Uhoh! Its been a while

Well if you are a faithful reader, ya know its been a while since I have posted. So I will try to give ya an update on what lil I have been doing. I will just have to use the terms "the other day" cause I sure cant remember what day I did what.
But for starters last weekend we got the garden worked out and hoed for probably the last time as the plants are really too big to plow thru again. Then we got rain an things really grew. I had lil tomatoes setting on and cabbage starting to head up. I sprayed the taters for those dang bugs last weekend and within 4 hours it poured rain and that was all gone. I went back a few days later when it wasnt raining and sprayed again with a different chemical as the first one did no good. I think the first spray was viagra cause next time there was an awful lot of lil bugs to contend with. Anyway as most intelligent people know, use caution with pesticides. I was using the garden pressure sprayer, the kind ya pump up and spray. Well I used 1 gallon of spray and was empty and ready to refill. To release the pressure and get all the pressure out of the tank you turn them upside down and hold the nozzel down till then stop hissing and nothing is coming out, right? I did and it stopped hissing. Little did I know that with some pressure in the tank the nozzle clogged. So I proceeded to unscrew the top to refill and the pressure sprayed the chemical on me, down my arm, and on the side of my face. I did have enough forethought to turn my head to the side. I am certain I absorbed a good deal of the chemical thru the skin cause next day and night I was too sick to die. If it made the bugs half as sick as it did me they are dead as much as they got. Anyway I finished spraying the taters that night and came to the house and got a shower. But for about 2 or 3 days I felt like I had been melted an poured out. The being sick dehydrated me really bad. As of today I do feel much better. Better enough to get out of the house and make a trip to town to get supplies. Ya know the cleaning stuff, soap, shampoo, that kinda shopping. Dang it took me  3 hours to get done so we are stocked back up on necessities. I like the dollar store for lil grocery items too. I picked up crackers, chunked ham for sandwiches for me, speghetti sauce (out of homecanned), dog treats, bleach, dish soap, paper towels and a few other things that we use that are kinda necessary. Then on to the grocery store. OMG things sure change when ya dont get out any more than I do. Prices have gone outa sight. Not to mention, for example, in frozen foods, I looked at salmon fillets, Packaged In CHINA for goodness sake.  Hamburger was runnin $2.99 a lb and looked like it was 50/50. Thas a tough one when you are use to having deer burger than is 99% lean. So a package of that will be mixed with deer burger for grilling later. Any way I got my 6 month dose of sticker shock and came home.
The last few days I have been working on getting my herbs cut and some dried and some frozen. My new herb bed is looking really good. The plants are growing really well. Even the Stevia that I started from seed is big enough to start harvesting. But the past few days I have also been researching the herbs that I raise and uses and that sort of thing. Stevia is best left till late fall to harvest as it gets sweeter with the cool days and nights of fall. So good thing I havent taken the scissors to it. So far I have cut sage, marjoram, summer savory and dried those. I cut a lot of borage and sliced it in julienne strips and froze that. Borage has a cucumber flavor and just adds "something" to soups. It is best added after the soup is cooked for a fresh flavor and the frozen will do better for that than dried. I do intend to dry some as well for medicinal tea. I still have a bunch of things to cut an dry as we go along.
This week the eggs in my incubator hatched. Not a good hatch rate, 13 out of 43, but the chicks were healthy and vigorous. They were eating within the first 24 hours. They have been in a container here in the house till they were strong enough to go live in the brooder house with their cousins. I have the impression cross-bred chicks just have better instincts than pure bred birds.

Aren't they cute? They were really quiet lil fellows too. Didnt make a lot of noise whern I had them in here. These lil birds hatched on Tuesday (aha, I remembered) and I just got the 50 others 2 weeks ago tomorrow. There is a good bit of size difference in them but the bigger chicks are terrified of the lil bitty ones. So funny, the big bullies ran off to the corner scared outa their wits. Well maybe to them they thought I had put a bunch of mice in there with em. 
I went to Jason's house this evening and got to see the lil kittens he has. His cat had babies this past weekend, 5 of em, all black too.
Not much else been happenin here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella