Hunting or something like it...

Jimmy and Carl went squirrel hunting on Saturday... and Carl got another squirrel...

On Tuesday, we had Squirrel Patties with Squirrel Gravy for lunch!

On Tuesday afternoon, Jimmy and Carl took care of removing the access to data on some computer equipment...

It might be easier to see if you view on YouTube directly: https://youtu.be/bH2U7zuZ5Qo

Feed for the Beeves

I used to call them "Beasties" but Jimmy said that "Beeves" is the more appropriate term (I think I have it spelled correctly!)...

On Saturday, Jimmy and Carl went to Edward's to get corn...

... it is a process that involves transferring the corn a couple of times.

The hound dog audience watching the process!

The box of corn after it got back to the farm - ready for grinding in the hammermill the next time the grain mix needs to be made.

The grain mix - we fill the buckets out of this container to take over to the "beeves".

When we go over to feed, the "beeves" hear the pickup truck coming and head to the troughs.

They sure are messy eaters - a lot spills out of their mouths as they eat. And they push and shove each other a lot too.

The container will provide the amount needed for about 3 days of bucket fulls, and then it needs to be re-filled from the auger wagon...

Filling the container from which we get the bucket-fulls to take to the troughs.

Video of filling the container from the auger wagon (which has been filled from the hammer mill):

 Link to video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/shorts/YZnFSitcx1A?feature=share

As we headed back to Gracie from the grain filling, we saw some free-loaders on the alfalfa field.

Duracell and Mocha

Blog readers over the past couple of years may remember bottle babies Duracell and Mocha... Mocha was born when we were here on the farm in the spring of 2020 (May 2, 2020); Duracell had been born a few months previous to that.

I had been wanting to get a picture of how big they have gotten, so I walked over to the gate where we had fed them 2.5 years ago to get some pictures...

Duracell

Mocha

I noticed that Duracell was chewing her cud, and I remembered that grand-nephew Evan had requested more cow and chicken videos last year and that I have not posted *any*, so I decided to video her chewing her cud... and got a little more than I bargained for...

In case that video does not play, this is the link directly to YouTube: https://youtu.be/dDYRXHToEz0

Preparing Cranberry Relish

One of the items that we like with turkey dinner is cranberry relish, so we made that for Thanksgiving...

Raw ingredients -- apples, oranges, cranberries...

... finished relish!

We had to run out to the store late on Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving because the amount of cranberries that we had purchased was not making it nice and red... so we joined other last minute shoppers getting all the fixings for Thanksgiving dinner!

Continuing maintenance on Gracie

Earlier in the day on Thanksgiving (before the evening feast!), Jimmy did some additional maintenance items on the generator. Carl had indicated that we wanted to get the belt replaced and flush the cooling system -- and thought that we needed to go to a shop that would work on Onan-Cummins generators so they could "drop" the generator and work on it. Many generators in motorhomes are on a slide-out tray so they can be easily accessed, but not on Gracie. 

When Jimmy and Carl were looking at it while doing the oil change in the shop a few days ago, Jimmy analyzed and figured that he could do the work from underneath... so, on Thanksgiving morning, Jimmy worked on it...

There is a front access panel (like a hood) on the front of Gracie that gives access to the top of the generator...

Top of the generator -- to get to the belt, Jimmy needed to take the back off the generator. To take the back off, he needed to loosen the top and both sides...

Jimmy accessing the back of the generator from underneath.

Access to the back of the generator.

Jimmy replaced the belt and drained the coolant from the generator. They then refilled the coolant and we ran the generator under load to get it up to operating temperature, and then checked the coolant to make sure it was still full. Then we ran it under a greater load to blow the soot out of the spark arrestor and to additionally check the coolant level. Jimmy still wants to check the lubrication for the fan, and that should complete the generator service.

Thanksgiving Feast

Regina produced an amazing Thanksgiving Feast for us!

Dessert table -- the purchased pumpkin pie and Cool Whip were Carl's and my contributions -- everything else was homemade!

A *very* full table!

Squirrel Stew...

I had neglected to post a few days ago that Carl got a squirrel while out hunting with Jimmy -- it went into the Squirrel Stew for Thanksgiving dinner!

Family around the table...

More of the family around the table!

Table rules - start what's in front of you, pass to the left, make sure the gravy comes after the stuffing, whipped potatoes, and turkey!

We had big dinner plates, but they weren't big enough to hold everything the first time around. Carl luckily had a seat right in the middle of the side of the table, and could thus refill his plate easily -- I'm not going to make any comments about how much was eaten, but...

... this was the second filling of his plate.

Let me see if I can remember everything: turkey, venison, squirrel stew, dressing/stuffing, whipped potatoes (with cream!), gravy, green bean casserole and plain green beans, sweet potato casserole, sweet corn kernels, collard greens, regular and crescent rolls, homemade butter and two types of jelly (peach and strawberry), cranberry relish, and, for dessert, pecan pie, fruit salad, brownies, pumpkin pie, Cool Whip...

... and this was Carl's dessert plate -- in case you think that second piece of pie has a napkin folded over it -- nah... that's Cool Whip... Carl thinks that the pumpkin pie must be completely covered with whipped topping -- he claims to like pumpkin pie, but... I think it might simply be a delivery vehicle for whipped topping!

It was a magnificent meal, and so wonderful to be with family!

Thankful

 Thankful for many things...

Henny Penny and processing pumpkins

One of the chickens, Henny Penny, has figured out how to get out of the chicken pen. She always goes back into the hen house at night, but she likes foraging for her own food...

... sometimes her foraging is just outside the chicken yard...

... almost as if she is taunting her less creative chicken buddies!

