In the zone man!

Well I think I’ve done it again. I’ve made a commitment to do another show and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to pull it off. 

See I looked at the invitation really fast and it looked like a good fit for me and my soap so I jumped in. Makes sense right? 

Yea, well I looked at the details the other day and realized that I signed up for a two day show. Now not to downer debbie here, but HOLY SMOKES! How much soap will I need for that? 

Well after the show that I just did and filling orders for a couple of the stores that are carrying my soap – I think I have literally around 20 bars of soap left. And the one store has contacted me since last Saturday and asked for more again. AWESOME!!! But that also means I better get cooking don’t you think?

So my quest started two nights ago. I ordered around 25 items from the soap supply company that I usually order from and then last night I ordered again. Just to give you an idea on what I’m ordering, I’ve got a couple of 35 gallon pails coming. The motto is:  Go big or go home.

With the show in the first week of June and with having to have the soap sit at least 4 weeks before you can use it… yup I’m cutting it close … again!!

Posted in Soap | Comments Off on In the zone man!

Chickens, Ducks or both?

20160414_155040_resizedI went tonight to get my new little chickens that I pre-ordered from a local hatchery and well I just couldn’t resist when I walked by the newest batch of ducks that were just hatched. I saw these cute little guys and just had to get some for the farm. And I did really well, I only picked out a couple of them. I wanted to know if they could tell if I got boys or girl ducks because I know how fast they can multiply – but the girl working gave me a funny look because they normally sell their ducks for people to raise and butcher them for food. I knew better than to dare to say that I wanted some new friends for our chickens to hang out with. So finally the girl said it was too early to tell so I guess I’ll find out later this summer won’t I? 

And tonight the ducks and chickens are all tucked in for the night in the side of the chicken coop that can be locked up. I’ll have to see if I can get a couple of pictures of the new little chickens that I got tonight this weekend. Now if I can just keep Checkers the cat out of the coop I’ll be doing good! 

 

Posted in Farm animals | Comments Off on Chickens, Ducks or both?

Disking corn stalks

It’s that time of the year again when you find pretty much everyone you know out in the field doing something. And what is Daryl working on now? Well he was disking corn stalks to try to break them down before the next crop will be planted. In this field he’ll plant soybeans,  but he’s not going to do that for a few weeks. Even thought the weather has been nice lately, he thinks our ground is just not ready yet for beans. 

So here’s a picture of Daryl disking down the stalks in our field late last night. When I asked him how it went do you know what he said? He said it was great! Now sometimes husbands (and even wives I’m sure!) don’t necessarily say what they actually mean – but in this case guess what? He was telling the truth! The equipment worked well and the stalks were in perfect shape to be cut up. Yup, it’s a good day to be a farmer! 

DSC_0395

Posted in Farming | Comments Off on Disking corn stalks

Overachiever in the chicken coop

I was in the chicken coop picking eggs and noticed a fairly large egg in the nest. Now when you have chickens you don’t always get the same sizes like you see in the store. Sometimes you get round ones, long ones, small ones, and even pretty dirty ones

But tonight? I got an Enormous one! I don’t think in the 30+ years of having chickens on the farm have I seen one so big. And so I was wondering if I could tell what chicken laid it and then I thought how dumb is that? Seriously was I trying to see if one was walking a little slower and kinda funny or something? So I finished gathering eggs and just had to take a picture to show you how big it is. Now remember our regular eggs are pretty big to start with. I mean we have to usually have to use the large or extra large egg cartons to store them in. So check it out DSC_0392Can you tell which one is the large one?DSC_0393

Posted in Farm animals | 3 Comments

Seeding down the waterways

On Sunday we knew that Scarlet was close to having her baby so we wanted to stay around the farm for the day. Well when you say you’re going to stay around the farm – that usually means doing something that you just might as well get it over with. And what was that this Sunday? Well we were off to pick rocks in the waterway in our field. Not the most glamorous job but still a necessity if Daryl wanted to seed it down soon.

