Apples… Apples.. Apples !!!

Posted on August 24, 2018 by farm2011

Well in case you were wondering, we have apples this year! 

I knew that we were going to have quite a few by how many blossoms were on the trees early on this spring, but normally the blossoms blow off and you are only left with the amount of blossoms soon to be apples on what the tree can handle.

Not this year.

We have so many apples that some of the branches are literally laying on the ground. It’s unbelievable! These trees were planted 34 years ago and they never produced this many! Now I don’t know if it’s because last year that we’ve lost some of the trees in our yard and it made more sunshine, or if the trees that fell down that literally landed on the apple trees knocked some sense into them – but whatever the case, we’ve got apples.

So we’ve picked quite a few and have given most of them awayBut the one red delicious tree seemed to drop a lot of the apples before we could get them all picked. So with the apples on the ground we’ve gotten 2 bucket loads picked up already and are expecting a couple more buckets of the wind fall apples before all this is over.

But it’s better than not having any apples right? And our only problem now if to figure out just how to get the ones on the top. We’ve used the tractor and bucket and it only goes so high and I can only reach so far!  

And no ones is liking our apples trees more this year than our dogs on the hot summer days! They think it’s their own little private oasis. The only thing is that they don’t like to get hit in the head very much when the apples are falling! But so far, they’ve been taking the risk. 

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Meet Marty

Posted on July 14, 2018 by farm2011

This morning we had a great surprise! It was our first calf of the season with Luther. Now to be honest I wasn’t just so sure how Luther the bull was going to work out. I mean he was about half the size of Ed the bull and looked just pretty darn young. 

Well, my predictions couldn’t have been any more wrong! Luther turned out to be a stud! Yup! A stud!  The earliest that we could have even had a calf was in mid July and that would mean that Luther would have to make ‘friends’ with one of our cows on the day that we brought him home  – and guess what ? That’s exactly what must have happened. He found a friend in Lucy. 

Lucy had this huge calf this morning and with it being her first calf we were just lucky she didn’t have any troubles delivering him. He was so big that Daryl was worried that maybe he was going to get into trouble because he wasn’t walking well and seemed just a little off. 

But it took only a couple of days and just like that Marty is a wild thing! He runs to the cows and then he runs out to the pasture, and then he runs back to the cows again.  Daryl even said the other day that the cows were coming home to get fed and Luther the bull was out in front of the pack leading the crew but then around the side of him Marty showed up and beat them all to the cow yard. Just too funny! 

So now Scarlet is starting to bag up and that’s also good. Since Bandit died last year she honestly hasn’t been the same since. I know it sounds crazy, but she always seems just a little sad and stays away from the cows and us. Let’s hope she has a new baby soon and feels better. 

In the meantime, we’re just enjoying Marty for now. Well when we can get close to him that is! 

Posted in Farm animals, Farming | 4 Comments

Perfect Day!

Posted on July 7, 2018 by farm2011

Today was one of those days when you just know it’s going to be great! I mean you get up almost with a smile on your face. OK, I said almost .. 

But I had a lot that I wanted to get done so I was up and at ’em early getting things organized. After a couple of different bags were packed and the kayak was in the back of the truck – off I went. 

First things first. I haven’t been running lately but wanted to at least get some practice in so I headed to a neighboring town early in the morning for their 5k. I had no clue what the route was, but it was too late. I had already paid and my little iPod was all juiced up for the day. Now this 5k had us starting out running in taller grass and I’m not kidding you it wasn’t pretty. I only made it around the first tree and thought to myself that this wasn’t such a good idea and my early morning smile wasn’t hanging around anymore. But it didn’t take long and we were off the grass and I realized that maybe I just wasn’t going to die and the run became a lot more fun. Hard and very warm, but a lot of fun. I was OK with my time (of course I always want it to be better!) and then got back in my truck and met some friends for brunch in another town. 

