Driving around

Daryl hasn’t taken the Chevelle out this year, and it was about time that he did and we went for a ride. But if there’s anything that I learned is that you just don’t take the car out of the shed. You have to wash and in this case, wax the car. But I didn’t mind because he took it to town and worked on it all morning. DSCN6989aThen around noon, she was ready to go. We weren’t sure where we were going to go or really what we were going to do, but the 4th of July was such a nice day we stopped in our local gas station and picked up a map and headed East. We found ourselves driving on roads that we’ve never been on before and it was a lot of fun.

The train on one side of us and the cliffs on the other side. Really cool!

The train on one side of us and the cliffs on the other side. Really cool!

We ended up at Harpers Ferry, Iowa for a really late dinner. After that? Well, we took a much more traveled road home. There was a flea market in one of the towns and we debated on stopping, but I’m thinking that I better make a few more trips to Good Will to clean out our house before I bring more stuff home.

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As the old saying goes..

As the old saying goes… Knee high by the 4th of July.

That’s how tall your corn is supposed to be. And now a days you really should have your corn much taller than that! But we try to go and take a picture of Daryl out standing in the field every year to document how tall the corn was that year. Below is this years picture.

Daryl measuring the corn for the 4th

Daryl measuring the corn for the 4th

And it’s kind of funny because we really never go back and look at the previous years. But maybe someday we will. I’ve started working on transferring Mom and Dad’s old pictures over to a digital copy and I came across one of my Dad out in the field with my sister. And when you look at it you just kind of smile because you think.. ‘Oh yea, it must be July’.

My dad

My dad

Other pictures I found when looking for the one above img143I’m really not sure who that person above is, or even the guy belowimg141But as you can tell, it’s not that uncommon to grab the camera and snap a picture on the 4th.

The corn is much better than we were thinking it was going to be at this time and we think it almost grew a foot this last week. When I was standing in the field taking some pictures the smell of the corn just kind of hits you. I’m not sure how to describe it other than like just cut grass mixed in with a sweet corn smell. But once you smell the young corn in the field, I don’t think you’ll ever forget it. No matter how many years you might be away.DSCN6973

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Cutting the oats tonight

A couple of months ago we plowed over ground and planted alfalfa for the hay. But you just don’t get the hay right away. What happens is that you mix in some oats and grass seed so that you can get a good cover to let the hay grow. So tonight Daryl cut the oats off the field.

Daryl cutting the crop

Daryl cutting the crop

I haven’t had a chance to ask him if he’s going to bale it with the oats on it or take the oats off. What ever he decides to do, it’s been so long since we had straw, it’ll be kind of nice to have it in the barn.

Oats field before it's cut

Oats field before it’s cut

While Daryl was working in the field, I was busy trying to get the lawn mowed again. I had some really bad luck last night and I was hoping that tonight would go better. What happened last night was that I was mowing in the front of our house by the hammock, when all of a sudden I heard something. Now I wasn’t sure just exactly what it was and I looked around and didn’t see anything. So I thought that I better keep moving if I wanted to get everything mowed. OK, this was very wishful thinking. When I wanted to stop the lawn mower and talk to Daryl, I looked at the mower and couldn’t figure out what was missing. Well…. what was missing was the knob that starts and stops the mower. And with our tractor you can’t start it if the mower is still engaged. Well, needless to say that was the end of mowing last night. I tried to fix it, but that just wasn’t going to happen. What I figured was that the hammock caught the knob when I was mowing underneath it and snapped the knob right off. Not cool. Daryl took the mower apart and was able to pick up a replacement piece tonight. So tonight I was in the ‘zone’ mowing to get it all done. I didn’t want to have to mow tomorrow on the 4th of July. And believe me, I stayed far away from the hammock!

Do NOT brake this off if you want to keep mowing!

Do NOT brake this off if you want to keep mowing!

