How do you describe Beautiful?

Posted on June 8, 2014 by farm2011

I’m finally getting a chance to write about the wedding that we were at on Saturday. Now granted, I’ve never been to a barn wedding before and you can just about imagine how much I would like it right? Well, I didn’t just like it, I Loved everything about it! From the second that you drive into the farmyard and pass the old truck that’s there to great everyone, you know that this wedding was going to be something special. Daryl had to go to the wedding earlier because he was part of the musical group that was singing at the wedding, so I parked the car by the shed and headed inside the barn. As I walked inside,  I was completely overwhelmed with awe. IMG_1665The chandeliers that were hung by rope and pulleys were glowing above your head and gave the ambiance that was perfect for any wedding.  As the wedding ceremony was on way, the warm wood interior  just glowed as the sun was shinning through the doors and window. It was a welcome sight from the rain that we had just hours ago. But because we did have a front go through, the weather also was cooled down and very comfortable. I don’t know how old the barn actually is, but they mentioned that the bride’s great grandfather ( I think this is right)  built it. I did take some pictures, but I think I’m going to post the one from the photographer from the wedding. It shows the true feeling of the wedding.

Photo of the Dad of the bride singing to the wedding couple

Photo of the Dad of the bride singing to the wedding couple

And now what’s in store for this barn? Well, they said that they were going to cut hay this week and needed to get the crops back into the barn. And even though the building will soon be filled with the smell of hay in the loft, horses down below in their stalls, and little kitties running around in the hay piles, how I will remember this barn will be that of one Saturday afternoon a couple hundred people came together and was able to share the day and witness a beautiful wedding. Kinda cool.

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On the farm – Saturday

Posted on June 7, 2014 by farm2011

I got up early because I had a lot that I wanted to get done before the afternoon. So after a couple of loads of laundry done and on the clothes line, I grabbed some of the flowers that I was growing in William’s greenhouse and started to figure out just where they should go. I have kind of mixture of flowers started, and I’m not that picky on where I’m going to plant them, so it didn’t take too long until I was digging up some dirt in front of our house and started to show some progress. Little Kitty and Kaiser still don’t get along and I grabbed my camera quick when I saw how Little Kitty gets away from the puppy. She climbs into the old milk can. DSCN8456Now that’s pretty funny and also pretty safe! I thought how cute that was and then got back to work. When I looked up the next time I saw this! DSCN8458OK, now that cat isn’t so cute anymore. And when I tried to get her off of the flowers, she just looked at me like ‘What’s your problem’. Yea.. Well, there wasn’t much else that I could do at that time so I ended up planting them and even though the flowers look a little crooked, I’m sure they’ll pull out of it and be OK in a week or so. I put a time limit on how long I was going to work on the flowers and I was ahead of schedule! Yea for me!! After giving Kaiser a drimk from the rain barrel DSCN8461 I grabbed the push mower and worked on trimming the yard and around some of the buildings. I didn’t want to work too long on it because I was still going to go on a run. I just shut the push off and was heading into the house for my running shoes and heard it thundering. Now normally I wouldn’t care, but for some reason this time I checked the radar.DSCN8464 OK, I think I should wait and see what was going to happen with the weather. It didn’t take too long and our phone was ringing. It was Daryl and he was coming home and stopped on our neighbors hill. He said that I should go check out the sky to the south because it looked like a funnel cloud just starting. Crap! So I ran outside while still talking to Daryl and by the time I got out there it started to go back into the clouds. Thank Goodness! But I still told William to get everything in the sheds (cars, lawnmowers,… ) and hopefully it’ll just blow over. It didn’t take long and then the rain came. And then the wind came. After checking out the weather on the IPad, we were in store for 50 mph winds and possible small hail. But it only got windy and a lot of rain. We were lucky. But now Daryl’s hay is wet and it won’t get baled for a couple of days. We also are getting ready for a wedding this afternoon at our friends farm and I sure hope that it doesn’t rain again until after the ceremony. Their daughter is getting married in their barn and they’ve worked very hard to get it ready. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what this afternoon brings.

