Why everyone should own a seam ripper

even if you don't sew. Someday it will come in handy. I promise. As long as you are taking my advice, here is another one: Measure twice, cut once. And before you measure twice, measure once. That was the step I forgot.

Remember this quilt?

The first thing Alex said when I showed him was "Is the top wider than the bottom?" By gum, he was right! To the tune of 2 inches! Yes, I am an awesome quilter. 

So I had to decide if I was going to fix it. I was worried it was going to take a lot of work. If it had been the second thing Alex had said, I probably wouldn't have fixed it and just given it to someone I didn't like. But seeing how it was the first thing out of his mouth, I knew I would never appreciate the quilt if I didn't attempt a redo. 

So I did. As soon as I got home from the fair. 

First place Southdown ewe. She is loooong. I like livestock shows because it takes me back to my 4-H days.

Alice is super cute. No comment on the sign. 

The famous butter cow. 

Here is the new and improved version of the quilt.

I know, you can't really tell.

Here is a side by side.

If you don't want to end up like me, measure before finishing your quilt.

Thank you.

Huzzah

I own a bicycle flat repair kit and a small tire pump. I carry it with me on my bike commutes because if I didn't have it with me, I would get a flat, right?

A couple weeks ago a young man stopped by the clinic on his bike and when he went to leave, his tire was flat. We weren't all that busy at the time so I pulled out my repair kit thinking "awesome! A chance to serve someone and experiment on someone else's bike!" I thought we had fixed the thing and I was bragging about it later until one of the front desk staff said something like "yeah, he showed up five minutes later wanting to use the phone." That was the first flat tire I had ever attempted to repair.

You can imagine my dread when I went to leave work today and my back tire was flat!! Alex had a meeting or I would have made him come rescue me. Everyone else at work was gone. I had no choice but to fix or be fixed.

So, in record breaking time (50 minutes), I repaired the flat and it actually lasted me until I got home! This is the triumph of my day.

FYI there is a nasty defect in my tire where a whole area about 1x3 cm is worn away almost to nothing and a little thread is poking out. And the tire curves the wrong way. Not good. And I am not sure when I will be riding my bike again. In all honesty, I should have caught it before it got to this point. Now maybe I will take more seriously the advice to look over your bike on a regular basis.

Not a great picture, but you get the idea.

As an aside, because I biked home an hour later than normal, I got to see a beautiful sunset. I also swallowed about 50 dusky bugs.

I love Thursdays

I don't have to go to work on Thursdays. It is the awesomest thing in the world. I have 26 hours of work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before my day off on Thursday and I have found myself recently counting down to 1:00 pm Tuesday, which is halfway to Thursday.

So what do I do on my days off? A better question would be: why do they go by three times as fast as any other day?!?

Today I finished a quilting project I have been working on for a while. It was originally going to be a baby quilt but I think you will all agree with me that it would not make a fabulous baby quilt unless the baby loved to read or chew on books.

Maybe we will hang it on the wall.

We got about five minutes of rain today. That is the most rain we have had for about 2 weeks. One upside of the drought is I have gotten a lot of biking in. No worries of being rained out pretty much the whole summer. Here is what my biking chart looks like:

That is compared to a couple months ago:

And for you observant people out there

there are four additional squares. I had to add them after I bought some biking shorts and figured I should "pay off" those as well. Biking shorts are not cheap!!

The Year of the Peach

Part I. Our peach tree had a very bad year. Right as the gobs and gobs of peaches were ripening, this had to happen:

A split down the trunk right at the V where the two main branches diverged and the trunk bore the most strain. This was our fault - we could have pruned better, shaped the tree's growth better when it was much younger, thinned the growing fruit more, and probably a dozen other things. Luckily, the weaker part (on the right in this picture) originally fell on and was supported by a chain link fence and the tree's vasculature wasn't compromised. So we sort of tied it back together and staked up some of the branches while the fruit was the heaviest. 

Which brings us to...

Part II. Our peach tree had a very, very good year. We got bushels of fruit from it: enough to freeze a little, can four different batches of jam, conserve, chutney, puree, make a couple cakes, eat in our oats, give some away, and blah blah blah... And the other great thing was that the peaches were amazing - sweet, juicy and oh so tasty.

I really wish I had taken a picture of the cake I made.

Part III: What do we do now? Prune heavily? Chop off half the tree? (Probably not.) How will the peach tree weather coming seasons?

Part IV: The moral of the story is that even if you have a humongous crack right through your trunk and you can't stand up straight and it looks like you don't have a chance, you can still have an amazing and miraculous season. I can't promise what will happen to you in future seasons though. That remains for the gardener to decide :)

Drought

They say it is the worst drought in over 50 years and I am in the epicenter of it. I don't think I have ever been in the epicenter of a natural disaster before (yes we were officially declared a disaster zone last week.) All I know is, the corn is shriveled, short, and turning brown. The soybeans still have a chance I hear if we get rain in the next week or so. Our yard is brown. But that is ok because so are all of our neighbors' yards. Our garden is hanging in there, thanks to our garden hose. If you see any rainclouds, send them to our soybean fields. Your cows and tofu will thank you later.

