In which Thanksgiving takes several days to celebrate properly

Isn't Thanksgiving just the BEST holiday?

Family. Friends. Food. Foolin' around. More food. I love that. The weather, not so much.

Check it out:

Jim started the apple-citrus brine for the turkey on Tuesday evening (while talking long-distance to his brothers in Colorado). Just don't drop the phone into the turkey's, errr, cavity!

The brining bucket is better known as our red camping cooler. It kept the turkey from freezing while it was outside in the pump house, covered in brine.

While the turkey is soaking in brine, it's time to bottle the wine. Jim made 12 gallons of dry plum wine from our plum harvest in 2009 (that's more than 50 bottles of wine!) and 6 gallons of sweet blackberry wine from all the blackberries he and I picked down by the river this summer.

The herbs for the chicken and the stuffing came from our garden, as did the potatoes.


The glorious bird!

Everyone has plenty to eat today.

...except for Puzzle, who claims that he should be served the entire turkey to eat by himself. (he got some little pieces of turkey with his kibble)

Even the chickens got lots of vegetable scraps.

Hana and the goats didn't want turkey. Hay is her favorite.

Fiddle loves hay. Also beet pulp. Also apples and carrots. And whatever else you've got.

There's also time to play in the sn*w, which was sufficiently deep to keep some of our guests away on Thursday :-( but the kids didn't mind the white stuff at all!

After dark, it's time for a little cutthroat card playing. Okay, not very cutthroat.

The cat always wiggles his ears when he's got aces.


The next day, we got word that one of our guests had dug out from her house, and was coming to visit. So we had a second Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat.

Lisa learned to make pumpkin pies.

Delicious!

It was almost four years ago that Jacqui was diagnosed with some ugly cancer, and had to find a new home for her big moosey standardbred mare.
Um, I guess you can probably figure out who the new moosey standardbred mare's owner is, huh?

Jacqui's other reason to come down to the States (besides visiting us and seeing her former horse) was to pick up Isis! (That's not her registered name. Her registered name is Yumi, which just makes us think "Yummy?!!!???)

Isis just weaned a litter of very nice puppies, and is now ready to start life as a house dog.
She is a ball-maniac!

Also, she's pretty fond of rolling pumpkins around!

Fee's non-hatred of Isis lasted for about fifteen more seconds after I shot this photo.

Then...

"Stay away or I will stomp you with my hard-hard-feet! and bite you with my sharp-sharp teeth!
Fiddle proves that she is tame, after all (once the dogs have been taken into the house for a while) by showing off her "yoga moves."

After a long weekend of fun, even the boots look tired.

Life is good.