After our bellies were full we headed out on the water. Gorgeous day for kayaking and with the river up we were worried that we were going to get done with our 3 hour float in around two hours. Well I think it took around 4 1/2 hours! Too funny!! When we say we don’t paddle, it’s really true 🙂 

With the water up, there are a couple of small waterfalls that we saw along the way

Next was to come home and get cleaned up because we were taking the Chevelle out for a late supper at the Barrel Drive In. This is a restaurant that you drive your car up and then you turn your lights on so they know you’re there. Well I’m guessing that with how loud the Chevelle sounds, they seemed to know when we pulled up. 

Finally the night ended stopping in for a few refreshments downtown and visiting with some friends that we met up with. 

Yup, it was a busy day – but a really fun day! 

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Dog Spa Day

Posted on July 6, 2018 by farm2011

It’s that time of the year again when the dogs have a Spa Day at our local vet office. 

Now when you think of a Spa Day you would think that the dogs would be excited – but I’m seriously not holding my breath. 

This year we decided to split the dogs up and go on different days. Reno was up first and that wasn’t an accident by any means. Reno is so mild mannered, and Kaiser… well Kaiser has his own personality when it’s Spa Day. Just to give you an idea how he acts, last year I got a call while at work to see if they could put him under when they were brushing him. Of course I said that I didn’t think that was a good idea and somehow they all got through it. 

So this year Reno went first and she loved it! She is always a lovey kind of a dog and after Spa Day it usually kicks it up a notch. You can’t walk through the farm yard without her literally right beside you and touching you when you stop. Below is the road trip back home in the truck.  Yup, she had to sit so close and touch me all the way home!

Well now it’s Kaiser’s turn and he got dropped off before work a couple of days later. I said that I’ll call early in the morning to see how it was going and when I said that the receptionist looked at me with the oddest look. Now I wasn’t sure if she was nervous or thought I was super protective of our dogs. Whatever the case, when I called they said that he was doing just great. I said that I was calling about ‘Kaiser’ and they said that they knew that and everything was going well. 

Finally work was over and I was excited to head back to the Vets to pick him up. I wasn’t sure just what I would find when I got there,  and when I saw him I seriously almost died! 

There was dogs barking and barking and I figured that one of those was going to be ours. But I couldn’t be more wrong. 

When Kaiser came out from the back and turned the corner – he flung his hair just like Fabio and I would have sworn he was moving in slow motion as he stopped in the middle of the room! He didn’t even acknowledge me and just looked around swinging his hair – it was hilarious! I paid the bill and I was wondering how he was going to act when we walked outside to the truck. 

When went to the vet in the morning he was literally shaking and didn’t need to be pulled – but close. And now? Well he was almost prancing when he was walking. You know how the show horses walk around the ring at the show? Well that’s what he was doing. And all the time just whooshing his hair around. He knew he looked and felt pretty darn cool! 

 

 

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Happy July 4th!

Posted on July 4, 2018 by farm2011

Well if you’ve read this post in the past few years you know that on the 4th of July,  I love to follow the tradition that my Mom & Dad did and take a picture of the Daryl in the corn field to see how tall and (hopefully) how good it looks! 

So of course Daryl knows that the request is probably coming, so he’s ready when I ask . Yup, I love to keep the tradition going and both the corn and Daryl are looking good! 

And when we baled hay the other day I took a quick picture of the small cemetery by our field. It just seemed an appropriate picture for today.

 

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You just never know what you’ll see when you’re on a bicycle

Posted on July 2, 2018 by farm2011

Daryl and I decided to get our bikes out of storage and go for a ride. I mean it was a perfect day to get out and get some fresh air. 

So we pumped up our tires, then we found our bike shoes – helmets – gloves – shirts – shorts – sunglasses – and water bottles, and out the door we go! 

Because we haven’t rode at all this year yet, I wanted to go on a ride that was a little easier to start with. So that’s why we decided to do the bike trail in a nearby town by us.

It started out pretty uneventful. All we saw was a whole lot of rabbits and a couple deer strolling by. But then on the way back we came around the corner and found this! Yup, a baby calf. Now you know that you’re riding a rural bike trail when you come across a calf! 

