Goodbye Charlie

Charlie came to live with us when Connie moved in. He was a pain in the ass at first and I was debating how to either fence in the front yard, or fence in an area for the chickens. Neither were really options with our budget, especially since Scott is so anti hillbilly twine. :)  

Charlie visited with us when Connie and Liam came down for one of the get togethers here when the chickens were still chicks. Chasing my little chickies was something that was going to make me find a hole in the lava rock in the desert for him to disappear into.  He chased my favorite colored chickie, and got a hold of it. When he went after Fudge and bit him in the face, life almost ended for him when he moved in.

He was a funny looking little dog. Mom was Wire Haired Doxie on one side, and Shih-tzu on the other. Dad was something that lived down the street, but I think was something scottie-ish, going by the way he looked. I gave him a funky hair cut with a mohawk, a goatee, and halfway shaved- tassel ears. It looked ridiculous, and I loved it.


Having some room to roam worked wonders on Charlie. He mellowed out, and turned into a great little dog. He quit pestering Fudge and stopped chasing the animals that lived here, but he and Ashley were my mighty cat chasers. The strays in the area like to try and get into my trash barrels, but with Ashley and Charlie on patrol they didn't stick around long. He chased voles and mice in in the long grass with Ashley. He followed me on walks into the trees to watch the chickens in the summer afternoons. He still was a rotten beast about coming when you called him to come inside.

He thought the steers were his friends. He hung out with me when I took Norman for walks so he thought the big steers wanted to be his buddies too.  He was always in the round pen when they were. Now that we're graining them, he was also trying to sneak grain when we fed them. I think that's what did him in. They were trying to pile drive him with their heads, and he thought they were playing.

He came inside the other day and just didn't seem his happy self. He seemed like he might be favoring a back leg, but there wasn't anything in his foot. When I got home from work Sat he seemed a little wobbly in the back end, but with the long back he could have just tweaked it. We had to go to Boise yesterday but Connie told me that when she woke up yesterday, he'd lost the use of his back legs and his bladder. She had to take him in and have him put down.

Goodbye Charlie. You were a good little dog for starting out such a pain in the ass. 

All ready for Winter

I haven't been really good about getting home from work with there being enough daylight left to get any good pictures of what's been going on. I took a few crappy pics with the phone this afternoon after I got everyone fed and watered.

Scott got the frost free hydrant that was freezing up on us all last winter, dug out and fixed. Teh Boy gave him a hand while he was down for Turkey Day. It's so nice not having to have to have yet another extension cord stretched across the yard to run the hot tape to keep the water faucet from freezing. I still have to drain hoses after every time I run water through it. Scott has taken over most of the morning chores for me and he gets the waters filled for me.

Speaking of water, it was becoming a huge hassle to keep the steers watered. It got cold enough that going out and busting the ice off the water troughs wasn't working. They were froze solid all the way through. Dragging hose across Andrea's property, across the road, and out to the pasture, twice a day, then dragging all that hose back, and making sure it was drained so it didn't freeze wasn't worth keeping the boys out on the pasture any more. Now they are in the round pen. We got em moved Mon after I got home. One cord to the front of the house and they have a tank heater. We threw some straw out to keep them off the snow and mud. Norman has some serious fuzz going on.

While the boys were down for Turkey day, Mike helped me bring the brooder pen Scotty made for me, back into the garage. It was still out next to the chicken condo from when we moved the second batch of meat birds outside. Speckles and her little chick are in it now, all cozy in the garage. When I bring the water bowls in for the rabbits, they unfreeze, so I know she can keep the little chicky warm. They are out of any draft, and the other chickens, or predators can't get to it. I still don't know yet if it's a pullet, or a cockerel chick, but I'm leaning towards pullet. It's going to have Barred Rock coloring. 

The big chickens outside have their heated water dug out of the garage, cleaned out, and plugged in.

The ground looks ugly. We had weird weather this year. No rain really or snow to speak of. It was getting into the high 40's during the day, maybe the low 50's. Then BAM, Cold. Down into the negative numbers in the morning, teens during the day. The ground didn't have any moisture to make it freeze. When we finally got snow it was that really dry powdery stuff and it mixed with the dry powdery, sandy soil underneath it. My front yard looks like someone took dirt, and sprinkled white playground sand in it.

