Life on the farm

Well it’s that time of the year again – Rock Picking. After work when Daryl came home, he was wondering if I could help pick up some rock just with the bucket on the tractor. He wanted to get the waterways planted yet tonight, so I thought that it sounded like a good idea. I went on a stress eating binge when I got home, so the thought of trying to redeem myself with some exercise was a little promising. And it’s been a whole year since we picked rock, so the idea sounded good and that was the plan. At first when you start picking rock you think to yourself, man this really feels good. Getting fresh air and some exercise, it’s not so bad. But after awhile you start wondering to yourself, where in the WORLD did these rocks all come from? But it didn’t take too long, and I even talked Daryl into doing a little more than we were planning so we could get the waterways all done. During the time we were picking rock, we had to dump a couple of the bucket loads because the bucket was getting pretty full and we for sure didn’t want to get stuck out in the field. But at the end of the night, it was a good job done and the newness of the spring rock picking is already over for me. Hummm… when were the boys coming home again?

This morning started by taking back the tiller to the hardware store. And wouldn’t you just know it that when they unloaded it – a pile of mud fell out from under it. Just not cool. It’s supposed to be clean when you bring it back, and I can’t believe that I didn’t get it all when I cleaned it last night. How embarrassing! Especially since I’m going to have to go back and rent it again soon.

So today was the day to get organized. To be honest, I haven’t got into any much of a routine lately, and it was just about time to start. So out came a trusty notepad and I took the time to get my list ready. I had a lot of things on it, and I knew that I might not get it all done, but I was going to try. The morning started out good. I got a bunch of laundry done and hung out for the first time this spring on the line.

First laundry of the spring outside

Sometimes in the spring it’s not the best idea to hang clothes out because there are other ‘odors’ in the air from farmers cleaning out their pens. So you really have to watch out for that otherwise you might be doing the same laundry twice. And I’ve had to do that before and it’s very productive.  But today was a good day and I enjoyed digging out the wash line for the clothes. I also got the downstairs cleaned and then I started to work on our clothes closet. This is a very yucky job in my book, but it’s something that needed to get done. I have to change out the winter to summer clothes because the closet isn’t big enough to hold all the seasons. Well, I was just starting into it when I thought to myself, ‘Let’s change it up a bit’. So I completely rearranged and reorganized the whole thing. For awhile it looked like a bomb went off in the room because I literally took everything out from the closet, I had the spring/summer stuff all over the bed,  and then I took out the shelving out. Now I’m really pretty good at sorting out my clothes, so I didn’t have too much for the good will pile, so that was good. What I ended up doing was moving all of Daryl’s clothes to a new spot in the closet and even though it wasn’t like I knocked down walls or anything – but I thought the change was almost as dramatic! For 30 years he’s been the guy who’s clothes is always on the bottom, but now he’s in a whole new spot along with a new spot for his dress clothes. And I must say – after working on it for over 3 hours, it looked fantastic! When I asked Daryl if he noticed that his clothes were moved, guess what he said? He said…. yea.   I guess it’s not as big of a deal as I thought.

So when I was working on the house stuff, Daryl took out the old field cultivator and worked up the ground  by the ditch where we had some water ways put into the field just west of our farm. He wanted to get it seeded down before it started to rain again. I never saw this field cultivator before, and Daryl said he doesn’t use it very much, or hardly at all. But he wanted something small for this job.

