Life on the farm

Cattle shed and our dogs

Posted on August 14, 2014 by farm2011

Well to start the morning off, just as I pulled out of the drive way I looked to the grove and guess what? I saw that we completely missed this one whole section that has more of those vines on. The only good thing about it is that the vines look like they are close to the ground. Man, I’m beginning to really not like those vines!

Daryl has been working on our cattle shed roof to get the roof straight so he can tin it yet this fall. It’s one of the last buildings that needs to have the roof done and it’ll look really nice when it’s done. It’s kind of funny around our farm because you just never know who you’re going to see on the roof of any building. Here Daryl is measuring it so he can order the tin from the lumber yard.

Daryl measuring the cattle shed roof for tin

And now our dogs. They are really funny, but then they are also really naughty sometimes. Today at work I checked my phone at lunch and saw that our neighbor posted that she just loves our dogs because they sit by the road and kind of cheer her on when she’s out for a run. OK, so that is pretty nice with the exception .. WHY are the dogs sitting by the road during the day? So I went home at lunch to find them just hanging out on the porch. Now honestly, it’s not the end of the world if they are out. But they’ve played with 2 of the little barn kitties too hard already and the kitties ended up being cremated after they got done playing with them because they died. I didn’t want them to kill any of our little 6 pack of kitties. So when I pulled into the yard Reno just kind of looked like ‘Yea, we’re out”… and Kaiser? He wouldn’t make any eye contact with me and just kind of kept walking around not sure what to do. I thought to myself they kind of looked like they were wondering who ratted them out. Too funny! What I found out is that they push the one barn door until the latch unhooks and then they just walk out. Now you have to give them an ‘A’ for being smart. But I put them both in again and back to work I went.

The photo of the day is from Kaiser. It’s two things that were in the yard that he was playing with. The first one used to be a pop can and the second one is a light bulb that he found somewhere on the farm and started to chew on it. Now just when is the puppy stage over?

This used to be a pop can. Now it’s a danger item in our yard!

Kaiser chewing on a light bulb

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Our grove

Posted on August 13, 2014 by farm2011

I noticed the other day that we were getting some kind of vine growing up in our grove and even though it looked kind of pretty – I’m sure that it wasn’t good for the trees at all. So I started to pull down the ones off the trees that I could reach and of course the majority of the vines were much higher than I could jump. So I went and got the rake to see if that would help. Now I never imagined that a garden rake could get heavy, but take my word on this – they do if you are holding it and jumping in the air to try to get these dumb vines off of tall trees! Finally I got down as much as I could and went to see if Daryl could bring the tractor around and then we could climb in the bucket to get the ones off the top. The reason I wanted these off is because I read that if you get a lot of vines on your trees, that they can be so thick that the tree can’t get any light to the leaves and it kills them. Not a good thing right? So Daryl started up the tractor and it didn’t take long until he got it back to the grove. He climbed in the bucket first to see if we could reach the vines and then we switched spots. It worked pretty good and if you grabbed the vines just right you could get most of them down. So there is a trick to riding in a tractor bucket when your driving around. If you’ve never done it, I’ll try to explain it. Rule # 1 (and really it’s the only rule) : you have to have total confidence in the tractor driver. The reason that I say that is because they have to tip the bucket up and then up once again while you’re in it and you better hang on and you just hope that they don’t tip it too much. Then in this case, you are driving around in the grove so they have to be watching for branches and so do you! If you don’t – the branches will either put some major scratches on places you never dreamed about getting scratched or in my case, I’m afraid that I’ll get knocked out. But guess what? Daryl is really good at this and no issues. We did a quick check of the grove and couldn’t see any more of these vines on the trees so our work was done for the night. Now it was time to make supper. It was kind of a good meal if I say so myself. I know that William is going to be leaving for college next week and for some reason I feel that I have to make a lot of food for him for the long trip. (I never said it made any sense now did I?) Anyway, we had grilled T-Bone steak, homemade mash potatoes, I found some sweet corn in the patch by the grove that was good so we had fresh sweet corn, tomatoes from the garden, sauteed some fresh onions for the steak, fried up a lb of bacon to put also on the steak, cut up a watermelon, fresh peas, and had some salads. Pretty good huh? And to top it off I had caramel brownies with ice cream if anyone was still hungry. And what will we have next week for supper when William is gone? Probably cereal 🙂

Supper tonight

The photo of the day is that of our 6 pack of kitties. I have no idea why this one kitty has to always lay in the food.. And she wonders why the other kitties are always licking her!

