I entered the fair with a few things... here's what happened.

I decided it would be fun to enter some canned goods into the fair and see how I could do against some locals. I immediately learned that the judges do not taste the product and that items are therefore judged by appearance. For most items, this means headspace, consistency, color, etc. Essentially, they are really looking at the "art of canning."

I labeled my entries with the required information: Item Name, Process used for canning (Water bath or pressure), Time processed, Date Canned.  Entries must have been canned since the last fair to be considered.

Jams and Jellies are expected to be plain and combination flavors (like my blueberry basil, chipotle peach, strawberries and cream, etc.) are only accepted in the "Any Other" class. You are allowed one entry per class.

There are 9 sections offered: Fruits, Jellies, Jams, Preserves, Vegetable, Juices, Relishes, Pickles and Meats. I entered 7 of those, omitting Preserves and Pickles, this time. ;-)

I dropped off 23 entries the night before judging and went home to try to sleep. I had taken the next day off work to spend at the fair with a great friend and was eager to see the results.

Here are my results:

What did I do with my Saturday night? Extracted honey. You?

In the Spring of 2012, I helped (watched and took pictures, mostly) Vicki at Zilke Vegetable Farm hive some honeybees to replace hives that had been lost over a particularly hard winter. I wrote about this experience, and how it changed my outlook on those little busy buzzers forever.  

Last weekend, we had the privilege of helping extract honey from the frames that had been produced by those bees (well, some - one of the two hives was lost this last Winter and re-hived in the Spring).

Road Trip to Virginia Days 3 and 4 - Barbeque and Luray Caverns

August 3 and 4, 2012

Having arrived late at night, we decided on a low key morning at home. I had some sewing to do for a gift basket order that needed to be sent, so my sewing machine made the trip with us and I spent a relaxed morning working with it.

Some of our favorite clients (not that we should have favorites, but hey!) offered to have a little gathering for us so we could finally meet some more of them in person. We brought sweetcorn and cantaloupe from Michigan and a big gift basket of canned goods for our hosts.  They provided an awesome spread of food, grilling chicken along with our corn and other treats.  We had an absolutely wonderful time visiting with everyone and getting to know them.  We ate and then as the evening cooled a bit, we retired to sit poolside to chat some more.  As we sat, we heard a pack of coyotes yip and howl which generated a bit of excitement.  Their home is set in a "subdivision" of sorts, backing up to some rather wild landscape just into West Virginia from Virginia.  If it hadn't been for the lengthy drive back to Virginia to Shane's mom's, we would have continued to stay and chat deeper into the night.  We sure hated to leave when we were having such a good time, but so it goes. It was some time after midnight when we arrived "home" and fell into bed.

The next morning (Day 4), I finished the basket and readied it for shipment (special thanks to my spectacular Mom-In-Law-to-be who took care of the final baking I needed, the night before while we partied the night away). We had settled on spending the day with family, but weren't sure what we were going to do until the notion struck us to visit Luray Caverns. It was a pricey stop, but OH SO worth it!  Gracious, was that an awesome experience. Mom-In-Law-to-be was not feeling well from the ride, so she stayed above ground while we explored below.  Our good camera took sub-par pictures, but my silly little iPhone shined in the strange and difficult lighting of the cave.

Road Trip to Virginia Day 2 - Skyline Drive (Big Meadows - It's really about the deer!)

We had been on the road most of the day, but there was at least one stop we wanted to make on Skyline Drive and we heard it was worth the effort to get there.  After leaving the Blue Ridge Parkway, we jetted west to another highway and made our way north with more speed than we could attain on the byways.  We made the jog back in to the mountains about a third of the way into the path and headed north to our scenic stop of choice and recommendation - Big Meadows.  Our dear friends, the Ackers, shared with us what a cool place it was, telling us that there were tons and tons of deer in the field all the time and what a great stop it would be to take the family.  We had to check it out!

Just after paying our park entry fee and getting on with our drive, we encountered our second bear for the day.  It was lumbering slowly across the road when a motorcyclist got impatient, passed a car on the shoulder and startled the bear.

A Scenic Drive From the Perspective of an Inquisitive Six Year Old

We gave Lexi a digital camera of her own to record our journey for the day.  We thought it would be great to see what she saw and might also keep her entertained on a painfully long drive for a six year old girl with an active mind.  It was outstanding!  She loved it!

We set a few expectations before letting her go with the camera though:
1.  Don't turn it on and off a lot, nor leave it on all the time, as there was no spare battery.  It has to plug in to charge, so when the battery went dead, that would be the end of her photo journey.
2.  Keep the wrist strap tight on her wrist for safety.
3.  Have fun and take pictures that would make her happy and help her remember her trip.

