Fall Colors and Last Tomatoes

Written by lindahubalek on . Posted in Blog, Uncategorized

Fall Colors by Linda HubalekWe just finished a driving vacation through Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. We hadn’t taken a vacation in years and we just drove to enjoy the scenery and visit family along the way.

The tree color was gorgeous up north, and we marveled at the difference of farms and crops between the states. Iowa had rolling hills of drying corn, with white barns and houses in the farmsteads. Driving across other states showed us flat land, red barns, and soybeans.

I’ve always wondered why settlers decided “this is it” and stopped to build a homestead on a certain place. The influence from their homelands can be seen centuries later.

And the next day we got home, we had our first snow of the season. I was glad I was home so I could pick the last of the tomatoes and peppers from my garden. If I was a pioneer I’d really treasure the last 100+ tomatoes I picked green. Think how many meals that would serve a family when you had no source of food except what you could grow.

I placed the tomatoes on trays and put them down in the basement to ripen over time. I’ll enjoy my summer tomatoes past Thanksgiving, and remember the weather then too.

New Book Covers

Written by lindahubalek on . Posted in Blog, Butter in the Well book series, Uncategorized

Butter in the Well by Linda K. Hubalek

Butter in the Well by Linda K. Hubalek

I’m back!

I’ve spent the summer working on the house my husband and I are building by ourselves. I taped and mudded the sheet rock, painted the entire interior of the house, planted grass, trees, shrubs, garden, etc- with a little help from a great teenage boy- oh, and packed and moved us from our old house- mostly all by myself while my husband was in Europe for his job. (He designs grain drills for a equipment manufacturer in Kansas and has been in Europe to test his new drill in their soils with their type of seed crops.)

Then I’ve spent this last month recuperating from surgery on both my right knee and trigger fingers on both hands (see why from the paragraph above).

I’ve also been updating my author website and getting geared up for the 20th anniversary of my first book Butter in the Well.

I thought the anniversary called for new cover designs so here’s the first sneak peak of the first one. I just changed them on my Amazon kindle ebooks (if you want to see them all), but haven’t made the changes yet with the book printer. Please look them over and let me know what you think of the new covers.

It was a fun process to design the covers and there’s story behind each one. I’ll tell you about them in future posts.

Meantime I’m glad to be back in touch with all of my readers again. I missed you!

Buffalo's Chocolate

Written by lindahubalek on . Posted in Uncategorized

 Last Saturday morning we spent time in the pasture watching the herd. The day hadn’t heated up yet so it was nice to sit on the tailgate of the pickup and watch as the cows sniffed through the tall grass looking for the range cubes that had been thrown out for them to find and enjoy.

The calves are starting to lose their baby wool coat and turn brown, a few spots at a time. They look rather unkept and splotchy right now, but by the end of September the calves will have sleek brown hair just like their mammas.

Ever learning from their mother’s, it was fun to watch the calves sniff the cubes, and maybe lick one. They aren’t quite at the stage of picking up and chewing one yet, but they know the older animals do it and get excited when they see them spread out – so they are learning it must be a good thing.

Because range cubes are a treat rather than a daily food, it’s a good way to train the buffalo to come when called. It might be for a roundup, or – if heaven forbid a gate or fence is down – you have a way to bring them back home to the pasture.

Think of it as the buffalo’s chocolate…