Friday With Forrest and Some DIY's

Good Morning, Human Friends!!  Forrest here.  

You know... I sure have a lot of friends, now.   I have all sorts of farm animals who are my friends, too... now that I have learned my manners.    What a wonderful world this is.  Mom told me all about you and how I have so many human friends that I have never met.  Oh, I wish I could meet and sniff and play with each one of you!  What fun that would be!!

(By the way, if you are wondering what the square thing is hanging off of my collar... it is a GPS tracker.  Mom and Dad used to use it on Annie and our old Oakley, so that when they would go on wandering adventure, so that Mom and Dad knew where they were.  I have it on so that Mom and Dad can tell how many miles I run each day.  A lot!)

I know that Mom tells you all about my lessons and my play time each day.  Today I wanted to tell you about one of the bestest things about mornings here on the farm.  Every morning, Dad calls, "Viteeeyums time!"  He says that "Viteeeyums" were something his grandma used to talk about when he was little.  So, in honor of her, he gives us our "Viteeeeyums" each day!  Sometimes he calls them our "viteeeyummy-yums". 

We each get a little piece of hard-boiled egg as a treat.  And I didn't know this before, but these treats are what Mom and I find under the chicken butts every afternoon!  Isn't that amazing?  Then, we each get a special viteeeyum.  Chester gets his Lupus medicine in a blob of peanut butter.  I get to lick the rest of the peanut butter off of Dad's fingers.

Annie gets some arthritis medicine each day to keep her joints healthy now that she is old.  I know this helps her a lot, because she runs faster when she takes her medicine!

I have had to learn to take my turn during viteeeyums time and not try to steal anyone else's treat!  I think I am doing pretty good at this now.  I have also learned that good boys don't steal people-food off of the counter.  I might have grabbed a piece of meat the other day.  Mom and Dad told me they were very disappointed in that and that it was not a good trick.  I felt very guilty.   I'm gonna try real hard to never do that again (oh, but it's so hard with this sniffer of mine... everything smells so good!)

We got some very exciting news yesterday.  You've already met my brother Oakley.  His Mom has been searching through the shelter for more of our siblings (we were a big litter of pups in the local shelter).  She found another one of our brothers... and we are going to try to set up a play date with him, too.  Won't that be so much fun!!  His name is Cooper and he loves to swim just like me and Oakley.

Life just keeps getting better and better!

I guess that's all I have to tell you about this week.  We are probably going to have a rainy weekend... so I'm not sure what kind of fun I am going to have.  But, we will tell you all about it on Monday.

Have a happy First Day of Fall, friends!

Your furry friend, Forrest

PS:  fallen leaves are pretty fun to crunch in your teeth... you might want to try it!  But don't swallow them... just spit them out like I do.

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Ahhhhh.... Autumn arrives tomorrow!  I am so happy with the cool weather we are experiencing.   These last couple of days have greeted us with 40 degree temperatures as we head out for morning chores.

It is the beginning of beautiful sunrise season... even on misty mornings.

Morning grazing happens now, without fly masks.  Although, after grazing, the fly masks go back on, as the black flies have been relentless once the temperature warms.

Every morning, in the woods that you can see across the street from the equines, I can hear a flock of turkeys beginning their day.  They've been roosting in the woods across the street for most of the past year.  We frequently see a couple of broods of young turkeys scampering around the farm with their mothers.

How wonderful it is to get to know the critters who call this land their home!

Yesterday I began to dig up our sweet potatoes.

The leaves of the vines are just beginning to turn yellow.

I found these beneath the first vine that I pulled...

Three vines later I had found all of these.  There are 8 to 10 times that many left to pull!  We surely won't run out of sweet potatoes this winter.  After digging, I wiped off any excess dirt and allow the skins to dry out on the dining room table for several days.  Then we will store them in sawdust, in the cellar, for the winter.

A week or two ago I showed you the dried calendula that I had covered in olive oil.  I did a warm infusion two weeks ago, then left it sit in a dark cupboard (giving it a daily shake)... then yesterday, I warmed it again for a second warm infusion and drained it through a sieve.  It's a lovely orange color now and smells like calendula.  Today, I am using it to make an orange calendula soap.  Calendula is great for the skin.  I can't wait to see how it does in a soap.  I'll share photos next week, after it is cut and ready to cure.

I love the challenge of making things rather than buying them.  Although that might seem a little silly, because of course, I have to buy the ingredients.   However, making the finished product and having control over all of the ingredients gives me great satisfaction.  This week I started another batch of homemade pure vanilla extract.   This is my second batch of vanilla... the first one I started in 2020 and have only the slender bottle pictured on the right remaining.  This should get me through much of the coming year, as the new bottle (on the left) won't be ready for at least 6 months.

  I order my vanilla beans from HERE.  (From time to time, you can find them cheaper at Costco.)  I slice each bean (there are three large Madagascar beans in a tube) with a very sharp knife down the middle into three or four long strips and soak them in 750 ml. of  vodka.  After about 6 months, the vanilla is ready to use.   Amazingly, you can see that the vodka has started to change color after only 2 days.  And...the cost to make your own is about a third of what it costs to buy it already made.