As we got closer we noticed that this little guy had a case of pink eye. OK now that’s a game changer! Pink eye is very contagious and it wasn’t necessarily on my agenda for the summer to have it either. Well we tried to coax him back down the gravel road where he obviously came from, but he wasn’t going to go easily. So we tried to use our bikes to gently guide him and guess what? That didn’t work so well either. I thought to myself when we were using our bikes that if someone saw us doing this I’m sure they were thinking we were scared of the calf. Well I guess we were kind of scared of the calf  – it was just that we were scared of picking up the pink eye from the calf! Seriously at this point I really didn’t care what anyone thought 🙂 

Well it turned out that we were right beside my nieces farm and with the help of her brother (my nephew) we ended up putting this calf on a trailer and hauling him back to the neighbors where he belonged. 

Then just as we thought we’ve seen about everything, a skunk waddled out in front of us. I guess you just never know what you’ll see when your out on your bike do you?

Posted in Riding bikes | 2 Comments

Well Hellooooo!!!

Posted on July 1, 2018 by farm2011

Now I’m sure you’re wondering just what in the world have I been doing this past month? 

I mean I haven’t been making any soap and obviously not updating this Blog!

Well to be honest, I just wanted to take a month off and June for me seemed like the best month. I haven’t forgot about you, it’s just that June is so jam packed that doing other things seemed a little bit out of reach. 

The month starts out with the crops being planted which was a challenge because the Spring has been a very wet one for sure! 

We’ve been having some ungodly storms roll through and I just keep holding my breath that the trees all stay in the ground and not end up on our house! The time that this picture below was taken was early afternoon and there is no way it should have been that dark! Kinda scary right? With the storms, they’ve also been bringing inches of rain all at a time. Once the crops were up, Daryl had a busy trying to keep the corn stalks off of them so they don’t suffocate. And after a couple of long hours in the field, he has most of the corn stalks and dirt taken the crops. 

And as for my soap? Well I had a show in the first week of June and it went very well again. I’m truly humble for all my soap customers that buy from me and I am looking forward to seeing what new scents that I’ll find for the fall. 

I just need to get going again for those fall shows because they will come up fast. I can tell that I haven’t made any soap lately because even I can smell the soap being stored in the laundry room when I’m in the house! 

We also have our towns annual Irish Festival in June, and with around 400 people in our town everyone has to pitch in to make it successful. It’s a 3 days festival and with this being the 6th year that our town has done it, everyone pretty much knows how it works and went very smoothly. Check out these good looking kids that were around to also help. They were not only around to pitch in where needed with the Irish Fest, but also getting the farm ready for the Kuehner Fun Day. 

With both boys home we were able to enjoy Father’s day as a family. Because it fell on the same weekend as the towns Irish Fest, it seemed to be a little rushed this year.

I ran in two 5k’s this past month.  Now that I think of it, I’m kind of wondering just what in the world I was thinking? For the first race I literally hadn’t ran at all but I figured I’d give it a try. Good thing for me I didn’t just drop over and to be honest I wasn’t that unhappy with my time – shock!  Then the second run was one week later and I made a promise to myself that I was going to run at least 1/2 of the week to prepare. Yeah, I broke that promise and hadn’t had a chance to fit any running into my schedule. But again, not the worst time for a 5k for someone who only ran once before that race. I’m hoping to fit in a couple more 5k’s yet this summer so that I can actually get some run time in. 

We went to a Prince Tribute concert this month and they were pretty good! It was just fun to head out for a date night 🙂 

And what is June without having the annual Kuehner Fun Day at the farm? The farm was filled with people playing games and having just a great time with perfect weather that we had that day. No rain,  and even though it was overcast for most of the afternoon, that really helped to keep the heat down but still kept it warm enough for a water ballon fight! And not that I’m so hung up on weather, but when you’re planning for around 50 + people at your farm, you do watch the weather pretty darn close!

There seems to be kids all over the farm which is just perfect! You just never know where you’ll find kids on that day and when I heard the chickens all worked up I saw these boys in the chicken coop catching chickens. They said that they almost got one, and even found some eggs! Now I don’t know if the eggs were there before or after they started to catch the chickens. I just smiled and then I knew why I saw some of the other chickens hiding out by the other barn that afternoon.

