Today is Labor Day, a day set aside to recognize the value of working people and the strong work ethic necessary to build our nation. Happy Labor Day to all, we salute you. Keep up the good work.
Speaking of work, Tucker, our baby squirrel, was working hard on his dropper full of Daisy's milk. When Benjamin feeds the little booger, he grabs the dropper with both hands:
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| Poor Daisy has yet another mouth to feed! |
Squirrels must be like kittens and don't open their eyes for a while as Tucker's eyes have not opened up yet. It's all good, though, he doesn't need eyes to find his milk. He has a good appetite.
Tucker's really cute when he sleeps. We through a bunch of rags in his little box - one of them is a sock. He'll somehow climb into the sock to sleep!
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| Tucker is all tucked in bed |
Russ was working with his year old Jersey heifer, Magnolia (Maggie Mae). He's working with her so she'll lead with a rope as he's attending a Dairy Show in Baton Rouge in late September and then plans to go to a show in Texarkana. Maggie was stubborn. Russ worked hard. Practice makes perfect, though. He'll have her walking fine in no time. The photo below was snapped when she was being good. A little later she dug in her heels and decided she didn't want to walk anymore.
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| Russ and Maggie |
We were about to wrap up our day when a gentleman we go to church with dropped off a bucket of purple hull peas he picked for us. What a blessing! We love purple hull peas. Our preacher says that growing up in the Great Depression, families survived on stuff like this. He said one day they'd have peas and rice and the next day, for variety, they'd have rice and peas! Purple hull peas just conjure up thoughts of country life, don't they? There's got to be a bluegrass song about mama shellin' a mess of purple hull peas on the back porch while daddy's skinnin' a possum for supper. Okay, let's skip the possum.
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| There's a reason they call 'em Purple Hulls |
So me, Russ and Benjamin started shelling. Tricia was making German Chocolate pecan brownies, a new recipe from Southern Living magazine that looked good (and it was). Here's Benjamin showing his expertise in pea shelling, laboring away on Labor Day, breaking every child labor law, I'm sure.
When you open the pea pod, you just run your thumb down the inside, popping all the peas out into a bowl.
And here's the finished product. Two quarts of fresh shelled purple hull peas. Cook them down with some tasso, bacon, or sausage (or possum) for flavor and put on a pot of rice. Cook some cornbread in a cast iron skillet and oh, my! "Kit le chiens jappe'" (Spelled phonetically - I have no idea how to spell it.) What it means is, "Let the Dogs Bark!" in Cajun French. Before air conditioning, they used to do all the cooking on the screened porch so as not to heat up the house. The wonderful smells wafting through the screen would arouse the dogs sleeping under the house and they'd start barking as they were hungry. To which any good cajun would say, "Kit le chiens jappe'". In other words, "Let 'em bark. This is too good. They ain't gettin' any!"
Only one downside, we all look like we voted in an election in Baghdad, Iraq, with our purple thumbs. The purple hulls stain your thumbs purple. Oh, well, it'll wear off in a couple of days.
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| Thumbs up for purple hull peas |
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