Supper time!

Posted in Farm animals, Farming | 1 Comment

Pictures from our Road Trip

Posted on August 12, 2014 by farm2011

I’m finally getting around to getting some of the pictures that I took from our Road Trip to Colorado last weekend onto a post. I have no idea just exactly what I did with all my time these past days, but I decided I better get this done tonight.

Our Trip

So first things first. I wasn’t sure just exactly what I was going to bring along to wear because I’ve never been to Colorado before and had no clue what the weather was. So it was way past midnight on Thursday night when I was still rummaging around the house. I knew that 4:00 am was going to come pretty fast, but I also knew that there was no way that I was going to get it done in the morning. I got a wedding card made and I decided to wrap the gift with ‘pretty town paper’. I was debating if I should wrap it in some brown paper that I had at home and put a really pretty bow on it. Well I decided to go with the town paper and man oh man was I glad! When I saw how pretty some of the wedding gifts were at the wedding-I think the brown paper would have not fit in so well. Good decision on my part! So I finally got my stuff packed and I’m sure it was going to be way too many clothes – but at least it was done. The morning did come fast and it was 5:00 when my brother and sister in law pulled into the yard. I couldn’t believe how dark it was yet and I’m usually getting up at 5:30. Maybe my eye balls weren’t ready for the morning yet. So we were off. Once it started to get a little lighter outside and we were getting more into Nebraska, it seemed that every field had oil drilling machines in it. I snapped a quick picture of one that also had some oil storage.We didn’t have to stop too many times to put gas in the car, but this one stop that we made we all just laughed! When someone in our group asked just where are we? It was like a sitcom because the answer was ‘No Where’.

Gas station in Nebraska

The weather started to get a little goofy and you could literally see rain come across the prairie.

Rain clouds out in the distance

But these clouds didn’t get over by us and I spent a lot of time just checking out all the trains that we saw along the way. A lot of them had coal in their cars and I wished that we would have kept track on just how many trains that we saw on our trip. It would have been a lot!

Trains and more trains hauling coal

We had decided to go to Ole’s Big Game Steakhouse in Paxton, Nebraska for dinner. Now I guess it’s a famous spot and the waitress said that they could serve around 400 for a dinner just in the middle of the week. There isn’t much in town and I really think the owner of this restaurant/bar could try out for that one commercial where this one guy said that he was the most interesting man in the world. Ole had gotten over 200 big game trophies displayed in this steakhouse and a lot of other stuff from his worldwide safari’s. See I told you he was really an interesting guy.

Inside Ole’s Steakhouse. This is just a small part of what was in there

Then we were on the road again. We were making pretty good time and I forgot that we’d loose an hour because of the time change. Seriously, yea for us!! We also noticed that there was a lot of irrigator systems in the fields. The land looked pretty dry and brown so I can see why they would need them.

Irrigation systems were all over both Nebraska and Wyoming

Finally as we were getting closer we could see the mountain range and we were within about a half hour from our hotel.

We met up with our friends for the evening and was ready for the wedding the next afternoon. The weather was a little overcast and then it started to rain just as the wedding was over. Someone said that in Colorado it can be really nice for the morning and then it’ll rain in the afternoon, and to finish off the day it’ll be nice for the night. Maybe it has something to do with the mountains – not sure. But I do know that the wedding was really nice and very special to not only the bride and groom, but also our friends who were the brides parents. I think they never stopped smiling all day and night! After the wedding and dance we hit the hay because we knew that the next morning was going to come way too soon. I was right. But we did manage to check out of the hotel as early as 7:30 and headed East to go home. I snapped a quick picture of how the fields looked with cows in them. They just roam on the prairie and when you need them back at your ranch the cowboys go out and scout for your cattle. What a totally different way of farming than we do in our area.

