Possums

Posted on August 1, 2014 by farm2011

Have you ever laid in bed and heard your dogs barking outside and just hope and pray that they would stop? Well after about an hour of laying there listening to them, I finally gave up and woke Daryl up and asked him if he would please go out and see what the dogs are doing. We’ve been having trouble with Reno sneaking out of the barn so I thought that maybe she was just barking because she was out and she knew that she wasn’t supposed to be. But with her barking and barking finally Daryl agreed and went out to see what was the matter. Well, she was out again (no surprise) and had something cornered. She had a possum and it looked like it was dead. Daryl knew better, so he helped to make sure that it wasn’t going to go anywhere in a couple of hours. After putting Reno back into the barn he finally crawled in bed again and everything outside was quiet for awhile.

This possum is dead.

This possum is dead.

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Cards & Stuff

Posted on August 1, 2014 by farm2011

I finally had a chance to get a couple of cards done that were way over due. I’m not sure why I got so far behind, but these birthday cards should have been done for a couple of months. Yea, I said I was behind. But I did get three of the four cards done and now I need to get a Graduation card done and sent that should have been in the mail in May 🙁DSCN8749DSCN8748

IMG_1843I also found a super easy recipe for making ribs tonight. Now I’m sure that they are not the same type of ribs that people marinate and work on all day – but honestly what normal person has all day to cook supper right? So here is the recipe that I made for the ribs and even William said that they were pretty good.

Take tin foil and double it on the counter. Take the ribs and literally put them on the tin foil and then fold the tin foil up to make a pocket. I put them then in a pan and baked them @ 350 degrees for around 1 1/2 hours without anything else added to them. Then take them out and let them cool on the counter and add barbecue sauce and let set for about 30 to 60 minutes. The original recipe calls for mixing all this stuff up for the sauce but I used some barbecue sauce that I like instead. (I told you I wanted to keep it easy right?) I left them sit in the sauce for about 30 minutes and then I put them on the grill to get the sauce cooked into them. Yup, simple. The best part is that you really don’t have to put anymore sauce on them after they’re done so they’re not so messy. IMG_1939

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Jinxed

Posted on July 30, 2014 by farm2011

We had skyped with Kyle and Kelcie Sunday night in South Korea and had to brake the news to Kyle that ever since we went to Minneapolis that one weekend and left Little Kitty alone – well, he ran away. Now Little Kitty is a Tom Cat so I’m sure he’s just hanging out at the neighbors or something so I’m really not too worried about him. But I think Kyle felt so bad and he said that we really need to start looking for another cat. He loves a house cat and can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t love them too. Well we were OK without one for now so everything on our side was good.

Which brings me up to today. Call it coincidental or maybe being jinxed by Kyle, tonight after work I saw this little baby kitty that Kaiser brought up to the house. I think he thought it was some kind of wiggly toy or something. He stood pretty proud by the cat and was kind of acting like ‘look what I found’. So into the house this cat went. It’s pretty small and wouldn’t drink out of the little bottle that we got from the vet very well,  so my thoughts for this little baby cat’s survival was pretty grim. The only thing that I did know is that this cat meows a lot. And I mean a LOT! Finally William just wrapped it up in a towel and literally slept with it to keep it quiet. He said he only rolled over it maybe once during the night. It’s a good thing that this kid is thin right? Well in the morning the cat was still alive and who would have thought it? Now it did start to drink from the little pan of warmed up milk so I’m thinking there just might be a future for it after all. DSCN8745OK so it lived through the night so I guess we should name her. Well her name is Maggie. But guess what? That night when I was outside I saw Reno guarding something down by the barn. It was cat # 2. I think Reno didn’t want Kaiser to get too close or something which is really a good thing. DSCN8746So 2 baby cats in the house trying to keep alive wasn’t the worse thing, but by the end of the night we had 3. Now this is getting a little bit out of control right? Then we had 4.