The photo of the day is one of some crazy plants that I bought from the Mennonites awhile ago. I planted them in an old pan that I had and I kind of like how they look. For some reason they look like they might be cactus’s  but I found out the hard way that you need to water them much more frequently that a cactus. DSCN8452

 

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Full Weekend

Posted on June 6, 2014 by farm2011

We have a pretty full weekend planned and when I heard that what I originally was going to do after work was moved to a different day and time, SCORE! So I quick called the Vet to see if I could get an appointment for Kaiser and luck was on my side. They had a 4:00 appointment open. When I got home from work, I left only Kaiser out for a little bit, grabbed my stuff, made sure he didn’t have too much ‘foreign’ things in his hair and off we went with the pickup. He kind of likes riding in the pickup and I so much prefer him over Reno because he either looks out the window or just lays on the seat. Now Reno she gets so nervous and starts to salivate and then I end up getting all her spit on me. Gross. Well today Kaiser and I are off for his next shots and that will be a good thing checked off my list. When we got to the Vet’s office I knew that he wouldn’t want to come out by himself so under his arms I grabbed and carried him in. I guess we should look at getting him a collar one of these days. As I’m carrying him inside I’m thinking to myself, just how heavy is this dog? He eats ALL the time so I’m sure he put on some weight since the last time we were in. After a bunch of coaxing, he got on the scale. 32 lbs. Do you know how much he weighed the last time we were in? 11 lbs. Next thing was to get a check up and some shots. And isn’t it funny how much different it is now with dogs? I mean our dogs get ‘check ups’, distemper & rabies vaccinations, heart worm medication, and flea and tick protection. Now I’m not for sure about this, but I don’t remember our farm dogs when I was growing up getting any vaccinations. Maybe they got the rabies one – but I’m not sure. And I have to laugh to myself because I could just about imagine my Dad’s face if I would have asked him if we could get flea and tick protection for our farm dog. So Kaiser was sitting on the table getting his stuff done and the one Vet made a comment that he was a big dog for his age. IMG_1633I agreed with her because I just got done carrying him around.  So she kept on with Kaisers checkup and then she again said, ‘Man he is really a big dog for his age’  And the funniest thing is that all of a sudden I could feel myself thinking – He’s not THAT big!  Now I’m sure the Vet didn’t mean a thing about how big our dog is and to be honest he is kind of a moose.

While I was at the Vet, Daryl went over to rake the hay. He was trying to get off work a little early to have it raked so it could be baled yet today, but he wasn’t able to leave on time. Now we’re hoping that it’ll be sunny tomorrow morning and we might be able to get it small baled before the wedding that we’re going to in the afternoon. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. IMG_1639

 

I ended up the night going to a friends house for a bonfire and pizza. What a fantastic way to end the work week!

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Haybine, chickens, birds, and clocks.. ‘Oh my’

Posted on June 5, 2014 by farm2011

These past couple of days have been really busy. Our hay (which by the way looks awesome!) needs to be cut so Daryl got the haybine out and was checking it out to see if there was anything wrong with it before it went into the field. I think it must have been OK, because by the end of the night the hay was all cut. DSCN8444 We wanted to square bale the first crop because we’re having a hay ride later this month and what good is a hay ride if you don’t have hay right? But the timing is bad, so I think we’re going to have to have someone round bale it for us. Daryl’s been looking to buy a large baler, but hasn’t had any luck so far finding what he wants. He did get the hay cut and is just patiently waiting for it to dry so we can get it baled. We have a wedding on Saturday, and it’s supposed to rain on Saturday so it’s going to be close. As for me, I’ve been keeping busy with the Irish Fest coming up wayyy too fast in our town. I can not give enough praise for anyone who would take the lead on doing something like this. It’s a little overwhelming at times. OK, really most of the time. I’m sure it’s all going to work out.