Here is a sampling of her photographs from the day (I have asked her to caption the ones she has something to say about.  The photos are hers, so shall the captions be. There were quite a few blurry shots and totally pointless shots of sky and haze, etc., and what fun would there be in posting those, so I have edited them out (mostly).

Road Trip to Virginia Day 2 - The Blue Ridge Parkway

August 2, 2012

We let ourselves sleep in just a bit, since we were on vacation, but got ourselves moving at a reasonable hour so as not to miss out on any of the sights we were planning on seeing.  We packed up most of our things, grabbed some complimentary breakfast and went back to our room to finish up and load the car.  (Let's face it, we all needed to go potty before a long car ride anyway!) As we "gathered our things" (ahem) we discovered that we had no running water.  A call to the front desk found that they were doing some repairs and the water would be off for a couple of hours.  I asked where my 6 year old was supposed to go potty and the desk clerk said, "I guess you'll have to find a restroom somewhere else."  Nice.  We meandered around the area and finally found a spot for us all to take care of business, but not without a lot of grumbling and whining. :-)

Road trip to Virginia, Day 1

August 1, 2012

Shane was fortunate to have Monday and Tuesday off so he could pack for himself and Lexi, but I had to work and was unable to get much done until Tuesday after work and some errands...So he headed to bed early and I stayed up to finish readying myself and the animals for our departure.  He intended to drive and I would just sleep the first leg through Ohio anyway.  Our plan was to leave at 4:00am, but we overslept a smidge and left the house about 5:00 instead.  We stopped for breakfast around 8:30 in Groveport, Ohio and got back on the road.  Our first scheduled destination was in Charleston, WV for lunch with a client of Shane's.  We arrived at his office a little earlier than he had planned for us, at 11:30 instead of 12:00.  He was in the middle of a client meeting, so we relaxed and hung out until he was ready to grab a bite to eat.  Mr. E and his awesome staffer Miss J took us to a great spot to show us some of the local color the city had to offer, a restaurant called Tricky Fish.  It had a really eclectic mix of menu items and was delicious!

A trip to Ohio leads to healthy meals

April 30, the chicks I ordered were hatching, so Mom and I made a day trip out of picking them up. The hatchery we ordered from was located in Polk, Ohio. I ordered 25 Cornish x Rocks for meat, 12 laying pullet chicks and Mom chose 8 layers to begin her backyard flock. Our route would take us near Milan, Ohio, so we made it a point to stop there along the way to get a few pictures and drop off my first travel bug in a geocache.

The town was adorable, quaint and even smaller than our Milan, Michigan. We wandered around, looking for a "hitchhiker" for the travel bug. I assumed that since Milan, Ohio is Thomas Edison's birthplace, there would be keychains or something with the name of the town on it available. 

Our first FTF!

Since our upgrade to Premium Member status, I have been tormented daily with seeing new caches posting in our area that we can not go search for because we have to go to work!  It's crazy how making a living can get in the way of all the fun! :-)  I have wanted so badly to be the first to find on a cache, but there are a few groups who tend to "hog" all the first to finds in the area.  It is fabulous these folks have the time to spend caching every day, but it becomes frustrating for those of us who seemingly never have a chance because we are racing those who are retired and have the free time.

Our first FTF!  Find #111 4/26/12

Recently, Shane and I had to spend a day working from home to take our car into the shop for maintenance.  We have two cars, but the one is much less reliable to make the trip all the way to the office than our daily driver.  It is used for short trips only.  We dropped off the car needing service at the dealership and headed home, with one quick stop on the way...

I noticed a whole series of hides by one team, and thought we might just have a shot at one of them if we caught it quickly.  The cache listing was published less than an hour before we made the grab, and it was located right on our way home.  We were so excited to be logging our first FTF, we practically sprinted down the trail to the GZ!  Shane made the find fairly quickly, so I logged our smiley and we headed home to get to work for the day.  It was an exciting, albeit quick, detour on our short trip.  It was tempting to try for a couple more in the same series, as it appeared no one else was out and about yet, but we made the responsible decision to get started with our work day promptly instead.

What a great way to start a day, with success, right off the bat!

