Pennsylvania

   Whew!  Last week passed in somewhat of a blur!  Busy, but fun!  The girls and I took a trip to Pennsylvania.  We had to leave the most important man in our lives at home, and that was sad, but we still managed to have a good time.

   A few months ago my sister asked us to go with her family to visit her daughter (my niece) in Pennsylvania.  My niece whom we affectionately call "Toydles" has been living there for the summer at a farm that is a haven for girls from troubled homes.  She has been acting as a mentor/mother to the girls while they stay there.  As there are horses at this farm, Toydles is in her element.  She's good at the whole mentor/mother thing.  I admire her greatly.  I couldn't do what she does.

   We started off the trip by an overnight stop in my homeland where we picked up my other nice whom we have nicknamed "Pie".  She was such a blessing because she helped me with the girls and drove most of the way to PA.

   Our first stop was to my brother-in-law's sister who lives in PA.  What an encouraging and fun time!  I thoroughly enjoyed our stop there.  It was fun to get reaquainted with them.  We attended their church on Sunday and I was so encouraged and blessed by the worship service and the sermon!  

   On Monday we drove the 2 hours to the farm where my neice was stationed.  What a beautiful drive! I had no idea that PA was that gorgeous!  I enjoyed looking at the old homes made of stone.  They are so quaint and old fashioned.  I don't know as I'd want to live in one, but they are neat to look at.

   This is the house that Toydles lives in.  It is enormous!  It has four levels and I don't know how many bedrooms.  Some have fireplaces in them!  The only drawback for me was that there wasn't air conditioning.  It was so humid that the air dripped water.  It wasn't raining, but every once in a while you'd feel a drop out of nowhere.  

   The pond you see here is actually fed by a spring on the other side of the house.  The water bubbles up from the ground, flows through the basement of the house and out into this pond.  The water is ice cold.  I'm told that before the frig was invented, they used to put the food stuff that they needed to keep cool in the water that pooled in the basement.  Pretty smart eh!

   I personally fell in love with the upper porch deck.  I sat out there for a while and read a book.  You can catch a nice breeze there and it was so relaxing!

   This is the view from that upper porch.  I couldn't quite capture the whole view, but it was spectacular!  As you can see, there were two ponds. An upper one and a bigger lower one.  

   One evening, my girls decided to go wading with my sister.  I knew that the potential for it to end in disaster was huge, but I agreed anyway.  Just as long as I didn't have to get in the water.  The silt on the bottom was pretty deep and I'm kinda girly when it comes to stepping into something where I can't actually see what is underneath.  As you can see, my little girl tried to give my big girl a hug and it ended in disaster.  My big girl was NOT happy.  

   My big girl got in on a "horsey" ride.  She loved it!  She didn't want to leave the farm.  I'm thinking that she is going to start working on her Daddy to get her a pony.  

   This is my nephew who abhors anything resembling cowboyishness.  He was pretty proud of his cheesy hat.  

   Sister lovin's.  This is pretty much the look that Pie gets whenever threatened with being made to ride a horse.  It's painful to her.  Toydles and her mother are the only two who actually enjoy the beasts.  

   This beast was my 1 year old's nemesis.  She was visiting the goat when it had the audacity to bleat right in her face.  From then on, they were decidedly NOT friends.

   We had a fun time, but we were ready to come home again.  My big girl got sick on the way home.  Took her to the doctor and found out that she had tonsilitis.  Soon after my little girl got it too.  So, they are on antibiotics and are quickly getting better.

   The previous post about corn day actually happened the day after we arrived home, so it really was a busy week.  Good, but tiresome.

   It's good to be home!

   

     

Corn Day

   I can't believe that I'm blogging about a day as mundane as corn day, but this year it was a surprisingly good year!  I usually dread corn day.  Normally the sun is beating down and it's the hottest day of the year.  I do not look forward to the mess and the tracking in and out of people into my house.

Will plan all future corn days around this little machine's availability!

   This year was refreshingly different!  We used to have a hired man whose family did corn with us.  His immediate family (3 young boys), his parents, his sister who usually brought along a few kids, and sometimes a great aunt.  That's a lot of people.  It took HUGE amounts of corn to feed all those people for the winter.  We even did some for another sister of his who lives a state away.  Alas, but our good hired man moved west!  We miss him greatly.  He was a wonderful man who did good work and was like family to us.  However, since there weren't as many people, we didn't have to do as much corn, and there weren't as many people tracking in and out of my house.  This year there were 5 adults and two little helper girls.  MUCH less of a circus.  Although, if we could have our hired man back, I'd gladly put up with the circus for a day.

   My farmer and his Dad picked the corn the evening before.  We got up early the next day and started husking it.

 We rented a machine that took the silks off and washed the corn at the same time.  This saved us HOURS of work!  I highly recommend this nifty little contraption.  You put the cobs in one end and they come out the other clean and ready to work with.  Which is, as my niece would say, "Awesome sauce."

    This little girl in the purple coat, was a good helper!  She handed Grandpa corn so that he wouldn't have to bend over.  She stuck with it until we were done.  I was proud of her!  She was even sick and running a fever that was only controlled by occasional doses of Advil.  She was a trooper!  When they were done with that job, Grandpa gave her a hug and a kiss which made a big impression on her.  She still talks about, "Helping Grandpa's back."  My baby was a pretty good helper too, although her attention span wasn't quite as long.

   My hubby's Grandma came out to help us.  She's a spry little lady!  She is an amazing cook.  (That has nothing to do with my blog post, but I thought I'd just mention that!)  Notice the large amount of corn!  I don't think that was all of it either.  It was way more than we needed, but it's always nice to have a bit extra!

Our sick, but happy girl.  What a gift she is!

My father-in-law manning the kettle.

  Then it's into the kettle to be blanched.  We have this awesome burner system that allows us to cook it outside.  This is great because the mess is outside and not in my kitchen, and the hot is outside and not in my kitchen!

   The next stop after being cooked is into our garage.  We set up tables to cut the corn off the cob.  But first the hot corn is cooled in big vats of ice cold water.  You can see the tubs in the back round of this picture.  The water is so cold that you can't keep your hand in there for more than a few seconds at a time.  The Arctic Circle springs to mind.

   One of the secrets of making corn day go quickly and with much less work are the handy dandy corn cutters we use.  You can see them in the picture above.  It's a circle blade that is expandable so that it will fit any size cob.  There are metal handles attached to the blade.  We cut out square blocks of wood, varnished the snoot out of them and drove a nail up through the bottom.  These are the best corn cutters to ever be invented!  You stab the cob on the nail, push it down to the block of wood, put your cutter on top and push down... and voila!  The whole cob is stripped at once!  (For those of you who are wondering, the cutters can be bought at Wal-Mart, online or at some farm stores.  The Wal-Mart ones have been known to be cheaply made.  Go figure.)

   My girl ended up with two minor wounds when she tried to help cut the corn off.  She gave up after the second band-aid.  I would have too!

   I don't have any pictures of "Yours Truly" bagging the corn, but I was there and I did work.  My job was cutting, bagging, playing nurse, running bagged corn to the house to put in the freezer, dispensing refreshing drinks, threatening dark things to my father-in-law who enjoyed splashing me with the Arctic water, and holding tired little people who needed a bed.

   You wanna know the best part about the whole day?

   It was COOL!!!!!   It barely got to 75 degrees!  That's why my daughter was wearing a jacket in July.  It felt like autumn weather.  It was wonderful!  God couldn't have given us a better day to do corn.  

   Anyway, it's over until next year!  Praise. The. Lord.