After all the games were played and the 2018 Kuehner Champion was named, the day ended with the annual hay ride. After the ride we get together one more time for supper with the warm-ups from dinner and then everyone heads back home until the next year.   The month ended for Daryl and I with a concert in Minneapolis that we had booked back in December 2017. It was an outside concert at the ball field – Jimmy Buffett was the opener with the Eagles playing as the main band. We went with my brother and sister in law and had a totally fantastic time!

So that’s the 10 cent tour of our June. There is always lots of stuff going on and I am looking forward to see what the rest of the summer will bring! 

 

 

Posted in Community, Family, Farm animals, Farming, Roadhouse | Comments Off on Well Hellooooo!!!

My scrapbook room

Posted on May 18, 2018 by farm2011

It seems like I haven’t had much time to get into my scrapbook room lately, but I did have a chance to make two important cards.

One was a birthday card

And one was an Anniversary card

I’m hoping to get into the room more this summer – I really love making cards!

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Anniversary month

Posted on May 16, 2018 by farm2011

Now normally you only have an Anniversary day – but for us, well we’re having an Anniversary Month. S C O R E ! 

What we’ve found out that as your kids get older, your birthday and anniversary gifts change too. So this year for our Anniversary, the kids gave us a concert package. We had gotten everything from the hotel night stay to the concert tickets. And even if it was during the week, I’m telling you that this was even the best day. I felt like we were escaping our jobs and responsibilities and heading out for the night. 

So of course we both worked today and beat it home to change clothes and pack the car. We were going to St. Paul and even though we’ve been to the cities quite often, we don’t normally go into St. Paul very often or honestly at all. 

With the phone charged and the directions in my phone, we were on the road. How fun is this going to be! 

We found our hotel with no problems and when we talked to the person checking us in we mentioned that it was our Anniversary. Well of course he couldn’t believe that we were married 35 years and said we were role models. OK, not buying that one but kinda funny right? So he upgraded us and when we walked into our room we looked at each other and thought SCORE! The room was absolutely HUGE! The room was a suite and named for someone. All we knew is that it was very large. It had a front sitting area with a couple of couches with a wet bar and TV area. And with the back section was even larger!

Now to get to the concert with our floor tickets. Yup, what great kids we have! The seats were perfect and we saw TRAIN and Hall & Oats. Like I said the seats were great and we could see the band members really well and it was just TONS of fun! 

Because the concert hall was literally 1/2 block from our hotel, after the concert we walked to a local Club to enjoy some more live music. 

We finally called it a night and because it was a Wednesday, and we knew that we were going to  both go to work tomorrow afternoon after we get home. 

Now to say we had a good time is an understatement. We had a just a Great Time! Thanks Kids! 

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Happy Cows!

Posted on May 15, 2018 by farm2011

You know how you feel when it seems like life is just treating you right and everything is going your way? Well I think that’s how our cows feel when we leave them out on the pasture in the Spring! 

See for the winter months their days are spent in the cow yard and fed hay and corn. Not a bad gig but still not where they really want to be. 

So when the snow finally melts and there is a hint of Spring in the air – you can bet that the cows just can’t hardly wait to get out into the pasture and literally kick up their heals! 

Since we’re almost out of hay from last year, the decision was to let them out on the grass. And they didn’t waste anytime getting their feet planted firmly in the pasture to get some their bellies full of fresh grass. 

Now when I say that they want to kick up their heals, well that’s exactly what they do! It’s like clock work. At first they’ll eat for a few minutes, but then it’s either when they realize that they’ve been freed from the cow yard or they’re just happy that it’s Spring (who knows?) they’ll start running and then their back legs will start kicking up in the air. Seriously it looks like the bulls when the cowboys are trying to ride them! It’s tons of fun to watch the cows and I’m so glad that I was home when they were left out this year! 

Now when I went to check out Scarlet I’m not sure what this was all about.When Scarlet got out, she took her face and rolled it and rolled it in the dirt. Kinda weird right? But ever since she’s lost Bandit she’s never been herself. I’m hoping that she’ll have a calf this summer and then she’ll be back to normal again. But I know that being out in the pasture is making her much happier. And like they say, ‘Happy Cow, Happy Farmer’ OK maybe they don’t say that, but kind of catchy right?   🙂 

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