Truely.......

I have not forgotten about this blog! I have just been overwhelmed with life events for the past couple of weeks.

Seth and I had a marvelous time at the 4-H National Shooting Sports Invitational but it is taking me a bit longer to get things somewhat back to normal. I came home to a garden in full swing, baseball games, temperatures near 100 degrees and my mother holding down the fort for me.

I have to make a trip to Tulsa to get my Mom tot he airport tomorrow and then...... I have more grren beans to can!!

I promise to post a full post with pictures in the next few days.......

Can't Take the Heat......

Get out of the kitchen! That old saying has a new meaning for me. The outside temperatures have already passed the point of being hot. In order for Charlie to sleep comfortably during the day (since he works the night shift), we have already turned the air conditioner on for this year. It just about kills me to hear it kick on and we keep the thermostat above 80 degrees...... that is all the comfort I am willing to give him. If it is too cool, it makes it very difficult for the rest of us to work outside, come inside for a bit and then go back outside to do more work.

One of my rules of the house is that once the AC is turned on, the clothes dryer goes off. There is no way that I am paying for the AC to cool down a house we are deliberately heating up.....A good portion of our day is spent hauling clothes back and forth to be line dried. Cooking in the kitchen is just about as bad. The stove that came with this house has almost ZERO insulation and it is pretty unbearable to use the oven. I have been using the crock pots quite a bit but you just can't bake cookies in one of those......

Luckily, I still have my old stove. It was a pretty pricey item when I bought it but it is set to run on natural gas. This house uses propane and there is some sort of valve that has to be changed out to make it work. After nearly two years, I am about to get my "good" stove hooked up. It has been stored at the barn and the guys brought it over for me to clean up. As soon as I get that done, I am hauling it into town for a repairman to change the valves. It has much more insulation and I am hoping it will make cooking more bearable.

Earlier today, I heard the sound of a large tractor nearby and went to investigate. Our Farmer/Neighbor was no till planting soybeans in to the wheat stubble!! Yippee!!! Now we need a little rain to get those little guys to germinate.

Time to call my hay guy and begin ordering cow feed for next winter...... seems like we just got done feeding out the last of it!! We are so pleased at how well our pastures have recovered from the drought last year. As a precaution, we are undergrazing it and it looks like it has paid off. We are making plans to graze a portion of it "intensely" and then let it rest and grow. We are hoping that will give us "standing hay"stockpiled for winter and reduce the number of bales we have to feed.

After replacing the starter on Hammer twice, Neil was able to get a little weed mowing done in the pastures. Then the front tires began to take turns going flat...... He finally reached the point of not being able to repair them any more. We have two new tires and a new rim on order for this week.

My green beans are coming in! I have a big batch cooked up for meals but it looks like I will officially begin the canning season tomorrow. Since it will take a few days to get the new stove installed in the kitchen, I will be doing most of the actual work with the pressure canner over in the barn kitchen. I am planning to do the prep work, and getting the beans in the hot jars at the house and hauling it over to use the stove over there.

All this is going on while Seth and I are getting ready for his trip this weekend. I am trying to trim down the chores as much as possible so that crew left at home will not have such a hard time. My mom will be flying in on Friday to act as supervisor.

One of those chores I am eliminating is taking care of this guy......

Remember him? He has just about tripled in size since he arrived but unfortunately, his brain function has not..... This is the last of the bottle babies for this year. His owner has agreed to take him back a bit early since I will be gone for a week.

My friend will be taking another round of chemo on Wednesday and we really do not believe that she will be any where near able to take care of her goats by the weekend. Another friend has agreed to take those two girls and milk them until I get back.

Giving Me The Eye!

This crazy milk cow!

I took this picture of her this afternoon while she was standing in her stanchion eating during milking. Please notice the rather intent way that she is looking at me........

When I milk her, I not only leave her head gate open, but I also leave the large barn door wide open. It gives us light, air and an occasional breeze. This also means that the evening/afternoon sun is glaring right on us. It is so bright that I wear my sunglasses while I am sitting down there with the machine.

Queen Holly does not like my sunglasses!! She spends most of the time in the barn using her tail to try and knock them off of my face. If I push them up on top of my head, she likes it even less and very vigorously slaps at them! I can take them off and she settles right down. Goofy thing!!

