Payne Mountain Farms

I designed a logo for the farm today and started a website, too. We are going to sell organic herbs, seeds, maybe some cornmeal and other produce.

Tony has been selling a few dozen eggs a week to neighbors and providing them to family members so the rooster symbol had to be in the logo.

All the talk about the planet and globel warming...we have been green for most of our lives.

Speaking of live earth...we watched the concerts all day on the live MSN internet broadcast. The technology is amazing. We sat in our living room and watched 7 different venues at a time! The concerts were non-stop. Our favorite - Roger Waters really caught our attention even if he did play his old stuff from the Pink Floyd days. So did Madonna and Melissa Ethridge. Maybe the world's heavy "consumers" will get the message.

Questions

Are you the type person that eats supper and lies around waiting for bedtime or the type person that eats supper as a means of refueling for some activity? What time do you eat your last meal of the day? I am interested because of mine and Tony's habits. We are like night and day although out of respect we do try to conform to the other's preferences.



Tony would love to refuel at exactly 5:00 p.m. every day. He would eat his meal, rest for an hour and head out to do more never-ending farm chores. Tuned to a precise schedule, he would shower at 9:00 and hit the sack at 10:00. As for me, I would be content to eat at nine or even ten and stay up until two.



In fact we try to eat by 6:00 p.m. It's usually 6:30 and never later than 7:00. We get to bed around 11:00 although if I can't sleep I get back up and compute.



Concerning Southern dialect - We call the evening meal supper. The midday meal is lunch. Dinner can be either one. A church dinner is a late lunch after preaching. A pot luck dinner is at suppertime. Breakfast is always breakfast.



Speaking of mealtimes and food. Real banana pudding is a vanilla custard layered between sliced bananas and vanilla wafers. It is not jello. Homemade custard is easy to make if you have a double boiler. Without one, it's almost impossible. What is custard that makes it so good? It's pure sugar, eggs, whole milk, a little flour, a dash of salt, and your choice of flavoring (almond extract is good in banana pudding if you don't have real vanilla).

Hay harvest

These round bales are waiting to be picked up and stored in the barn.

Hay harvest

The old Ford tractor is coming round the mountain!

Hay harvest

Here Tony is about done mowing for now. The first cutting turned out to be cow candy. That means they will love it when they get a bale this winter. You know the cows love their hay when not a straw is left and they moo for more.

Hay harvest

Here the hay is on the ground. There's lots of blue grass mixed in with a lot of clover, too.

Hay harvest on the farm

Tony has been mowing hay all weeek. It is a busy time on the farm.

A cow named Karo

Karo's momma didn't want much to do with her so we raised her on a bottle. That's Karo in the photo, the black cow. The only way we could get her to take the bottle was to smear the nipple with karo syrup. That's how she got her name. Now Karo is all grown up and has her own calves. She is a very attentive mother and is a fine cow. Tony sent off a load of calves yesterday and today we went shopping for wormer, twine for the hay baler, tomato plants, and groceries. Prices have gone up so much, but not what we receive for our calves. Everyone gets a raise but the farmers. Soon this nation want have any small family farms. The young people sure don't plan on working for nothing. They would rather sell out to a subdivision and you can't really blame them. I don't know what people will eat. I guess contaminated wheat from China.

Ed is my dog

Ed is a miniature schnauzer. He has papers that say so. Most miniature schnauzers are either silver or black. Since Ed is spotted, he is call a "party breed." I named him after Ed Roland, the lead singer in Collective Soul.

Ed will be seven on Halloween, October 31, 2007. He is a dog with personality and we spoil him rotten. My spirits lift when I come home and Ed comes bopping up the driveway to meet me. Dogs surely are man's best friend.

We have other dogs. Digger, Blackberry, Socks, Bo, and Mama Dog. They are hounds that look to Ed as the alpha male. Ed bosses them all. I guess he has a short dog complex. Sometimes he acts like a pitbull.

Quiet Sunday except for squalking chickens

Sunday's are quiet around the farm. Tony takes a rest from his hard labor and only does essential chores like feeding the cows, chickens, dogs, cats, and pig. I did laundry, wrote up a couple of ribbon-cutting stories, optimized photos for the articles, read about a web-developer tool called Joomla, filled up the wild-bird feeders, and enjoyed sitting in the sunshine. It's like June in March here in North Georgia.

A low flying plane upset the chickens and they went to squalking like mad right before lunch. They thought it was a giant hawk. The roosters went to crowing and then the dogs went to barking. I hollered, "Praise the Lord!" three or four times and soon everything shut up.

Tony is napping and I am fixing to make a pot of coffee before fixing some supper. Tonight's menu includes tacos with sliced tomatoes from the fruit stand that actually have some taste.

Hay Day

Tony loaded 150 square bales of hay from the barn and took it to the feed store. They bought it because hay is in great demand right now. We are in the process of building fences. We have to fence in the new baby trees so the cows won't eat them. It is a major undertaking. Why new trees? To block the view of the new sub division coming in behind our farm.