Friday Night Fish, Franklin, Flowers & Windmill

This evening the poultry got some Friday night fish and Mike and I went to a country restaurant at the Tennessee line (just a few miles up the road) and had some Friday night fish. If you can't tell, Franklin is smiling here, he's full of those fish above.

We walked up to check on the garden and had a following.

Some of the bloggers that live down south have said that their gardens have dried up from all the heat and no rain. Fortunately, up here in the Appalachians, we have had a cool summer [never really gets hot here] and enough rain and our garden is lush.

Tonight, that crazy SweetPea somehow got the neck strap to my camera that was laying on a patio table, around her neck and freaked out. My camera is banging against the gravel and dirt, and she is just bucking and stomping up and down, Mike is trying to catch her, and she is acting like a crazy goat. Finally, Mike wrestled the camera off of her and we were sure it was done for but seems to be working fine and my unprotected lens wasn't scratched. Panasonic DMC-FZ8

Drama just follows that girl around. She got knocked up way too young and worried me to death, then had to have a c-section {cost us $700 on MEMORIAL DAY HOLIDAY}, never did recognize her own daughter, we've had to bottle feed Gabbi since she was born, and the list just goes on.

but back to the garden, the pickins have been good. corn and beans are just starting to come in.

The guinea keets are 9 days old. Don't know if you can see 'em but 9 Cuckoo Marans have been added in. The other evening we heard a ruckus, ran out, and our terriers had discovered a hen with some newly hatched chicks. They were attacking the hen, but she is fine now although missing quite a few feathers. We hadn't realized she was missing and had hatched these chicks somewhere in the barn. Our 3 terriers run at night and stay in a dog kennel during the day. Our goats and chickens are locked up at night.

Early, the Daddy of the chicks

Look at the size of this Echinacea.

Wish I could say that these flower photo's were taken in my own yard but it'll take me a while to work up to this much flower action and we just moved to this 30 acres Memorial weekend. However, there is some action going on here. Our Greek brother-inlaw is a contractor and one of his sons, our nephew, Savva, has been working on the footers to what will be a covered deck.

Although Boone is a small town we do have a university here, Appalachian State University. Recently, ASU got a windmill, I went up to snap a few photo's of it and flowers were all around.

From 1979 to 1983, Boone, NC was home to the largest wind-powered electric generator in the nation. Managed by NASA and operated by Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation, the windmill—the “MOD-1” as it was called—was located on top of Howard’s Knob, and put Boone on the map for sustainable energy, even though its primitive design discouraged much energy production. This year, Boone has become a windmill city once again. The tower height is 115 feet, the blade diameter is 66 feet and the turbine will produces 150,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually—or roughly enough energy to power 10 to 15 residential homes. The machine generates clean, renewable energy and does feed the energy produced directly into the electrical grid. The wind turbine is the largest in North Carolina and serves as a demonstration project for all community members in the High Country and sits at the Broyhill Inn on the ASU campus.