Take me home

#108's awesome camo

On our way home from our 5 cache day, we noticed a cache that was recently placed in a park not far from our house.  We pass it everyday, twice a day, going to and from work and hadn't noticed its placement just a week or so before.  In it, there was a travel bug that was headed to its final destination, which happened to be Tecumseh, my hometown.  I made puppy dog eyes at Shane and he agreed to stop, even though it was cold and getting dark fast. We ran (literally) into the park to try to make the find before we lost daylight.  We were hugely unsuccessful.  I was so disappointed, since I so desperately wanted to take the TB to its home and deliver it to its goal.

We had stepped right over it

Shane, being the real trooper he is, agreed to get up with me in the morning to try again.  I woke with the chickens, so to speak, and greeted him with coffee to get him going.  We went back to the park and, after quite a hunt, he made the find.  It was brilliantly camouflaged and we suspect we likely stepped on it without knowing the night before, given its location.

Opening Soon!

May 19, 2012!!!

Being good friends with the farmers who run a farm stand is such a blessing. I get inside access to planting, playing in the dirt and information. I have been anxiously anticipating them setting an opening date and was finally given an approximate date, May 19!!!! I won't hold them to it though as weather and other circumstances really dictate the date, but I wouldn't be heartbroken if they were open already! :-) They are feeling better prepared this year and ready to open earlier as a result. Make the time to stop out to see them on Carpenter Road in Milan, just North of US-23, on the east side of the road.  I guarantee you will want to go back, again and again.

Vibrant, delicious lettuce
growing strong

The lettuce has been coming for quite some time, stored turnips from last season have come and gone through the weekly farmers market at Original Gravity Brewery (every Wednesday 5-7pm - with Happy Hour being extended for market hours), and lots of wonderful new things are in the ground and growing along already!

Afternoon with a view

As always, be aware, this post may contain spoilers. In most cases, we try to keep things vague and non-specific, but occasionally there may be pictures or descriptors that give some secrets away.

Saturday, April 21, was an afternoon that just begged to clear our minds and spend some time together outside.  How could we resist?  We ran some errands and stopped at a park right behind the grocery store we found ourselves shopping at.  There were a couple hides in the park, so we figured, why not?

As we walked past the playground and picnic areas, we encountered this manhole cover.  Since Lexi was with her mom, Shane decided to take the obligatory bow in her honor.  It was fantastic!  I am guessing there were a few folks wondering what he was up to that day.  :-)  (It was totally worth it to bring Lexi with us in spirit.)

Another milestone, 100!

Easter is one of the holidays we alternate with Lexi's mom, so we were excited to have her this year.  She arrived in the morning, searched for the eggs the Easter Bunny had left around the house for her, and even stumbled upon a basket of goodies as well.  :-)

Easy grab for #99

Since we weren't having a big elaborate meal for the holiday, we decided to go out and hit our milestone of 100 caches found as a family before returning home for homemade pizza - Lexi's favorite meal to help prepare. We headed for Tecumseh and let her make a quick grab for our #99.

A little pick me up

As always, be aware, this post may contain spoilers.  In most cases, we try to keep things vague and non-specific, but occasionally there may be pictures or descriptors that give some secrets away.  That said, enjoy the read about what was intended to be a quick trip out to lift my mood!

#82 was found near this area

Friday, April 6, we were off work for Good Friday, and I found my self in a bit of a funk. I couldn't seem to get my mood to match the gorgeous day outdoors, so Shane suggested we go out and grab a few caches as that always seems to fix it!

Geocaching offers me an escape from whatever is worrying me at the time.  If work is tough, or money is tight, it all melts away when we are out in nature on the hunt. We see beautiful places, we clear our heads and life finds some perspective. This day was precisely what I needed!  We started out near home with a guardrail find and discovered a serene piece of road that was therapy for the soul. There were remnants of some sort of structure, and a beautiful bit of the Saline River to admire from the road.

Frank and Beans!!!!

Once Josh got bitten by the geocaching bug, there was no stopping him.  After the 19 cache adventure, he wanted to get out for more. I had a couple of errands I had to run but knew that with Josh taking the day to get some errands run himself, there had to be a little caching in the day. After setting up his account the night before, where he used name made from his nicknames from his youth, we hit the road with the monkey for a little more "treasure hunting". The group consisted with two-thirds of the Unlikely Family and the newest member of the group, Ralph J. Beans.

Find #77

I needed to head to the local hardware store to gather some ideas for a project I am working on, so I checked the app on my phone to see if there were some caches in the area. Sure enough, right next to the store we were headed to there was a cache.  That was where we were going to start.  The GPS showed where the location for   You Silly Skirt Lifters are the Lowest was, but as we hit the zone, we had trouble finding it.  We searched some places where a cache normally would be hidden; there was a hollowed out tree nearby, a couple of light poles with "skirts", even a pine tree.  None of the tricks I had learned from past caches helped find this one.  Back to the drawing board.

