Monday, October 24, 2011

Bonnie and Applesauce

  Mission Accomplished!  Bonnie came home yesterday.  I don't know who was more stressed, me or her.  Evidently she's only been trailered a couple of times in her life.  It took three of us to get her into the trailer using a bucket of grain, a butt rope and a lead rope.  She didn't act scared but she was really stubborn.  Her previous owners had me all freaked out, saying that we should only take her out in an extremely controlled environment with lots of hands.  We got her all buttoned up and hit the road.  I have got to get a tape on her to guesstimate how much she weighs.  I could really feel the difference in the truck and the trailer springs were creaking up a storm!  The trip home was pretty uneventful.  I stopped for gas when we were about 20 miles from home (couldn't resist $3.12) and opened the feed bunk door to talk to her.  She seemed cool as a cucumber so that went quite a way toward calming my jangled nerves down.  We got to the stable and I went to find the on-site caretaker to help me get her out.  I took the front and he took the back and what do you know?  Bonnie backed out of the trailer and stepped down just like she'd been doing it all her life.  We put her in the paddock with five other horses and what a sight!  All six of them were running around the pasture with Bonnie in the lead, getting to know each other.  She had her tail flagging like she thought she was an Arabian.  I've never seen a draft horse galloping at speed except for the jousts at Renaissance Festivals; what an awesome sight.  Now comes the fun part.  Horses have been missing from my life for a while due to my Naval career, so I have a lot of catching up to do.

  A couple of days ago, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things.  They had apples for sale at 49 cents/pound.  We couldn't resist that and bought about 10 pounds to make applesauce.  As we were picking out the apples, we talked with a lady that was doing the same thing.  She recommended freezing instead of canning since it's a lot easier and keeps better (as long as the power stays on).  We got home and started peeling our hearts out.  Luckily we had a little helper.


*E* was having a ball sucking on the apple cores.  He looked like a chipmunk with all of the bits in his cheeks.  I think apples are probably his favorite food in the whole world...takes after Dada I guess.  The sauce smelled INCREDIBLE while it was cooking.  Does anything smell more like fall than apples, cinnamon and cloves?  We ended up with four ziploc bags of chunky sauce and  it should taste great with some Kielbasa and our homemade kraut that's only a couple weeks away.

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