When I was outside tonight I snapped a couple of pictures. The first one is of the chickens that are constantly hanging out by our barn lately. I’m really not sure why, but they either are smashed up against the barn or just hang out underneath the wagons. DSCN8445

The second picture is an update on my little birds nest with eggs in it that I found about a month ago. Yea, it’s not such a great picture anymore. I had high hopes for these little eggs, but either they hatched and flew away.. probably not, or they got eaten by another bird or cat. Yup, that’s probably what happened. DSCN8450

And the last one is the photo of the day. It’s my kitchen clock. Well, it was my kitchen clock. I saw her this morning and the no eye ball in the socket gave it away that she was having trouble. I guess it fell off the wall last night and that was that. I did end up throwing her away and am hoping that I can find another one to replace it. I’m not too worried. DSCN8448

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It’s been quiet lately

Posted on June 2, 2014 by farm2011

It’s been pretty quiet around the farm lately. Now that the crops are in, Daryl’s been working on spraying the lawn. He just hates it when we get creeping charlie in our grass, and let’s just say we have a LOT of it this year for some reason. I still can’t believe that someone would actually want to buy it in a flower shop! That just sounds crazy to me. I think it’s kind of like buying dandelions or something. What?? I just did a quick internet search and there are a lot of web pages to buy dandelions. OK, now I know that there are a lot of people out there that might need some help.

As for me? Well I’ve been working on a project for an upcoming Festival in our town. The project is a book that will be available in a couple of weeks. The book is the first of a series and to be honest – we kind of have it pretty much under control. Who would have thought?? I’m working on it with another person and about a week ago I was kind of freaking out about it. But now it’s a week later and I think it’ll be OK. You know why I think it’ll be OK? I’m at least not waking up during the middle of the night covered in sweat and worrying about it. We’re going to put the final touches on it Friday night after work and then hopefully call it good and send it to the printers. It’s a little bit more stress that I was looking for, but in the long run I think the series will be pretty cool. I’m also helping set up a Historical Display in our town for the Festival and I think that will also go OK. We’ve got  quite a few good ideas on what we’ll need and then it’s just a matter of putting them all together. I guess the real test will be in 3 weeks!

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And it’s raining

Posted on June 1, 2014 by farm2011

It wasn’t that long ago that I was complaining about how much rain we were getting,  and that it needed to stop to get our crops in. Well, it did eventually stop and this past week it got really warm and windy. Those two weather combinations only lead up to making it really dry out in the fields. Most of our crops are up, but there are a couple of spots that needed some moisture to help them push out of the dirt the remaining of the way.  So now you guessed it. We’re looking for rain. Our priest started to add it to our prayers in church this morning and with a chance of storms coming through our area today – we knew (well we hoped!) that we had a good chance to get some rain.

There is one thing that is for sure , if you are married to a farmer you’re going to spend a LOT of time talking about the weather. I laughed to myself tonight because we went to a couple of different Graduation Parties this weekend and of course the first thing that you say is ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you doing’ then you roll right into the conversation ‘Did you get rain today’. And of course in those conversations it usually goes something like this ‘so and so over on the 80 acres on the Waucoma black top got rain, but the neighbor… didn’t get any’ But guess what? As I’m sitting in the scrapbook room writing this post I can hear it starting to rain and that’s such a good thing. So for tomorrow’s conversations, well I’m sure that it’ll  be something along the line on just how much rain everyone got 🙂

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Say yes to the ….. car?

