Happenin's on the Farm

I have a minute to do a quick post, just to keep everyone up to date.

Sophie's kittens are growing. They're coming up on 1 month old. There are 3 girls and 1 boy, all solid black. We will probably keep the boy, since the best cat I every had was a solid black cat named Jaguar. And guess what we're going to name this one...?

...and speaking of boys on the farm, Wish's three boys were elastrated last night. That means we have 4 wethers to slaughter for food this winter.

The potatoes are all ready to be harvested, the corn is tasseling, the beans are on their third round of production (and this weekend I might, maybe, pull them up.) My onions are doing well, the Blackberries (the fruit, not the phone) are starting to ripen, and the tomatoes are still green. I wish they'd get with the program, but at least everything else is finally growing, despite the cold weather!

I bought a new stove off e-bay this week. I got a DutchWest #2461 (made by Vermont Castings) for $100! The listing came up while I was browsing, and I bought it before the listing was 2 hours old. It has a glass front door, and a flat top for cooking. I had been going back and forth on whether I wanted to buy a "cookstove" or a "heat stove", since I plan to do most of our winter cooking on the thing, but it will be in the Living Room, just a couple steps from the Kitchen. Basically, the question was, did I want "Pretty" (heater stove with glass door, no oven) or "Practical" (cook stove, with oven)? Practical was winning. UNTIL, while I was searching for info on the DutchWest, I ran across an off-grid blog, called Powell River Books. She had the same problem (heat stove/no oven) and solved it in an ingenious and inexpensive way! Which was all the push I needed to go ahead and buy the "Pretty" stove!! It's in Springfield, OH, about 4-5 hours away. We are going to go pick it up after the "Cinderella" show.

Stephanie and Tim at Adventures in the 100 acre wood generously gave us our current stove a couple years ago, when we were freezing our patoots off using a tiny stove, and had no money to buy a bigger stove. So it seems only right that we do the same for someone else. It is still a good stove, and heats well. We have about 1200 sq.ft. and it kept us nice and warm. If there is anyone out there reading this who needs a good wood/coal stove and wants to come pick it up, e-mail me and I'll tell you more about it!

"Cinderella" opens a week from today, and (in my uneducated opinion) I don't think the cast is anywhere near ready. The Duke doesn't know his lines, the mice aren't sure about the words to some of the songs, and cues keep getting dropped. Watching "Cinderella" unfold, I have decided that the Director/Producer is insanely optimistic, or (quite possibly) just insane, to be producing a play with the entire cast under 14. (I begin to think W.C. Fields was on to something.) It will be good experience for the kids, undoubtedly, but the sanity of the grow-ups involved is questionable...and I include myself in that group!

The next 2 weeks are going to be catch-up/preparation for the great Bathroom Removal Event. I decided to put off gutting the bathroom until AFTER Cinderella. But I'm hoping to have everything ready by then, so the re-do goes smoothly. When you stop laughing hysterically at that last statement, pray for us!

Time to start the day's work. The creatures are stirring, so I need to, also.