Water break for the cattle

Cows just roam in the fields

Now the next stop that we did was really cool! We found our way to the Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard. Now I’m sure your’e thinking… what? But we read about it on the way out to Colorado and was lucky enough to have time to stop on the way back. It’s in North Platte, Nebraska and let me just tell you that it’s cool. We stopped at the Golden Spike Tower to get a good look at this train yard. The Guinness Book of World Records certifies Bailey Yard as the world’s largest railroad yard. There are more than 315 miles of tracks and can handle more than 150 trains a day or over 10,000 train cars. Since I really Love trains, this was a great stop for me. I mean not only is it some place that is really something to see, but it’s also in the Guinness Book of World Records. Double Score! So I obviously took quite a few pictures when we were there and check them out below: I also added what you saw on the one side of the tower when you looked out. You saw all these trains and activities on the three sides and then just quiet farm land on the other. Well we were almost home and I tried to get a good picture of the York water tower. You know when you’re looking for your camera and just can’t find it? Well I had a couple of cameras along and I still couldn’t snap the picture when I wanted. But I did include it in this posting because it’s definitely eye catching. I guess 15 years ago this water tower was supposed to be painted beige and blue but the people in town said they wanted something with a little bit more color. I’m thinking they succeeded. I laughed because when we are on our bike rides we always look for the towns water tower and once you see it you know that you’re close. Now sometimes the water towers are hard to see so I think that maybe there should be more colorful ones like this one around. It’s getting towards the end of our trip and we got one final bonus when we stopped for supper. We stopped in Mason City, Iowa and we just couldn’t figure out why they were having such awesome fireworks? Well it turned out that this town was hosting the National Pyrotechnics Guild International 2014 Convention starting that night and was going on for all week. It was too bad that we really needed to get home because it would have been something cool to sit down and watch more of. Maybe we can plan to go the next time they are in Mason City. Finally we pull into our driveway and are greeted with the 6 crazy kitties. William really helped us out again when we were gone taking care of the farm animals and kitties and we appreciated all his help. But it was time to get ready for a full week of work and it was hard to believe that that morning we were in Colorado. Crazy! But even though it was a long way to go to a wedding, it definitely was worth it in my books. Life’s too short to sit around and wait for the day to go by. Isn’t doing the unexpected sometimes what makes life interesting?

OK, so here is my photo not only of the day but also of the trip. Just too funny!!

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ROAD TRIP!

Posted on August 11, 2014 by farm2011

Guess what we did this weekend? We packed our suitcases and headed to Colorado. Yup, the ultimate Road Trip! We went with my brother and sister in law and took off Friday morning to head West. It took us I think around 13 hours to get there and it wasn’t that bad at all. Well maybe that’s because I was in the back seat and didn’t have to drive. But the time did go fast. I think it’s such a radical thing for us to do though and I’m so glad that we did it. The brides parents who have been our friends for sometime now, was really happy that we made the trip. I took some pictures along the way (surprised?) and will try to get them posted in the next couple of days.

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Wrapping a gift

Posted on August 7, 2014 by farm2011

After work tonight I thought I’d quick run to one of my favorite scrap booking stores to pick up some ribbon for a wedding gift. Well, that all sounds good right? So on the way to the store of course I did a few errands in town before I went to their store. I wasn’t sure if the bridge that the county was working on on the normal highway that I’d take was done, so I went the long way around but it was worth it. They were still open and there was tons of stuff to look at. First things first though right? I came for some ribbon and I for sure need to get that off my list before I get distracted. Well guess what? They really don’t carry any bow ribbon there to buy, so I guess the only thing else to do was to shop around. Well for not having what I came for, for some reason I still spent more money than I had expected. Yea… you can say that I found a couple of things that I liked. But the good thing is that they won’t go to waste and honestly what a harmless hobby that I have. So I had to stop at the discount store on the way home and pick up a bow. I also picked up some wrapping paper to match. I was thinking of wrapping it in other paper, but changed my mind and went the easy way out.

While I was running around tonight Daryl started to grind feed for the cows. He picked up the stuff that gets mixed in with the corn from the farm store after work and when I pulled into the yard he was almost done. We were getting low on corn for the cows and now we should be set for awhile. No Ears was so funny when the corn was being unloaded. She just stood by the fence watching what was all going on and hoping to get some of the fresh ground corn.

And to end the night I had quite a few things on my list to do but guess what I did instead? William and Jude lit a camp fire so we sat by it for quite some time. We laughed when we saw the little kitties coming across the yard to see just what we were doing. And then they fell asleep in Jude’s lap. I’m thinking these cats are pretty spoiled if you ask me!

Hanging out by the camp fire tonight

The photo of the day is this one Man Cave that I saw on the way to my scrap booking store. It’s such a good use of an old camper and I’d love to see inside of it sometime.

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Our Baby Kitties

Posted on August 6, 2014 by farm2011

Last night William asked when we did we get 7 baby kitties living on our porch? I told him that this was news to me because I only thought we had 6…. but after about 4 who really is counting right? He said that it was down by the bottom of our porch so I’m guessing that Reno found another one in the barn and brought it up to the house to put with the rest. But this little kitty is pretty wild and I had my doubts on keeping it around.