Posted on May 31, 2014 by farm2011

Have you ever seen the TV show where all these girls go to this one bridal shop and are looking for the perfect wedding dress? And when they find it, they all start crying and say that this is absolutely the one that I’ve been looking for and ‘I say yes to the dress’. So every time that I would watch this show, you would be able to catch me just rolling my eyes thinking that this is about the most unrealistic thing in the world. I mean – really? You just know that it’s the right one. yea.. ok

So last week Daryl and I went to a movie in Decorah on Monday and after it we decided to go driving around the car lots. We’ve become pretty familiar at looking at cars on the lots and knew just about everyone’s inventory, not only in our county, but the neighboring counties as well. This particular day I wanted to see if Daryl liked this one car that they had on their lot and if so, let’s drive it and buy it. I mean, we’ve been talking about cars for a long time right? OK,so that was the plan. So we pulled into the parking lot and was checking out the car that we talked about after the movie. And then all of a sudden we turn and …..there it was! I swear it was literally like we were on this one bridal show – but was looking for cars instead.  There in front of us was a car that we both really liked. Now up to this point we were still undecided on a car, suv, are whatever. But we saw a Chevy Volt and both new that if we liked it after we drove it – we were buying it. We’ve talked about the Volt car a couple of years back when they first started to make them, but haven’t really had a chance to talk more about them after that. We haven’t seen any on a lot or knew of anyone who had one. But on the way home we just knew that if we liked it – it was going to be ours before the week was over. So after a couple of trips to town to drive it and bring in a car to trade in – the car is ours. The car is really something different that we’re not used to. It’s strictly run on electricity and at night you have to plug it in to recharge it.

How we charge the car up at night

How we charge the car up at night

It does have a gas engine once the batteries are depleted, but the motor then just charges the batteries. So it’s strictly an electric car. OK, now how cool is that? The estimated mileage is around 93 to 95 mpg. We ended up trading in the car that we bought from Daryl’s Mom & Dad’s estate and kept the Pacifica. I felt bad for the Impala, but I just can’t trade in the Pacifica yet.

We traded in the Impala

We traded in the Impala

Even though the Pacifica has around 238,000 miles on her, I just couldn’t part with it. So we’ve taken the Volt out a couple of times and so far so good. I guess only time will tell if it’s going to work out good for us. But just like the TV show – we said ‘Yes to the car!’

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Grandpa Franzen’s tree

Posted on May 29, 2014 by farm2011

We have two special trees planted on our farm. The first one if for my Dad and the second one is for  Daryl’s parents.

My dad always loved trees and knew just about everything that there was about them. Just by looking at the leaves he could name that tree within seconds. He also did awesome woodworking and he would hand pick out the tree that he would have cut down and have locally dried. He’s made a lot of our furniture in our house and like I said – it’s awesome! I think his love of wood and trees might have started when he was young because when he was a kid he helped his dad in the saw mill and was always around trees.

So in memory of Dad – Grandpa Franzen, we have this tree planted in our back yard. I really like to look at it in the spring when it’s just getting it’s leaves and then as the seasons pass through the year, the leaves turn a beautiful red color.

The picture of the day isn’t just one picture, it’s a couple of them. The pictures are Dad’s  tree getting ready for summer.

DSCN8304DSCN8352DSCN8399DSCN8407DSCN8435

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Picking Rock

Posted on May 28, 2014 by farm2011

With the weather being nice that only means one thing for us to do. If you guessed picking rock.. well you guess right. Now honestly it’s not that bad of a job and I do it for exercise because I know that I do need the exercise! But when you’re in the field and picking rock, this feeling that I should get exercise only kind of lasts for about an hour. And then after that I think to myself – ‘you know I’m pretty comfortable in my own skin’ : )

But with the beans up in less than a week after they were planted,  the amount of times that we can go out is getting limited. So tonight was probably the last night out with the tractor and wagon and then there is one part of the field that we didn’t get done  so Daryl will have to work on that with the tractor and a small crate. It’s no big deal and by looking at our last load we really made it a good one!DSCN8427

Other than that not too much else happening on the farm. I was out checking out the garden tonight and couldn’t believe the apple trees. It wasn’t that long ago when the trees were all blossomed and beautiful, and now they lost all the blossoms and are getting ready for apples. I’ll be glad when we get apples again, buying apples for No Ears and Sassy can get a little pricey.

