Spring Rain

Posted on April 9, 2015 by farm2011

Before the rains came this week, I was able to get the rest of the landscaping bricks put down.

If you remember one of the earlier posts, I said that I wasn’t sure that we’d have enough of the bricks. Well of course we didn’t have enough so back to the store I go again. This time, I was going to get more than enough. Now the smart thing to do in this type of a situation is to actually go out and measure – well I just knew that 30 would be enough so why waste my time?

Yea… well I got 30 of the bottom bricks and then 65 of the top ones to cap it off. I must have looked pretty pathetic when I was talking to the guy at the home store because I asked if they will be going on sale soon. He said the top caps never go on sale. Humm.. that’s a rip off if I ever heard it! But of course I still bought them. I was also very grateful for 3/4 ton pickups. While I was waiting for a fork truck guy to help me out, I could see that they were loading a whole pallet of mulch onto a 1/2 ton truck. My fork truck guy said they were so scared the tires were going to blow but couldn’t convince the guy who was driving the truck. I’m not sure if they ended up loading the whole thing or not? Not sure, but was glad that I had the good old farm truck with me tonight!

So I made it home and as I was unloading the truck and walking with the bricks I started to think that maybe, just maybe, I should have measured before I left. Now can you guess why? If you guessed that I’d run out of both the bottom and the top  – well you’d be the winner! I was 4 short on the bottom and I think 6 short on the top!

But here is a good part of all of this. I also wanted to get a new window for the old milk house and I wasn’t sure of the size when I was in the store.  So now I can go back with the car and get a couple more bricks and a new window all at the same time. SCORE!

At the end of the day it was raining pretty hard and I was glad that not only did I get all the brick put down but I also had got the 25 bags of mulch emptied out.

Spring rain brings .. well it brings many days of mowing the lawn!

Spring rain brings .. well it brings many days of mowing the lawn!

So here was the before picture of the area

Not so pretty

Not so pretty

And here is the after picture of the area.   Sweet! 

Nice!

Nice!

Posted in Projects completed | Comments Off on Spring Rain

Mystery Photo 4-7-15

Posted on April 8, 2015 by farm2011

Now here’s a challenging one for you! I made this weeks extra hard.

Here is the photo – can you guess what this is? IMG_2784

Posted in Wednesday's Challenge Photo | 7 Comments

4-1-15 Mystery photo results

Posted on April 8, 2015 by farm2011

OK seriously, you guys are GOOD! It was the old hand water pump!

Here was the clueDSCN9712a

And here is the picture of the pump! DSCN9712

Great Job!

Posted in Wednesday's Challenge Photo | Comments Off on 4-1-15 Mystery photo results

Easy Peasy Stuff

Posted on April 6, 2015 by farm2011

I promised that I was going to give the recipe for Ma’s Bars, so I’ve also included in this post with some other fast and easy recipes.

Ma's bars

Ma’s bars

Ma’s Bars

1 stick of butter
1 cup of crushed graham crackers
1 cup of coconut
1 cup of chocolate chips
1 cup of butterscotch chips
1 cup of chopped nuts
1 can of sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 350 ° F
In a 9×13 pan, place the butter in it and put it in the oven to melt
Once melted, add the following ingredients in layers : graham crackers,
coconut, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, & nuts.
Pour the sweetened condensed milk over the ingredients and bake
until golden brown.

 

Mixing in the cheese for the Alfredo sauce

Mixing in the cheese for the Alfredo sauce

Easy Alfredo Sauce

1 stick of butter
1 cup heavy cream
2 cups fresh Parmesan cheese
salt & pepper

In a skillet, warm the butter and cream.
Season with salt and pepper
Add cheese and whisk until smooth. Add extra water if needed to thin it.

 

Fluffy Snicker Dessert

Fluffy Snicker Dessert

Fluffy Snicker Dessert

6 apples
6 Snicker bars
1 box of instant pudding (vanilla, butterscotch, or chocolate)
2 containers of Cool Whip

Place the cool whip in a large enough bowl to add the remaining ingredients.
Then add the instant pudding to the Cool Whip and Do Not Mix with milk.
Cut up the apples and candy bars into small pieces and put with the Cool Whip
mixture.
I added extra candy bar pieces to the top of the dessert and then drizzled it with
caramel topping. But you can skip this step or add other toppings – just what ever
you have in your cupboard at the time. It’s pretty forgiving. If you have don’t have enough candy bars – add more apples. You know, just in case someone ate one on the way home 🙂

Posted in Baking, In the kitchen | Comments Off on Easy Peasy Stuff

Happy Easter!

Posted on April 5, 2015 by farm2011

Yea!! It’s Easter! And that means that I can actually eat the chocolate malt Easter eggs and not feel guilty about it.

Now granted – I’ve been eating the eggs, well OK only one bag so far.. and I did feel a little guilty about it. But now that it’s officially Easter – let the party begin! The only problem that I’ve got is that the Easter bunny only brought one new bag of these eggs and I’m thinking since it was in William’s Easter basket, it’s probably his. Maybe I can find some in town tomorrow on sale 🙂

Easter mass for our church was Sunday at 10:00 and I think because it was Easter, it seemed a little longer than normal. So about half way through the mass I was looking around and wondering just how many hams did you think were in the ovens? As you can tell my mind wonders some when I’m supposed to be listening to the sermon. My guess? A LOT! And did we have one in our oven – you bet!

