Happy Mother’s Day!

Posted on May 13, 2018 by farm2011

What a great Mother’s Day I had! 

From phone calls from the kids, to getting gifts and visits – I mean how can it be any better?

I must admit that in the past it almost seemed like just another day, but maybe because I’m getting older or the kids are getting older it’s becoming one of my more favorite times of the year!

And with Mother’s Day also comes some gifts 🙂

I was excited when I opened mine this year because they had given me a candle that smells heavenly along with a chicken feeder. Now before you start thinking why in the world did they give a chicken feeder – let me show you the picture of it first.

Yup chicken feeder with plants.

So now I have both cows and a chicken feeder in my kitchen and I LOVE IT!  And the feeder looks perfect on my kitchen window! Now just to remember that even though they kind of look like cactus – they are plants that will need water! 

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Always an adventure!

Posted on May 12, 2018 by farm2011

Now when you normally go to the dentist it’s a pretty routine trip. I mean you go there, wait which seems for hours and hours, and then finally get in to the ‘chair’ right? 

Then you count the minutes that you have to be there and they poke and prod you and talk to you about flossing (or lack of it!). Once you’re finally released from the chair you give them money and high tail it out of there for another 6 months.  

But not my dentist office. It’s always an adventure! There’s music playing and someone is always laughing and having a good time with fun conversations. The one conversation that I seem to always get involved in is about soap. And I also should mention that they are also some of my best soap customers! 

Now if you’ve never had to have some hands and utensils in your mouth and then try to tell others what the new fragrances are that you are working on – well you’ve just never lived! And for my last appointment we were discussing soap again, when the discussion turned to Mother’s Day. Well one thing led to another and it turned out that I was planning on making a couple of Mother’s Day baskets for my dentist. Too funny! 

I knew that I wasn’t going to get to any larger towns for supplies and I’ve never done Mother’s Day baskets before, well this was going to be something that I was going to have to wing it. 

And how did they turn out? Well I think they look pretty good and so did my dentist!  

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Getting ready for some rock picking

Posted on May 5, 2018 by farm2011

With the promise of warmer weather has Daryl thinking of all the rock that needs to be picked out in the fields. Yup, unfortunately this is one of the things that happens every spring in our area of Iowa. 

Now I heard that there are farms that don’t have rock and I’m thinking that this sounds almost unbelievable doesn’t it? I mean how can some farmers be so ‘blessed’ (?) with so many rocks and others not? 

Oh well, we’re the ones that seemed to be in the blessed category so that’s just how it is! 

Now if you’ve never picked rock or haven’t picked rock for sometime, you know that you need a good rock wagon to join you on this adventure. So after Daryl took a look at the one that we’re going to use, he thought it’d be a good idea to replace one or two of the boards. But one or two of the boards turned into replacing the whole top of the wagon. There seemed to be more bad boards than he originally thought at first. 

Now that the wagon is done, and once the crops are planted, I guess we’ll be ready to head out in the fields again. As long as it’s sunny it’s really not that bad of a job

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Field work begins!

Posted on May 3, 2018 by farm2011

We finally are out of the snow season (Thank Goodness!) and the weather has been really nice lately. And with good spring weather, that usually means that the field work will be in full swing soon! 

So with having to buy hay this year, Daryl decided to work some ground up this Spring and plant some more hay ground. Not much, but enough to get us hopefully with what we’ll need next Fall and Winter.

Well I wanted to snap a couple of pictures of the field work beginning, so my plan was to take a couple of pictures and then see if Daryl needed my help. And it did turn out that he was asking if I would check that the seed was falling when it came out of the equipment. No big deal right? Yeah. So of course I said no big deal and was ready to help out in any way. I was going to ride on the back where there was a plank to watch the grains, but of course when I tried it out there was more on my backside than the equipments! 

So my new plan now was to walk behind the equipment for a little bit, say that everything was going good, and get back home to work on nothing other than soap of course! 

OK, so I gave Daryl the thumbs up and he put the tractor in gear and we were off. HOLY SMOKES! I didn’t remember to be careful with a big log chain behind my feet that’s used to cover the rows up after the grain had dropped. Well as you can imagine, it caught my legs just above my ankles and started to drag me through the field. With luck on my side, I didn’t fall right away and all I kept thinking of .. Please don’t break my ankles, Please don’t break my ankles! Now I don’t have any idea if it actually could break my ankles, but I was sure worried that something bad was about to happen if I didn’t get out of this situation soon! So I managed to turn sideways which I’m not sure was better or worse because now I’m trying to walk/half run sideways behind the equipment with the log chain pulling me through the rows. Just so not cool! 

Well as you can imagine I was stumbling along with this look of panic on my face which seemed like hours, but was honestly only probably a couple of seconds when finally I got out from it and fell in the field rows.

With just some scrapes and bruises on my ankles, it was something that I sure hope that I am a lot smarter about where to stand the next time we do this! 

And the final answer? The planter was working just fine 🙂 

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Farm Animals

Posted on April 22, 2018 by farm2011

Now there are a lot of animals that you could find on the farm, but if you’re in our neighborhood and close to our farm – well it’s a pretty good chance that you are going to hear our peacocks screaming.

We’ve had peacocks for more years than I can count, and our newest member to the flock – Charlie, has become the boss pretty fast! 

So I was in the house this afternoon and when there was quite a bit of noise outside, I knew right away who was the culprit. Yup, it was Charlie!

