Busy, Busy

It might have been a mistake to start feeding Missy.  She may have lost the incentive to hunt, or perhaps she's just smart.  I was down in the barn early yesterday and when I opened the grain bucket to set out breakfast for the first girl, a humongous rat jumped out, the first I've seen since Missy moved in.  This rat was easily half the size of the cat.  Were I her, I wouldn't want to tackle a monster like that, either.  I can do without a jump start like that.  I can also do without rats of any size, thank you very much.

Helper Dude was right on time and the first order of business was the chimney.  When he was done, he said it hadn't been too bad, but when I cleaned out the creosote later, there was a full ashcan of that dirty black stuff.  No wonder poor Stove had been choking.  Next, Dude trimmed Bessie Anne's nails, a long-overdue pedicure.  She's not happy to have this done, but she's been slipping on hard surfaces and better a momentary discomfort than a dislocated hip.

Shortly after HD left, Beau stopped by to say he'd come back in the afternoon to light and tend the burn pile.  Yay!  I was desperate to get this done before the birds started nesting in that mountain of brush.

Stove and the brush weren't the only ones fired up yesterday.  I finally got to work on those boxes of apples that had been sitting in the round room, which, in my house, is like being in cold storage.  I had just taken the first two 9x13" pans of Apple Hill Cake out of the oven when Beau and nine kids (four were his and five were his sister's) showed up on the porch.  They all were willing taste testers and the cake was deemed a success.  Most of the crew set to work on the burn pile while two of the girls stayed to watch me in the kitchen as I set about making more cake batter.  They were fascinated with the old-fashioned apple peeler, corer, slicer, especially when they got to turn the crank.  "My goodness, you have a lot of pig stuff!," and they started to count.  They came up with 188, but that doesn't include those in rooms they couldn't go in nor those out in the front yard.

Not only did Beau and his crew of willing (or not) kids get the burn pile down to ashes, they got out the splitter and chunked up a good portion of the cedar rounds, and stocked up the porch rack for me.  Well worth the price of a few slices of cake.

When they were leaving, it was time to put the girls to bed.  Sometimes the reverse sunset is as lovely as the one in the west.  It's unfortunate that the pines that show up as gold are dead, killed by the infestation of bark beetles last year.  Camille has removed 17 such trees from her properties (these are not hers).

I needed to get back to the house to take the last two cakes out of the oven, four in all, but the sunset demanded equal time.  The cakes will go in the freezer.  I still have a lot of apples left.  Hmmm.

Not long after I finally sat down, Beau called.  "Would it be possible to get another slice of that cake?  The kids and I were telling Katie (his wife) how good it was and she was disappointed she didn't get any."  It's not like I didn't have enough to share, so bagged up the remains of the first one for the family.

When they came by, Beau asked if he could show Katie the downstairs.  I always have to laugh because the first response from anyone who sees that room with the big bar and fireplace for the first time is, "Wow!"  Katie didn't disappoint.

It had been a busy, busy, very productive day.