To answer the questions about the expensive cows: The milk, cheese, and ice cream that the dairy from the previous post produces is actually all just a byproduct of the real money maker: genes. Embryos actually. Cows are only worth so much in the last few years because we developed the technology to be able to harvest a large number of embryos from a single female and implant them into surrogate mommy cows. The expensive cows became so expensive because of their fabulous milking abilities, udder quality, and quality in general and therefore their genes are an international commodity.

To explain about the squirrel: We were concerned that squirrels would strip our peach tree as they have been known to do in the past so we borrowed a live trap and started catching them a few weeks ago. Alex skinned the first one he caught and stuck it in the fridge but we couldn't ever bring ourselves to eat it and eventually threw it away. We've caught a handful of squirrels so far and we just need to keep them away another week or so. (Our squirrel trapping permit ends in a couple weeks anyway.) Joe is welcome to come shoot as many as he wants too :)

And, because no post is all that fun without a few pictures:

Panda on the left and Ernie on the right. Panda was my very own dog when I was about 12 and I sure loved her. She chased cars and the UPS truck ran her over. 

Jessie, I love your hair. Ben, I love your face. 

Yes, I used to wear bows like this. Thank you mom. 

My first 4-H lamb, Lana. 

E-I-E-I-O

A few weeks ago I organized a tour to visit a dairy farm that I saw as a vet student. I originally saw the farm on a large animal ambulatory rotation because they wanted some advice from the university's theriogenologist and I was tagging along. I was fascinated at the time by two things: 1) the fact that they had two or three cows worth over $1/4 million and 2) the fact that they were planning on making a cheese cave.

A few friends and I visited the farm again, about two years later. I was hoping to see a fully functioning cheese cave but it turns out that the owner's son who was originally in charge of the cheese-making part of the business was killed in a tragic accident and the whole cheese thing nearly got scrapped altogether. They are making cheese today, but I believe on a smaller scale than was originally intended. Anyway, I basically wrote all that just so I could post this picture:

We unfortunately didn't get to see cheese making in process, but we did meet the exotic cheese maker from Holland (? I think) with an exotic name like Diego or Raul or Fabian or some such name that is actually Dutch.

Just think, one of the cows in this picture (I don't know which one or ones) is probably worth more than your house.

The cheese tasting was fun too.

The end.

By the way, there is a squirrel in my fridge.

Summer vacation 2012

This, my friends, was no staycation. 

Remember our blog posts about a year ago all about the trip we took to Mexico and by the end our three blog readers were all completely sick of us and our vacation and didn't stop by to see our blog again for another 6 months? Well here is another exhausting vacation post, so consider yourself warned.

In summary, we (Alex, Lucy, Lola, and I) drove out to the West, sucked in some fresh, non-humid, mountainous air and left Ruben at home to protect the house. It was a long drive.

Our first stop was to the home of Seed Saver's Exchange where we saw some of their heritage animals (Ancient White Park Cattle) and a whole lot of nicely weeded plants. It was a very nice place and I asked if they would let me move into their barn but they are full right now. 

On the way out, we stopped by the iconic Mt. Rushmore. Alex says I should call it the ironic Mt. Rushmore.   But that doesn't make any sense. It was worth the visit. I wore a side ponytail that day so you will not be seeing any pictures of me.

The corn palace was NOT worth the visit.

This is where we camped the second night at the Wind River Indian Reservation. It was windy and gorgeous. 

 Seeing the mountains again almost made me want to cry. It was like seeing a family member again that I hadn't seen for way too long.

We stopped by Jackson, WY where we had our honeymoon 5 years ago. I wouldn't expect you to know that  since we didn't have a blog back then. This is a little candy kitchen where we bought these amazing chocolate covered caramels on our honeymoon so of course we had to go get some more. The lady remembered us from our honeymoon as that adorable couple. I made that up, but the caramels were just as amazing as the last time we were there. 

We were lucky enough to be able to see a whole lot of family and friends during our trip, which made the trip very memorable and special for us. 

Lucy and Lola were great travel buddies.

We went to a petting zoo. 

Alex has the wingspan of a golden eagle. 

I don't. I am more in the turkey vulture range.

We were able to connect with a lot of good friends and I am very grateful for that. 

We're over halfway done. I don't blame you if you closed this page a long time ago. 

 Hazel is an awesome marshmallow eater. Notice Asher in the background. He was being a stinker and not letting me take a picture of him.

Me first thing in the morning.

 We hiked to the top of Squaw Peak overlooking Provo. We ran most of the way down which made me as sore as I have been since I ran a marathon. Of course, then we had to go and do a bunch of hikes around Arches two days later which nearly killed me. Or it nearly killed Alex, whose shoulder I leaned on every time I had to walk down a slope because my legs were killing me so badly.

BUT all the views and scenery were way worth it.

 This is a view of Timpanogos (which we hiked a few years ago) from Squaw Peak. 

This is also one reason why it is not a bad idea to live in Utah.

 And... Arches. This is Landscape Arch. 

The iconic (ironic?) Delicate Arch. Who named it that anyway? 

Do you see me over in the corner? That is me getting sunburned. 

Finally, Canyonlands. Too beautiful for words. I feel the need to go back there someday and hike, boat, camp, horseback ride, and/or backpack.

 Stunning. 

If you made it to the end of the post, I owe you a cupcake.