The ponies have their blankets on and they're off the pasture too. They're in the dry lot right next to the haystack so I can feed easier. Then hop the electric fence and feed Dave's horses.

Scott got a good chunk of the firewood bucked up into rounds and the biggest rounds split to fit in the stove.

The wood rack he built for me last year is working perfectly. It takes me two wheel barrow loads to fill it, and filled it will last me about three or four days. 

Connie has been working over at Valley Country Store. Scott is still working nights (which I hate) at IMP. I'm still grooming dogs at WindSwept Kennels. 

I Haza Baby Chickenz!!

Actually I have two little chicks. Two little, home grown, my own broody hatched, chicks.

The Austra White hen, Speckles, decided three weeks ago that she wanted to set that day's eggs I hadn't collected yet. With my two failed attempts already, I figured why the hell not? Sure it's getting to be cold, and there is likely to be snow on the ground soon. Not like any of them are gonna hatch anyway. I thought Tues this last week was going to be the hatch date, and I wasn't terribly surprised when Tues came and went with no chicks. 

I did remember to mark the eggs this time and I knew she stole two more, so I thought I'd just let her set a few more days to see what happens. Color me giddy when I got home Thurs night and picked her up to peek under her. A little fuzzy chick was peeping under there. It was too dark to really see anything, but today I got pics. She hatched out a second chick Fri morning too. 

YAY, /HappyDance

I don't have any idea who the baby daddy is. Neither of them have a puff on their heads. The black one does have a little yellow spot. I'm just tickled pink that we Haza Baby Chickenz!!!!

Chickens, Fencing, Steers and Horses

I was talking on the phone with my momma the other day and were were comparing chickens. I was trying to explain the breeds and the birds that I have, so I went out and snapped a few photos. The light was fading and I didn't get pics of everyone.

Einstein is bigger than I thought he was. He's turning into a very handsome rooster.

The White Plymouth Rock Rooster is Captain. I'm super happy with both the boys. Gentlemen, they both are. The White Rock behind him is a hen. 

This is the Red Ranger that I just couldn't butcher. She's so big and fluffy.

One of the Easter Eggers, the the Buffy Red Ranger in the background. This is the EE that will come over and eat of my hand. 

Two of the other Easter Eggers. 

This is Spur. One of the original hens we started with. She has spurs like a rooster. Her and the other other black hens are Black Australorps. I was told they were Jersey Giants, but the other birds are bigger than they are. Australorps we decided. All four of them are molting and look terrible right now.

This poor girl doesn't have any tail feathers left. Just some scraggly bits.

The fence has been working beautifully. Scott did a perfect job on it. None of the cows have gotten out, the horses are happily out on pasture and not eating the winter hay. 

Ben and Fox behind the new gate and fence braces.  

This is the corner brace that gave us such a hard time getting into the ground.

Bacon, the steer, is starting the grow in some woolly hair. He's looking like a fine tasting fellow. Soon we'll bring both the steers back up to the round pen and start feeding the crap outta them, getting them ready for the butcher. 

Norman was out stuffing himself on grass and didn't want to come out the the fence to get his picture taken. Give him a trunk though, and he's look like a baby Woolly Mammoth. 

I promised Heather pictures of the new mare. Here's one of her favorite boy, Ben, too. 

Ben

Hancocks Gaelic Fox. Her topline isn't really that funny looking, Ben is hiding behind her and you can just see a bit of him by her withers and neck. 

Hancocks Gaelic Fox and Benjamin Brown

Fox

Scott on Hancocks Gaelic Fox

Scott and Fox

Upside Down Fire, New Fences

In my cruising around the internet, being and armchair homesteader, I found a link, or a pintrest post, or maybe it came across my facebook, for a fire built upside down. There really is no telling where I saw it. Somedays I've got seventeen different tabs open on my computer and I'm nine subjects away from what I started looking at. I thought for sure that I had posted a pic of the upside down fire I built out in the fire pit in the front yard over the summer, but I have no idea where I stuck it. Honestly, the pics are probably still on Scott's phone because I never figured out how to use the damned thing and send them to my phone.