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Still picking rock

With the crazy weather that we’ve been having, we’re still trying to get some of the bigger rock picked up out of the fields. And the trouble now is that the beans are getting too big for a wagon to be out in the field. We don’t want it to wreck the crop. So Daryl was thinking for awhile what he was going to do and he came up with a good idea. He got a hog crate out that was once used in the Farrowing House and took the one side of it off. Then he hooked it up to the tractor and was going to drive around in the fields and load up all the bigger rocks. Now I’m thinking that this is a really good idea. I was trying to get some other stuff done around the house and farm, so he went out to try it. He said that it worked pretty good and the only trouble that he had was trying to make sure that he could see the rocks in the field. The reason that he’s bothering with them at all is that he doesn’t want to wreck the combine head and some of the rocks he found were pretty big and would for sure do some serious damage. William helped him unload it down in our one field tonight that washe out  so bad. It sounds like one more load should do it. DSCN6959

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Celebrating Sister Rose Catherine’s Life – Sunday

The day was set to celebrate Daryl’s Aunt – Sister Rose Catherine’s 100th birthday. But about a month ago she passed away, and then there was a discussion if the celebration should still happen. The decision was made to still have this special day because there were so many that couldn’t make it to the funeral, and we were one of those. We were in New York for Kyle’s Commencement and really couldn’t change our plans. So I was kind of glad that they kept the day for the celebration and was anxious to see where Sister spent most of her life.

Now do you remember how tired I was when I went to bed Saturday night and that I just crawled into bed with a towel on my hair? Yea, well… we knew that we literally had to be on the road at 6:30 to make it to the service on Sunday. And when the alarm went off, there was nooooo wayyy I was ready to get up. I mean, it was 5:30 am. So finally Daryl yelled up the steps to me that I might want to get up. He said it was 6:10. WHAT? Then I thought.. MY HAIR! But as I was grabbing my dress out of the closet, I did a quick check of my hair and guess what? It looked kind of good. Yea, who would have figured? So I quick went to the bathroom, grabbed my makeup, brushed my teeth, curled the front part of my hair, and walked out of the house at 6:24. Now granted I still needed to put my makeup on in the car mirror, but not bad for 14 minutes was it? And I didn’t even know what I was going to wear for a dress or shoes that day.

We made it to the St. Rose of Viterbo Convent that is the mother house of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. DSCN6953So I’ve been doing some checking on what a ‘mother house’ is. And it’s funny, because when I ask someone they try to act like they really know what they’re talking about.. but I find out pretty soon that they’re bluffing. So this is what it is : The motherhouse is the founding house of a religious order, or the convent where the mother superior lives. So my reference to it as the Mother Ship for Sisters.. just wasn’t too far off was it? We found a place to park and made our way inside and towards the Chapel. At this point I think my jaw dropped open. It was beautiful. The Chapel was so unbelievable that I told Daryl that it even looked fake. DSCN6927The pictures that I took do not do it justice and if you are ever in La Crosse Wisc, you will have to stop in to see for yourself.
DSCN6942We were trying to figure out how many people were actually in the Chapel for the service because the singing was so loud, and so we figured that there were people up in the balcony that surrounds the whole Chapel. But later we found out that the acoustics were just that good. Again, amazing. DSCN6940The service was dedicated to Daryl’s Aunt and about 1/2 of the people were there because of Sister. After brunch, Daryl’s cousin gave a short program on the history of Sister and the Kuehners. It was really nice and you could tell that he put a lot of time into preparing for it. The couple of things that I learned about Daryl’s side was that when the original Kuehners’ came to the United States they had to renounce France. Now the Kuehner’s are full blooded German so this sounds confusing. But they lived on the border of France in some disputed land and they spoke German and was also full blooded German. So once they landed, they had to renounce France not Germany. Another interesting story was one that was told was that when one time his one Aunt and Uncle went to a local dance hall where Lawrence Welk was performing, Lawrence wanted to dance with Daryl’s Aunt so Daryl’s Uncle went and conducted the band. I bet that story was told many times over the years! There are too many stories to write that we heard that day, but those two just stuck out for me.DSCN6901 Then Daryl was asked to sing a couple of songs that was from the time period that his Aunt was growing up, which was a hundred years ago. Now this gave him some trouble. It’s not so easy to find these really old songs on YouTube. But he was a trooper and made it through it. Everyone really enjoyed the songs and all that night I couldn’t get the song, ‘Oh Dem Golden Slippers!’ out of my head!DSCN6917 Right before we were going to head home, we got a tour of the small prayer room of Perpetual Adoration. Determined to establish perpetual adoration, the sisters tried it out, praying two at a time for two hours. They demonstrated they could do it, and on August 1, 1878, at 11 a.m., the congregation—then called the Sisters of St. Francis—began praying around the clock and soon thereafter became the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. This is the longest prayer in history.DSCN6936 What I found out after reading up on this Convent is that the Chapel is called the Mary of Angels. Mary of the Angels Chapel in La Crosse was named after a tiny church built in early times in the marshlands below the town of Assisi, Italy. Abandoned and in disrepair, the church, St. Mary of the Portiuncula, was given to Francis of Assisi by the Benedictines to use as a place of prayer and as headquarters for himself and his followers. The first congregation moved into this convent in 1871 and since then they also opened a hospital, orphanage, a shelter for troubled children, school, and I’m sure many more things. The Chapel is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Below is the picture of the Chapel that I found on the web. It’s really big!9991763I was so glad that we had a chance to see this unbelievable building not only for ourselves, but also to get to understand how Daryl’s Aunt lived her life for so many years here. Oh yea, check out what I also found there  DSCN6948a

