Getting Fall Ready

Things have been busy the past few weeks at our humble abode. Canning has been a major activity and there's still quite a bit more to do.

We've gotten all of our homeschool plans made; books and supplies have been purchased and are being organized for our start of school at the end of this month.

Hubby got a last minute call last week from the Army Reserves and he headed out on Friday to spend the next 50 days at Ft. Jackson, SC - they had a shortage of instructors and gave him a call to come help out.

I've been working some on my newly acquired HAM Radio skills - with much success locally on our 2 meter mobile unit. I'm anxious to try my skills though on the HF bands - I have a radio that a friend is letting us borrow, but so far my antenna hasn't quite been up to par. I can hear very well on the 40M band, but apparently no one can hear me. So, that's on my list of things to get to sometime in the next several days.

Cows are doing well and babies are growing nicely. We've been very blessed this year with ample rain and some unusually cool temperatures this July, which has kept our pasture grasses going full-steam. A nice change from the droughts of the past 2 years.

Bees are also going full steam ahead - we managed an incredible feat of splitting our one main hive from last fall into 4 new hives this spring - now we have a total of 5 and they all seem to be doing well. Not much honey to extract this year due to the splits, but wow, if they all make it through the winter we should have tons of honey next year!

Well, that's a quick update on our goings on - how is your summer winding down?