Feels Like Summer

I don't mean just by the weather. It is very warm these days but the flow of my days seem alot like summer. The road is very busy with grain trucks hauling the wheat harvest to town. I just came in from chores and it is almost dark. I can see the lights from the combines still at work across the fields. My neighbor was raking hay and just stopped for the night at about the same time that I did......

The corn across the road is tall and tasseled out...... very early.  When I wander out to check cows, I am able to pick enough black berries to call it breakfast-on-the-go.

This is a heifer I call "Buffy"-- because when she was a baby she was very ugly and resembled a buffalo. She has improved with puberty. This evening she was cooling off in the pond.

This little bantam hen has made herself a nest in the pink horse bucket. We found her earlier this week and I moved it to a safer pen. I have no idea if or when she might hatch out her chicks......

These are my boarders. One of them has CAE so I keep them totally separate from my herd and they have to be hand milked. Normally, they live in a small town and they seem to be really enjoying this country life with lots of grazing...... My friend is improving but she is still weak from the chemo. She is scheduled for her next round on Wednesday. I am afraid that it is going to be quite some time before she is able to have them back home......

As you can see, the new starter worked for Hammer. Neil has begun to mow the weediest parts of our pasture. It is very slow going because the brush hog is really just a bit too big for this tractor and the pasture is FULL of stumps. We have tried to walk over it and mark them but there are still a few surprises in the tall grass and weeds. Neil say that at this rate, we should have the whole pastured mowed in about a year.......


Seth has been practicing for his muzzle loader competition and getting very discouraged. The more he practiced, the worse he shot. We finally decided that he has just worn the rifling out of the barrel of his favorite gun. It is probably 25 years old and well used before we bought it. Seth has calculated that he has probably shot over 1500 rounds out of it in the last two years.  Charlie used it before him. We made a trip to the local hunting shop just to see if they might have one..... usually they don't. Very few people use a traditional muzzle loader anymore. Imagine our surprise when the owner grinned and pulled out a beautiful rifle from the back room....... Needless to say, we brought it home and Seth is a very happy young man.......

 

Garden Goodies

I am pretty darn proud of my root crops..... probably because I have never had very much luck growing either of these. Picked a big handful of green beans and three jalepeno peppers, too.

Our wheat averaged 52 bushels to the acre. Considering how late it was planted, we are thrilled! The bad news is that we have had a little rain almost every day since it was combined. That means that we will not be baling any of the stubble for wheat straw. It has already begun to mold. Another farmer has promised to try and get his wheat straw baled so that we can get about 200 bales. I need this for animal bedding and to mulch the garden. In a pinch or a cold storm, livestock will eat it, too.

Our cattle are looking amazing. Even the old cows are slick and fat. I am watching for a few calves to be born in June. We are all bouncing idea around about cross fencing and rotational grazing.

The poor tractor, Hammer, has finally just stopped. Tapping on the starter will not convince it to crank. We bought a new (rebuilt) starter that took two days to arrive. With great anticipation, Neil and Adam put it on and....... absolutely nothing! After much detective work, help from a neighbor and several phone calls to other mechanic types, they determined that the new starter has a wire short. Back to the parts store and now we are waiting for another one to arrive on Wednesday.

The boys are home and we are almost back to our routine!

Mama Time

My "little guys" are both gone off for a few days to 4-H camps. Charlie is working so he is asleep during the day. This is the second day that I have been on my own........ and it has been wonderful! I have gotten lots of little things done--- none of it house work!!

Morning chores take the longest and I am pleased to say that I can do them all by myself in just a bit under 2 hours. Neil helps me with the evening chores so it takes even less time.

The big news is that I got those pictures of the wheat field just in the nick of time. Neighbor Farmer combined it all late yesterday afternoon! He got it finished up just before it began to rain.Apparently we had some really strong winds with our rain last night. I totally missed it! This extra work must have worn me out because I slept right through it. When I drove into town this morning, I was amazed by all the downed tree limbs and the acres of corn that had been blown almost flat.