A short trip out, er, um, April Fools!

As always, spoiler alert!

Looking back to April 1...
After a marvelous time with family, Lexi asked those who could to join us for a little geocaching so she could share her love and skill for it with them.  Unfortunately, most everyone had pressing plans, with the exception of her "Uncle Joshy."  He had expressed interest earlier in the day, so after a little clean up at the party, we headed out to see if we could show Josh how to cache.  We figured we would catch a few smileys and he would want to head home before it got too late in the evening.  After all, we didn't set out until after 3:00 in the afternoon...

#58, finally!

Conveniently, there was a cache hidden right outside our picnic location.  We had made an attempt on it before, without luck.  In fact, we had met a nice man and his two delightful daughters one evening while they were making an attempt on the same cache.  They were newer to caching than we were, and very excited.  We exchanged information and we shared with them our blog so they could follow along our journeys.  I am excited to say they have started a blog of their own,  Adventures in Geocaching, which you will see in Our Favorite Blogs to Visit list to the right of this post as well.  I encourage anyone who is excited about caching to follow them too.  They actually found the hide outside the brewery before we did - Go Cache Kids!  On this day, we made the find with a brand new cacher in tow.

Happy 6th Birthday little monkey!

Miss Alexis turned 6 on March 27, which was a Tuesday.  We couldn't do much that evening since we get home so late and it was a school night.  We asked her where she wanted to have dinner, if she could choose anywhere; she chose Mario's, our family favorite Mexican place.  Of course, we treated her to ice cream after at the Spotted Cow.  It was a great evening as a family, but not much in the way of celebration and bedtime comes so fast on work nights!

With the weather being as nice as it has been, we decided a picnic would be great.  She could play on a big playground structure, we could eat and visit and celebrate her six solid years as a great kid.  There would be cake too!  Along came Sunday, and with it did NOT come warm, sunny weather.  In fact it was damp and quite cool...not very conducive to picnicking.  The only back up location we could think of that was kid friendly that would allow us to bring the picnic indoors (food and all) was OG.

A shot at redemption

With a bit of time to kill on a Saturday, what do you suppose we turned to?  I will tell you - redeeming ourselves.  We have been unable to find one cache in particular on more than one occasion so we decided to make a quick trip out and try to find it again. This cache is a micro (small but not tiny) that is supposedly hidden in plain sight, but cleverly so.  After a great deal of searching, confusion and walking in circles,we came up empty handed once again.  We will have to take another shot at redeeming ourselves another day, I guess. We didn't want to simply go home with tails tucked in failure, so we decided to attempt another to end on a high note.

More after work fun

As always, this post may contain spoilers!

#51, first in a parking structure

Hitting a milestone like #50 didn't slow us down.  On the contrary, we were even more excited to get back out there.  On lunch, I decided to check the area around the office for caches, and, what do you know!? There was one located in the parking structure adjacent to our office building. I told Shane about it and we decided to make a quick trip over to locate it before it was time to get back into our day of meetings.  We had never located one in a parking structure before, so we weren't sure of the hide technique.  Being multilevel, we found ourselves searching several floors once we pinned down which side it was on (thanks to the satellite imagery on the app for our phones).  Shane made the find without too much trouble and we were logging another smiley.  There was a trackable inside this particular hide, but it had a huge laminated photo hitchhiker that would have been difficult to place in another cache, so we passed on it.  It was neat to score a find on lunch and leads me to think that we may have to plan a little picnic lunch caching later in the season.

A nice round number, like 50!

After being so close to our 50th find, we couldn't wait to go out and hit our first milestone! March 18, we headed out with just that goal in mind.  We didn't have a lot of time, so we got right to it to get the two finds we needed.  We found yet another local park we never knew existed, and wandered in to check things out.  There were some teenagers that acted very suspiciously when we arrived who made haste in departing at the same time.  Maybe I am getting old, but A LOT more people behave suspiciously to me than what I used to see. However, in my defense, it is also in the news a lot more than in the past as well. :-)

#49 just waiting for Shane!

With all the rain we have had this season, the trails were pretty muddy and soft.  When we realized how far off the path the cache was hidden, Shane decided to grab it himself while we waited on higher ground.  It was tucked under a log and just waiting for him.

This one was one we had saved for some time, as it had the requirement of swapping out ONLY dinosaur prizes.  We had to wait until we found one in another cache to move to this one before we could hunt it.  Today was the day!