Our apple tree

Our apple tree

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The long weekend is over

Posted on May 26, 2014 by farm2011

I can’t believe the long weekend is over all ready. I mean, weren’t we just getting off work on Friday and now it’s time to go back already?  But I guess we did get a lot done this weekend and when you stop and think of everything that you can do in a couple of days – I guess it’s probably time to head back to work.

How did we spend the weekend? Well to start it off, I stopped off at my favorite Hardware Store on the way home Friday to pick up some wine for a retirement party. I had no intentions to buy anything else,  but ..  I found a really cute shirt and some jewelry that I thought I should buy. I had a gift certificate that I was hoarding from Christmas from Daryl, so I finally cashed it in. So now with some new clothes and wine in the car, back home I go. That night was the retirement party and the next day? That was the day for me to go kayaking. I had to hurry and get home from kayaking because we had to go to two graduation parties that night. The parties were fun and in the morning we were trying to figure out what to do on Sunday.  So after church on Sunday, Daryl got out the Chevelle out  and we cruised over to Ma’s to drop off a card that I had made for her. Then off to the Barrel Drive Inn for dinner and then to another Graduation Party. Once we got home from the party, we skyped with Kyle and then went out into the field to pick up rocks. Now I have no idea where all the smaller rocks came from, but within an hour and a half we had a load of mostly small rocks. I’m hoping the next load will be the bigger kind – you can get the load done so much faster with bigger rocks. Then a bonfire ended the night with the kids. Well, that gets me up to today. Now what should we do? Well, the one thing for sure was to go to the Memorial Celebration in our town. IMG_1619The Legionnaires work really hard to get ready for the day and I think pretty much our whole town comes out to see their program that they put on.  It’s pretty cool. There’s probably a couple of hundred people there to watch (which literally is all of our town!) and the high school marching band plays, all our town’s Service Men and Women are there, and there are also speeches from some of not only the service people but even their grandchildren.IMG_1617 The weather looked like it was going to rain – but it didn’t and I’m always so glad when we can make it to the program. It’s just plain cool. Then home for a little bit, only long enough to figure out that we were going to go to a movie – Godzilla. Yea, Daryl wasn’t that excited about those plans,  but he didn’t have any other ideas  … so I won!! A quick stop off at the Whippy Dip for a sandwich and we had about 5 minutes to spare before the movie started. Plenty of time!IMG_1626 I liked the movie, but I’m pretty sure that Daryl won’t want to see it again.  To be honest I think he was just trying to stay awake. Then on the way home we saw a sign for fresh vegetables. William really likes asparagus, so we stopped off to pick some up. Daryl said how trustworthy some people are around our area. The rules of this little stand was that you find what you want and just leave your money. There is even a sign that says if you want something but didn’t have the right amount of money, come back another time and bring the rest of the money that you owe. Now seriously, how cool is that? IMG_1627OK, so that brings us up to late this afternoon. William had some kids over and I worked up the garden again. Daryl was mowing lawn and our goal was to get out into the field again and pick up another load of rocks. As  long as we had William to help us on the weekend, it sure seems to go much better. But the lawn mowing and garden planting took longer that we expected, so we’ll have to try to get a couple of loads of rocks picked up this week sometime.

So in a nutshell, this weekend our schedule was – shopping, a retirement party, 3 High School graduation parties, went to church, skyped with Kyle, picked rock, went to the Barrel Drive Inn for dinner, kayaking on the Upper Iowa River, tilled the garden, had a bonfire, we went to the Memorial celebration in our town, did some baking & laundry, went to the Whippy Dip, we went to the movie – Godzilla, mowed the lawn,  and planted the garden.

Now it’s after 11:00 at night, and I was just talking (facebook messaging ) with Kyle. I think everyone is tired because I noticed that it’s pretty quite downstairs. I’m sure glad that this will be a short week at work because I think we all need the rest 🙂 I’m not sure what our plans are exactly next weekend – but I’m guessing it’ll be just as busy.

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