4 baby kitties

4 baby kitties

Well move time forward and now we literally have 5 little kitties that we’re trying to keep alive. And only two of them have their eyes open so they are really little yet. DSCN8752 And do you think we can keep Maggie happy? No. She just cries and cries and can escape from almost anything. I’ll be in the kitchen and then around the corner comes this little cat the size of your palm looking for you. So our mornings and during my lunch hours during the week has changed. I made some egg muffins that I break up and mix with milk and try to keep these 5 little cats alive.

eggs, milk, and cheese baked together

eggs, milk, and cheese baked together

I’ll give it another couple of days before I name the rest of them. It’s still pretty early to be too optimistic. And even though Kyle is thousand’s of miles away – I swear that that he might have jinxed us!

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Brain Fart

Posted on July 29, 2014 by farm2011

Have you ever just started to think about something during the day that you really should have been thinking about a couple of days ago? Well.. that’s what happened to me this week and it was a total brain fart.

I was at work on Tuesday still trying to catch up from being gone last week and to be honest pretty busy. All of a sudden someone brought up chickens. Yup, chickens. Well I got this kind of pit in my stomach and started to think about our little chickens. I know that Daryl and I talked about them on Saturday, but today was Tuesday. Then I started to sweat. I mean I wasn’t sure how long chickens could live without being taken care of and for sure three days shouldn’t kill them right? Well I couldn’t stand it anymore and I called Daryl to see if he checked on them lately. Nope, not since Saturday. So after work I beat it home and found all 5 of them still alive. SCORE! Now I don’t think they were happy, but they were alive so that was a plus. Somewhere all the line either William or Daryl put in another waterer and I think that just might have saved their lives.

So my picture of the day is that of two of our chickens. I wanted to take a picture of the little’s guy that we have but he kind of acts like a bird and not a chicken so I’m not so sure on what’s going on his him. But he thinks he runs the joint so his name is Mayor. I’ll try to catch a picture of him later if I can. But below are two of the five that we have. The white one’s name is Duff (his sister’s name if Tuff) and the other guy? His name is Booker T.

Our new chicken Duff

Our new chicken Duff

Booker T

Booker T

 

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Good intentions

Posted on July 28, 2014 by farm2011

Well we made it back from our week bike ride and I had good intentions to post the pictures from it tonight. As I was going through the pictures up in the scrap book room I kept hearing the cows outside. Now for some reason after 9:00 pm in our house I swear everyone goes deaf. No idea why, but they do. So after going down stairs and talking to Daryl that there’s something wrong with the cows – here in the yard was Tango and Earl standing. They were both looking pretty scared and knew that they shouldn’t be out on that side of the fence.  And who do you think was making all the noise at 10:30 tonight? No Ears! She was just freaking out trying to figure out where Earl went. Daryl got the pickup started and shined the light into the cow yard and I grabbed a pail of corn and it didn’t take long until everyone was back where they were supposed to be. I’m not sure how they got out and I hope Daryl was able to figure out where because if Ed get’s out it’s not going to be as easy.

Since I don’t have our bicycle post done, my photo of the day is what we came home on the weekend. It’s a skill that Kaiser has and it’s not a good one if you ask me! He sure is digging for something though. We keep adding rocks to try to stop his digging and pretty soon it’ll only be a patch of rocks if he keeps this up! IMG_1938

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Our Bike Ride, the first days

Posted on July 26, 2014 by farm2011

What a great week we had! The weather was pretty close to being almost perfect and it is always so fun to be out with some of your closest 10,000 bikers.

We were lucky again to be able to stay in houses instead of camping and that is nothing but a really good feeling. I mean we did the camping thing for about 10 years and it was fun, but staying in houses… is really good.

So I’m going to give it my best to put together an over view of the week we had and hopefully I won’t leave too much out 🙂

Saturday – the day before the ride. This is the day that we start out for the overnight town and get ourselves somewhat organized. It’s the time to see if you remembered everything that you’ll need and get all your maps and money ready for the week. I never sleep too good during this week so I wasn’t disappointed when I spent the whole night tossing and turning thinking about how the week will go. Then the sun came up and it was time to ride.

We finally came up with a Team name this year!

We finally came up with a Team name this year!

