, very annoying duck.

When a One-Word Answer Becomes a Post

You want to know how the canoe camping went, huh? Well, I could just say, "great," but then you wouldn't get to hear about how A. and Jodi had to lift the canoe over a six-foot-tall beaver dam and one of the packs fell into the water.

Or how they had to slog through a hundred feet of brush in the water, pushing the canoe through murky muck to get to the shoreline.

Or how A. made doughnuts to bring along*, which resulted in him telling me the trip could be summed up for the kids as, "A hatchet in one hand and a doughnut in the other."

In other words . . . great.

* Yup, A. has started making doughnuts. He makes them from buckwheat flour and fries them in tallow, which you would think would be the worst thing ever, but it somehow works. We shan't talk about how much tallow is absorbed into the doughnuts, but it's certainly enough to keep hunger at bay for a good long time.

A Serious Oversight

I can't believe I took this picture a month ago and never posted it:

Baby eating watermelon, omnipresent dog, and chickens. Picture perfect, indeed.

Thank God I found it and finally posted it. The world needed that photo. Obviously.

A.P.D.: The Reluctant Herbalist Edition

I made something* for dinner tonight involving Italian sausage and tomatoes, so I figured some herbs would be nice in there. Oregano seemed appropriate, and we have some in a pot right outside the dining room door. So I used the fresh oregano.

And that is really, really unusual for me. Because I HATE dealing with fresh herbs. In fact, more often than not, I use the dried ones in the kitchen rather than go out to the garden to cut oregano or thyme or whatever.

I'm sure every foodie/gardener/locavore in the world just gasped collectively and started shrieking in their heads about THE FRESH HERBS! And their incomparable taste! And THE FRESHNESS AIEEEE!!!

No? I imagined that? Well, if I did, it is an imagination based in reality, because I cannot tell you how many chefs I've seen online or on TV or whatever waxing rhapsodic about fresh herbs.

I just do not have the patience. First they have to be cut, then washed. Then they have to be stripped off the branches. And yes, I have heard that very helpful tip about just pull down the stem in the opposite direction the leaves grow and they'll all just get stripped off! So easy!

My stems always break. Not so easy. Screw that.

And then they have to chopped up and by the time I've dealt with two or more different herbs, I'm sick of the whole thing and just want to dump in some dried stuff. Dinner is enough of a time-challenge as it is without spending ten minutes on a minuscule portion of the final product.

So where do you stand on the herb divide? Are you a fresh-herb evangelist, or do you shake your herbs from a bottle?

* "Something" is the correct word here, since I find myself more and more frequently mixing a bunch of shit in a pot and calling it dinner. The one-pot meal is my best friend. Luckily, I'm an experienced-enough cook that this does not end up tasting like shit. It's a far cry from haute cuisine, though, for sure.