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Family noise

As I’m looking over the pictures from the Kuehner Reunion at our farm Saturday, I’m just not sure how to describe it. I mean, how do you try to explain to someone just how cool it is to have your family over for a full day to just share some laughs and have a good time?

The morning started out with rain, of course! As I was standing in our living room looking out into the yard, all I could do was to just give out a heavy sigh and try not to worry about it. Daryl had just graded the driveway again Friday night, and now there was a pretty good water stream heading south and taking the gravel with it. But I thought, we had the Roadhouse to hang out in if we wanted and I’m sure that it was going to be fine. Anyway at this point, it had to work if we needed it. But about an hour before anyone started to come, the rain stopped and the only thing left was wet ground. OK, seriously not a big deal and I’ll take some mud and wet grass over rain. As Daryl’s family started to show up, at that point I realized that it could even pour outside today and it wouldn’t make any difference. His family was just ready to hang out with each other and have a good time. (but secretly I was keeping my fingers crossed that the rain was done!) After a huge dinner, everyone went outside to see what the weather was going to do. It did lightly rain a couple of times during the day, but nothing too major. The day was filled with basketball games, bean bags, trampoline, baseball, Polish skiing, ping pong, and a scavenger hunt.

Games of Polish skiing

Games of Polish skiing

And when it was a little too wet outside, William brought the Wii into the roadhouse for the kids to play. DSC_0190During the day I took time to step back and just listen to ‘noise’ of the farm and I thought to myself just how cool that was. I mean there wasn’t anything fancy about the day, but with both of Daryl’s parents gone, it seems harder and harder to get everyone together. So for one day in the year, all his brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and great nieces and nephews try to come together to the home farm. When I was just standing there listening, I could hear kids chasing the chickens, other kids laughing on the trampoline, a couple little girls running around with our little kitty Pepper, a pretty competitive basketball game going on, and the peacocks screaming with all the noise in the farm yard.  It was pretty cool to be honest. IMG_0517And as it got to the later part of the afternoon, the next thing on the agenda was a scavenger hunt. My sister helped me tons and pretty much organized this game for me. Once they were given their instructions, off we sent the kids to figure out the clues given to them. Both big and small kids went running to try to beat the other team. This gave us just enough time to get the Roadhouse somewhat picked up and also gave Daryl a little bit of time to get the hay wagon ready for a hay ride. He usually always gets a full crew to ride when he has the wagon ready in the yard. I laughed when I heard that a some of the really little kids only made it just a couple of yards down the road and were already taking a nap. It didn’t surprise me because they were playing pretty hard all day. DSC_0168After the hay ride, hot pizza and we warmed up the leftovers was ready for supper. Then we had to wait for it to get a little darker out for the sparklers and fireworks.  So if you weren’t too full from the root beer floats that we had for dessert, there were kids just wanting to make s’mores for someone at the campfire.DSCN6897 The fireworks ended the night and after everyone helped picked up the Roadhouse and the tables and chairs were put away, everyone headed home with some very tired kids.DSC_0204

