342: How now brown cow

As  promised, I’ve brought you a few photos from the Portage County Randolph Fair.  Next year I might go on my own during the week so I can spend more time looking at and photographing the animals.  I’m not sure which are my favorites.  It’s a toss up between the cows and the goats.

The horses are pretty darn cool too.  They are beautiful animals, that’s for sure.  My oldest granddaughter, like most little girls, is very interested in horses.  She went to horse camp this summer to learn a little about the care and riding of horses.  Now, of course, she wants her own horse.

No visit to the county fair would be complete without a photo of the sign.  We go to the fair in the morning (cooler weather, fewer people) so every year I end up shooting towards the sun to get a photo of this sign.  It does look as though they need to repaint it.

Soon after entering the fair grounds we passed the area where they wash the cows.  I’m not sure if they use that area to bathe any of the other animals or not.  There are always cows there when we pass it.

Taking a nap

This cow had its head resting on the back of the cow next to it.

Emma and Maddy both enjoyed petting the animals.  Maddy (the little one) can get overly enthusiastic (as almost all toddlers do) which is why her mother usually has hold of her arm or hand.

There were dairy cows and beef cows.  My favorites are the Scottish Highland Cattle.  I’ll have some photos of them ready to show you soon.  Maybe.  I haven’t really had a chance to look at them.  It’s possible none are blog-worthy.

We saw quite a few chickens, turkeys, geese, and ducks.  It was a fowl world.  There were also pigs, goats, alpacas, dogs, lizards, snakes, and lots of bunny rabbits.  I’ll have more in a future post.

Pepper Picking

In case you want to park your pepper

My outdoor time today was spent picking a bushel of peppers.  I know it would have sounded better if I’d written “a peck of peppers,” but a peck is less than a bushel and picking peppers is so easy that I always figure I might as well pick a bushel of them.

Driving out to the pepper fields

I picked the peppers at Walnut Drive Gardens.  When we first arrived at the pepper fields, a man who had just finished picking tomatoes told us that the peppers had been picked over pretty well already and that we’d have to look hard to find them.

Pepper field

I don’t know if the man had poor vision or if he looked in the wrong place.  I had no trouble finding big, beautiful, bell peppers almost everywhere I looked.

While out and about, visiting another farm and market, I met up with this beautiful garden spider:

Back at home I picked peppers from my garden.  I grew red and yellow bell peppers.  Green bell peppers are easy to find around here.  The red, yellow, and purple, not so much.  This year was an experiment to see if I could grow them.  So far, so good.  Next year I will plant more.

And now I must get back to dealing with that bushel+ of peppers.  In case you’re wondering what I do with them, I chop them up and freeze them to use in stews, soups, stir-fries, and chili.  A day or two of work today will save me time and work later.

Thanks for dropping by and joining me on my pepper hunt.  🙂

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