Another bit of good news is that the puppies are finding new homes. The ad came out in the paper yesterday and so far, four of them are gone. That leaves us with 3 females: two black and tan pups and one blue merle. The honest truth is that I am planning on keeping the blue merle until the very last moment. I don't NEED another dog but if one has to stay, I at least want it to be the one that I like the best.

These are the two remaining girls. It took about 20 shots to get a good picture of them because they will not stay still and they will not stay at a distance...... they want to be up close and chewing on my shoes. 

The boys will be back late Friday afternoon and I really hope that they are having a great time. If it dries out enough, another neighbor is going to bale up our wheat straw on halves. We have to get it done pretty quickly because our Neighbor Farmer is going to plant a late crop of soybeans in this field. It should all come together for the straw bales to need to be picked up and moved to the barn about the time the guys get home.....Hoping for somewhere around 200 square bales. I stopped in town this morning and bought us each a new pair of work gloves!

Amazing Bounty

Some days, I just have to sit and wonder about just how blessed I am...... Today is one of those days.

Our borrowed bull is going home in just a few days. There are two girls that we were hoping would come in to season and be bred before he left. It was a long shot that they would recover from calving and begin cycling again while he was here. Yesterday, Wilma was in heat and the bull is hanging out with Cornbread this morning as if she is coming in.......  By all outward appearances, this young bull has done an outstanding job for us. This means that we can actually wait a bit longer before we have to spend the scarce money on a new bull.

There are 7 gas/oil rigs on our property and one drilled but capped oil well. The mineral rights were leased out long before we bought this place but since we do own the rights, we get a percentage of the revenue they bring in------ providing they are running. In the last two years, only one well has been operational for any length of time. That well was not maintained and pumped very little and barely earned anything. Eventually, they just shut it off. For the last six months, I have prayed almost daily that they would be moved to get them all going again. It is an eyesore with all the pipes pulled and weeds growing up around them. It is difficult to clean up and mow around them and it was just insulting to have to put up with the mess and not get a penny for it!   

Just before we left for Yellowstone, a crew showed up and began working on the rigs.....

As of yesterday afternoon, six out of seven rigs were pumping!! Our percentage is incredibly small and we certainly will never get anywhere near rich but it is not so insulting to have these things on the pastures now.

Kansas is world famous for raising wheat and harvest has begun.

This is our wheat field. Our neighbor farms it for us. We split some of the expenses and get a share of it. We have been watching it all winter and wondering how things were going to work out after last year's drought. Our wheat was planted just a bit late but looks marvelous!

Our friends to the south of us have already started combining but ours will need just a few more days to get dry enough. The word is that Kansas is having a bumper crop of wheat. One friend has averaged over 65 bushels to the acre----- HOLY COW! That is about 30 bushels per acre above normal!! These numbers are matching up with other reports from across the region. Be still my heart......

Then there is the garden......

This morning I was able to spend some time in my happy place with out any troubles from my allergies --- thank goodness!

There are lots of tomatoes out there as well as baby green beans. I harvested broccoli, cabbage, beets and a couple of carrots. I pulled up and composted worm riddled broccoli plants and bolting lettuce. Planning to plant more squash to try again.....

I finally just could not bear it any longer and broke down and bought two of the dwarf cherry trees at the feed store..... I could not stand to see them getting hotter and hotter while sitting there in those black 3 gallon pots..... I HAD to rescue them! Seth and I added them to the orchard yesterday. I HAVE to quit with the fruit trees...... we now have three peaches, six or seven apple trees, a plum, a pear. two pecans and now two cherry trees. Add to that the eight blueberry bushes, four grape vines, a fig, elderberries, strawberries and black berries. The boys complain that mowing the yard is an obstacle course.
The gourds, cucumbers, peas, and Lima beans are all up and really growing. Now if we could just get a little rain...... not enough to slow down wheat harvest but just give the garden a bit of a drink.


All my critters are hale, hearty, growing and producing. My children and busy and happy. I have many friends and live in a safe and wonderful place.

I am reflecting on all of this because I am helping a friend who is not so fortunate. She is battleing cancer--again. The chemotherapy is horrendous and she has been very ill. I brought her two milk goats home with me to take care of for her until she is feeling better. It is impossible for her to milk them right now. It is the least that I can do...... She is fiercely independent and it breaks my heart to see her struggle so.