Good Job William on the fireworks

Good Job William on the fireworks

As I was walking to the house, I couldn’t help to think now how quiet the night was, and how I liked it so much better with all the noise. But after a quick bath, I found out that I was probably just as tired as those kids and headed to bed for the night. I was so tired that I left the towel on my wet hair and crawled into bed. In less than 2 minutes I think I fell asleep. I was hoping that my hair would be OK in the morning because we had to leave at 6:30 am or before on Sunday to go to a celebration for Daryl’s Aunt. But for now, I’m thinking that this was a successful day and it was a fun day.DSCN6900

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Not on the my list

I spent a couple of hours after work this afternoon mowing with the rider, and when I was almost done I looked down at my legs. I’m not sure why I did this, but something must have caught my eyes. What I saw was a lot of red blotches and welts on my one leg. At first I thought no big deal, but in the next hour all the blotches combined and now it felt like my leg was really warm. I’m sure that I got into something, but as I was looking at it, I thought to myself that going to a Dr was absolutely not on my list of things to do tonight or even tomorrow. Yea, pretty sure on that!  I’m going to have to try to get rid of this by myself. I’ve added a picture that I took and I made the picture of my leg smaller than the ‘normal’ size because it was just plain scary in the big size!

Not pretty at all

Not pretty at all

After I got done mowing, I quick went to find the hand saw so I could get rid of the ugly volunteer trees that were growing in our grove. I guess I used the word ‘quick’ but it really wasn’t that quick. I checked absolutely every place that I could think of on the farm for the saw, and finally after going through all the buildings the second time,  I came across it. The blade wasn’t the sharpest, but hey.. it worked.

I think we'll give them to the cows for something different to eat tomorrow

I think we’ll give them to the cows for something different to eat tomorrow

So I got to cross of a couple more things off my list and then I jumped into the shower. I thought if I washed this leg with a lot of soap, that maybe.. just maybe.. it’d go away. Yea, not so lucky. But I think it did look a little bit better as the night went on. When Daryl looked at it, he was wondering if I got it cutting down the trees. But to be honest, I have no idea where I got this rash from. When I started to mow with the rider after work tonight, I put my head down and literally floored it. I even used the cruise control on the mower for the first time. Pretty cool stuff! So to say where I actually rubbed against something that was definitely wrong, would be a miracle. No big deal. I have to wear jeans to work tomorrow and after work  I’m planning on heading to town to get some supplies for the big weekend, so hopefully by then it’ll be gone. Or at least the welts down and not so much on fire would be nice! While I was working on the yard, Daryl was able to get the hay baled so that’s really good. We had a neighbor who has a round baler do the work for us. WhooHoo! Another thing to cross off the list.

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Making a new list

Well, it’s crunch time. We’ve got the Kuehner’s coming this weekend and we still have a lot to do. So I made a list. Now I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty good at lists. And the one that I made was one that was even something that we could do.

