The weekend!

Posted on July 13, 2014 by farm2011

The weekend is finally here! I don’t know if you feel the same way, but when there is a Holiday the  work week after it seems to last forever!

Since it was the weekend I had some big plans to be on the water kayaking Saturday. Well, that dream was pretty short lived. At our farm the rain started early in the morning and we didn’t want to be on the water if it was going to rain. So instead I did a bunch of errands and Daryl and I ended going out for the night. It was still a pretty good day – but I think going kayaking would have made it even better 🙂

Now Sunday’s weather was really nice. And honestly it was almost perfect! Low 80’s and a slight breeze. Yup, pretty much perfect. We knew that we were going to head out early to get some bike riding in and once the bikes were loaded into the truck, we were off. We started to ride on this one highway that’s not so traveled and we came across a sign that said in so many miles the bridge was out. Well, you usually can get around those type of situations with a bicycle so we kept riding. Pretty soon it said that the bridge is out in 500 feet. Yea, whatever right? Well, when we got to the spot guess what? The bridge was out. Now who would have thought they were actually telling the truth. Because it rained Saturday night, there was no way that we were going to get across or around it. So we turned around and headed back to town to find another road to ride on. We ended up riding on this one highway that I think honestly I’ve never been on it before even in a car. It was kind of fun just checking not only the farms but also the area out. We had a really nice ride and was home in time to make a Birthday card for my Aunt and then off to her party that was being held today for her 90th birthday. IMG_1827We took the Chevelle to the party because it hasn’t been driven much this year and it was a good afternoon just to drive around for awhile. Once we got home, we checked in with Kyle on skype and then I ended up doing some housework and Daryl went to cut the hay. He thought he’d be out in the field for about 2 hours, so I was kind of confused why he was home after about an hour. Here it turned out that he hit a rock and needed to work on the haybine. I just laughed when I saw that Sam the peacock was watching him pretty close from the barn window and every time he started the tractor, Sam would just scream.

Sam the peacock is in the barn window watching Daryl

Sam the peacock is in the barn window watching Daryl

Now don’t you wonder just why he had to scream? I mean was it because the tractor was loud or what? Who knows, but it didn’t really take Daryl too long to fix the haybine and off he went again to get the field cut tonight. DSC_0088

The night ended up with a campfire that William lit. The moon Saturday night was called the Supermoon because they say that it’s the closest to the earth and it also appears 30 % brighter  than normal. Now I know that the moon was the brightest last night – but holy smokes it was huge tonight and just beautiful. Sitting by the campfire with the huge moon in the background was a great way to end the weekend.

The photo of the day is Sam in the barn window watching Daryl. Sam has gotten pretty tame these past few weeks and also kind of funny too. Check him out

Just watching what all was going on in the farm yard

Just watching what all was going on in the farm yard

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What?

Posted on July 11, 2014 by farm2011

I was at work today and I couldn’t figure out for the best of me why my hips hurt so bad. Seriously feeling some aches and pains going on. I thought that it was probably just because I’ve been spending about all 8 hours behind my desk lately at work and maybe I needed to move around more. I wasn’t sure, but I was pretty much feeling like I just had hip replacement or something. Yea, it wasn’t a good look at all for me.

Tonight we had a chance to go on a quick bike ride and we figured even if we only went about 10 miles it was better than nothing right? I wanted to have a chance to try out my new sandals and helmet and I’ll be needing them soon so I needed to find out if they’ll work. I usually have TONS of trouble with my feet and guess what? My bike sandals felt pretty good. Score! But when we were riding bikes I had time to think what in the world did I do to make my hips so sore? Then I think I figured it out. I spent about 1 & 1/2 hours last night with the rotor tiller in the garden and I think that did it. If it’s still somewhat light outside when we get back from the ride, I was going to work in the garden again and then I’ll know if that is what caused this.

We got back around 8:00 and I spent the next hour in the garden with the tiller. Yup, it was the garden stuff that gave me trouble.  Oh well, I’m almost done cleaning it up and I even planted 2 more rows of peas tonight!  Now I know that it’s July, but the garden is pretty bare and if they grow at all, they’ll look better than the weeds that I’ve got going on right now.

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Decision Time

Posted on July 10, 2014 by farm2011

Have you ever looked at a project and then had to make a decision if you were going to do something about it or just leave it to .. well .. die? That’s what I did tonight. I’ve been looking at my garden and even though the weeds weren’t the worst that I’ve ever seen, the garden also wasn’t the best either. So now comes the decision. Do I just call it and go to our local farmer’s markets and get my stuff? Or do I take the plunge and get the garden cleaned up? Well, I decided to clean it up. Yup, this was going to take some work. So normally I put my flip flops on right after work when I’m outside,  but they really make my feet pretty dirty and bad looking. Well I figured I better get some shoes on and try to keep my feet somewhat presentable. The next thing is to get out the weed eater and to find some electric cords to plug it in. It didn’t take long and now I’m up and running. Wow, this was going to take more than one day I can tell!

