A friend at the farm!

We have a visitor this week. His name is Jake.

 Some friends of ours went away for Thanksgiving and so Jake got to come hang out with us on the farm. He seems to love sitting right here.

In front of the bay window.

So that he can keep an eye on all the animals out there.

He even recruited some help.

And J told him what a great job he was doing keeping such a watchful vigil.

But dont let him fool you. Hes a little sneaky sneakster. 

You see it was cupcake baking day here on the farm.

In case you didnt hear, I have begun the C.P.P over here. Other wise known as the Cupcake Perfection Program. This weeks cupcake? The Boston Cream Cupcake. 

The batter was forming up pretty nicely.

And I got them all baked up pretty like.

But wait...heres where it gets a little crazy...I had to leave the kitchen. For just a minute, mind you. Fast enough to run upstairs and back down again.... And dont you know that little cheeky Jake ate 11 of my 24 cupcakes that were cooling on the counter. Thats right. Cupcake liner and all.  Hence the reason you see 13 cupcakes on this cooling tray.

His interest in the kitchen should have tipped me off. Not to mention that I had heard stories from his folks about crazy mishaps in the kitchen....but nooo...here I was so trusting.

Yeah well, not anymore. Those cupcakes are going into the breadbox.

They can finish cooling in there. Safely.

Doesnt he just look like he has a tummy full of cupcakes?

Hmph. Well, at least they werent finished when he got to them. And dont worry...he was totally fine after eating all those cupcakes. Didnt even seem to phase him. 

But once I did get them finished I, of course, had to show him what he missed out on.

I think they turned out pretty nicely. Im just sayin.

Its that time of year again

When I begin to feed the goats in their stall.

Even tho Finley isnt quite sure what to make of this idea.

And when Toni waits very impatiently at "HER feeder" for hay.

And then proceeds to give me the cold shoulder when I dont get out there quickly enough.

You see, about this time of year, the irrigation system has been shut down for the winter. All the sprinkler valves have been blown out so the pipes dont freeze. This means that the pasture no longer gets watered on a regular basis. So, as you can imagine, its pretty picked over out there. Dont get me wrong, there is still plenty for them to eat out there, but the most select areas of the pasture are no longer to their liking. 

Dolly doesnt seem to mind very much at all because she still has her hay bits.

However, Toni...she doesnt like Dolly quite that close.

So yeah, the goats.

I have begun to feed them in their stall now.

Only because they tend to get underfoot pretty readily and they dont take heed of one very important item. PERSONAL SPACE. 

Just ask Toni.

And the llamas, well, they really like their routine. Every morning, when the hay makes its appearance...the llama ladies rush to their favorite feeding spot.

4 llamas 4 feeding spots. Makes sense right? 

Then tell me, please, why this one feeding spot is always left all alone....

I just cant figure it out.

Silly llamas.

Is October already over?

Can you believe its November already? 

Seems like October went by in a flash. 

We carved pumpkins.

 
We had Halloween.

 
And, I began my new cold weather survival project. 

 
Thats right. Cupcakes are going to get me through the winter. Those cold, dreary, gray days....when Im missing the sunshine and its too cold to play outside....Ill be making cupcakes. Im referring to this endeavor as the Cupcake Perfection Program. Or the C.P.P. for short. I know, it sounds very official, right? You should join. Ill make you a name tag. 

That cupcake you saw earlier was last weeks cupcake. A dark chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting. It turned out quite delightful and family and friends gave it a thumbs up. 

My main goal in all this is to keep my sanity through the winter. Im not a big fan of winter in case you didnt know that already. But also, I really would like to have a go to cupcake. You know, the one thats there for you always....the one you can count on in a flash. I mean, G is just 5....I still have lots of classroom parties to get through. So, the perfection will be making that perfect chocolate and perfect vanilla cupcake. Of course, making all kinds of everything in between. 

This weeks cupcake began with chocolate. Hard to go wrong with that, huh?

 
The end result is the black bottom cupcake. 

 
And boy, was it ever tasty. And very simple to make with very few ingredients. 

 
I began with a book from the library. It was all about cupcakes. Turned out that the pictures were very pretty, but the cupcakes just werent that good. So, then the natural progression was to get online and just look around. I discovered this great blog thats all about cooking....and from there I tried out these last two cupcakes I mentioned...with my own revisions, of course. 

So, thats where Ill be this cold weather season. And theres a high probability that I may have to be rolled out of the house come Spring time.

Accidents that can be avoided

A few weeks ago there was an accident down at the end of our drive. In fact, theres still a few remnants left over from that in our ditch.

It was in the middle of the night when it happened and the driver was intoxicated. He ran off the road and damaged the culvert that runs under our drive and he tore our mailbox right out of the the concrete that it was set in. The last I heard he is sitting in jail. 

In the meantime, we had to replace our mailbox with this pretty new green one.

And the damage done to the culvert was so extensive that the whole thing had to be replaced.

And then just the other day I drove home to discover this big truck parked in front of my drive.

Normally, this wouldnt really be an issue except I had just gone and loaded my van up with all these groceries.

What to do? I couldnt get the van up the drive because they were pouring fresh, hot asphalt. And if I couldnt get the van up there then that meant that I couldnt walk over it either....

I need to be up there where the house is.

This drive is normally how that happens.

Looks like were gonna be hiking the groceries up there by hand through the ditch and over the berm....And by we, that really means S.

I set all the bags out for him at the best spot we could find and then he climbed up the berm with them and then walked to the house.

After a few hours, we were left with this newly patched drive.

And now we have this shiny new culvert to replace the one that was no longer functional.

A lot of work had to be done by county workers to remedy what was caused by a drunk driver. Something that could have been totally avoided if one man had made a better choice. Im just very thankful that there werent any injuries. 

And I can hope that the dozen farm fresh eggs that I sent home with each of those 5 county workers helped them leave my farm a little bit happier than when they first arrived.