I am going to quickly explain, mostly through pics, how I make pumpkin puree for use in pumpkin recipes. Why cook or bake with pumpkin? It is loaded with Vitamin A and C, and lots of minerals like zinc and magnesium, and it is a good source of fiber!
When I say "pumpkin" I am really talking about any type of orange fleshed squash. I love Georgia Candy Roasters and they are a banana shaped squash. I also like the Jarrahdale Blue Pumpkin (this is what I am using for this demonstration below) because they are SO dense and heavy...lots of flesh to harvest! I like to use my crock pot for cooking the pumpkin...
I put the pumpkin on my pillow so I remember to put it into the crockpot before bed...LOL!
I cut it in half and clean out the seeds (and give the seeds to the chickens)...I can only fit one half of the pumpkin in each time...I put the crock pot on "low" heat and go to bed...
In the morning, the pumpkin is all soft and squishy...and hot! Be careful! I let it cool down and then scrape out the flesh and put into my food processor...
After pureeing all the pumpkin up and making it smooth, I actually put it in a cheesecloth lined sieve to drain out the extra "juice"...(I give the juice to the chickens too as well as the soft outer rind)...I fold the cheesecloth over the top of the pumpkin...
Then, I put a brick on top to weigh it down and really squeeze out the pumpkin juice...I feel this is a necessary step because if you try to bake with the freshly pureed pumpkin...it will add a lot of moisture into your recipe and ruin your final product...ask me how I know...
I let the pumpkin drain all day...now it is nice and THICK!!!
Then, I weigh it and put it into freezer bags. I think it is considered unsafe to can pumpkin because it is so thick. Maybe you could pressure can it but I just started freezing it years ago so that is what I continue to do...I lay the bags flat in the freezer and they really don't take up that much room...once they are frozen, you can even stack them on their sides...
Pumpkin is great in breads and muffins and donuts...of course! But there are lots of savory ways to use pumpkin too! AND...it is super healthy for you!
Pumpkin Bacon and Chard Lasagna...there are LOTS of pumpkin pasta recipes out there! Just google pumpkin and pasta...another good one is pumpkin mac and cheese!
Pumpkin Turkey Chili...there are actually LOTS of pumpkin soup recipes...like butternut squash soup...many times, I don't even have to me making a special "pumpkin" chili...I just add some pumpkin puree to my chili...makes it nice and thick...
Okay, this one is a sweet one (not savory), but I just discovered it last month and it is my new favorite! Put it in the crock pot before bed and wake up to breakfast...to remind myself, I put the steal cut oats on my pillow...
Bonus tip: wear gloves when you handle pumpkin...it has an enzyme that is an exfoliant...I picked seeds out of a pumpkin one time and then my fingertips peeled for days and drove me crazy!!!
I actually prefer spaghetti squash seeds for roasting...I like their smaller size.
I LOVE pumpkin seeds too and grow a "special" type of pumpkin just for the hulless seeds. I could go on and on about seeds because they are just powerhouses of nutrition. I did make a blog post about saving and smoking! pumpkin seeds a few years ago and you can see it here:
This actually happened last year but I never got around to posting it. I was called by a friend that said there was a swarm in Moscow that needed rescuing. I had an empty hive box so I headed there. It was a fairly small swarm and it was not too high up in the tree so this was all promising...
I laid a tarp on the ground under the swarm and then cut the branch off that the swarm was hanging on. Again, luckily, it was a small branch and I could just cut it off with a lopper...I set the swarm box on the ground and opened it up...the bees started marching into the box...
This is kind of the slow part...waiting for the bees to all climb into the box...
More waiting...
Here is a little video that I made of the bees going into the box:
Finally got them into the box and too them home. I took the frames out of the swarm box and put them into the hive...
So, that was last year and I am so sad to say that this hive did not make it through this past winter. I only had one hive make it through the winter and that is the hive that swarmed a couple weeks ago. Here is a video of the bees right after they came out of the hive...they ended up hanging out on an apple tree but when I went back to get them, they had left...Side note: Both of these swarms occurred on June 24th which is the Feast of the birthday of St. John the Baptist. He is known for eating only locusts and honey...I just thought this was a neat coincidence.
