Here I go again...

With taking forever to update! Honestly time has gone so quickly, I can hardly keep up.

It's been super busy here between getting ready to leave, working around the farm, pickling, and just day to day stuff.

We are in full packing mode right now and our truck camper is going on the truck as we prepare to leave Monday morning for surgical trip number two (surgery number 7). I like traveling a whole lot better when it doesn't always involved surgery for me, let me tell you!

I have been very stressed out about leaving the little dogs. I have never left them for more than two weeks and that was at my last surgery. I am not used to not having them with me when we travel. Douglas has a lot of separation anxiety (it's kind of mutual but he becomes a worse emotional wreck than me) so I was most worried about leaving him. We will have the camper but we are also staying in a hotel for at least a week right before and after my surgery. The hotel is really nice and set us up comfortably for my initial recovery, but they also do not accept pets. So we had assumed taking even one dog was out of the question. But they were kind enough to make an exception for me because of surgery! So I could bring one dog. Norman is the best traveled and trained, but Douglas will be going because he's so attached to me he panics if he cannot get in the bathroom with me. The Chihuahua's are also bonded so they will be OK together, but still, I don't like leaving them. I know I also have to worry about myself though, and I won't be feeling so great, and also Kevin will have a lot on his hands while I am in the hospital.



I did manage to get a whole bunch of pickling done! I got through a bushel of cukes and stocked us up on Dills, bread and butters, mustard pickles, and also 8 day fermented icicle pickles. It felt so good to be canning. I wish I could have done more but I'm glad I accomplished what I did, even though it took me a while to recover.



My peppers are just starting to get ripe and actually producing better than I expected with all the rain and actually cool temps for July & early August. I hate to leave them! I'm hoping I'll still have a bunch to harvest when I return. I'm freezing everything I can so I can process them when I get home. The bananas and jalapenos I will pickle.



It's also peach time and I wish I could be preserving some... but since I'm getting ready to hit the road, I've just been eating up as much as I can, either fresh or in muffin form! Peach crumb muffins are one of my favorites.



I'm also harvesting herbs to dry while I am away. I suspect I should be able to gather a lot more when I return. Chamomile is my favorite, just smelling it is so relaxing. I love it in tea but I think I need it in pill form to take as needed, it's amazing as natures relaxant :)



The kids are all doing well! The boys are separate from the girls now (since this picture) and I'm hoping I won't have any boys jumping fences while I am away!



They have been enjoy the extra abundance of grass and also green leaves and flowers this year.



So has Jackson! It's been a great year for pastures, hay... It's hard to believe when we come back it will be fall!

The creek looks gorgeous in purple - but as you can see our humidity has been high the past week, you can't hardly see outside it gets so thick at times and actually, we haven't had any recent rain. Such a strange summer we've had here.

But now we are heading into the major heat. Pretty much everywhere we are going it is hot, hot, hot!

I am very excited though because hopefully we'll fit a couple of fun things into the trip despite me not feeling great and the main event being surgery. On Tuesday we are hoping to visit Luray caverns in Virginia which we drive by all the time and have never been able to stop at, so I'm really looking forward to that!

I hope to update from the road when I can.

Thank you all for all of your support, for reading, for your comments, it all means a lot to me. And I apologize for not keeping up with blogs recently, I do check in and hopefully will be more active and on track soon.

Oh, and P.S. we got about 350 square bales of hay off our fields, the barn is full, and we've got another huge pile under tarps so we have a nice big security net of hay this year, that's been helping me sleep better at night a lot!

Here's hoping this surgery, once I recover, really helps. I'm not afraid of surgery at this point even a little, but I am worried about recovery - I'm tired of doing it, and this one may be different than the others. But I remind myself that by "different" it might be hard, but it also might be very easy, you don't know until you are living it, so I'm trying to think positive and hope for the best :)