Because we’ve had quite a few peacocks over the years, they all seem to have their own personality. Some of them would sit on top of the sheds and keep an eye out for the farm, some of the peacocks would sit in the barn window trying to look cool, and we’ve even had some that absolutely would not like certain vehicles as they drove by and they would scream as loud as they can. Honestly that was probably the funniest. We knew exactly when this one car would be close to our farm and they would scream until they were almost down to the corner. 

Well the weather is finally turning to Spring, and that means the peacocks are getting a little stir crazy. 

 

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35 Years!

Posted on April 21, 2018 by farm2011

Happy Anniversary to us!

35 years! WOW right? I thought you were supposed to be old or something when you say that you’ve been married for that long? Well I sure am not thinking that I could be that old 🙂

So what did we do for our Anniversary? Well Daryl gave the cows just a little bit more hay and bedding for the night and after we packed our swimming suits and a good outfit and off we went for the weekend.

With no hotel reservations set or seriously we didn’t even know where we were going to go, we were just looking for a hotel with a good restaurant close and an indoor swimming pool and hot tub.  And where did we go? Well we went to the same hotel that we went to on our honeymoon 35 years ago. We not only have a special place in our hearts for it, but we also like it being downtown so we can walk to any restaurants or night entertainment. After being upgraded to the Executive Room, this night was turning out pretty good! We found a restaurant that was recommended and it was fantastic! 

With the Spring coming to our area really late, it was fun to go away before all the crazy schedule that farming brings!  

 

 

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Spring clothes

Posted on April 20, 2018 by farm2011

With Iowa weather one day it’s snowing and the next day we’ve got sunshine. Now being that it’s going on to May – I SO much approve of the sunshine over the snow! Just like the greenhouse taking a hit from the crazy wind that we’ve had this Spring, it looks like I’m going to have to figure out my clothes line too! The wind took the top off of it and broke it off the bottom pole. Have I said lately how much I hate wind? Now I know that you’re not supposed to hate anything – well too bad! I do honestly hate wind!  

But Daryl added some extra bolts to the pole and cut parts of it off I think – whatever he had to do, he put it all together and I’m up and running again 🙂 

And for my spring wardrobe? I’m switching it out this weekend no matter what! I’ve been threatening to do this the past couple of weeks and I’m pretty tired of my winter clothes right now (do you ever get that way?) I’m also anxious to see what I all have in my spring storage bag and then I’m double anxious to find out if it all still fits

It’s a big job always having to switch the clothes for the seasons, but honestly I find some treasures once in awhile that I kind of forgot that I had! I sort out what I didn’t wear for the previous season and off to Good Will I go. I always wonder how people clean out their closets if they don’t have to switch them out every season? I would think you’d never get rid of anything that way! So I guess it’s a good thing to have small farm house closets – well anyway that’s what I’m going to try to convince myself this weekend! 

 

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Happy Birthday !

Posted on April 17, 2018 by farm2011

April is always a big month for us – everyone starts to get spring fever, the weather (hopefully) will start to warm up, and of course it’s Daryl’s birthday month! 

So one of the things that we haven’t done so well these past years is to make sure that we have the right candles for the birthday years on the cake. And of course we are not always so successful!  So in the past we’ve had to cut the birthday numbers out of paper and had to be very careful not to light the cake on fire and we’ve even resorted in the past cutting down the old numbers that we’ve used for years and years to make new ones. Good idea, not so good looking though.

But not this year! This year I’m ready and went to the store and bought two new ones just to be sure. Yup, trying to be prepared! 

And with the kids on Skype and the birthday cake lit with the right candles, it turned out to be a great night after all! 

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Greenhouses

Posted on April 16, 2018 by farm2011

With all the conversations about having possibly 3 Greenhouses built in our town, it’s got me thinking about William’s greenhouse in our own backyard. And because we’ve been in some typhoon path with all the wind lately, the greenhouse has taken its toll!

I did buy a new panel last year to replace one that blew off this summer on the greenhouse, but sadly it’s never been put up yet and now I’ve got about 6 more others to replace! I’m really not sure where the original ones went?  

So this is how the weather started out looking this morning on the way to work with a front moving in and then during the day we had sleet, rain, hail,  and then snow – so I’m thinking that I’ve got a little bit of time before the greenhouse will need to be ready! 

 

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Laundry Dilemma

Posted on April 8, 2018 by farm2011

Have you ever done one of those things when you just really know that you should for that extra step,  but instead you spend all your energy on trying to convince yourself that – oh it’ll be OK?

Well I did a TON of laundry on Saturday and a couple of the loads I hung outside on the line to dry. The wind was blowing and actually the sun was even out. Yeah, it was a pretty rare occasion for us.

The laundry was drying very nicely and all is good in our little corner of the world.

That is until it was getting late last night and starting to snow. So now came the big decision. Should I put on my winter coat and find my boots to go outside and get the laundry in? I mean it’s going to need to be dried anyway, so if I brought it in I’d have to set up the drying rack and do all that kind of stuff. And as you can tell I was running out of steam fast and had no desire to do any more laundry tonight, and I especially wasn’t excited about going outside either. I mean we just started to watch the show Naked and Afraid and even though it’s not a regular show on in our house, it was so much better than laundry. Just saying!

So what did I do? Well I left it out there of course! Just as fast as we can get snow and rain here in Iowa – we are also supposed to get some mid fifties weather showing up in the next couple of days. Yup, it’s staying outside and by the time it’s dry again I’m guessing it’ll have a nice country fresh smell to all of it.

 

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