Honeyberries are a relatively new fruit that has been cultivated since the 1950's. It is actually a type of honeysuckle that bears fruit, hence the name "honey" "berry". They grow in the wild in areas of Eastern Europe and Asia and this is where cultivation began. The plants are super winter-hardy and the flowers frost tolerant. Because they are so cold tolerant, they are one of the first fruits ready to pick in the spring! I just started picking my honeyberries this past week.
Last year, I actually had a good crop of honeyberries but the birds got them all so I made sure to put netting over them this spring. The fruit is said to have the taste of a cross between blueberries and raspberries. The fruit looks kind of like an oblong blueberry.
Here is a pic of one of my honeyberry bushes covered with netting...don't mind the weeds, I am going to get in there and pull them out...some day...
I had never actually even heard of honeyberries but when we first moved to the farm, I was at the plant nursery and I was so excited to start planting something, anything! The owner of the nursery said that they had some honeyberries. You need 2 for cross pollination. I bought 2. I was so excited to see the fruit the next spring that I went and bought 6 more the next year! Now, those first 2 bushes are really big...about as tall as I am!
An added bonus is that they are super easy to grow! They are not picky about the soil conditions and are super hardy. If you are looking for something unique and different to grow, give honeyberries a try!
I know it has been a LONG time since I did a blog post. It has been busy (as always) and then the bird flu came and I thought I would have time to maybe start up again but the motivation just did not come. Now, I finally feel like I have some thing to share...a more "in-depth" review of the Halo collar and it didn't seem like a simple FB post would suffice.
Background
Yuki actively looks for holes in the fencing to get out. Spud does not do this. She seems perfectly happy to stay within the 4 acres that we have fenced around our home. The problem is that Yuki is very sneaky and we cannot seem to find where he is getting out or we would block the hole! The neighbor said he has seen him "climb" the gate. I have also seen him up on the gate as if he were going to climb over. It is hard to explain but we have added more fencing material to the gates so that he cannot do this BUT he was still getting out. He was going over to the other neighbors and barking at their dogs and so we needed to figure out another way to keep him home!
Yuki with his Halo collar on...getting pets after a successful training session.
We bought a kennel and had to start putting him in there at night. Also, we have to put him in there when we leave the farm because, as I mentioned earlier, he is super sneaky and often gets out when we are not around the farm or in the middle of the night. Even after the kenneling, we got a text saying that he was out at like 2:00 in the morning. I was like, that is impossible. I remember putting him in the kennel. I thought maybe I didn't get the latch completely closed....went out to the kennel to find that he can chewed his way out through the metal wire! This dog does not like to be contained!
At the bottom, you can see where Yuki pulled away the fencing on the kennel. Henry put the plywood on after this happened...
I was going to actually start looking for a new placement for him but my heart was just not into it. Then, I ran into a friend from church at the Co-op and she mentioned that there was something you could put on your house and it made an invisible barrier that would keep the dog contained. I was not sure if this would work but maybe we could use it at night. I started googling on the internet and that is when I found the Halo collar.
Training
The Halo collar seemed promising and we ordered it right away. This system is a collar with GPS sensors on it and then you walk around your property and put in virtual fence posts. When the dog gets close to the GPS fence, the collar beeps. If they ignore the beeps and get closer to the GPS fence, the collar vibrates. If they ignore the vibration and go even closer to the boundary, they get a shock. We got the collar and I started reading about its use. It seems I have to train the dog to the collar first. Ugh! I should have probably known this. You can't just get it and put it on him and turn on the "GPS" fencing and walk away.
To begin, you start with beacon training in the home. A beacon is a small device that you activate and then leave in an area that you do NOT want the dog to go to. For example, let's say you want your dog to stay away from your dining table. You would put the beacon on the table along with a "smelly" treat...something like bacon! Then, when the dog comes over to investigate, the collar gives a warning beep when they get too close and you pull them away with their leash and praise them. You do this over and over until the dog recognizes that when they get that beep on their collar, they are to turn away.
Small side note at this point...Pyrenees are not really treat motivated, even to smelly bacon, like most other dogs so this has always been a barrier to training...
The beacon training was also challenging for us because our dogs never come into the house. So, it was double challenging to try and manipulate the situation to practice this. I started letting Yuki in the house and he just looked at me like "what am I doing in here". I noticed that he would go into the storage room and eat the cats food so I decided to put the beacon in there. We worked on that for several days until he would not go into the storage room.