Working up the ground by the ditch

And if you remember that he walked the field to mark it for some new hay ground the other day? Well he ended up getting that all worked up and today he spent it seeding oats. I never in the past helped much (or at all) with seeding oats, but today Daryl asked if I could help him get started. OK, now this shouldn’t be too hard right? Well, he started out with the tractor in front of me and I followed him down the road to the field with the truck. It wasn’t long until the drill was filled with both oats, alfalfa, and some grass seed and we were heading down the rows. I was on the tractor and Daryl was checking the drill to make sure that everything was working as it should be. The drill doesn’t get used all that often, and she needs some loving when you first start out. Soon, Daryl was in the driver seat and I was sitting on the tractor fender, hoping that the amount of seed that we had would be enough for the field. And wouldn’t you know it, Daryl got everything done but 1/2 of the last row. He called the seed dealer, but with it being late Saturday night, he was out for the evening. But the dealer gave Daryl the name of his brother, and said that he might come out to his shop and get us a couple of bags to finish. Luck was on our side, and after the rest of the seed was in the drill, it didn’t take Daryl too long until the field was done. We finally ate supper around 9:00 that night, but it was a good and very busy day on the farm.

Working on filling up the drill. Daryl is working with the alfalfa seed in this picture

One bin was for alfalfa and the other was for the oats

Daryl using the drill to seed oats

On Thursday, all day I kept hearing how great everyone’s garden is looking and that their produce is so many inches tall. OK, so my garden is still looking pretty bad, so I decided to call my favorite hardware store to reserve the garden tiller for Friday. They wanted to know which one that I wanted to rent. Well, you know how you always think you’re going to remember something and that there would be no way that you’d forget it? Well, that was the case and I thought for sure that I’d remember which one that I had rented, but no such luck. So I just told them – I want the ‘Big’ one. Yea, go big or go home right? Well, I was feeling kind of smug and sassy thinking that I had it reserved and I’m just sure that I was so lucky that no one else wanted it on Friday after work. Well, Friday morning came and I switched vehicles with Daryl and now I’m driving the truck for the day. I needed it to bring home the tiller after work. So after work, I’m driving to the hardware store, and soon we have it loaded in the back of the truck. I’m driving home, just drinking my Diet Coke and just enjoying the nice sunshine. Perfect weather for working in the garden. I was so ready to get the garden looking good and I was really in the mood to start tilling it up. I got home and Daryl was going in all different directions on the farm, but he was able to help me get the tiller unloaded. He looked at me when he saw the size of it, but he didn’t say too much. We finally got in through the garden gate and turned the blades on. Well, that only lasted for about … 2 minutes. And that might just be a maybe. The ground was so wet I had to stop.  Then I had to spend about 15 minutes trying to get the mud off of it, and then another 10 minutes loading it back on the truck – I decided that it was not a successful day after all. And now tomorrow morning I’ll have to bring it back to the hardware store by 7:30 am and pay them for the rent. Humm… probably shouldn’t have been so sassy huh?

I think Spring is finally here, Yea! The weather finally was warmer than it has been for many months and you can sure tell that everyone is enjoying it! After work I started to work out in the yard. There is a lot to do in the yard, the only good thing about that is that we don’t have too much going on in the farm until June. We’re planning a Kuehner get together at the end of June, so I’ve got some time to get it together. So I started to put out the lawn furniture and then I just couldn’t help to start a bonfire. Some of the chairs that I set out was on the patio, so since I was already there is was a perfect opportunity. When I was checking out the fire pit, I noticed that something was digging in it. Now I don’t know what in the world that was, but I’m pretty sure after the fire that I had, it won’t be a problem anymore.

While I was in the yard, Daryl was working in the cow yard. I heard the skid loader starting and I knew that he wanted to get the yard cleaned out. But when he was doing that, Ed the bull was not happy. He wasn’t happy because the peacocks were screaming again with all the noise of the tractor. But it didn’t take Daryl too long to get it cleaned out and soon he was sitting beside me by me enjoying the fire.

Daryl cleaning out the yard

We ate supper fast and then Daryl wanted to get back out into the field. He wanted to ‘walk the field’. If you never have heard of this before, it means just exactly what it sounds. He wants to change some of the crops, so he walked the field to measure out where he needs to plow up the ground. He put flags in the field to mark out where he should start and stop, so I hope they stay in until he can get out again.