After mass and once we opened the front door to our house that familiar smell of a ham cooking in the oven just hits you! Now granted our family likes ham, but tell me honestly when you walk into a home and smell a warm ham in the oven it just doesn’t make you smile. We had a very good traditional Easter meal: Ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, and a fluffy salad.

With our bellies full, I wanted to catch William quick before he headed back to his apartment and have him help put up the new sign for the Roadhouse. You might remember that I got it for my birthday back in February and we haven’t had much chance to get it hung up yet.

Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday to me!

So the afternoon was beautiful weather and it was time to get it hung up. Here is the progression on how it went ~

First things first, where should it goDSCN9714

Let’s double check it before it’s secured on the wallDSCN9715

Then let’s get it hung upDSCN9717

Finally, it looks awesome!

The Roadhouse

The Roadhouse

After the guys got it hung up, we were able to spend some time Skyping with with Kyle and Kelcie in New York. Then William had to head back south to his apartment to get ready for the week ahead.

But for Daryl and I the day was still young so we got out the Chevelle and shined her up for the first ride of the spring. And what better place to go then to head to Decorah to the Whippy Dip. Now if you’re not from this area and are unfamiliar about what the ‘Whippy Dip’ actually is, let me tell you. It’s a very small store that is very well known for it’s ice cream. That could be the cones, malts, sundaes, anything ice cream! They also sell easy sandwiches, but not too many people might know that. While we were waiting in line, I started to count the amount of people either waiting to order food, just hanging out with their food, or just kinda hanging out. Guess how many people on an average were at this little ice cream shop while we were there? An average of 40 people. Yes, 40 people! We waited in line for about a half hour to get our things we ordered and I was thinking if I don’t get my order from any fast food chain in let’s say 3 minutes I wonder if they have to kill the cow to make the hamburger. But for some reason waiting 30 minutes to order an ice cream cone is, well everyone is more than OK with that. It’s just how you roll when you’re at the Whippy Dip.

Hanging out with a lot of other people eating ice cream!

Hanging out with a lot of other people eating ice cream!

After stopping in at some friends house on the way home, it was time to put the Chevelle away for the night and we’re hoping that the summer will let us go for more rides than we did last year.

The picture of the day is an Easter basket that I had made. Isn’t Easter great?

An Easter basket that I made

An Easter basket that I made

Posted in Family | Comments Off on Happy Easter!

Saturday work

Posted on April 4, 2015 by farm2011

We had an awesome day today getting things done around the farm.

Daryl worked pretty much all day on getting the cow yard cleaned up and all the manure hauled for the spring. He’s been hauling the manure to the other farm and now that he’s done, the cow yard and shed looks so nice and clean. There’s a fresh corn stalk in the shed and a big round bale in the cow yard. Yup, the cows should be thinking that they’re pretty much in cow heaven about now.

But there is one thing that we found out when Daryl puts a new corn stalk bale in the shed. Ed the bull gets a little goofy. And when I say goofy.. that pretty much sums it up. What Ed does is that he’ll kind of roll around in the corn stalk to break it up and then rutz around until the other cows come in and see just what in the heck is going on. Well Ed doesn’t want anyone near him when he’s enjoying the new bale and will chase everyone away. I was watching him today in the shed and he can’t even stand it if the cows watch him from the other side of the yard. He’ll chase them away so fast! It’s times like this when you know that it’s a good thing to stay very very far away from him. I know he’s cute and everything – but he is pretty big and also he is a farm bull! Oh yea, and he’s also a little goofy!

No Ears was first at the new hay bale

No Ears was first at the new hay bale

Well while Daryl was working on the cow yard, William was still home for the weekend and started to work on making some bean bag games. Some people call them corn bag toss I guess – but it’s the same thing. He used just wood from around the farm and so far they are looking awesome! Now to get them painted with some Iowa State colors on them and then try them out.

William working hard on the games

William working hard on the games

And finally what did I do today? Well I worked on laundry in the morning. The weather was absolutely perfect so I was brave and hung them on the clothes line. The last time I hung anything on the line the dogs thought it was a game and pulled the clothes off the line as they swayed in the breeze and played tug of war with them. Guess what? When your dog plays tug of war with your clothes, your clothes get wrecked. I had so many holes in one of my shirts that it looked like I was in one of those horror movies and was slashed to death. But today – so far so good and no dog games at the farm!

I also worked on getting the mulch back where it belongs down by the Roadhouse. For the past couple of years I’ve been saying that I want to get some landscaping block to keep the mulch in and once I got it all cleaned up today – that is what I was going to do. And especially when I was trying to figure out how many blocks that I needed and a whole herd of chickens came by and started to dig the mulch back up and throw it all around again! After I yelled at them and tried to chase them away – they just looked at me and if they could talk I’m positive they would have said something like ‘what’s your problem?’ OK! That’s it!!