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Hanging out in the yard

Posted on July 8, 2014 by farm2011

I was just walking into house tonight after work and I could hear a plane that wasn’t too far away from our farm. Now about this time of the year, people might start spraying their crops with planes and the reason for this is because the corn is too tall for the sprayer to be in the fields. So after the second time I heard the plane go over our house I thought I better go out and check it out. Now I don’t know about you, but really why do you go and check out a plane flying around? It’s not like they can see you and it’s not like they’re going to do some fantastic stunts or anything. I’m not really sure why people go and watch a plane – but guess what I did? I went outside into the yard to watch the plane. Too funny right? Well, the airplane wasn’t spraying any crops that I could see and I’m not sure just exactly what he was doing. I thought at first it might be my brothers checking out their crops and tile lines from the air, but they said it wasn’t them. So the only thing that I can think of is that maybe he was taking farm pictures to sell door to door later. If that’s what he was doing, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be in the picture in the middle of our farm just watching him fly around.DSCN8724

The picture of the day is my petunias by our front door. This was the first year that I’ve tried to grow them from seed and I had kind of a hard time getting them to start. But I’m really thinking that they are doing much better than the ones that I bought later this spring to fill in. I’m kind of digging how they’ve turned out.  Check them outDSCN8727

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Slowed down some

Posted on July 7, 2014 by farm2011

It has slowed down some these past few days and I’ve really taken advantage of that! I’ve been getting some errands done that need to be done and also have been catching up on paperwork. I’m also working on sending a box to Kyle in South Korea. The last time we Skyped he said that I didn’t need to send so much food – well I was checking out the stuff in the box that I’ve got ready so far and I think there is a lot of food in there. Well to my defense – if I’m sending a box I might as well have it a full box right?

One of the things that I haven’t done since the weather has been holding out, is to weed my garden. Man oh man she’s looking kind of rough. Well, maybe I’ll get that done on Thursday if it doesn’t rain.

 

 

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Riding our bicycles

Posted on July 6, 2014 by farm2011

We finally got our bicycles out this afternoon. In the past years, we’d be on our bicycles as early as the first week of May and now it’s the first week of July!! Yikes!! Because of all the wet weekends that we’ve had, it’s made it next to impossible to get any early riding in this year. So finally we had a chance to get out and see just exactly how bad our bodies were going to react to sitting on a bike and also the heat and wind that came with the day today. And honestly the ride wasn’t too bad. We didn’t go too far and we wanted to see how our back sides were going to take it and also if we needed our bikes tuned up. Surprisingly both were OK. Now granted we only went about 15 ish miles I think, but it was a good way to test everything out if you know what I mean.  It didn’t take long though when we started to ride for me to know just exactly why I love riding bicycles. The smell of the sweat clover and just taking in the country side makes me happy. I think we’re going to try to get a couple more rides in yet this week. Anyway that’s the plan!

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Twins Baseball Game

Posted on July 5, 2014 by farm2011

IMG_1820Isn’t it the truth, when you don’t have to get up early it seems like your back starts hurting around 5:30 and finally after trying to get comfortable you just plain give up and take a shower? Well, that’s what always seems to happen to me anyway. So this morning was the same story. I laid and bed and thought to myself just stick it out and go back to sleep. But then I had to go to the bathroom ..  and finally I got up and downloaded a bunch of pictures on the IPad and then took a shower. The baseball game wasn’t starting until around 1:00 and that meant that we didn’t really have to leave until 10:30 from our hotel.

Since Daryl and I couldn’t sleep anymore and the kids were awake, we decided to get to the Metro train and head to the stadium. We were really surprised when we saw that the train was full of both Twin’s fans and Yankee fans this early before the game. It was an uneventful trip in (which is good) and then we got to the stadium. Once we got to the stadium we worked through the crowd and started to watch the batting practice.

The Twins gave Derek Jeter the second base from the old Twins stadium

The Twins gave Derek Jeter the second base from the old Twins stadium

OK, now for the game. Our seats were really good and they were behind home plate and just under the awning. It was pretty hot in the sunshine and so I was more than happy sitting in the shade. I even saw some emergency people taking out this one guy that looked like he got too hot. The game was kind of long if you ask me, but remember I’m not that good at watching sports.

Derek Jeter at bat

Derek Jeter at bat

So this is how I passed the time.