But back to the upside down fire. When I was taught how to build a fire it was most likely the same way every one else was taught. A little tinder, paper, or something else easy to catch fire, then your little sticks in a teepee around the paper. Some larger sticks, then some small split wood, then light and hope like hell to starts burning. You baby sit that for a little while, slowly adding bigger pieces of wood until you have a rip roaring fire. What really happens is you sit there and blow on it, trying to get the twigs to catch. Ten minutes later you're kicking yourself in the ass for forgetting to add larger sticks, and now the whole damned thing has gone out, and you have to start it again. Or you forgot to add the big logs and it's burned to ash and you're hoping there is enough little coals to get the effing thing going again while you sit there and your butt cheeks freeze to the ground.

Forget all that. Chuck that whole thinking out the damned window that is probably still open from when you opened them since it was such a nice day out, but now it's 64 degrees in your house and you're dreading trying to get a fire built in the fire place.

I stacked this totally bassackwards. Two split logs on the bottom. Crumpled the pages out of an old phone book (See, I'm recycling, reusing...) and stuffed it down in between the spaces between the logs and the walls of the wood stove, and crammed even more in between the logs. Stacked my larger kindling cross way on top of that, and then my little kindling back the same way as the logs. I lit the paper, and walked off and forgot about it. Seriously. I came back ten minutes later to shut the door I had left cracked open because it was putting off too much heat already. The center of the fire had already turned the logs into a nice coal bed. Stacking the kindling on top of the logs leave plenty of room for air to get drawn in and let that sucker start burning.

I was so impressed with myself I took it upon myself to share with any one who would listen. Even people who didn't really look like they wanted to listen. Heck, now I'm even putting it out there in that thare interweb thang so people can share with their friends, or just random people walking down the street. Everyone needs to know about this. I should win an award for helping mankind or something.


The damned cows are finally back out on the pasture again. I wrote last month here about them tearing through the fence and having to be up in the round pen. We thought we were going to pull out the old tee posts, dig a few holes, make a sturdy corner brace and string some nice tight wire with a ground. No problems, a weekend project. NOT!!! What a pain in the ass, and not even my ass. It was miserable hard work for the guys. Basically I bought a $50,000 rock pile when I bought the land here.

The acreage sits on a lava rift that goes clear to Jerome and almost to Fairfield. Little fingers of it branch off and just manage to snag the corner of my property, and then pop up again in the back half. Right where I wanted to build the house originally, and right where I needed to put in those three corner poles in the front.

It took Scott and his friends Larry and Pat, six hours with a 90 pound jack hammer to dig the holes deep enough to concrete in the poles. Six hours of them breaking rock into gravel and dust, then Connie and I used a plastic cup to scoop out the powdery crap. Grind, scoop, grind, scoop... Then we had to give the concrete three days to cure before we could start stringing fence. That turned into the next time Scott had two days off a week later. The holes for the new gate went in no problem. Tractor with a fence pole auger, and zip zip.

The ground up in the front corner never gets irrigated so it's all sand. No conductivity from the fence through the animal to ground. Scott sunk some rods into the ground and connected it to the middle wire on the fence. Now when the cows try and push through they hit both wires and get lit up. The fence meter reads 8k and all the pretty red lights are lit up. They don't try the fence anymore. Every one is getting fat and happy on all the grass out in the front pasture. 

My shape is round, Green eggs

I joke all the time. I'm in shape, my shape just happens to be round. It's really not that funny. Nothing is more pathetic than watching a fat girl try and jog. A short, fat, girl. A short, fat, girl in cowboy boots, huffing and puffing up and down the driveway. Up and down the driveway, because nothing is more pathetic to watch, and I don't want to subject everyone driving on the road to the sight. And my driveway is pretty long.

I'm not hugely heavy. Not morbidly obese. The is just more of me than I wish there to be. HA HA, I rhyme. I have gained weight though, especially this summer. It isn't healthy. I don't feel good, or feel good about myself. My joints hurt more and more often. The tendinitis in my elbow has been kicking my ass. I get tired easier. I can't do as much outside Work, and I've gotten weaker.

 I'm about 20 pounds overweight. My pants don't fit right. My boobs are ginormous and don't fit in my cute bras. Why do they only make cute bras in sizes for people with no boobs? What, big girls don't want to feel sexy too? They're going to be nekkid and under the covers with the lights out before they let their man come out of the bathroom? Big bras come in beige, white, and black. BORING! I want hawt pink, and turquoise. Something with lace. Pretty purple polka dots...