Looking pretty bag this Spring!

Looking pretty bad this Spring!

So tonight Daryl and I made a quick run to the Home Store to pick up some landscaping block for the yard. Just as a FYI, when I say a ‘quick run’ it’s about an hour to the store, and hour to get our stuff, and then another hour to get back home. So this run was over 3 hours to get some blocks. Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to live in a city, but sometimes picking up something as simple as landscaping block is more of a commitment than anything else. But I think it’ll look pretty good when we’re done but I’m worried that we didn’t buy enough. If it doesn’t rain tomorrow I plan to see just how it’s all going to actually look and to see if we have enough.

And with getting home late from the store, that’s about all she wrote for us tonight. I’m not used to all the fresh air and honestly I’m ready to hit the bed!

 

Posted in Farm animals, Our dogs, Roadhouse | Comments Off on Saturday work

♫ Tradition ♫

Posted on April 3, 2015 by farm2011

If you know anything about me by now you know that I believe in traditions. And with Easter right around the corner,  one of our families Traditions is well… a little different than most families.

It’s our Good Friday Tradition to be exact. We look forward to it all year and the rules go like this:

You only can eat at Red Lobster once a year – Good Friday. Now even if you are hungry for fish or lobster – you really are not supposed to go to Red Lobster during the rest of the year. I know it sounds strange, but hey this is rule # 1.

And rule # 2 is that when you do get to eat there, you can order anything you want. Now I’m not just talking about an extra salad or stuff like that. I mean anything!  So while we’re patiently waiting for our table we talk about what food everyone is going to order and what kind of appetizers we should get. You know.. food talk 🙂

So for our group this year, William and Jude were able to join us and boy did we have a good meal! We had mushroom appetizers, salads, a couple different types of lobster, seafood pastas, and that was just some of the food. Needless to say we did not go away hungry!

Now granted it’s not the normal Traditional thing that families do at Easter, but guess what? It is something that our family does and if you ask me I think it’s a great one! Here’s to a ‘Good Friday’!

A 'Good Friday' Tradition

Our Tradition

Posted in Family, Places to visit | Comments Off on ♫ Tradition ♫

Spending the night grubbing out trees

Posted on April 2, 2015 by farm2011

We spent tonight working late to start to grub out some trees that are in our fence line. For some reason these volunteer trees just will all of a sudden appear and will grow and grow if you don’t take care of them. And when I say ‘take care of them’ .. well I mean junk them out!

Daryl thought that the last time that we had them removed was about 10 years ago and as you can see – we’ve got our work ahead of us!IMG_2758

First things first though. Daryl had a chance to cut some of the trees off earlier, so honestly tonight’s work wasn’t so bad.IMG_2762 It was just a matter of picking up what was cut off and then trying to get them all on the wagon. And let me just say that this sometimes was the hardest part! I swear these trees have mind of their own and I’m thinking they made up their mind that they were not going to stay on the wagon. But with some perseverance and a tractor and loader – I’m just saying that if it was a contest we would have won! IMG_2763

Then after the first round of trees were loaded up, it was time to go back and get some more of the stubborn ones. If you’ve never done this before, what you do is to hook the log chain around the roots of the tree (or bush) and pull it out with the tractor. Some of these roots of these trees can be really long and honestly it almost looks like you’re pulling some type of a monster out of the ground. I’m not kidding!

After we got just about everything that we could on the wagon, IMG_2765off it goes to a tree pile that has other trees on it that has been piled up to dry.IMG_2766

And with some bad luck, the hydraulic hose didn’t work so I thought loading them was yucky work, well we just kicked it up a notch! For some reason once the trees were all loaded all the branches locked themselves together and it just wasn’t cool. But we did eventually get them unloaded and we were done for the night. It was starting to get dark, so the rest will have to wait until another day.

I had the truck in the field so I came home a little earlier than Daryl did because he was driving the tractor and wagon. And since I had my camera along with me I decided to snap a quick picture of what I saw in the cow yard once I pulled into our farm. I wanted to show how good our cows are getting along with sharing with the chickens. As long as they don’t step on anyone – I think we’re all good!IMG_2757

The photo of the day is that of the roots of one of the volunteer trees that was in our fence line. I am as amazed as much this year and I’ve been in the past years on how crazy the roots are. I mean the trees are so ugly but these roots – well they’re kinda cool.IMG_2761

Posted in Farm animals, Farming | Comments Off on Spending the night grubbing out trees

Mystery Photo 4-1-15

Posted on April 1, 2015 by farm2011

Here is the clue and it’s not an April Fools joke either!

Take a look – can you guess what it is?DSCN9712a

Posted in Wednesday's Challenge Photo | 3 Comments

Mystery Photo 3-25-15 Results

Posted on April 1, 2015 by farm2011

Kim – you Rocked it!

Here was the clueDSC_0436b

And here was the answer. It’s an old wringer wash machine. The poor thing is being stored in our machine shed. I’ll need to rescue it one of these days! DSC_0436

Posted in Wednesday's Challenge Photo | Comments Off on Mystery Photo 3-25-15 Results