Sunday – We got our bikes ready, adjusted our helmets and off we went. I can’t explain how it feels for other people on the first day – but for me it’s such a good feeling. It like you’re excited, anxious, happy, and nervous all at the same time. You know that if you weren’t there you’d probably be at work so that kind of makes you smile. The first stop was to dunk our tires.IMG_1848 It’s a tradition that you dunk your back tires in on the west side of Iowa  in the Missouri River and then when you get to the east side of Iowa you put your front tires in the Mississippi River. After the tire dunking we all took off riding between veterans and the state flags on the highway and to say that is was cool is such an understatement. The ride wasn’t a long ride today and it was good to get some miles on our bikes. We laughed because we weren’t able to get a lot of training in this year and we only rode 45 miles to train. So we kind of say that the first days of Ragbrai is our training and this year that statement couldn’t be a more true!

Way cool way to start the weeks ride

Way cool way to start the weeks ride

We rode around 70 miles today so we just doubled our training. Too funny! It didn’t take long until the guys found watermelon along the way. For some reason watermelon tastes so good on a bike ride and this year? Yup, it was good! IMG_1868 So tonight’s accommodations is a little tricky. We couldn’t find a house to stay at and we were lucky that we did book a hotel room back in January for us. So 11 people stayed in this really small hotel room. When we had booked the room she said ‘Oh you guys are in the suite’. hummm.. I’m not sure I’d call it a suite, but it was a roof over our heads and we spent a good part of the night just laughing. I think this bike ride is a lot about getting together with friends and family and just enjoying not only the ride but also hanging out for the days and nights in between the rides. It’s just a lot of fun.

You gotta do what you gotta do....

You gotta do what you gotta do….

 

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Will catch up later..

Posted on July 19, 2014 by farm2011

I’ll be gone for a couple of days and will have only limited access to any internet. So I’ll catch up later with you in about my week.

Have a good one…

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New babies and more worrying

Posted on July 17, 2014 by farm2011

Well you know that we have this new little baby calf at our farm – Earl, and he is doing really well. But you also know how I can worry just about everything, so I started to worry if Earl was nursing off of No Ears. You could see his little ribs and I thought ‘Oh no’ he’s not drinking. Even though he runs around the cow yard like a dang Jack Rabbit, we finally caught him and got him coaxed into the pen in the barn. No Ears was close behind and it wasn’t too long the door was shut behind them. So Daryl went in to kind of coax him to nurse and that really wasn’t necessary. Earl knew just what to do! Whew!!IMG_1833

So while Daryl was working on putting the bale mover on the tractorIMG_1835I just hung out in the cow yard. Yea… I do know how that sounds. 🙂 But I was sitting on the ledge of the fence and Scarlet came over and just stood in front of me. Now Scarlet is tame, but this wasn’t something that she normally does. As I started to pet her, she came and put her head by my lap and just stood there. OH NO!! What was wrong? Geez, just when you think your’e done worrying about kids, now I’m worrying about calves. But I gave her a look over and didn’t see much that could be wrong. She was walking kind of funny but her ears were up which is a good sign. IMG_1837The only other thing I could see was that she looked a little fat. I was still outside when William came home and I told him that I was worried about Scarlet. He looked at her and thought that she was bloated. AAAHHH !!!  But I do know what qualifies being bloated from experience from Rion, so I don’t think it was that. Then I thought to myself if maybe… just maybe .. Scarlet was nursing off of No Ears. No Ears is such a good Mom that she would take care of two babies like nothing. After a quick nap in the grass, I noticed that Scarlet was doing much better. I think she drank so much milk that her belly was too full to walk!IMG_1840

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Earl – our newest member to our farm family

Posted on July 16, 2014 by farm2011

Tonight after work I got a bunch of errands done and was busy in the house getting some laundry done and starting to make supper. Daryl was out in the field raking the hay and it was a really nice night outside. We might actually get the hay baled this time without it getting rained on. I hate to jinks it, but it’s looking promising!

Daryl raking up the hay tonight

Daryl raking up the hay tonight

Then when Daryl got done in the field and was feeding cattle all of a sudden he was in the kitchen asking for help. And the first thing you think of is ‘Now what happened’ right? Well this was both a good thing and a bad thing. Today No Ears had her babies. Yup, you heard right. She had twin calves – a heifer and a bull calf. But the bad part of this is that the heifer was dead by the time we found her with them. I don’t know what happened, if she was born dead or had a hard birth or what, but she was dead. This calf was an all black calf and it was really a pretty calf. But the other twin did live and it was a bull calf. He is so cute and his name is Earl. He’s pretty spunky already and tonight both No Ears and Earl are safe in the barn. No Ears has a pail of water and some corn and hopefully everything will go well for them tonight.