Cold beer and nachos. That's how I roll

Cold beer and nachos. That’s how I roll

But with the Twins tied at the 8th inning I thought to myself, ‘Oh no! somebody .. anybody make another run!’ Because one time we went to a Twins game and it lasted 19 innings. Pure torture if you ask me. And at the end of the ninth inning it was still tied. First overtime ended in another tie and then the second overtime the Twins pulled it out and won! Yea!! IMG_1822

Because the game lasted longer that we were originally thinking it would, we didn’t make it to our local town to watch their fireworks. But as I’m checking out our bobble heads from the game, William shot some fireworks off at the farm to celebrate the long weekend of the 4th of July.

Some of William's fireworks at the farm

Some of William’s fireworks at the farm

DSCN8719

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Minneapolis here we come!

Posted on July 4, 2014 by farm2011

There was still a couple of things that we had to do this morning before we could leave. We had to check on all the animals and double feed them to make sure that they had enough for overnight. This meant to have both water and feed for the chickens and dogs for a couple of days. Now I’m now sure what Little Kitty was going to do, but I guess he could hang out with the dogs if he wanted to. And for the cows? Daryl ended up getting a new bale of hay for them.  We just hated to do this, but without a lot of sunshine these past few weeks, the cows have the pasture grass almost gone. Now that everyone should be settled in for the next two days – off we went.  Have you ever felt that you just wanted to go somewhere and it really didn’t matter where you went but just somewhere? Well that’s how I felt and so I was really excited for this weekend. We took the new car to see both how it handled in city traffic and if it worked out OK.

The first stop was the amusement park – Valley Fair. IMG_1784It’s been quite a few years since we’ve been here and I just knew it was going to be fun. There has been some issues this past month with it being flooded and some of the park being underwater, but the only thing that we saw that it really impacted was the parking. There were a couple of their parking lots closed down and were flooded. Now some people tell us that we’re crazy to go to an amusement park on any Holiday because it’s so busy. But we tell them that this is the best time because there is so much other stuff going on that it’s not busy at all. And this year, yup maybe only about 1/4 of the normal crowd. Score for us! To start out the day we headed for the roller coaster called the Wild Thing and they were right – it was a wild ride. But fun!! Since we were just getting warmed up we headed over to what looked like a giant swing. Now it didn’t look so bad but holy smokes when you were riding it you were really high in the air. The structure is 100 feet high and you swing 125 feet up in the air at 60 mph.

Xtreme Swing

Xtreme Swing

We found more roller coasters to go on and then we wanted to get to this one magic show. We were not sure what it was about, but we promised William’s girlfriend that there wouldn’t be any clowns. Yea.. you know what’s going to happen right? The opening act is all clowns. But it was only one act and then the Magician comes out. It was Ed Alonzo from the show Saved By The Bell.IMG_1792 I think Kyle would like to have seen this guy because he grew up with that show every morning before school. The show was fun and so was the whole day. The weather wasn’t hot or cold and it was pretty close to being perfect. So at the end of the day we picked out a couple of rides that we wanted to hit before we left for our hotel. The first one was the roller coaster Renegade. We rode it earlier and let me tell you that it is fun!! It stands 104 feet tall with a first hill and ride maximum drop of 91 feet at 52 mph . The track is 3,113 feet  long, and the ride lasts around two minutes. This is also one that gets shut down due to the flooding of the Minnesota River, but we were glad that it was open today. I found out that this roller coaster was also featured on Discovery Channel’s Build It Bigger program. Pretty cool. So we’re walking the path to get to the coaster and all of a sudden people are coming back down. The car got stuck on the track. IMG_1800Now we’ve gone to a lot of amusement parks in our lifetime, but we’ve never seen a car stuck with people in it on the first drop. We ended up waiting and then decided to try something else instead. And just as we were leaving, they got the people out and we were back in business. IMG_1785There was also another thing that I’ve never even heard of before and much less see. It was a family dryer. This ride is close by and the people watching on the bridge get pretty wet.IMG_1797 The instructions say that for $5 you can blow dry your family. I wish someone would have done it when we were there. I think that would be so funny to see!IMG_1796  Another ride on the Wild Thing and then before we leave one more ride on the Steel Venom. Now this ride is a little different. It’s a roller coaster that sends you straight up into the air 185 feet and in less than four seconds you go 68 mph. IMG_1795Seriously, this is the only ride that makes my palms sweat. But it is a blast! William and I rode together on the last ride. IMG_1807

After a long afternoon at the park, we were headed to find our hotel. Our car has GPS in it and it came in pretty handy to get us to the hotel. We ordered some Pizza and Wings to be delivered to our room and spent the night at the pools hot tub. What a great day we had!

The photo of the day is William and Daryl just hanging out. IMG_1803

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Getting stuff ready on Thursday for the weekend

Posted on July 3, 2014 by farm2011

We had plans to go away this weekend so we needed to not only catch up on a couple of things around the farm, but also get some errands done.