While Daryl was out walking around in the field, I kept looking around the yard and taking notice of everything to get done. The one thing that caught my eye was the old wash sink that I planted flowers in last year. The reason that I noticed it was because last year it was about 4 feet taller! I never thought that it would sink into the ground like it did with the weight of the dirt. So I thought that I would have to take all the dirt out and start over again. Daryl thinks that he can get it pulled up with some chains. Now I really don’t want to wreck this. Even though it’s probably not worth anything much other than scrap metal – I still really like it. I guess I’ll take a closer look at it later this week.

My flower pot that shrunk into the ground

As for tomorrow – I’m picking up the tiller from town and starting on the garden.

So I checked again on my tomatoes in the green house tonight. I’m not sure why I thought that they would miraculously look like they recovered – but when I checked them they still looked bad. They looked really bad and I’m pretty sure that they are dead, what do you think?

What tomatoes?

When Daryl and I were watching the best movie in the whole wide world tonight – The Wizard of Oz, the wind started to pick up. It was such a crazy wind and it just didn’t sound right, so we ran outside to put the car and truck in the shed. It really sounded like it was going to start to hail. But eventually it slowed down and it never did hail, Thank goodness! I talked to our friend who lives in Wisconsin and by 8:00 pm tonight he had over an inch of new snow. OK, I guess as long as it didn’t hail, I’ll take the wind.

I finally got a couple of boxes ready to send to the boys tonight. They are being sent later than I had planned because the last batch of beef jerky turned out so bad that I didn’t want to send them until I made some new stuff. On Sunday my brother stopped in with some meat from their farm and after dehydrating 4 pounds of beef jerky, the boxes can be taped and mailed tomorrow. I wish I would have kept track of how much beef jerky that I’v made so far. I think it would have been a lot!

I was outside checking on the gopher situation the other day and seeing how bad it was going to be this spring, when I could hear something. Now standing in the pasture there are only so many things it could be – but this noise I knew exactly what it was.  What it was was our windmill. It kind of has this certain type of  noise that it makes when it’s windy  and I think it only brings character to it. Some might argue, but hey.. it’s not their windmill. This windmill was one that was on my folk’s farm and it was rescued. I don’t remember much about it’s past history other than I think it had a barn by it and it did pump water in it’s day. There hasn’t been much there for a long time, but when we picked rocks in that field we would once in awhile find some cool half broken piece of a horseshoe or maybe once in awhile some old square nails. My brothers farm the land now where the windmill stood and they are the ones that saved her. They had it taken down and literally put back together again.To say it was in bad shape might not even tell you really how bad it was.  My one brother is a welder and was able to fix it all back up. I LOVE my windmill. Now between Daryl and I we always talk about loving something or if you like it. Well, I LOVE it! We had to hire someone with a crane to set it up and it’s got the footings so deep that I don’t think it’ll ever blow down.  I remember it like yesterday when it was going up we had so many neighbors and town people driving by that we finally quit waving at them and just kept on doing the work. Our one neighbor who was putting in his crops even told us that both him and his son stopped the field work to come and watch. They knew that they might never have the chance to watch a windmill going up again and didn’t  want to miss it.  We wanted to have it up for our son’s graduation and that was such a good motivator that we did get it all painted and up just in time. It’s funny what you can get all done on the farm when you have a graduation isn’t it? So when I was standing in the pasture checking out the windmill the other day, I noticed the new windmills that have gone up around our area. Our neighbor had put up a couple of wind turbines and it isn’t too far from us that one business came in and put up 15 wind turbines for a cost of $45 million.

From our farm you can see the new wind turbine farms

There is something about windmills, old or new that just catch your eye and are fascinating. But the only difference is that I don’t think anyone with a new turbine would like the squeak that ours has,  and it wouldn’t take long until a technician’s truck would be pulling into their yard. For me? I kind of like the squeak. It’s got a comforting sound and it makes it ours, and it now she stands proud on our farm.

Just perfect!