Stuff

Judging by the Blogger stats for my blog, on normal days I get anywhere from thirty-five to fifty readers.  However, just let me entitle a post with something like "Feeling weepy" or "Did anyone miss Cliff" and the numbers double.  I'm thinking maybe I'll start using titles like "I found a dead body today" or "Cliff is having an affair" to get my numbers up.  
Not really.  I figure if, on a low-reader day, there are thirty-five people who take time out of their day to read this gibberish, I am pretty lucky.  
It had begun to look like we were in for another year of drought:  I dragged out the soaker hoses and had already used them on the early crops, just to get the seedlings to sprout.  The weather-guessers kept predicting chances of rain last week, but I have become a doubting thomas, and left the hoses in place.  Then we received 1 3/4 inches of blessed rain, and I rolled them all up and put them away.  This morning a thunderstorm rolled through and we got another almost-inch.  
I've moved the chicks to the cabin:  we moved the cattle watering tub out there with them.  I put them out to run around the big house during the day when temperatures are above sixty, and at night or on cold days I gather them up and place them in the watering trough, where there's a light to keep them warm... although it isn't a regular heat-lamp bulb.   The next three days and nights are going to be really cold; it's getting pretty crowded in that tub, and I think perhaps we had better purchase a regular heat lamp bulb and hang it in a corner of their house, doing away with the tub.  
Longtime readers know that I always put out a couple of tomato plants a month earlier than I should, with plans to cover them on cold nights.  This year is no different.  I have three tomato plants and a pepper plant to cover every evening.  

Here's how the latest attempt at cheese is looking today.  I tried wiring all that contraption up in Cliff's absence, but it didn't work so well.  He added the top ten pounds after he got home yesterday evening.  As long as I have Cliff around, this seems like it will work as a cheese press.