First things first – my little chickens are still alive which is awesome! So after work I went to town to pick up some more chicken feed. When I was at the farm store to pick up the feed (which I thought was an easy task) I made the comment which feed should I use? Well, that started this huge debate if I wanted medicated feed or not. Now seriously, all I wanted was some feed and I didn’t really care if it was medicated or not. Just give me the one that I should buy right? Well, it turned out that they didn’t have any unmedicated feed so now this should be an easy decision. And since I didn’t have any ducks the medicated feed would kill I should be fine.  But then my clerk called in for reinforcement to find out if I could use this other kind. The other kind was for bigger chickens but it should be OK. Now seriously, we had a lot to do and all I wanted was something for them to eat. After a long discussion I found out that I could use either one. I tried to be patient, but all I could think of is Daryl raking the hay and wanting to grind feed yet tonight. These clerks were really nice, but I asked if my little chicks would eat the one kind and if they wouldn’t die from it. They said yes. OK, let’s buy that one! After I checked out, I grabbed the bag and headed outside. I was glad that the car wasn’t too far away because I forgot how heavy a 50 lb sack can be.

So when I got a couple of more errands done in town, I got home just in time to see Daryl pulling out of the drive way with the tractor and rake. The one small spot of grassy hay was still down and needed to be raked again. It didn’t take me too long to get the bigger feeder for the chicks and their new feed in the pen and then I started to mow the lawn. With all the rain that we’ve had lately, the whole lawn hasn’t been mowed now for some time. Our rider is fairly new and the only thing that I would change about it would be how fast it goes – or should I say ‘How fast it doesn’t go?’. But between Daryl and I we actually got almost everything mowed this time. The only spot is in the bottom of the ditches but that’s really not a big deal.

Daryl was able to get the feed ground and the cows were waiting to see which corn they were going to get tonight.

Grinding corn feed for the cows

Grinding corn feed for the cows

They like the new ground stuff the best, but the feed pen needed a good cleaning so that was on their menu for tonight. I had to laugh because it wasn’t that long ago when Tango wasn’t allowed to eat with the big cows and now he’s just one of them.

Sassy, Ed, No Ears, and Tango

Sassy, Ed, No Ears, and Tango

But Scarlet? Well, she’s not so welcome yet.

Poor Scarlet!

Poor Scarlet!

So at the end of the day, we got the chickens all settled, the hay raked (again!), feed ground, groceries bought, and somewhat packed for the weekend. Not too bad for doing it all after work.

The photo of the day is a picture of our two dogs. They seemed to be close to us when we’re outside doing chores.

Kaiser & Reno

Kaiser & Reno

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Baby Chicks and a very naughty puppy

Posted on July 2, 2014 by farm2011

I still have the little chickens in the house and my nephew came over he said that the box that they are living in stinks – so I guess that it’s time to put them outside. I also have a bigger problem with them. When Little Kitty comes into the house, she runs over to the chickens and tries to push the screen window that I have on the box off. At first I thought it was just an accident and then I literally held the screen on and she came over and tried to stick her face under it to get to the chickens. Yup, time to go outside for sure! So I asked Daryl to go over to our other farm to pick up a cow tank. These tanks are used to store water for the cows and would work perfect! Over to the other farm he went and came back with the tank on top of the wood that I got from work last week in the back of the truck. He asked if I would help him unload the wood after I got the tank and I think it was a fair trade. So I drug the tank into the chicken house and guess what? I had one already in there. I think I should have scoped it out before I asked him. Down to the barn to get some loose straw and I found a chicken waterer in the brooder house for their new home. I put the chickens in it and it was looking pretty good. I tried to get a cute picture of them and they still would run to the opposite corner. But this picture gives a pretty good idea on how their new home looks. I put some chicken wire on top and then an old chicken wire door on top of that. Hopefully it’ll keep out Little Kitty and all the other farm cats!

The new home for our little chickens

The new home for our little chickens

We also had the electric company back to work on our poles. I think they’re done, but I’m not sure. Our electric was off again tonight, but only for about and hour so that wasn’t too bad. My Mom was over when I snapped the next picture and said that I sure took a lot of pictures of them putting up the poles. Come to think of it – she’s right.

Finishing up the work on the telephone poles

Finishing up the work on the telephone poles

And now for our naughty puppy. He has gotten into so much trouble digging holes in our lawn that he’s gone to digging holes in our new gravel that we just put down. I have no idea why he would do this, but Daryl seems OK with him in the yard and not the lawn. Kind of weird place to dig, but I guess OK.

I have no idea what this dog is looking for!

I have no idea what this dog is looking for!

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