Next was whistle training. This you are also supposed to start indoors. There is a button in the halo app and you push it and the collar makes a whistle sound. When the dog hears it, he is to come to you. Again, we practiced this inside but I quickly started to do this around the farm as well. Also, a little challenging because as soon as I go outside, the dogs just automatically come to be to get pets. I would have to wait for them to go away while I was working and do the whistle. He is finally getting very good at the whistle training so next is fence training! We are just going to start on this now so I will have to report back on that!
Before I end, I just want to mention a couple of other things regarding the Halo collar. It can only be worn 12 hours a day. So, this works great if you bring your dog in at night. However, we want him roaming around at night and barking at coyotes. The collar takes at least a couple hours to charge up each day. Since we are still putting him in the kennel at night right now, it is working for us to just put the collar on during the day. I think we are going to have to get another collar and swap them out each day. Again, they only recommend that the dog wear the collar 12 hours a day. Also, the GPS fence has to be at least 15 feet away from your house. This is fine for us but I just wanted to make a note about this for other people that live in town as this may be more challenging if you fence is close to your house.
One good thing about the collar is that I have identified 2 "holes" where he was getting out! We have patched them up and this is helping him to stay in! I just noticed when he was getting close to our physical fence and then snuck outside to see what he was up to and found him standing up on the fence getting ready to go through. I know this is a little hard to see but here is a pic of what the halo app shows on my phone. The yellow boundary is where Yuki is supposed to be. Here he is at the neighbors hunting rabbits. He did come up to the gate with a rabbit in his mouth! I found the hole he was getting out of right after this...
Lastly, the Halo collar actually saved Yuki's life a couple of weeks ago. Most delivery people just leave the packages outside of the gate but one person has the gate code and drives in to our house and puts the packages on the porch. I guess the dogs, yes, both of them, have figured out how to follow the delivery guy out the gate when he leaves! I happened to be at home and I was working on separating hoses to try and get the irrigation going for the garden. I had not seen the dogs for a while so I looked at the halo app. I could see Yuki's collar WAY out of bounds. The weirdest thing was that it was not moving. It was so far away that I got into my truck and tried to drive to get him and Spud. BUT I came up to the U of I sheep farm and could not drive any further. I was unfamiliar with that area so I drove back home and decided I needed to walk and get him...it is mostly pasture so there are no roads back there.
I headed out over hills and fencing. At about a mile away from the house, I see Spud. I could see by Yuki's collar that he must just be right over the next hill. I kept going and found that he had gotten caught in a coyote snare. I didn't even know what a coyote snare was up until this point. It is a piece of metal with a loop on the end. It was attached to a fence and I guess it hangs down and then when the coyote goes under the fence, they put their head through the loop and it cinches up and chokes them to death. Yuki's head was through the loop but it was stuck around the Halo collar so it could not close all the way but he was still having trouble breathing...it had cinched up pretty tight. I took off the collar and got him to lay still. Luckily, Seth (he works with Mark) was at the house and I called him, explained where the wire cutters were and he drove back over to the sheep farm and then walked over to where we were and I was able to cut it off his neck. Talk about a close call. If Spud would have been caught, this would be a different story...I am sure of it...but the bulky Halo collar kept the loop from cinching up too tight.
Yuki with the snare around his neck...waiting for wire cutters...
We have been meaning to put up some new fencing on the west side of the farm and this is where one of the holes in the fence was that Yuki kept getting out so Henry started working on this fencing project yesterday. Let's see him squeeze through these 2x4 inch squares! There was some barbed wire fencing there before, and, even though we had put a hog panel up against it, he would go over the hog panel and through the barbed wire.
So...that is our Halo journey so far...it is an expensive system but it literally paid for itself already with the fact that it saved Yuki's life. So happy to start fence training and keep this guy inside the boundaries!
The last couple of years have not been good "bee" years. The spring has been too cool or too rainy. We have 3 hives and one died last summer which is really odd for it to die that time of year. Usually, the bees have a hard time making it through the winter. And that is what happened this past winter...one of the other hives died. So...I went in and harvested the honey and wax...Ollie helped me...
I don't have a fancy extractor so I use a crush and strain method. I didn't get a pic of the bottling, but basically, there is a spout at the bottom of the yellow bucket and I just put a jar under it and fill it up. Then, I got busy rendering down the honeycomb. I put it into a big double boiler and let it melt down.
