Grandkids’ Weekend

Posted on October 5, 2026 by Donna

But first we had a week of farming.  The sunset last Sunday evening was pretty on the nearby hills.

Monday morning I took the obligatory photo of a dew covered spider web.

I enjoyed this view of the sheep with the barn in the background.

Wally overlooking some of the turkeys.

Denise had given me a bunch of basil.  So with our basil I made a bunch of pesto Monday evening.  I also made my favorite Salmon with Pesto recipe (from the Alice Bay cookbook from the Rhododendron Cafe).  It was amazing as always, and we have a lot of pesto frozen for future uses.

On Tuesday it rained like crazy here. Even our peacock got wet.

We have been feeding apple pressings.  Our old ewe Vanessa enjoys them.

I found this desiccated dead bird in our hay barn.  It’s pretty well preserved.

There was a colorful array of chickens eating their grain.

That evening the beagle was eyeballing the peacock on the gate by the barn.  Unfortunately after this, she chased him into a tree, and he wouldn’t come down.  He ended up going missing for a few days but then returned.

For dinner, I made a farm meal of Skillet Pork Chops With Buttered Corn using our pork corn and squash.  It was really good.

I worked Wednesday and Thursday and then the grandkids were dropped off Friday morning.  We got the animals chores done on a foggy morning.

And then headed to Anderson School in Bothell.  We had lunch at the Woodshop.  I showed the kids our McMenamins passports.  We got Oktoberfest stamps.

Piper liked her Scooby Snack Attack, and William liked his Mighty Mac & Cheese.

Piper really liked her king bed in the room.

Then we headed to the North Shore Lagoon Swimming Pool.  We stayed at the shallow end and threw balls at each other.  It was really fun.

Then we had a snack at Nui Nui upstairs.  The kids liked looking down at the pool and counting the swimmers.

This sculpture appears to be carved out of a single tree trunk with its roots.  Pretty amazing.

I had a zombie cocktail, Tom had a mojito, William had a strawberry lemonade, and Piper had a hot chocolate.

I think this room in the restaurant was designed on the pilot house of the City of Bothell steamship.

There was a cool ram head decoration on the wall.

One of our rooms was dedicated to John and Allie Rodgers, brother involved with the early history of the Bothell area.

Here is a hallway at the school.  I am always impressed by the lighting at any McMenamins.

We stopped by the Principal’s Office.

And then went to the theater to see the movie Forgotten Island. Piper was bored by it, but the rest of us enjoyed it,

Outside one of  the torches was burning in the grey evening.

We headed back to the pool as it was family fun night where they had more inflatables in the pool.  That was great fun.

Then it was back to our rooms and bedtime.

The other room we had was dedicated to Gene Ristow, a science teacher and drivers ed instructor at the school.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at the Tavern on The Square.  There was a bright green grasshopper that initially climbed up Tom’s leg then hopped onto the ground.  We were worried he would get trampled so moved him to a nearby bush.  He then proceeded to climb the wall.  He went all the way up then disappeared.  Maybe jumped somewhere else.  I wished I had a better photo of him as he was quite striking.

We walked around the gardens.

And then packed up and headed home.  We made Halloween cookies using a sheet pan chocolate chip cookie recipe but put various halloween candies in instead of chocolate chips.  More candies went onto just after baking.  I think it looks pretty halloweeny.

We watched the Great Pumpkin which the grandkids hadn’t heard of before.  Piper seemed interested, but William seemed bored.

Piper and Ryeleigh then fell asleep on the couch.  Piper chose the couch again instead of making a bed.

Sunday morning we did the animal chores including feeding Jameson (their favorite).

After the animals chores, Tom put William to work on the tractor.  He did really well.  It was his first time driving the tractor.

 

 

They were moving an RV refrigerator to the front yard as Tom had sold it to a man coming over to pick it up.

Piper played in the house organizing her toys.  I was impressed by her organization.

So then she organized my trinkets by my computer’s monitor.

We mostly watched football including a Seahawks win!  For dinner I made Frito Pie.  I thought it would be quite popular, but it got mixed reviews.

Today was a Halloween themed day.  We got out some decorations from the attic.  This included chicken and pig hats.  They were enjoyed.

