FarmReport

The  hay crop was OK, but down considerably from last year.  Tried a couple new things in the garden this year:  leeks and shallots.  I'd never eaten either before.   God knows how many articles I've read praising shallots as a gourmet's delight; possessing a delicate subtle flavor between onion and garlic.  And the raves I read about leeks, possessing a mild sweet flavor far superior to ordinary garden variety onions.  Our opinion:  they're both onions by another name.  Can't understand what the fuss is about.  Is it climate, or soil, or do you need a gourmet palate?  Reminds me of when I planted  arugula.  Heard great things about it, but out of our garden it tasted terrible.  Since then, we've eaten it (presumably commercially raised) several times in various dishes prepared by others and we've really liked it.  Go figure.  Any comments?

The geese were back this year doing their usual thing.  But they changed their usual get-the-little-ones-to-a-larger-pond-migration route.  Rather than coming up the meadow, where we could get a good look at them, they bolted from the pond straight into the woods and vanished.  I swear, momma lays rolling eggs that hit the ground running.  As soon as those little feet are sticking out of the shell they start on their migration.

We would like to officially announce the arrival of Nuisánce de Monie Pitt (Nucy for short).  We've now expanded our live stock holdings to include one head of cat.  Sort of like Moses, we found her abandoned, at the tender age of two weeks, crying her eyes out, in the bushes near our front door.  We know who the mother is and she is on our ---- list.  Trish became a wonderful ersatz mommy and did a lot of studying on the internet on how to raise a very young kitten.  She's almost grown now and seems none the worse for wear.  Perot was always our pain in the butt mutt.  Nucy's now become our pain in the tushy pussy.

We're surrounded by ranchers.  We've had horses show up (unannounced) on our property several times.  This year we had several cattle show up at our pond.  We managed to track down the owners and they came over to fetch them on horseback, ATV, pickup, and whatever.  They put on quite a show for awhile.  Unfortunately, the cattle escaped to the back of our property (which is extremely rugged).  They may still be down there.  We hear occasional cattle calls that sound real close.

Construction Report

STILL building shelves for our stuff.  I swear, junk must be able to self replicate like DNA.  I can never get ahead of it.  Tornados are a constant concern around here so Trish had me build a poor man's hidey hole in the basement.  It's made out of recovered lumber, the walls are solid wood, 6" thick.  It may not be officially "tornado certified" but considering it's sitting in a basement with reinforced concrete walls it's probably adequate.

MusicReport

We did our usual music festivals this year.  Even did a couple of paying gigs.  Skiatook gave us a chance to check out our new portable TV antenna.  (The old antenna on our trailer hasn't worked in years.)  We bought a portable antenna so it could also be used at our house.  Now if Dish every goes out we can at least get local programming.  Worked awesome, it's nice to be able to keep up with the news while away.  We did the band scramble this year and I raved the audience with my signature song. 

We did Winfield a bit differently this year.  We've been fed up with land run for a long time so this year we avoided it completely by camping in Oxford (a small town about 10 miles west of Winfield).  We even did a few gigs live on the Napawalla Acoustic Alliance Stage while we were there.

The weather gods surprised us with very nice weather for our Spring Rendezvous.  On Saturday we picked outdoors all day long and into the night around a pleasant campfire.

Of course -- the weather for our Fall Rendezvous (the rendezvous that almost wasn't) was perrrrrfect.  And we did a perfect job of picking a weekend that everybody had conflicts.  We did manage a small gathering on Saturday and picked under ideal conditions around a beautiful campfire until well into the night.

Anyone passing this way is always welcome to drop in and sit a spell. Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season and we wish you all the best for the coming year.