Then, I place cheesecloth over the top of a cardboard milk carton and poor the melted honeycomb through the cheesecloth and let it set up. Voila...beeswax...I will use this when I make the herbal salves!
Keeping it short and "sweet" this time...pun intended. This was a pretty simplified explanation of the honey and wax collection. I have done several more detailed blog posts about honey and wax rendering in the past and if you just search for "honey" in the blog, they should show up for you. It has been at least 3 years since I have been able to collect honey/wax so I thought it would be good to review!
Got 2 sets of new bees in mid-April so they are busy working on the farm now...the apple blossoms have just opened this past week!
The bees have been enjoying the daffodils!
I planted hops near the chicken and duck coops last year. They grew but did not get very big. I think because it was just the first year and they were getting established. This spring they are taking off so I put up some wires to train the vines. I am trying to get the vines to go over the top of the run to provide some shade in the summer. I will keep you posted on this project...
I have read that hops contain a hop beta acids which is like kryptonite to varroa mites. Varroa mites are deadly to honeybees. I think if the bees interact with the hop flowers, maybe they could get the hop beta acid on them and bring it back to the hive? It sounds like it is in the preliminary testing phase. Also, I read that you can pick and dry the hop flowers and feed them to your chickens and they have some antibacterial effect in the chicken gut. Well, we will see if I get around to picking any hop flowers. I have zero interest in making beer...would rather make wine. I mostly just wanted the hops for the shade because they are known to be a super fast growing plants.
Things are really picking up here on the farm...and Zach is off for the summer so I am going to be extra busy with Mark. Therefore, this will be the last blog post until the fall when things start to get more manageable...I post almost everyday on Facebook so like "Remarkable Farms" on FB and you can keep up with the day-to-day activities of the farm.
About 3 years ago, I decided to try something new and grow some birdhouse gourds. I guess I must have had some bad seed that first year because nothing grew. I tried again the next year and got a lot of nice, good sized gourds! I harvested them and brought them inside to dry down. They are green when you pick them but then turn brown and become hollow as they dry down. Here are some gourds growing in the strawberry patch...
I find the flowers of the birdhouse gourd absolutely gorgeous! They are frilly and delicate! The bees love them!
Here are the gourds I harvested in 2021...
I took them into the house and set them out to dry down...it took months! I don't know what I was expecting but I guess I thought it would be faster.
Slowly, the green started to turn to brown...
Then, some even peeled and shed their outer layers. I read that this is normal.
Some fungus started growing on them and, again, I had read that this is a normal part of the "aging" process...
Finally, they were dried down and so I scrubbed all the fungus off...
Then, I used a drill to make a hole in the front and made holes in the top to put in a string to use as a hanger. I then, used leather dye to "paint" them different colors! From left to right, these are orange, green, mahogany, and light tan (which is the most natural color).
I will have these for sale at the Farmer's Market. I think I am just going to sell them by size...2 inches per height. While doing some research, I discovered that there are also Apple gourds that are shaped like a big apple and Martin gourds that look like a big pear. I ordered some seed of each of these and we will see how they grow this year!
Buckle up...this is going to be a long one but probably one of the most important blog posts I have ever written and it is 12 years in the making (maybe 20 years if you consider Mark's age). April is Autism Awareness Month and I am going to make you "aware" of one of the most debilitating symptoms of autism for Mark. Speech and language difficulties. Mark can say some words for things that he really wants. For example, he can say "pizza", "cheese", "swimming", "bike ride", "egg delivery", etc...BUT, you are not going to sit down and have a conversation with him. I rely on his body language to help me determine how he is feeling most of the time...is he content...is he getting upset...is he happy...is he sad. AND it is more than speech troubles....It is hard to explain, but it also involves motor planning challenges. He knows what he wants to do but he can't make his body do it. How frustrating! Can you imagine being trapped in a body that is not working like you want? I have been seeking to teach Mark a better communication strategy for years! Something that is compatible with the motor planning that he can do...
In 2011, a movie called Wretches and Jabberers came out and it was about a couple of men who learned to type for communication and set out on a global road trip to change people's minds about disability. I wanted this for Mark...not the global road trip part...the communication part. I even went to a conference in Syracuse, NY during the summer of 2014 to learn more about the technique. One of the keynote speakers was Naoki Higashida (pic below). He is nonspeaking and lives in Japan. He typed a book called The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism. There is even a movie made from the book and you can watch it on Netflix now!