The main thing that I wanted to get done today was to get to town and pick up some more mulch. I bought some the other day, and it was not anything close to what I would need. The best deal on it was the grocery store – go figure! I didn’t have too much in my cart and the bag girl even gave me a smile, well until I said that I needed 12 bags of mulch. Then this girl said that there was no way she was going to help me and found some young kid to help instead. I’ve never seen him work there before, so I’m figuring he was a new employee and was given the bad jobs. Well, we got it all loaded into the car and I headed home. I also bought some more floor cleaner for our basement and I was hoping to get a lot of things checked off my list tonight. So first things first. My plan was to get the mulch out of the car and get it all laid tonight. Yea, that’s not going to happen. I started to carry the bags to the area that I needed them, and man oh man it was hot and humid! I could almost feel the grass under my feet grow as I was walking back and forth. At one point I was sweating so bad ( I know, not the most attractive thing!) that it was literally dripping off my face. Well, to my defense, I wanted to get this project done within about 15 minutes and I was almost running with the mulch bags. But when the sweat was so bad that it started to blind me, that was when the trouble began. I had to close my eyes because the sweat was burning so bad and I was literally blindly walking across the yard to get to the car. I would have used my shirt that I was wearing, but to be honest it wasn’t really the best idea at the time. So I knew if I could just get to the car, I had a towel put down under the mulch that I could use. I was so glad that no one went by… well I don’t think anyone went by anyway… because I think I probably looked pretty bad. My eyes were closed and my hands were out in front of me. Now how stupid is that? Like I’m going to run into something in the middle of a farm yard or something. Well,  I finally made it to the car and once I wiped my face down, I was able to see again. And to top it off, I still didn’t have enough mulch to finish the job! So back to the store for the third time to get some more mulch tomorrow.

We really need to get Daryl's truck fixed!

We really need to get Daryl’s truck fixed!

But Daryl had better luck. He was able to get out in the field and get the hay raked. He said that it wasn’t the best hay now, but it also wasn’t the worst hay either. That’s good news because it really had got a lot of rain on it since it was cut. I spent the rest of the night cleaning the basement and sanitizing it. It smells pretty good right now. It smells kind of Fabreezy. If you have a farm basement (aka:cellar) you know that they can smell kind of funky sometimes, and especially with all the rain that we’ve been having. So scrubbing the basement got checked off the list.  I also was able to get the outside siding washed on the house and a couple of other things done tonight. It felt pretty good to get some things actually accomplished. Now I’m hoping that tomorrow will be also as productive.

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Raining again on Tuesday

Are you sick of me talking about rain yet? Well, there isn’t much else to talk about. There wasn’t that much of a chance of rain today, but even with the slightest amount it seems like we can get another good soaking. I was hoping after work today that I could possibly mow. Yea, that wasn’t going to happen. I hardly got my shoes off and then it seemed like the sky just opened up.DSCN6846 But luckily after a couple of hours it actually cleared up for the night. Now it’s pretty humid, but at least it’s not raining. I snapped a picture of the flowers that I still need to set out some time this week. It’s pretty bad when they’re blooming in the containers isn’t it? DSCN6849Well, at least I know that they’ll be all ready to look nice once they’re actually in the ground. I want to put them under the windmill, but it’s just way too wet there yet. I still have faith that I’m going to get this done!  I also found Lucky. I was kind of worried because we’ve been getting some pretty nice strawberries lately, and he just loves to sneak into the garden to get them. When I did find him, he was checking out the garden.

DSCN6853aToo funny! But maybe he was thinking that the garden was too wet to bother about the strawberriesDSCN6850At the end of the night, Daryl was able to work on the rake with pretty decent weather. If you remember he cut hay a couple of days ago, and hasn’t been able to get back into the field since. He’s hoping that he’ll be able to rake it up on Wednesday and then again on Thursday, so maybe it can be baled on Friday. I guess we can keep our fingers crossed.

Working on the rake tonight

Working on the rake tonight

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The Crossroads for Pepper, strawberries, eggs, skunks, and storms

Everything was going pretty good with this little barn kitty and I kind of started to even like him more. He is really such a bother though and seriously spending lunch to come home just to bottle feed him really wouldn’t be my first choice on how to spend an hour. But the last 24 hours he got kind of sick. He was having such a nose thing going on and when he tried to meow he couldn’t. He had some kind of laryngitis and his mouth would open but no noise came out.  Kind of pathetic. Well, it was time to make a decision. Should I let nature takes it course or take him to the vet? I was definitely at the crossroads of his little life. On one side I thought that he’s so puny and when he’s outside the dog just literally drags him around – it’s really just a matter of time. But then on the other side I could just see his little face when he was trying to drink his bottle and had no appetite and could hardly breath. After sitting at work for about 2 hours I caved in. I called the local vet’s office and made an appointment. So on my lunch hour I race home and bring Pepper to the vet. They said that he’s awful small for his age and I said that I knew that. When I asked if they ever seen a little kitty get some weird sinus stuff and they said all the time. So by the time I left the office, Pepper had got a shot, he also got sent home with other medicine that he needs twice a day, and then prescription food. Sounds like a lot for a little barn kitty doesn’t it? Well, now I’m committed. So he needed a bath. If that vet thought that he looked kind of scrawny when she saw him, she should have seen him wet! Yikes!

