Can you say B.U.S.Y.?

So, we just have a little bit going on right now.  I hope you can sense my sarcasm.  We are smack dab in the middle of harvest.  All grapes are on the ground and now some are starting the drying process and some are getting close to the end, so we still have a ways to go.  Our county fair is fast approaching, which means we are even more busy in the evenings making the rounds to make sure all the sheep are on track to be shown in 3 weeks from yesterday.  

This is where the grapes are right now.  Almost there at our home place, they will roll the trays early next week and box them up later in the week...if all goes as planned.

Just a little different than what they looked like here.

We are the sheep showmanship instructors at the local high school.  We love it, especially when we get a group of kids like we have this year.  They want to learn, they pay attention, and they apply what we teach them.  90% of the time...they are still teenagers :)  They have a "mini-fair" tomorrow, which is a little show put on by the Ag-Boosters to help the kids be prepared for the real fair in a couple of weeks.  So, in order to get them ready for the mini-fair this is what we were helping them with till 9:00 last night.

Jealous much? :)  We were exhausted and sore from all the bending over, but it's what we do.  We enjoy it...mostly.  We are with these kids twice a week until fair starts in 3 weeks, then we will be living at the fair for a few days.  

Hope you all are enjoying the beginning of fall.  97 degrees does not seem like fall to me, tho.  

What's the weather like where you are?

Nasty shag carpet? I think NOT!

Things are a little slow around here this week.  They are picking the other 2 properties and the grapes here at our house are just doin their thing, and laying in the sun.  Doesn't make for an exciting post, that's for sure.

So, the next improvement on the house was the flooring.  Ooohhhh...the flooring.  Let me tell you, it was nasty!  All the original flooring.  Green shag carpet and all.  The previous owners had renters in the house for 18 years, and their animals too.  Let me just tell you that years of dog smell and cat pee in the carpet doesn't make for a nice aroma.

In the beginning, Chris was convinced we were going to be able to wait on replacing the flooring until we couldn't handle it any more.  Well, I was already to that point.  No way I was going to live in a house that smelled like it did.  But, to help prove to him that it was not salvageable, we went through AT LEAST a dozen canisters on the vacuum cleaner, full of pet hair.  It was quite lovely, if you could imagine.  Now me, being very much anti-pet hair, that was proof in itself that there was no way we were going to get it all out of the carpet.  It just grosses me out for some reason.  And I think we went through at least 6 canisters of carpet deodorizer.  You know that powder you can sprinkle on the carpet and let it sit for a couple hours...or a couple days and then vacuum it up?  Yeah that didn't help either.  So Chris finally caved and we went carpet shopping :)

Would you want to keep this?  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the shag carpet itself.  I grew up on brown and orange shag in the living room and yellow shag in the bedrooms...but it was clean.  THAT is the key.  Clean.  Not nasty and filled with pet hair and pee stains.

Brown shag in master

It doesn't look green, but this is green shag in the living room

Living room & dining room

Kitchen with the linoleum.  

Ripping out the carpet :)

Kitchen & Dining room after the carpet was ripped out


And now the glorious after photos

 The hallway that previously had green shag

 Dining room and kitchen-no more green shag or linoleum

 New carpet in the living room

 New carpet in the master bedroom

oh look, he does do floors :)

The two spare bedrooms got new carpet as well.  The only flooring that didn't get replaced was both bathrooms and the laundry room.  The linoleum isn't in too bad of shape, so those rooms can wait.

Rain Rain Go Away!

Harvest has officially started! 

 These pictures are pretty self explanatory.  Use the knife to cut the grapes off the vines.  Never pull them off because too many grapes end up on the ground.  As you can see, our vines at our home are tall enough for them to walk in to.  However, the vines at Chris's parent's house are much shorter, so they have to kneel in the dirt and pick.

They have pans with them that they put the grapes in when they are cutting them off the vine, and when they fill up the pan, they turn around and dump it on the tray behind them.

As you can see in the the last picture, when they are finished dumping their pan, they get the trays ready for the next pan that they are going to dump.

Each of our rows are using about 200 trays, so it takes a while for one person to pick a row.  The pickers are paid per tray, not sure what the price is this year but in years past it has been $.25-$.27 per tray.  It adds up pretty quickly, and a good picker can make decent money.

Once they are done with a row, it will look like this.

The object is for them to get as many grapes on the tray as possible, and these trays are pretty full.  

Let the drying begin!

Just pray for no rain, that's all we really ask for!