Seven Quick Takes on Friday--volume 76

One.

What a busy week, and I still have so much to do that was on Monday's "to do" list!  Oh, well.  I did make up a huge quantity of my favorite granola yesterday, squeezed in between school and umpteen loads of laundry...

Two.

My kitchen appliances are too cool for me.   I tend to go through blenders pretty quickly.  Something about grinding up ice cubes all summer for smoothies seems to be the trouble.  They start to smell like burning tires and then they die.  This time I replaced mine before its untimely death with a Ninja.  I was opposed to purchasing it just because it was called Ninja and was a flashy cobalt blue, but someone recommended it to me and it was $20 less than the stick-in-the-mud two speed Oster I was thinking about, and a whole lot less than this gorgeous workhorse of a blender for which my heart pines.  How do I like the Ninja?  It's alright.  It is steady on the counter, doesn't make a mess when I pour, is easy to use and to clean.  With all four blades, I wish it did ice better.  It's more like a snow-cone texture than a snow texture, if you know what I mean.

Three.

I am really enjoying Wives & Daughters.  I got North and South as a gift last year and loved it.   I am so glad to have a ten year-old daughter who shares my love of historical dramas, with all the costumes and gorgeous estates.  Bret sort of comes and goes throughout these movies, and the boys?  Well...

Four.

Spring pastures are wonderful.  We aren't milking Naomi (Fiona takes care of that), but Nuala, who hasn't calved in two years, has gone from giving less than a gallon a day this winter up to over two gallons a day, just because of the wonderful grass.  And the butter is getting really yellow again.  Here is a shot of our growing heifer calf, Fiona:

You can click for a bigger image.  Isn't she gorgeous?  And is it apparent that I have a thing for names with three vowels for every two consonants?

Five.

We can almost forget we have a "farmette" during the winter months, other than milking and feeding of animals, but spring is so busy--for Bret!  Besides trying to earn a living with his cabinetry work (thank you, St. Joseph, for your most recent gift of work to Bret), he has to enclose my garden beds to keep the chickens out, set up a spot for the new chicks we will be getting next week, and find time and fair weather to do the biannual cleaning of the chicken coop.  

Six.

We don't get much theater (pronounced "theah-tah") around these parts, so we create our own cultural events.  This week we enjoyed Popsicle Stick Theater's presentation of a play based loosely on Cinderella.

One of my favorite ad lib lines:

Prince (to the step-sister):  And where is the house of your mother?

                                Step-sister: About two miles as the horse rides.

                                Prince:  The horse isn't riding, I am.

Yep.  We got yer culture right here.

Seven.

 Nothing more to write.  Just a nice photo of Gabriel with one of our oldest hens.  It is a fact that no laying hen has ever made it into a soup pot around here.  No siree, this is the Patch O' Dirt Farm Home for Retired Laying Hens.

Have a great weekend.  And don't forget to stop by Jennifer's Conversion Diary for more Seven Quick Takes on Friday.