Rachel, would you believe I have had this recipe in my draft folder since September 20!? Thanks for the prod to get a picture and get it posted! Enjoy Cheryl’s Salad!
Cheryl’s Salad
Serves 15
1# Romaine lettuce
1# bacon, cut up and browned
2 small purple onions
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
Dressing:
1 cup sour cream
1 cup salad dressing
1/2 cup sugar
So easy and so good!! One of our favorites.
In other news - - - -
I think Kate was late for chores yesterday 
I know I liked wooly bears when I was little; I mean I know I liked to collect them, I liked to pet them, I liked them to crawl all over my hands, just like Jewel does. But now - - -ugghhh. No thank you. The idea of it about does me in. It’s so creepy crawly. And it’s a worm 
Time for a little barn history. Our barn is a century barn, and at one point the room pictured below was filled with some sort of feed. When we moved here, I really don’t remember what was in it, but I do remember cleaning it up with the kids; it became a much-loved playhouse. That was before the barn was sided, and the kids liked to peek out of the cracks in the barn to see who was here or who was coming to the barn. They shot lots of wolves and bears through those cracks, too, and many happy hours were spent here. Imagination flourished.
Fast forward a few years. The same crew that had so much fun in this playroom decided we needed to collect and recycle scrap metal, and this little room became the scrap room. It has been off-limits for more years than I can remember, because the pile of scrap metal with its sharp corners and rusty edges simply wasn’t safe. The boys have always made money off their junk hobby, which they contributed to our family pizza fund, and they’ve burned lots of energy doing so, so we’ve tolerated it these many years, albeit grudgingly.
Well, yesterday the scrap in the scrap room was moved to another spot in the barn, right where it should have been years ago, beside the garbage cans. Brilliant, huh?
And now - - - -
this crew of littles is having a mah-velous time in their old new playhouse!
After school today, we picked apples to keep in storage. Josh brought me this gorgeous Red Delicious.
For size comparison, I am holding it in the next picture, and I must say that I find this amazing and beautiful.
To think that this delicious fruit grew on a tree from the tiniest of flowers is almost miraculous. Watching fruit grow all summer brings me much awe, and I think especially this year because it’s what we call a ‘good apple year’, and the last two years we had few to none. So yes, this is awesome to me, and I delight to worship the Creator of such beauty.
Furthermore. Is it too much to say that when you eat an apple, you are eating a miracle? I know scientists can explain exactly how the whole system works, how plants are self-propagating, blah blah blah, but who can explain how they do it? I mean, how does a tree know what to do to create more trees? How can a seed know to put roots down and leaves toward the sun? Why does it do that? And why does a new apple tree not produce for several years, until it is mature enough to nourish fruit? How does it know when to set fruit? How?
Way back in 1975, when I was little girl in grade school, I received a book from my teacher, My Favorite Book. There is no author listed on the book; it was published by Good Will Publishers and was sponsored by various community businesses, such as Windsor Pharmacy, Tremont Savings & Loan, etc.
This little book explains it all:
Earlier I said the development of this fruit is almost miraculous. I take that back. It IS a miracle, plain and simple. Man cannot produce an apple, no matter how hard he tries. Impossible. Only an apple tree, designed by God, can produce an apple, and, at that, only if God blesses the tree with fruit.
Ramble over, sorry.
I really like apples, and I really really like our orchard.
Can you tell?
We picked both Red Delicious trees and one of the Yellow Delicious, and we left the other Yellows on the trees for anytime snacking. For the record: we added about a half cup of water to each bag before we twist-tied it shut. This idea came from a friend of ours, another home apple grower, and it has worked well for us (that is, when we have enough apples to store!). These are kept in an extra refrigerator we have in the shed, and the rest of the apples will remain on the trees until the weather is cool enough to store them in the same manner in the garage. Since these buckets didn’t fit in the frig very well, we moved the bags into dishpans which worked much better. We’ll save the buckets for garage storage.
Jewel took these px, so that’s her hand. This is also a Red Delicious, but from a different tree. As I am learning, all Red Delicious are not the same. But they are all red, and they are all delicious!
Our apple trees have monkeys
[and isn’t he a cute one??!!]
A few of the Yellows we left for snacking. Aren’t they beautiful?
[see above ramble]
Ok.
I’ve been meaning to photograph these Fuji trees for several weeks now but never remembered to take my camera when I went down there. This is a 2010 which means this tree is only three years old, and the size of its trunk verifies that. Unlike peach trees, apple trees can usually hold all the fruit they produce, but it does look like this little tree put on more than it can handle, doesn’t it?
Another 2010 Fuji. This little guy also needs some major pruning and shaping once its apples are picked. Its branches are too long for how young the tree is. I think. I don’t really know, from experience or anything, but for some reason it just doesn’t look natural to me. And it doesn’t look like the 3-year-old trees in my pruning book. Frankly, it looks rather odd.
2006 Fuji. Really, we did thin these trees, really we did! It doesn’t seem like we thinned them enough, though. Most of the apples are still nice sized, although not as big as the Reds above; but we’re thinking that with such a heavy crop this year, this little tree won’t be setting many apples for next. Time will tell.
Another 2006 Fuji. Have I mentioned that Fujis are my favorite? We think of them as a ‘candy apple.’ They are already very very sweet but they’re not falling at all which means they’re not even ripe yet. This is the first year for them to really give us a notable crop, and we’re pretty happy with how they look. “Officially” they’re not ripe until late October; I’ve heard that Fujis are best if they’re picked after the first frost. At this point it looks like we’ll have lots of apples for storage, but if I’ve learned one thing from our amateur orcharding, it’s that you don’t count your apples until they’re picked. So we’ll see what the next few weeks bring.
Same tree, close up.
Kids made great progress on their playhouse. Sarah is sitting on the loft, and Jesse is educatin’ the kids on what they did way back when he was a young’un.
Wooly Bear.
Jesse was telling us about how he and the other kids were going to paint the whole playhouse. They didn’t get very far, did they? So guess what the younger kids want to do - - - paint the whole playhouse! We’ll see how that goes…
Enough.
Good night.
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