Benton County Fair Part 3

To finish off the Benton County fair series of posts I'm going to show some of the produce that was on display at the fair. As I mentioned yesterday this includes the biggest onion I've ever seen and I'd say it would be great in a salsa or fried with mushrooms and a steak.

The food on display looked great and I wouldn't mind living on this food rather than packet stuff every day. Not that we eat packet food everyday, we actually eat home cooked fresh food the majority of the time.

The eggs were really big and fresh looking compared to supermarket eggs that tend to be quite small and very thin shelled.

+Linda Dean was in absolute heaven and spent a long time studying the produce on show. She is currently building a home hydroponics system and hopes to match the produce on show at some stage in the future.

Produce was not the only thing on display though, there was also a large selection of very impressive and colorful flowers on display including this sunflower.

I like unusual looking flowers with interesting shapes and colors, they make for good shots and can look very impressive.

The organizers and staff of the fair really did a fantastic job with the displays and really showed off what people in the community had to offer.

And to finish up I'm going to show two great images that were captured by +Linda Dean. The first is of one of the hardworking staff members at the fair. If it wasn't for these guys there would be no fair rides every year.

The second shot by +Linda Dean is a great capture. Most days and nights we either see or hear the fire trucks racing by to help someone and deal with a problem. We tend to take these Firemen for granted so it was great to see them taking the time out to spend time with the kids at the fair.

We spent six hours at the fair on the first day and we had a great time and some good food. It was really enjoyable and we would definitely go back next year.

15 Miles Later...

An early rise and a long bike ride out beyond Philomath to the Provenance Farm collection point. We got a great deal on a whole lamb, 42lbs of lamb to be precise and we had to go collect it. Neither myself or +Linda Dean had been out there before so it was a new experience for both of us and neither of us were disappointed. For me, well, a farm is a farm, they all kind of look the same with a similar layout and similar buildings. Not this one, from the time you arrive at the front gate feels like it's out of a movie. Babe or something similar, the gardens are beautiful and very well kept with a ton of color.

They even had a recent arrival for us to pet and she was even willing to pose for us, if only for a short time before madly leaping around in excitement.

Unfortunately it was very overcast when we were out there but I did my best to try and capture as much of the color as I could. The gardens were just full of color from flowers and berries, the flowers especially were very spectacular which gave me a great excuse to test the new camera to see what it could do. +Phil Bowyer was also looking for a review of the Nikon D5200 so what's a better way than to show off some shots taken with it.

I'm very happy with it, even with the bad light we had this morning the shots came out pretty well. It's really great at capturing the color of the flowers and does an amazing job with clouds I think. I was also shooting with a polarizer this morning.

The pictures come out really crisp and vibrant even in bad light and I love the way it captures each individual vein of the petals and leaves.

The shots come out very natural and are not over cooked unless you want them to be. The camera has a HDR setting but I haven't played around with it yet, I normally prefer using +Snapseed to edit when I want the really spectacular clouds and the stormy skies in my images and Snapseed is incredible for those effects. It can also handle fine touch ups too if need be.

One thing for certain, someone on that farm is going to be eating some fantastic Jam or Jelly to anyone from the US later in the summer and autumn. They're definitely not short of berries, Marionberries (as pictured above), Blackberries, regular and Yellow Raspberries and Red Currants.

It would be incredible to wake up to this garden every day and I'd imagine would help start you off on good terms with the world, especially on those summers days with blue skies as far as the eye can see.

It even managed to capture the Wasp on the flower which is something I was never able to do very well on the old camera. I need to get more practice in with insects as the summer rolls on.

The above image for some reason looks like something out of Star Trek, like it could have been used on the set of the original series, not sure why, it just does.

I love how sharp the images are straight from the camera compared to my old one which tended to be fairly grainy at times unless the light was perfect and very bright.

On our way home we passed under an old railway bridge that crosses the bike path through the woods and I decided to stop to get some shots, I thought the above was interesting and had a story to it though it's not known to me. Still though, it kind of sparks the imagination just looking at it.

This was +Linda Dean tracking a Chipmunk in the trees, it got pretty angry the longer we hung around, running down to a lower branch and yapping at us...you could imagine it waving a fist and shouting "Get off my lawn!!!". 

And to finish, another nice capture of Linda thinking "get that damn thing out of my face, I am dealing with an angry chipmunk here and also gasping for a beer...craft beer...from a bottle!!!"

So our adventure to the Provenance Farm collection point went great and we're home, loaded with enough lamb for the summer which will be nice. And if any of you are in Oregon and are looking for fresh farm beef, lamb, chicken, turkey and eggs, then you should definitely check out Provenance Farm. You won't be disappointed and they are some of the nicest people you could meet.  

You can find them online here: 

•  http://provenancefarm.com/

Transplant of a Rose

Last autumn we transplanted a miniature rose bush from a very dull spot on one side of our house. It was a sad looking object that was really struggling to survive. We have massive trees on three sides of the house, not all ours but they still block a lot of sun light during the summer. This had caused this particular miniature rose bush to really struggle. So we decided to transplant the bush to the front of the house in the hopes that we could save it and hopefully watch it bloom this year. Well, I'm glad to report the transplant worked and we have a blossoming miniature rose bush in our front garden, full of flowers and life. And to prove it, I have taken a small but nice collection of shots to show off just how bright and colourful it has become.

The clear blue sky really helps bring out the colour of the roses and variation in the different roses shows just how healthy the bush has become since we replanted it.

The yellow gives the petals a velvet like appearance near the centre of the flower. We'll be trimming these early flowers so more can be produced as the season continues.

To give you some perspective, the bush itself is only about a foot high but the first cutting produced nine or so flowers with tons of blooms left to produce more.

I love the contrast in the above image between the rose and the background leaves. The red edges and veins in the rose leaves look fantastic and I am very happy with this capture. Hopefully over the course of the summer I will get a lot more opportunities to capture more shots from this miniature rose bush. But until then I will be keeping a close eye on it to see how it develops. It really is incredible to see such positive change since we replanted it though.