Two years ago with surgery after surgery, I wasn't eating as much. I was outside more. I looked pretty darned good. I didn't ride this summer. I sat around more eating crap. Large amounts of processed foods, and high sugar items make me hurt all over. I still eat them. Damn Dairy Queen for having a restaurant just up the road from my work. I drive past it all the time on the way to the thrift store looking for that great gadget or bargain I just can't live without. Damn me for not having any shred of will power enough to keep driving on by instead of pulling into parking lot and tying on the feed bag.

I started jogging. Actually it's more like a fast walk with a shuffling bounce. It starts out as jog. I don't get very far before it turns into a shuffling bounce. I'm doing it though is the thing. It's only been three times now in a week. It's about 275 ft down my driveway and a bit longer than that up the dirt road to Dave's pasture out back. Walk a little to catch my breath, and then jog back up to the house. I looked it up on Google maps. I have to do that 10 times to be a mile. I'm roaring and heaving to catch my breath at the end. My legs feel like jello, but dammit it, I'm sick of looking like I do. The only way to fix it, is to do something about it.

My short term goal is to jog down to Dave's and then back to the house without stopping. Longer term is to make it the whole mile. I want to work out in the pasture moving irrigation pipe without getting winded. I want to go galloping across the desert and not want to stop before the horse does.  I want to feel good, and feel good about myself. Baby steps.

What if I ended up somewhere, or in a situation where I had to travel a pretty fair distance? Work is 30 miles from home. Most people think they can walk about a mile in about 10 minutes. Sure. A mile. A single mile. After about 5 miles the average couch potato is looking for a place to sit and rest. They've been walking for about an hour and a half or so, their feet are killing them, their legs are tired. After they've sat their feet are a little swollen, and hurt three times as much after they get up and start walking again. It isn't going to take 30 hours to walk 30 miles. It's going to take three days, being reasonably out of shape. It's time to fix  my out of shape.

Bottom right and second from the right in the next row up

I make people laugh by getting excited about little things around the farm. I got to watch a chicken lay an egg the other day. I watched one of the Easter Eggers lay her first egg. I know it was her first because I've seen her going in and out of the condo the last few days like, "I know I'm supposed to be doing something in here. I feel like I should be in here. I just don't know why yet." I've peeked in on her settled down in a nest box, only to get up and walk out.

 I cracked the lid on the box the other day, sat down on a bucket and she obliged by pointed her feathered butt at me and popping out the first green egg I've seen from one of my hens. It was a little teeny green pullet egg. I was all excited. I brought it in and showed it off to Scott and Connie. I think they were more excited for me being excited, than they really were about the egg. Oh they sure thought it was nifty that we got our first green egg, but I was silly excited about it. 

Major fruit score, canning everything in site

Connie and I started canning everything we could get our hands on the last week or two. I took a few of the chicken carcasses I had in the freezer from when I parted out the chickens we processed, and threw them in my giant stock pot. We let them simmer on the stove top for over 20 hours. Really we should have waited till it was cold enough to simmer them on the wood stove and not use the electricity, but what the heck. I think canned 7 quarts. Four with meat bits we picked off the bones, and three just stock. It smelled so good in my house for two days straight. 

Next was the green beans. Green beans coming out of my ears from the garden. I've never eaten so many green beans in my life. They taste so much more amazing than the crap you get out of a tin can from the grocery store. 7 quarts, 9 pints, and however much I put up in the freezer. I still want to do dilly beans, and battered fried green beans. 

The corn in was begging to be picked, canned, and eaten right off the cob, so last Sunday was a picking, shucking, canning, giant mess on my floor, making day. I think I pulled like 40+ odd ears of corn out of the garden. There is still a bunch out there that wasn't quite ready yet. We de-husked and cut corn all day. Some of the bigger, prettier ears went either whole, or cut in half into the vacuum sealer and the freezer. Some of the cut kernels did too. 

Connie showed me this wonderful trick to cutting off the kernels. Place a small bowl upside down in a very large bowl. The smaller bowl is your base for setting the corn on. I was shooting corn half way across the living room trying to slice down the cob on a cutting board. The dogs loved it. I don't think Scott was as amused. We canned two runs of 7 quarts, and two runs of 7 pints. It wasn't until almost all the way through that Connie found how to make creamed corn by scraping the cobs with a spoon to get all the juiced and bits of kernel still left on the cob. We got two lots of 4 cups in the freezer from that. 