Pepper's first bath

Pepper’s first bath

But now everything is going much better and I’m wondering what I’m going to do with him now. He can literally jump out of the tote that he’s been living in and he’s too small to just be let outside. The only thing that he’s got going for him is that he’s pretty darn cute. At the supper table both Daryl and William just couldn’t believe that I took him to the vet and after what I KNOW was a really mean look that I gave both of them, the subject was dropped. I guess I must really have that mean look down.

William also picked the first batch of strawberries tonight. DSCN6834aI’m a little concerned because normally Lucky has them all cleaned out, and I’m thinking that I better go and make sure that the peacock is OK. But once the strawberries were washed and sliced, they got mixed in with some vanilla ice cream, topped with whipped topping, and chocolate shaved on it. Life doesn’t get any better than this.

Good nighttime treat

Good nighttime treat

Now I just wish I could get in the rest of the garden with all the rain we’ve been having, but it’s next to impossible.

Daryl had picked eggs yesterday and did you ever look at something and laugh and think that it’s really kind of funny? Well that’s what Daryl and I did when we looked at how many eggs we didn’t pick these last couple of days.

Do you think it might just be too many eggs?

Do you think it might just be too many eggs?

I don’t know why we just didn’t go out and pick them, but when Daryl actually took a 5 gallon pail and did do it, Wow! He said it looked like one of those cartoons where the eggs just keep going and going towards the sky. Too funny! So we laughed about how many there was and was wondering what we were going to to with them. But we laughed way too soon. Last night when we were in the house, all of a sudden I heard Reno our dog give a little yelp out and I went to investigate. Yea, it didn’t take too long and even though all the windows were shut in the house I knew that he found.. or maybe the skunk found him. When I opened the door for just a second, I could see Reno walking around with her mouth open and trying to cough. It was a really good sign that she grabbed the skunk from behind and when it got set down – it sprayed her in her mouth. This is a really bad thing for a dog and I think they only do it once. One dog that we had was walking around the yard holding a skunk in his mouth by the tail and then he let the back legs touch the ground and WHAM! Into the mouth the skunk sprayed. Now that time the dog literally had foam coming out of his mouth and he looked at us like it was our fault. It might have been just a little bit our fault that time because we did tell him to put the skunk down 🙂 OK, back to our dog. So what it looked like was a skunk was nearby and saw the pail of eggs and must have thought Jackpot!  I don’t know if it grabbed the eggs with it’s mouth or what, but there was one cracked egg on the ground by the sidewalk eaten and another egg close by. So tonight Daryl took the whole pail of eggs and said that he was going to get rid of them. I never found out just what he did with them, but he put them in the car and drove off. And to be honest, some things are better left unknown right? Now we just have to get rid of the skunk smell by the house before the Kuehner reunion at the farm this weekend. So finally when things were what we thought settling down for the night and we were trying to watch a little TV before we all went to bed, it started to lightning. And not just a little bit here and a little bit there – I mean it was wicked! The electricity blinked on and off and then the satellite went off for our TV. So the only thing left to do was to watch the storm come in. You couldn’t really see any of the clouds until it lightning because by now it was around 10:00 pm and pretty dark outside. But when the sky was lit up you could really see the storm coming through. I thought to myself that it’s a good thing that most of the storms happen at night because those clouds really looked bad.storms But finally around 11:00 it did die down and as I was walking upstairs to go to bed I thought to myself, that it’s just another night on the farm. From barn kitties, strawberries, eggs, skunks, and storms – you just never know what’s going to happen.

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