So when I got up this morning to give them all breakfast, I could’t find this new little kitty. Again it didn’t surprise me because she was pretty wild and I thought that maybe she ran into the garage or back down to the barn. I looked around for her a little bit and then off to work I went. The sad thing about all this is after I came home from work this afternoon I found her laying beside the steps just off our porch. I think during the day that maybe she fell off the porch and got really hurt. I felt terrible and honestly I still feel bad. The little kitty was still alive when I found her and was in the process of dying. Now mind you this is at 3:30. So I sat with it for awhile and tried to pet her when she died. After about 5 minutes I thought that this cat sure is taking a long time to die and I’ll check back on it later. So about every 10 minutes I’d go outside and sit with it and pet it and think.. OK, it’s now going to die. But it kept going. I know the right thing was to help it die, but there’s no way in the whole world that I could do that, so I just kept checking on it. I had to go to an appointment @ 5:00 in town so surely it would be dead when I got home right? Yea, not so. Well it’s 9:30 pm as I’m writing this post and I see that it’s not going to be much longer and she will be dead. I know that it’s probably not in any pain and is just literally on it’s last breath, but holy cow I’m really feeling kind of sad for this little kitty. But as for the rest of them? Well they’ve been getting scrambled eggs with warm milk in the morning and their night time snack is kitty food soaked in milk. When they’re done they all have these big round bellies that kind of make them look like how baby birds look before they get feathers. I’ll try to snap a picture of them tomorrow to show just how fat they are. I had to give two of them baths tonight because they literally sit in the bowl when they are eating. William said that they he thought that they all kind of nurse off of this one little kitty and it looks so weird. I’m thinking they’re just licking off the eggs.

I’m also including in this post a really easy salad recipe that I got from Daryl’s niece last year. I absolutely love this recipe and even thought I’ve just made this last night, I’ve almost got this whole bowl ate. 🙂

Cook noodles (it doesn’t really matter how much – just end up with about a half of a bowl), add vegetables, I also add cheese, ham, olives, & tomatoes. You can add just about anything that you have in your refrigerator that you like. Then pour enough Italian Dressing over it to cover it all. Put it in the refrigerator for about 2 hours and Shazam! your done. The picture doesn’t really do it much justice.

Posted in Farm animals | 1 Comment

Farm animals and farm work

Posted on August 4, 2014 by farm2011

I ran home again on my lunch hour to feed the baby kitties and when I left to go back to work the sky looked a little weird but I thought that there’s no way it’s going to rain right? Well about an hour later the sky opened up and it just poured. So why was I so worried about this? Well when I got done feeding the kitties the chickens came around and it kind of freaked me out. I didn’t know if they would be mean to the little kitties and start pecking on them so I grabbed a handful of bread and fed the chickens down by the barn. That way they’d stay away from the cats. So I put all 5 of them back on the porch and just hoped that they’d stay there. Now with it raining, I was not only hoping that the chickens wouldn’t be mean to the cats, but also that they stayed on the porch and didn’t jump off again and drown. Man oh man these cats are becoming a lot of work aren’t they? So I was kind of nervous and just hoping that I wasn’t coming home to a bunch of dead cats on our lawn and this is what I found

Yup, no dead cats .. just a lot of little kitties that are meowing a lot! And then to top it off, later tonight William asked when we got 6 cats? What? These cats are multiplying as if they were some kind of fish in the bible or something! I guess Reno found another one and put it with the rest by the house. I think she needs to stop looking for these cats don’t you?

Well tonight was a big night for our new chickens. They’ve been in jail (the cattle tank) now for a couple of weeks, so I left them out to run around in the brooder house. They have the whole 1/2 of this chicken coop and for some reason they all ran into the chicken cage that was being stored in the room. Now I’m not saying anything bad about these chickens – but they just might be a little socially challenged.

Not the smartest chickens around the farm

And while I was working on getting these chickens free, Daryl and William were working on replacing a supporting beam in the cattle shed. I was so glad that no one got hurt and also that William was around to help Daryl. Looking at how heavy that beam was, I’m sure that there wouldn’t be any way that I could help much. So I was just hovering with my camera and took this picture of Earl.

Earl and Sassy.. along with chickens and cats in the cow yard.

He’s so stinking cute isn’t he? And then I also took one of Sam. Daryl had the chain saw going and tractors and just a lot of noise. But Sam just kept watching and eventually moved to the bale that was the closest to the guys and just stood there and watched. It was pretty funny!