After farm chores, we went to Gordon Skagit Farms to check out their pumpkins and corn maze.

This foliage dress was amazing.

Piper was contemplating which pumpkin she wanted.

She interacted with a witch there.  I loved her response.

On the way home we drove by Joe Treat’s house to check out his sculptures.  The kids were quite impressed.

Earlier Piper and I had carved one of our pumpkins based on a photo of their dog Pip’s face.   I think it turned out OK.

This afternoon Piper took our Halloween items and decorated our liven room table.

Meanwhile William (and later Piper) was helping Tom building some shelves, and Ryeleigh was stealing wood pieces.

That was our weekend with the kids.  We all had fun, I believe.  I am once again exhausted.  But happy things went well.  William seems like his normal self again after the crash which is so wonderful to see.

P.S. I finished this book.  I learned a lot about the upper Midwest, the Great Lakes, shipping history and sailors.  I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

Posted in Farm, NYT Cooking recipe, Recipes- farm, Trips | Leave a comment

Motorcycle Weekend

Posted on September 27, 2026 by Donna

I have had a livelong relationship with motorcycles which inspired this weekend.

We headed out Friday afternoon after I got off of work.  We were heading to my father’s cabin, but traffic was awful.  Everett and Bellevue traffic was slow, contributed to by the stormy weather as well as being Friday evening.  But then there was crash on Snoqualmie pass, and it got even worse.

But it was Dolly Parton Day.  I found a tribute to her that had been held the evening before in Ellensburg.  So we listened to the recording of it, and it helped lighten the mood.

 

The moon was rising from behind clouds and was beautiful.  The photos do not do it justice.

Ryeleigh was enjoying the ride.

We arrived, and the moon was still pretty next to our lit trailer.

I continued the Dolly Parton Day theme by making 2 Dirt Road Martinis from her 2024 cookbook.  (Tom didn’t want one so had an Old-Fashioned instead.). We sip them while finishing the show.

The next morning the weather had improved.  Ryeleigh enjoyed trying to spot wildlife from the porch of the cabin.

We went walking, of course.  You could see Mount Rainier and Adams clearly.

I appreciated Thomas’ skull and horns collection.

We went to one of my favorite overlooks and took a panoramic photo of the view.

The main reason we went to the cabin was to be within striking distance of attending the Coal Dusters Motorcycle Club: Pioneers of Local Dirt Biking in Ronald on Saturday afternoon.  We went with my dad, brother Greg, and his partner Sue.

There was a collection of dirt bikes dating from the early 1960’s to the early 1980’s.

Here were the two oldest ones.  They do not seem very functional.

There were a lot of vintage photographs as well.

This was my favorite one.

The event was a fund raiser to put a roof on the Ronald Schoolhouse which was originally built in 1916.  We were in the nearby Hawthorne Hall which was the gym and stage for the school.  It was an impressive building, and the outlets were nothing we had ever seen.

They had people who had ridden the coal and slag piles in the area.  They told stories related to these times and what dirt bikes they had.  It was being recorded to preserve the history.  It was fun to hear the stories.

There were raffles, and I really wanted to win this old photo of the Number 9 mine.  This is the slag pile that we used to climb on our dirt bikes in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  Unfortunately I did not win it.

And this is the Old Ronald School that needs the new roof.  Hopefully this event really helped this cause.

This is a map that shows the relative locations of the different mines and their coal and slag piles.  Most of the people at the meeting talked about Number 5, but we spent most of our time at Number 9.

Today (Sunday) we headed to Anacortes to participate in the Oyster Run.  I haven’t gone before as usually I consider it a bunch of loud hogs driving dangerously past our house and upsetting the animals.  But Tom has gone before so I thought I would give it a try.  I usually stay home and make sure nobody crashes into our fields, but it hasn’t happened yet so likely won’t happen now.  The weather is absolutely gorgeous.

First we checked out the Washington Vintage Motorcyclists spot, and some great bikes were there.  Here are my favorites.

The motorcycles kept coming into Anacortes.

Here are our bikes.

Our bikes in a sea of Harleys

Some cool paint jobs.

Then we got to watch the Seattle Cossacks.  We’ve seen them before, but they are always impressive.