Yesterday we went to a friend's house that had two apple trees and a pear tree to go fruit picking. We took two rubber made type totes with us and my handy dandy hillbilly fruit picker. I didn't take a pic of mine, but it looks pretty much like this. 

It worked great. Got all the apples I couldn't reach since pretty much everything a normal height person can reach is about two feet out of my reach. We got a red variety and a green. I ate one of the greens while we were picking. YummiE. Tart and sweet at the same time. I'm looking forward to lots of apple sauce, and pies. I want to try canning the pears. 

On the way home we drove up and down the streets of the neighborhoods. First off, I just like checking out other people's stuff. Secondly, I was having a serious case of fruit tree envy. All these people with trees full of fruit in their yard, and most of it was just falling to the ground to rot. Here I am with no fruit trees on my property and they are just feeding the flies and the yellow jackets. What a waste. I drove past a house with three peach trees so loaded with fruit the branches had fallen over to the ground. Peaches all over the ground. So I stopped and screwed up my courage to go bang on the door and ask if they minded us picking their peaches. 

No one was home. Go  figure. I'd driven by that house prolly twenty times just itching to stop, and never did. Screw it. I grabbed a plastic bag out of the truck and Connie and I started snatching peaches as fast as we could. Really, what are they gonna say? Give them back? There were hundreds of peaches rotting on the ground. 

We did the same thing at another house with trees full of plums and plums all over the ground. I did knock, but no one was home. This time they pulled up while we were picking plums in their front yard. I about had a heart attack. Out of this truck is two high school kids, so I walked up and started babbling, "HI! Do you mind if we pick you plums? There were just so many rotting on the ground we thought we'd grab some and cart them off before they made more of a mess in your grass." See, I was doing a public service. Those poor boys looked dumbfounded before the older one just kinda shrugged and said, "Sure, I don't care. We weren't going to do anything with them." Connie and I busted out laughing after they went in the house. What a bunch of crazy ladies we are. Here's they haul though. Both totes are full of apples on the bottom, and plums and peaches on top. 

Yesterday was plum day. I found a recipe for plum jam at pickyourown.org.  We made 12 pints. Tonight I peeled and canned peaches from a recipe I found at cityboyhens. 5 pints of canned peaches. We still have a lot more plums and peaches to process. I'm outta lids though. Plenty of jars left, I just have to wait till Monday to be able to get more lids. 

Storms and Muletape

There has finally been some rain here in the desert. A couple of rain/thunder cells have moved through helping with the fires up north, and making for some lovely light shows in the evenings. Gooding is usually in some sort of black hole that makes all the rain clouds skitter away around us to the north and east. Rain coming from the west hits Glens Ferry and sputters out to nothing. I got a couple of nice pictures of the clouds coming in, a few lightning bolts, and the rainbow after wards.

 

I've been working on a new blog. It's for my sister to showcase her tack she makes. 

Jack of Crafts Mule Tape Tack

She hand dyes, hand ties all the tack. It's amazing work. I kinda want one, but I can't afford them. lol. 

Having livestock means hard choices.

Having livestock means having to make hard choices, they are entrusted into our care. We keep them for food, we keep them for protection, we keep them for companions. Eventually we are going to have to make a decision about them for end of life. 

We decide when it's time to be butchered, when it's time to move on to someone elses care, when it's time to put them out of their misery, or end suffering. This last week I had to make a terribly hard choice, that many people would not agree with. I had to find somewhere else for Apache, my blind gelding. He was finally completely blind. He may have been able to see some shadows far away, but he was blind. 

He was doing fairly well out in the pasture by himself. As long as he didn't have any contact with the other horses, he didn't loose his mind. If we tried to take Ben past him, or off the property, he paced, he whinnied, he tried to plunge around and not move at the same time. It was very sad to watch. I tried putting him out front with the cows. He paced so much he made the front pasture a bog. 

I put him in the dry lot and fed him hay, but when the winds came, and we get hellacious winds here in Idaho, he freaked out trying to find shelter from the blowing sand. Trying to walk up to him and catch him to put him in the round pen was almost dangerous. He didn't want to listen to pay attention to where I was standing to avoid running me over. 

In the round pen he couldn't hear Dave's horses out back and worried himself into a frenzy trying alllll day and night long to find a way out of the pen. He was loosing weight no matter how much I fed him. He banged into the water barrel, tripped over it, scabbed up his shins. 