Sam just checking out what the guys were doing tonight

Now the photo of the day is that of butter. Yup, butter. I bought this the other day and I’ve just never seen or bought anything like it before. It’s butter wrapped up in parchment paper that a local farm sells near us. I’m not sure if it tastes anything different, but it’s about as fresh as you can get. Plus it looks kind of cool too.

Posted in Farm animals, Farming, Picture of the day | 2 Comments

More on our bike ride & things to see

Posted on August 3, 2014 by farm2011

I started the post some pictures from our bike ride on the July 26 post and decided that I need to add some more to show you just what the ride looks like and what a good time we all had.

Sometimes the roads get busy and here’s a snap shot of one of the towns we went through. We always try to keep track of what each other is wearing and we do kind of a good job keeping each other in sight which in itself is amazing isn’t it?

We passed through a lot of windmills today and I think they look so cool when you’re riding on a bike near them. They are so huge and you can only hear a whisper when they’re running.

We joke a lot about that we used to sleep in tents with about 10,000 of our closest friends. Now don’t get me wrong, that was also fun – just a different kind of fun. Where we’re staying tonight has a lot of lakes around it and this is the scene off of one of the houses that we stayed at. We met so many nice house owners that literally left us come into their house and take showers and spend the night with them. It’s unreal how friendly and how cool they all are.

Today’s photo of the day is that of the World’s Largest Bullhead. Now you don’t get to see that everyday do you?

People are on bicycles everywhere

And soon we found ourselves at the Surf Ballroom in Mason City. Now if you’ve never gone to this ballroom you should really try to make a point to visit it sometime. The original ballroom burnt down in 1947 and was rebuilt in 1948 and has been having concerts ever since. The most famous concert was that when Buddy Holly, Valens and Ricardson left a concert there and all died in a plane accident near by the town. There is a lot of history in this old ballroom and it definitely is worth the drive sometime to visit it.

One of our friends takes his guitar along for the bike ride every year and this was a great stop for him and some of his buddies to play a few songs

There are a lot of times during the ride that you have opportunities to just relax. And there’s no better way to do that then to catch a few naps along the way.

We stopped at the Wapsipinicon Mill in Independence along the river and took a tour of the largest grist mill remaining in the state of Iowa. It’s 6 stories tall and has a lot in it to look at.

Again we were grateful for all our host houses. It doesn’t matter if we have a large house or a smaller house – we are so appreciative of them all! Next on our list is Strawberry Point. This is the home of the World’s Largest Strawberry. I think it probably got photographed the most that it ever had today.

There’s quite a few times along the ride during the week that we’ll get free stuff. So we weren’t surprised that we got handed some free candy today. But I was surprised on how good the candy was and that it was started in a small town of Hull that has a population of 2100 people. They have a lot of different candy that they have produced and it’s crazy that you might know most of them. If you get a chance – look up how this business started in this small town. It’s really fascinating.

Well about by now you’re probably getting sick of all the pictures. But the next one is the one that is the tradition at the end of the ride. It’s went you dunk your bike into the Mississippi River to symbolize that the ride is over and you made it! Whoo Hoo!!

So now that the ride is over can you guess what Daryl and I did the next day after it? Well you eat so much during the week that on Sunday we were starving! So we took out the Chevelle and went for a drive along the Mississippi river. We went more North into Wisconsin and then went out for dinner. And how did we end the afternoon? Well ice cream of course!

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Tango

Posted on August 3, 2014 by farm2011

Daryl had been working on getting Tango into a pen in the barn and this afternoon he was successful. Poor Tango. He knew something was up and little did he know that he was going to the sale barn tonight. He was never made into a steer so we couldn’t have him as a bull on our farm. We already have a bull and Tango is the son of our female cows. So Daryl loaded him up tonight and off they went.

I think Tango looks scared

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On the Upper Iowa River

Posted on August 2, 2014 by farm2011

I got up early and did a couple of loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, and got the dishes done. I fed the little baby kitties a couple of times and then grabbed my swimming suit and loaded up the kayak. What a great day to meet one of my friends for breakfast and then head out to the river for the day. The sun was shining and it was an absolutely perfect day. Even though we knew that it was going to be kind of warm, we never felt it when we were out there. It would be fun to find another spot sometime to kayak … but for today this river was wonderful!

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Cattle shed and our dogs

Our grove

Pictures from our Road Trip

ROAD TRIP!

Wrapping a gift

Our Baby Kitties

Farm animals and farm work

More on our bike ride & things to see

Tango

On the Upper Iowa River

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