Then we walked around checking out more bikes.  These are the ones that were interesting to me.

They went all the way to the shipyard.

We headed to the Rockfish Grill for lunch and the Hawks game.

Then checked out more bikes.

We got on our bikes and headed to Washington Park.

This is the tree where my friend and co-worker Lori Egbers’ ashes were scattered.  It has been almost 8 years.  It’s hard to believe, and I still miss her singing and laughing at work.  But what a beautiful place to remember her.

We went back home and then headed to friends Shimon and Denise’s place to pick up some apples.  I made the mistake of trusting our beagle in their yard where their much smaller dog Gus is well contained.  But not Ryeleigh.  Fairly quickly she somehow found an escape (we never found it), and she ended up a ways away howling. So we all chased after her in their neighbor’s field and finally got her.  That was scary.  Never trust a beagle!

Posted in Farm, History, other recipes, Trips | Leave a comment

Back on the Farm

Posted on September 23, 2026 by Donna

We stayed home last weekend while William was still in the hospital.  He had plenty of visitors though.  We caught up on the farm.  I am admiring our two young tom turkeys.

I enticed them into the sunshine to see their bronze highlights with some success.

On Sunday evening we watched the Seahawks, and I posted a “Win for William” post on Facebook.  They did, in fact, win which I thought was great. At the same time though William was getting his chest tube removed which was a huge step forward for going home.

On Monday, doing the chores, I admired the frosted tips on Jameson’s hair.

I also noticed that we have deadly nightshade on our farm.  Fortunately nobody seems to be eating it.

Tom found a shed snakeskin on our farm.  There was one at dad’s cabin that I wished I had picked up.

I have been drying edible flowers and herbs. I have dried violas, chamomile flowers, marigold, nasturtiums, dill weed, dill seed, spearmint, lemon thyme, oregano, lemon balm,  peppermint, thyme, sage, chives, basil, parsley, basil, fennel seed and fennel leaves.  The house has been smelling great!

Monday night, William was able to go home from the hospital!  The air pocket outside of his left lung finally resolved, and he was good to go.  Such a relief, and I think he will do much better with sitting and walking at home.  Hoping his recovery is complete.

Today I was finally able to get all 3 tom turkeys showing off at the same time. They are majestic.

I was admiring the cows while they were eating their morning grain.  Louella is looking really healthy.

Jameson is growing up nicely.

Sonja is looking fat but healthy.

Bluey was begging for bread bits from me and looking cute.

Unfortunately, Diddley’s arthritis is getting worse, and he really isn’t walking much.  So I moved him into the barn with Vanessa, the crippled sheep.  It is supposed to rain quite a bit, and I didn’t want to leave him out in that. Plus I am not sure he is getting up to drink water so this way I can make sure he has access to food, water and shelter.  But it is definitely going to be very hard watching his decline.  He is my favorite sheep. Not of all time but living sheep.  Bob comes to mind as an overall favorite, but Diddley is a close second.

I finally finished spinning Jet’s wool into yarn.  He was a black Shetland wether we had who died in 2022 at age 14 years.  The wool is from his 2014 and 2019 shearings.  I accidentally S-plied singles into a 2 ply yarn.  I realized it when I was all done.  So rather than give up, my zoom spinning companions educated me that I could then Z-ply the 2 ply yarn into a 4-ply yarn.  So that is what I did, and the resulting yarn is looking good.

I appreciated gorgeous Wally sleeping on our bed this afternoon.

I finished this book that Al strongly encouraged me to take home rom the cabin and read.  It is about the history of the Bumping Lake (near my mother’s family cabin).  It includes history of the local characters, mining, dam building, road building, environmental protection, the CCC, fisheries, fire fighting and the Supreme Court.  William O. Douglas was tearing around the area in a a battered brown Dodge Dart and used the pay phone in the Whistlin’ Jack’s parking lot to make phone calls, including regarding important Supreme Court decisions.  I was wondering if I ran across him in my childhood doing these things.  Anyway, this is a great book about PNW history and worth reading.

For dinner I made Sheet-Pan Chicken With Apple, Fennel and Onion because we have homegrown chicken, apples and fennel.  And it was amazing,  One of the best meals ever and highly recommended.

Posted in Farm | 4 Comments