As I wrote on this blog, few weeks ago, we gleaned a number of pie pumpkins at a local farmer's field (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/10/gleaning-pumpkins.html). Since we got back from Dominican Republic, I have been working on getting them processed from pumpkin to puree. The first set that I did, we tried making into pumpkin soup. We have tried to make pumpkin soup a couple of times in the past year or so, but it never came out that good -- I had decided to try it one last time, and if it didn't work, to give up! 

I used the recipe that we like for Butternut Squash soup (https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/instant-pot-butternut-squash-soup/#tasty-recipes-62787 - it has a Granny Smith apple and carrot to add sweetness, and we found that putting 1/2 a block of cream cheese in at the end makes it nice and creamy). For the pumpkin soup, I also added pumpkin pie spice. It turned out pretty good, though we like it even better if we stir in a spoonful of honey and add more pumpkin pie spice to the bowl at the table. So... we decided that we should go ahead and process all of the pumpkins so we would only have puree to carry with us (in the freezer).

The first set of pumpkins I used the Instant Pot to process, but... it is limited in how many I can do at one time, so the second time...

... we tried using the oven. I was still limited on space, but could do more -- doing some in the Instant Pot, and others in the oven.

We found that the ones done in the oven were not as "cooked" as in the Instant Pot, so it was a little easier to scrape the flesh out -- but I'm a little concerned that the flesh may not be cooked enough if it isn't cooked some more -- so I've got those bags of puree in the freezer marked specifically as being for making soup. The Instant Pot ones could be used in pumpkin bread or soup -- but were harder to scrape out because the skin was so soft.

Before the pumpkins went into the Instant Pot or the oven, we cut them open and scraped out all the seeds and inside stuff...

... and then dumped that over into the chicken yard -- the chickens were *very* happy with that gift!

A picture in the midst of processing -- empty shells that have already been scraped in the pink bowl, puree in the bowl with the teal spatula that I'm measuring out into the zipper bag to go into the freezer. I try to measure out what is in the bag in the freezer so I know what size recipe it will serve to make.

These are shells before scraping that were done in the Instant Pot, cooling on a rack so we can then scrape them.

We picked up 15 pie pumpkins from the field. One was bad inside (so the chickens got all of that one) -- so we've processed 14 pumpkins and have puree for making soup and bread down the road!

Weighing day

Two of the "beasties" that we feed grain were to go to the processor, so it was time to weigh all of them to get a benchmark and figure out which two should be taken.

Jimmy got them up into the field in front of Mark and Sissy's beautiful home...

... then moved around back of the barn to where the scale is currently located.

We weighed them all...

... and identified the two candidates to go to the processor.

We all agreed that working with these "great daft beasts" (as one of my former IBM co-workers would call them in a very Scottish accent) makes eating your next serving of beef even more satisfying. They can be *very* annoying!

Going for a ride-along

On Friday, Jimmy was planting a cover crop...

...he had rye (tan seed in top bins) and crimson clover (white seed in the bottom bins)...

... loaded into his no-till drill.

Carl went for a ride along -- you can see the part of the field that is already planted is to the left of where they were currently planting (the grooves).

After a couple of rounds, Carl got out and Jimmy continued with the planting.

Carl said that it was hard to get good pictures during the ride-along because it was bumpy and he had to hold on to keep from bouncing around in the cab of the tractor.

The next day (Saturday), Jimmy wanted a helper to ride on the drill to make sure that all the seed cups were full as he was getting to the bottom of the bin. I asked him if he had taken any pictures during that ride-along, and he said that he was concentrating on holding on so he didn't fall off, so no pictures! But... there is one of him on the no-till drill that we blogged about back in April 2020: https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2020/04/planting.html

A beautiful fiery sky

Sorry for no posts for a few days -- we got busy!

There was a beautiful fiery sunset one evening last week...

Just gorgeous!

My brother has pointed out that he never sees sunrise pictures on our blog... and that is true! We are rarely up and out in time for sunrise! And... we tend to find that sunrises are not as pretty, but, we don't see many, so... our data collection may be incomplete. Maybe one day we'll get pictures of a sunrise, but... not sure when that might be!

Generator service

On Wednesday morning, Jimmy and Carl did the service on Gracie's generator...

Recording the number of hours currently on the generator (1384).

We had gotten the parts needed for generator service from the Cummins vendor at the Tucson FMCA convention back in March.

Oil change, oil, fuel, and air filter changes accomplished

Jimmy also looked at the front driver's side hydraulic jack for us -- it appears that it is still leaking fluid (we had an HWH person look at it in March at the FMCA Tucson event) - Jimmy tightened the cap at the top of the jack...

It looks nice and clean right now - we're going to keep an eye on it, may need to get HWH to deal with it again.

With all the service items completed, we drove Gracie to the Love's Travel Center (about 2.5 miles away) to dump our tanks. When we returned, the transmission fluid was at operating temperature, so Jimmy checked the transmission fluid level (it was fine) -- last item on the checklist checked off!

Service for Gracie

On Tuesday...

... Gracie went into the shop -- she pretty much fills the center section of Jimmy's shop.

Tube going in the front is providing air pressure to allow the brakes to be tested. Gracie is up on jack stands in the front...

... and also up on jack stands in the back.

She is safely off the ground!

Her own jacks started the process, and then the jack stands supported her weight.

Jimmy greasing at the front end.

Maintenance schedule... 1 of 3

 

Maintenance schedule -- 2 of 3

Maintenance schedule -- 3 of 3

Note that even though Gracie is 11 years old (132 months), her mileage is less than 54K!

After lubricating the chassis, changing fuel filters, oil filter, and oil, inspecting wear components, and the many other items on the checklist, Gracie's chassis service was completed. We are so grateful that Jimmy is willing to do this for us. All our RV friends are highly jealous when they find out that we have someone we know and trust to do our service!