Last week the calves figured out the fence wasn't hot down in the one corner. My steer broke out 4 times in one afternoon, even with adding a third hot wire. We had to move all three of them up into the round pen until I can pay to have someone come out and drill through the lava rock just under the soil, and make a new fence corner. The round pen is a good 60 round, but there just wasn't enough room for two- 13 month old steer, one 4 month old steer, and one blind horse. 

I put Apache out on the short pasture and in trying to find his way to Ben, he bumped the wire fence pretty hard. It wasn't hot, but it was enough to knock some of the wire out of the insulators and bring the top of the fence down.  He got tangled up in it. He managed to get free, but what if he didn't? What if I hadn't been home?

So I called Steve. He's the horse trader I got Ben from. I didn't want to have to take him to the sale. It would have been a terrifying nightmare for him to try and run him through the sale. I didn't want to think about him in a feed lot getting ready to be on a truck bound for Canada when he can't see. I don't have the money to euth him and have him hauled off. 

Steve agreed on coming out to take a look and see what my options were. I know what he is. I know the horses he buys sometimes end up at the sale and on a truck with the kill buyer. He doesn't try and hide it. He's a horse trader and everyone knows it. 

Steve and his wife came out with their truck and trailer. I got Apache haltered and he got some hands on with him. He agreed with me that he wasn't dangerous. He stopped when Steve intentionally stopped in front of him and didn't say Whoa. Apache just backed off a few steps. I said to him i was being a realist, that I knew he might end up on the kill buyer truck. He told his wife she had a new horse to ride. See what they could do. He told me he'd put Apache down if things didn't work. He wouldn't ship him. I believe him. 

I cried, I haltered him and led him to the truck. He loaded very cautiously, but jumped up without freaking. I cried some more when they pulled out of the driveway. It was terrible, but it was something that needed to be done before I came home and found him bled out from impaling himself of a tee post. 

Bucket and Jar Score, Canning Green Beans

We camped out in the yard last night, Scott and I. Threw up the tent, had a fire and everything. We really don't have the extra cash right now to go anywhere, or the extra time. Last night was a great night for throwing up the tent in the yard though. It wasn't too cool with the cloud cover. There was clouds and lighting in the distance we could watch through the door of the tent. The new fire pit The Boy dug for us made for a great campfire. We blew up the air mattress, brought out the blankets and pillows from our bed. It was even better than camping since when I wanted a midnight snack I could raid our fridge.

The only downside is we pitched it right next to the round pen. The steers are in the round pen right now since the fence is down. Whoever said cows are stupid never met my steers. Out of three Jersey steers, My steer from last year, not Andrea's steer, has figured out that the irrigation water doesn't make it all the the way down to the front corner of the pasture. That means nothing grows in the corner.Why the hell the cows want to be out in the corner in the first place, since there isn't any grass growing is beyond be. The ground is all sand so there isn't any conductivity from the fence to the ground, which equals no zap. So now the fence is torn apart, the cows are in the round pen, and come daylight, they were mooooing in my ear. The roosters were crowing behind me in the trees. It was kind of a noisy morning. Wouldn't have traded it for anything.

Connie got us a hell of a score the other day. I asked her to ask at the grocery store what they were going to do with their frosting buckets. They gave her all 6!!. They have lids with gaskets so they are airtight. The buckets are 3-1/2 gallon buckets. WOOT!!! I already have one filled with rice, and one three quarters of the way filled with pinto beans. Flour is next. I'm going to keep going back and asking for more. They are food grade and perfect for home storage.

Scott's friend Pat was going through the storage in his garage and came across a bunch of old jars that belonged to his mother. He asked if I would be interested in them. Heck yeah I would. There were boxes and boxes of them. Scott and Pat loaded them all up and brought them to my garage. I did one whole load in the dishwasher and there are still boxes out there. 

And last for today is the green beans. I've had green beans coming out my hiney. The stringless beans we've been eating as fast as I can pick them. I have two small batches out in the freezer. I planted two rows Kentucky Wonder Bean. They were supposed to be a pole type bean, but we never put up a trellis for them. They just grew wild all over the place like a chaotic version of the green bush beans. We started picking them last night. I have mounds and mounds of Wonder Beans.   

We shelled out some of the beans out of the biggest pods.

And then from THIS SITE, The Canning Granny, I love her site, we canned beans. Seven Quarts, and Nine pints.