Porch Talk, Final Fair Update, Friday Florida Food Post

There's Jr. in the anxious moments just before he walked "PIG!" into the auction arena. All the folks around him are fair volunteers who work tirelessly to make the fair a success. The auction is the real thing with a auctioneer speaking in rapid-fire auctioneeralese. As I mentioned in a previous post, the animals are bid upon by individuals, organizations, and businesses with big hearts. The bidders bid way above actual market price, and their generosity is much appreciated by the kids who have raised the animals.

When a little boy who is battling bone cancer walked his pig into the ring, the bidders went crazy until the final price for his pig reached $10.00 a pound.

Like I said, they have big hearts.

Jr. did just fine and "PIG!" earned a sweet $4.00 per pound. She weighed 235 pounds so get your calculator out.

After 4 years of fair pigs, he thinks he'd like to try a feeder steer for next year. That will be a whole new learning curve, pen, etc. That's a long way off tho, so for now, I'm putting that concern on the manana backburner.

This is Friday so it should be a Florida Food Fest post, so let's talk strawberries. A few days ago, Mrs. FC came home with a flat of perfect Plant City strawberries. Red all the way through and the aroma was heavenly. So was the flavor. I think I ate half of the flat myself.

How do you prefer fresh strawberries? I'm not into dipping them into anything else. I just want to eat them naked (the berries) by the handfull.

It's the time of year where you can sit on the porch, eat a sandwich, and not be bothered by sweltering humidity or mosquitoes.

This lasts about 2 days.

Just kidding. It's been porch weather for weeks and last night we even got a little rain to help those seeds and seedlings in the pigpen garden.

I did have to put the top back up in the JEEP tho ... bummer.

Adjacent to the garden, I raked in Black-eyed Susan and Purple Coneflower seeds in the area I burned last week. I'd like to get a little "wild" perennial patch going.

Today, on a break from National Board writing, I will rig up my antideer garden protection as the bean seeds should be breaking the surface soon. "Blaze" the yearling deer with the white streak down his spine has been hanging out around the garden, so I really can't delay.

(Oh, it was a ham sandwich and yes, ... I shared with Flounder)