So after Scarlet had her baby, Daryl pulled the tractor in the yard and we were going to go out just for an hour or so. Well it didn’t take more than an hour to get the area picked but check out what we were up against!20160410_154721_resized Yea, we hit the honey hole if I ever saw one for rocks! 20160410_162254_resized

Now after all the job was done and the rocks out of the way, Daryl got the grain drill out tonight and got the area all seeded down. DSC_0394

And what are we going to do next Sunday? Well we’ve picked rock the last two – so this coming Sunday we decided not to pick rocks! 

Posted in Farming | Comments Off on Seeding down the waterways

Our chickens

After I checked in on Charles and Scarlet in the barn, I decided to see how the chicken coop and chickens were doing. See I’ve preordered some new chickens that I’m getting this week and I really haven’t spent a lot of time just checking out our group before I get the new ones. 

I’m really afraid that I might be the ‘ chicken lady’ when people talk about farmers who might be just a little off. It’s really not my fault,  but our chickens must associate me with food because when I walk through the yard and they see me, well they literally come running. And if you ever seen a chicken run, it’s not a good sight! 

So when I went into the coop tonight, the whole bunch ran in to see just what I was doing in there. It was hilarious! While I was in there I did notice that I have a couple more roosters than I thought I did. DSC_0380

And for some reason this chicken below will follow me around the farm, and I’m thinking it might look kinda strange if you would be driving by and see my companion walking around with me. Oh well, I guess there could be worse things in life! DSC_0382

Posted in Farm animals | 2 Comments

Our new Mom

Guess who had her baby today? Scarlet!! 

We knew she was getting close and first thing this morning when we went out to check her, it looked like her water broke just minutes before we got into the barn. So we left her alone and the next time Daryl checked on her, the front calf legs were just starting to come out. OK, good that it was her front calf legs, but they were big! It was our fear that this calf was going to be too big and would give Scarlet trouble. We decided to let her alone for about 20 minutes and give her a chance to try it on her own. This was Scarlet’s first calf and even though we didn’t want her to have trouble, it was so much better if she had her on her own. Well after 20 minutes we found this! 20160410_094133_resizedYea!!! Congratulations Scarlet the baby is beautiful! 

And how is Scarlet as a new mom? I’ve never seen any cow lick a calf more than Scarlet does. DSC_0374That poor calf will have the slickest coat around. And what is his name? I think I’ll call him Charles. DSC_0373

Posted in Farm animals | 3 Comments

Just driving around …

Have you ever had one of those days and when you decide that this is the day that you’re going to get a ton of errands done? Well that was my day today. 

So I packed what I needed for those errands and headed out early in the morning. First stop was a flower shop in Calmar. This shop is selling my soap and I stopped in to see how it was going. I was really unsure if anyone would want to buy them and my nervousness didn’t last long. She wanted to buy everything that I had along for the day because the first soap that she had gotten was sold right away! SHAZAM!! Well I had picked out a couple of the soaps for my next stop and left the rest. I’m pretty sure that I a big dumb grin on my face as I  started driving North. Yup, I’m sure. 

The next stop was another shop that was selling my soap and this one is in Cresco. Now this is a really cool shop because they offer a lot of local artists to sell their stuff. And how is my sales going there? Well not as good as I had hoped, but maybe it’ll pick up you just never know. 

With the car all charged up, I went north to Harmony Minnesota to another lady who was interested in selling my soap in a large unique store. But she wasn’t there today in the shop, so I just dropped off a sample bag of soap for her to try and I’ll try to touch base with her later this week. And of course I had to do a little shopping while I was there 🙂

And it wasn’t too late in the day so I headed back to Cresco and then went west. West you might ask? Now normally I should go south, but there was a sale going on in a local candle shop that I thought I should check out. This candle shop outlet is in Osage and I knew that time was ticking away. So when I was literally at the crossroads, and one way was to head home and one way was to head to Osage, I chose Osage. With only 12 minutes to shop in this store, it was still awesome! When you are in an outlet store it’s only a good thing and then they were offering By One Get One free – I felt that I found a treasure. 

