May is almost over!

Well, I've been so busy that I've not posted in a while again.  Since my last blog, we spent the weekend of May 16 & 17  at Ironton, MO's Arcadia Valley Mountain Music Festival.  We always enjoy spending time there.  Arcadia Valley is very beautiful and full of history, such as nearby  Fort Davidson, a Civil War site with a museum and the original groundworks.  Anyway, the music festival was great!  There were numerous bands on 2 stages, several food vendors (with funnel cakes!!!!!), and various other vendors, which included me and my goat milk soaps.  Saturday was much colder than I remembered the weatherman predicting.  I didn't bring my spinning wheel on Saturday, but I did bring it on Sunday.  Met a teacher from a school in the area who asked if I did spinning demonstrations at schools.  I told her I did if I was invited.  So we gave her my business card and she will be in touch when it's closer to the time her school has their Fall Festival.  One thing we always enjoy about visiting Ironton is that we eat supper at Bailey Joe's BBQ.  They have the most delicious BBQ pork and their Cherry BBQ sauce is so good we have to buy a few bottles to take home with us!

The next weekend we spent in Cape Girardeau at the Southeast MO Meat Goat Association's Goat Show in Arena Park.  Even though we raise diary goats, we enjoyed watching the goat show and learned a lot.  We sold some goat milk soaps and we got to enjoy goat burgers, goat brats, and smoked goat meat.  Yum! Yum!

Because of the rain we keep receiving, I haven't finished putting out my garden yet.  I have all my tomato plants, but 7 out.  I still need to plant corn, different squashes, pumpkin, okra, cucumbers, sweet peppers, watermelon, Oriental eggplants, more lettuce, and some herbs. 

Tomorrow I will make another batch of  yogurt and then will pick some spinach and an onion from the garden to make fresh spinach dip.  More yummy stuff!  I'm looking forward to our goats having their babies so we have goat milk to make yogurt, buttermilk, and cheese.  I've been using store-bought cow's milk to make my yogurt for now; and while it's good, we enjoy the goat milk so much more.

All of my farmers' markets are open for business now.  And after 5 weeks of attending other events, I was finally back at the Bollinger County Farmers' Market this last Saturday.  It rained, even though the weatherman said it wouldn't until the afternoon.  Attendance was down a bit and most of the vendors left early because of the rain.  

The kids will start Summer School tomorrow.  I will make soap, wrap soap, work in the garden and run to town to buy feed and deliver Avon.  So I'd better get off the computer and bag up the Avon and get supper ready.

I'm Back! What a Busy Week

Boy!  Has it been a busy week and this is the first chance I've had to blog. 

Last Friday I was a substituting at a local school and we had the worst storm!  We were in the hallway, for safety, twice before the day was over.  During the lunch hour the electricity went out, came back on for a brief time, and went out again for the remainder of the day.  One teacher estimated the winds to be 70-80 miles an hour.  The sky was so black, it was like night-time before the first wave of high winds and rain hit.  During lunchtime a second wave of high winds and rain arrived to pound the area.  As I drove home, I saw lots of devastation:   trees down everywhere; electrical lines down; roofs missing from barns, sheds, and garages; and a large camping trailer overturned, but further down the highway another camping trailer hitched to a pickup truck that was fine.  Folks spent the weekend trying to clean up.  Some people still don't have electricity today. 

My family and I packed up goat milk soaps and my spinning wheel Saturday morning and spent the day at the Red House Interpretive Center in Cape Girardeau, where I spun sheep wool into yard and sold a few soaps.  The Red House is modeled after the trading post of Louis Lorimier, founder of Cape Girardeau.  Louis and Clark spent some time in Cape Girardeau before beginning their Expedition.  The Red House is very interesting to visit.

Then on Sunday, after church and Sunday School, we ate at a local Chinese restaurant for Mother's Day.  Yummy!  In the afternoon, I planted some kohlrabi plants that my dad gave me.

Monday and Tuesday I spent working in the garden: weed-eating, hauling goat manure and tilling more of my raised beds.  I planted a few tomato plants, but still have more to plant, as well as other vegetables.  I also planted a patch of green beans.   Should be enough Chinese cabbage to pick today and I'll stir-fry it along with a package of frozen stir-fry veggies I have in the freezer.

Wednesday was market day and again it started out cool and misted rain for a while.  By the end of the market it was finally warming up and the sun was  trying to come out.  However, overnight we received almost an inch of rain (yippee! I have a new rain gauge....last one broke) so it's too wet to work in the garden today.  I started out my day by washing two loads of laundry, hanging them out on the "solar dryer", made a batch of coffee soap, had lunch, and am now blogging.  

So what to do next?  Make more soap or bake something yeasty????  Hubby likes anything with cream cheese filling or drizzled on top.  Decisions, decisions!