Typing for communication is a form of augmentation communication and it can be controversial. I don't really have time here to go into the controversy here. The conference was inspiring but they didn't go into a lot of the logistics of "how" to teach the typing for communication. BUT that did not stop me, I tried to teach Mark how to type for communication by myself when he was in Middle school. We would work at it every morning before he went to school but we never had a breakthrough where he could independently type by himself. We even went to a local speech therapist that I had heard had some training in augmented communication. She just flat out told me that Mark would not be able to learn it. I don't know why she thought this. I don't think people should make blanket statements like that. It was rough...many tears...
Then, in 2017, we got ready to buy the farm and get Mark’s egg business going, we were having issues with our other son, Joshua, and communication fell off the priority list.
In spring 2022, I got a text from a parent that has a child with autism. I used to be the child's support broker and helped their family to get services set up for him several years ago. He reminds me a lot of Mark when Mark was younger. Mom told me that there was a lady in town teaching spelling for communication. She knew I had tried to teach Mark to type for communication at one point. I was intrigued by this new possibility but it was spring and I was crazy busy getting things planted on the farm...
The next month, Mark and I were at Spence, we call it the “farm store,” to buy some supplies. After paying for our items, we walked out to the parking lot and there was a young man there waiting to speak with us. He said he worked at the Jubilee School. I know that this is a school for children with autism. He said that there is a lady there teaching kids how to spell for communication. He said her name was Cynthia. Then, I remembered my friend's text and I pulled it up and it was the same contact info.
Okay, okay…when a perfect stranger comes up to you and gives you this kind of information...I saw this as a sign. I didn’t need another prompt from above…I called Cynthia immediately and got us set up to start Spelling 2 Communicate (S2C). If you click on the link, you will be directed to a webpage with several videos explaining S2C. There is a video labeled "Overview of Spelling to Communicate" and it is good to watch and only about 4 minutes long. I will attempt to explain it more here...
Speech, talking with your mouth, is a fine motor skill. Getting your mouth and tongue to contort into different shapes to make different sounds is hard work that most of us take for granted. Basically, S2C is turning a fine motor activity into a gross motor activity. In S2C, the speller uses their whole arm and a pencil to point to letters on a board. This is the gross motor activity. They spell out what they want to say one letter at a time. Let me also note that when you start S2C, you work with the alphabet on 3 different boards. This reduces the options for the speller and helps to develop the motor control needed to point to the correct letter. As the speller gets more practice, they can be moved to 1 board with all the letters of the alphabet on it.
Cynthia started working with Mark in June 2022. Of course, it started out a little rough. Mark had been out of school for 2 years at this point and we were not doing any type of “table” work at home. Table work is when you sit down and work on teaching a new skill. So…it took several sessions for Mark to learn to just sit and work at a desk again.
Each session is similar, they start with a lesson plan. The lesson can be about almost anything...hiking, music, art, advocacy, etc. They read the first paragraph of the lesson and certain words are spelled out. Then, it is Mark's turn to spell out the designated spelling words from the passage. After about 3 spelling words, he is asked a "closed" question. A closed question is a question with only one correct answer. It is based on the passage that was just read.
Cynthia did all the “work” at first and we met with her once a week. It seemed that things were going slow. I was so excited to start working with Mark myself because then we could get in more practice time each week. Finally, in September, she started teaching me to work with Mark at her office and then in October we started on our own at home.
At first it went well. Then, Mark started having some behaviors when we worked. He started attacking me and this caused a lot of anxiety for both of us. I let Cynthia know what was going on and we re-grouped and worked through this period. I have videotaped most all of our lessons and will be slowly putting them out on our YouTube after this blog post goes out. Here is an example of Mark's aggression towards me at the 12 minute mark of this video. It may be hard to watch. I know I don't like watching it and I was there when it happened...this is Session 7...
We were able to get back on track but it was so upsetting and things were moving so slowly. Also, I had recently finished reading a book titled Underestimated: An Autism Miracle by Jamison and J. B. Hanley. The book is about a young man, that was a little younger than Mark, and his journey to learn S2C. He seemed to pick it up right from the first lesson. I was happy for this young man but it made it hard to see Mark struggling to learn this new way to communicate.