Now to head to Charles City, New Hampton, and finally back home to get to church. Then it was time to head out for the night. And since I hadn’t gone south of our farm yet today – well we went south to Waterloo for a hockey game. Some guy handed us free front row tickets 20160409_191229_resizedand Daryl even caught one of the t-shirts that they threw out. 20160409_213016_resized

Yup, it was a busy but really fun day! And there is still tomorrow yet in the weekend!! 

Posted in Places to visit | Comments Off on Just driving around …

Presidential elections

Now I’m not one to jump to state my opinion on who should or shouldn’t run for president, well until today.

I think the person who marketed Beanie Babies should run for President. Yup, H Ty Warner has my vote. 

Why you might ask? Well I was talking to my sister when she was cleaning and organizing out her daughters closet and she said she had a lot of Beanie Babies and wasn’t sure what she was going to do with them. I had to laugh (or cry – just not sure) when she said this because we also have joined the millions and millions of people that had gotten sucked into the marketing craze of absolutely having to have the latest and greatest Beanie Baby that was coming out that month. And this went on for months and months until about 3 years. Do you have any idea on how many of these stuffed toys you can buy in that time frame? Well a LOT! 

And to make it worse we had even bought specific cases that were sold to protect the toys because of their future value. Well you know that these were the ‘Limited Edition’ ones or the discontinued ones which probably made them even more valuable.

OK, now to step back and evaluate this whole thing. First of all millions and millions and millions of these toys were made and there is no way that any of these can be of much value at this point, so I did a little research on the web. Honestly there is a lot of information out there which I was quite surprised at first, and then I thought that maybe the moms of the kids who collected them are cleaning out their kids rooms 🙂 Getting back to the prices, some are actually priced at $10,000 to $30,000 on Etsy and others? Well there are some posts that people can’t even give them away at a Garage Sale. 

So by now I’m sure you’re wondering where all this is going with elections right? Well if someone can market a small toy that you literally could not play with because you were afraid to damage them or something,  and then sell accessories to boot? Then to top that off get the whole World to buy in – I’m saying that if H Ty Warner invested all his money including his inheritance to come up with $50,000 to start a company and reported earning over $700 million in profits in a year and then within about a decade his net worth was $6 BILLION, can you imagine what he could do if he was president? Yup, H Ty Warner has my vote this November. Just check out your tubs stored in your closet or the plastic cases on your shelves and tell me that you won’t be also wouldn’t be tempted to vote this way too! DSCN8843

Posted in Family | Comments Off on Presidential elections

Happy Birthday Dad!

Dad has been gone now for 9 years and it seems just like yesterday that we were taking rides in one of his old cars. See Dad loved what is called now ‘vintage’ cars and even though he had quite a few of them – I think us kids all would vote that the 1948 Packard would be our favorite! 

This car was not only a rarity in the car world with not many made in a span of a couple of years, but also with the depression going on and with the wood on the outside of it, it made it even more rare.

So when Dad would get the car out and the back tail gate would flip down and we’d all crawl in, we knew that it was going to be fun. This was a time when us kids could all crawl in the back and not need any seat belts or even seats to be honest. See the back was an open area so a lot of us could fit in it at one time! I’m guessing we were loud like you would expect kids to be, but I never remember getting into trouble for it. Weird now that I think about it. And back then living on the gravel road never stopped Dad for taking a Sunday drive!

Eventually as time went on, Dad sold it a few years before he passed away but he did have a chance to visit the owner one summer to check in on it. As I was talking to my brother tonight about the car,  we think that someone should go visit it again just to see how it’s doing 🙂

And how did this whole memory start? Well Ma found a picture while cleaning out an old drawer or something and it was Dad with his car. Pretty cool picture and a pretty cool Dad! img417

Posted in Family | 1 Comment