We celebrated Thanksgiving on Sunday and got in the Thanksgiving mood by making hand turkeys. We all made one. So we had a hand turkey family!! We have a 3 gallon bucket of mixed pea's and beans and that is what we used for decorations. They are very easy to make. You get some colored paper and trace and cut out your hand. Turn it over so you can't see your trace line, slather with glue and add beans, peas or some people use different kinds of dried pasta. Even E had a great time doing this. With Baby R's it took both Papa and I to get a trace of her hand and then I just put glue on it and dumped a bowl of beans and peas over top. Waited a little bit and tipped it back into the bowl to get the extras off and it was done. I figured that was what she'd like to do with them. But I didn't want her eating any. E put the entire bowl she had one at a time on her glued hand in a big pile and yelled DONE!! So I dumped the extras off and let her do it again.
We celebrated Thanksgiving with Papa's last boss, his wife and his daughter. We had a great time. Ate extremely well as per normal. Our one lonely turkey was great, breast nice and juicy just the way Papa likes it. We did not weight him, we forgot, but he weighed considerably more then E. (And he BARELY fit in my huge turkey roaster, we had to tuck the wings in as I cooked him breast down.) She is 20 lbs so we assume the turkey was late 20's early 30's. I made the best pumpkin pie ever, from the pumpkin J and I did, and a pretty good apple. After the meal we taught them to play Pinochle, which my team actually won!!! Gasp. I must be having a winning streak as that was 2 games, on two different nights, that my team has won. Both times we won by about 500 points!! YAHOO. The kids read books with Amy and watched us play. J and L had a cute discussion over supper about who's muscles where bigger which we all got a kick out of. Baby R loved the pumpkin pie and cranberries.
We moved the pigs again. Papa took the boys outside to make a pig run. We needed to move them about 200 feet so he made a pole and wire run from one area to the other. This worked great and the pigs are now in the under cover area where our cow spent last winter and what we've had so far this year. They will stay there now until butchering day. Which, being under a roof should be fairly easy to hang them. They are totally enjoying it (we poked holes with a rock bar and filled them with corn and they are happily turning it upside down.) but poor Bindy was really horrified!! PIGS in HER covered area. She stood a ways off and stared at them. She refused to go get a drink all day (it's by the pigs). She was so nervous milking that Papa only got 2 gallons that night and I got 2 the next morning. She heard the pigs 'whoof' and just about scared the daylights out of me. Her whole body did the lift up and move inches trick!! While I was milking. Now that's she's gotten used to them a bit she tattles on them. One of them got out yesterday and she bawled and bawled until we got it back in. Now the entire strength of the fencer is on the pig pen. I doubt they'll get out again. This morning I got about as much milk as I normally do so she has adjusted well. The plan right now is to butcher at least the biggest 3 between Christmas and new years. Maybe the biggest 4. We already have a line on Berkshire wieners for April and we are looking forward to trying the breed.
We loaded up the kids in the back of the Travelall and went and got a load of poplar from the back. 30 minutes and we had a truck bed trailer loaded and unloaded. I love being prepared!!! Because our weather this year is so mild we have not been burning any pine unless we need to start a fire. So we have been going through more poplar then normal. Which is fine with us as we have TONS of the stuff split and stacked.