No Ears and her new little calf Earl

No Ears and her new little calf Earl

So after everyone was settled in the barn, Daryl and William took the little dead calf out in the back and buried it. Daryl said that Tango came over to see what they were doing and when he looked in the hole where the calf was he jumped up in the air and ran away as fast as he could. I don’t know if he got scared or what – but Daryl said that he reacted pretty funny. Now there wasn’t anything  funny going on with Ed the bull though. Ed was MAD that No Ears and the calf were locked up in the barn. He was so mad that it even made William a little nervous and stayed on the outside of the pen tonight. And even as I’m writing this post I can hear him in the cow yard just making a lot of noise. Yea, he’s not happy about this one bit. But all in all it was an exciting night for us and I had to laugh when I saw Scarlet in the cow yard. She looked so grown up.

The night ended with my Mom calling and saying that my sister was going to stop over with the quilt that she just got done and if I had a chance to swing by to see it. She’s giving this quilt as a gift and if you ask me, that’s a pretty nice gift isn’t it? It looked awesome!!

Mom and my sister

Mom and my sister checking out the quilt

I have another sister that also quilts and somehow this talent missed me when I was born.  I just don’t have the patience for that at all! I laugh when I think of how I made some of the Halloween costumes for the boys. Instead of getting a lot of sewing done for the costumes, it was the time of the year that my glue gun got used the most. And one year I made William into a mummy with gluing the pieces onto his sweat pants and sweat shirt. I didn’t give it much thought while I was doing it and the poor kid had to be a mummy for 7 hours without being able to go to the bathroom. The reason was because his clothes were all glued together. You have to admit that it’s kind of funny. Now to my defense I really rocked the costume that year!

And to finish out the night is a picture of one of my flowers blooming out front. I don’t know what kind they are, but they’re doing pretty good and are just starting to blossom. Check it out DSC_0095

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Mowing Lawn

Posted on July 15, 2014 by farm2011

Mowing the lawn.

I think I dislike it more every year . Now maybe if I had a gazillion hours in the day that I didn’t know what to do with I might like it better – but honestly .. who has that right? Well you probably guessed by now that I mowed the lawn tonight and after 4 1/2 hours, I quit for the night. Daryl helped out by doing some of the trimming but I couldn’t help to think to myself just what in the world are we going to do when we get old and try to get this mowed? I guess we’ll have a lot more time right? But we might just have to let the ditches go into some wild prairie reserve or something. Maybe I am just thinking that I don’t like it so much tonight because I really have a lot to do and sitting for hours on end on my end wasn’t helping the cause. But I did get done with what I was going to do for awhile now and it’s time to get my real work done!

I was able to get Kyle’s gift box packed and mailed yesterday and he has a Holiday coming up at the end of the month so I sure hope that it gets to South Korea before then. Sometimes it takes 5 days and sometimes it takes 15 to get there. So if it takes 10 days.. I’m good with that and so would Kyle. One time Kyle told me that getting a gift box is almost better than Christmas. I sure hope that he’ll always feel that way with the boxes that I send because it’s kind of a cool thing to hear someone say to you.

No surprises here on how much it weighed!

No surprises here on how much it weighed!

I also found out that I’m way behind on my card making. I mean how could I miss my niece and nephews Birthday?!!  That is sooooo not cool. So I have my niece’s gifts already and I just have to pick up my nephews tomorrow in town and then get their cards done. I also need to get a Graduation card done for my other nephew. Yea, he graduated in May so it’s like way overdue! But I did get a Graduation card done this weekend and sent out. It’s probably the pinkest card that I ever made and so I sure hope she likes pink! I was going to work on cards tonight but didn’t quite get to that. I’m hoping that I’ll get a chance tomorrow night because they need to get mailed this week!IMG_1829

 

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