Things slowly improved through the holidays and soon we were back on track. In January, he was actually smiling through his lessons with Cynthia. This was great to see because it definitely did not start this way last June! One obstacle that we have to work through is that Mark is very “prompt” dependent. He always waits patiently for you to direct him for what to do. It took 2 years for me to get him to feed the chickens by himself while I went into the other coop. At first, he would just stand there and do nothing when I left. But slowly over time, I convinced him that it was okay to keep working while I was out of sight. BUT typing independently is going to require him to take the initiative and spell on his own.
Here is a video of our 42nd session...things are going much better now...
February 20...it happened. Mark was working with Cynthia and spelled out a whole sentence of his own words!!! This is called "open" communication. They were working on a lesson about art and paintings. She asked him, "What colors would you use to paint with?" and he spelled, "I would use red, orange and some roses." If I wasn't sitting right there, I wouldn't have believed it. We have been limping along for months with one word answers and now a whole, open sentence!!!
It is common for the individual to be more "open" with the facilitator at first. I have not been able to get any open sentences from Mark myself but we are working on answering the questions in sentence form instead of single words. When Mark works with Cynthia, sometimes he is very emotional, almost crying. He is finally getting a voice and, I think, this is almost overwhelming for him. We are still in the beginnings of this journey but I am so hopeful and want to let everyone know about this amazing technique!
I am working with a group of individuals to bring a documentary movie to our town. It is called SPELLERS and it is about several individuals that use spelling to communicate! It is based on the book that I mentioned earlier, Underestimated: An Autism Miracle. Here is the trailer for the movie...As I mentioned, this is just a group of people putting together a free showing for the public to let everyone know about S2C. If you live near Moscow, Idaho...please feel free to come! We may have codes to give out to people that do not live in the area so they can watch it on-demand...more info to come on that option...
There will be Continuing Education credit available for medical professionals and educators!
As mentioned on the flyer, there will be a Question and Answer Panel after the showing of the movie. I am going to be on that panel with Cynthia and the mom that I mentioned earlier in this post...that initially told me about Cynthia and S2C last March.
The other boy that started S2C with Cynthia is much more "open" than Mark. A couple of days ago, Cynthia was working with him...she told him about Mark's recent open spelling. She asked, "Is there a message you would like to give him? What do you want Mark to hear from you?" He used his letterboard to give his reply:
"TELL HIM NOT TO GIVE UP. HIS WORLD IS ABOUT TO CHANGE AND GET SO MUCH BETTER. HE WILL LIKE BEING ABLE TO COMMUNICATE."
Everyone needs to know about S2C! We estimate that it is going to cost close to $3000 to show this movie. IF you would like to support this project, please make a donation to our GoFundMe. If you do donate, please mention Mark in your comments or "words of support" on the Go Fund Me page.
We are calling our group "Palouse Friends of Spellers". There are 10 of us working on this movie showing. I already got some good news this past week that the Dean of the College of Education at U of I sent out the information to everyone in the Department! I will be putting links to all this information on the ReMARKable Farms Facebook page. If you see the information about the movie on the FB, please share it to your personal FB page. We appreciate any help in getting the word out! The Kenworthy will seat 268 people and we want every seat filled!
Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, I am going to start putting out all the videos that I have recorded of me and Mark working together on our YouTube channel. If you Subscribe to the YouTube, I think you get an email each day when the new video posts. I am going to release one video each day. So far, we have 65 recorded so there will be at least a couple of months of new videos each day. The camera automatically shuts off at the 20 minute mark so that is how long they are. They are not terribly exciting. I don't expect people to actually sit down and watch every video. It is just to show how this technique works and you will slowly see the progress we are making. AND remember, we are doing our best. I am not a professionally trained facilitator. These are not high quality films. Just me and Mark doing our best to learn a new skill...please, say a prayer for our journey!
Also, remember that I am not a professional writer...I am hoping this all made sense but, please, reach out if you have any questions. I would LOVE to talk with you about S2C!!! This is a lot of information from the past 12 years and it was challenging for me to try and put it together in a coherent way...
Have an eggcellent day!
~Denise
P.S. I do have 3 other "open" sentences that Mark has written and I will be posting them, and any new spelling he does, on the ReMARKable Farms Facebook page!
