Another every-once-in-a-while update:

Well hello again. :)

I finished the apples from the 3 apple trees here around our house. This is one of the several batches of apple butter that I cooked down.

 My Grandma Marly came and stayed here for parts of 4 days and helped me with putting up apples and corn. She also went along with my mom and I to partially clean out the jars from our former land lady, Fern's basement. Most of the jars we brought home are canning jars, and most of them had old food in which we had to clean out and then scrub the jars really well and put them in the dishwasher.

Grandma came with to get the Azure order and then we stopped in at Mid Dakota Grain in Steele so as to see all the improvements.

 We had a visiting goose for a while. He was obviously somebody's pet. He ended up being the neighbor's.

 My mom bought herself a 4-wheeler at the Orr auction. :)  

Michael & I bought a car trailer that needs work but was a good buy.

 Paula McGrew (we live in what used to be her grandma's home) came to ND to visit for a few days and stayed up at Andrew's place.  Here she is, riding with her cousin through the Braddock Threshing Bee parade.

 Zach M. driving the old trencher through the parade.

 James & Jenny came and visited us again mid-September. It was their anniversary weekend, so I experimented and made my first ice cream cake.  

We took them to the Braddock Threshing Bee and both Michael and James drove tractors through the parade. 

 My Michael.....  

Like the wheels? :)

 My man----helping to thresh the grain...

 Tracy Jo, riding the kid's tractor-pull rig.  There's a weighted trailer hooked on behind.

My mom, Paula McGrew, Michael some of the time, and I did an apple cider pressing demonstration during the threshing bee and gave free samples of the cider. We gave out about 3 gallons of cider over the 2 days.  I also demonstrated using the drop spindle some of the time, when I wasn't kept hopping with the cider pressing.

 Michael worked up half of the alfalfa field we're renting from my parents and planted a mix of rye and oats. The rye is up a couple inches already now.

 My husband and I went, uh, boating a week ago Saturday. We went down to Beaver 

Lake State Park, caught no fish, then went on McKenna (West) Lake and also caught no fish, so yeah, we went boating----not fishing.

 Last Sunday, the two of us went to Bismarck to run errands for the farm and to buy a trailer-full of sheep fencing (woven wire) from 2 different people, using our "new" trailer. We were able to trade hay for some of the wire. 

It was such a beautiful day, so we decided to take an hour or so to go to the zoo, since Michael hadn't been there yet and it's a really nice zoo. 

 ...they even have alligators!

 Putting up the 3rd planting of sweet corn...

This variety is called Anasazi sweet corn and is from seed I saved a few years back. I love all the colors. 

 I baked 2 pies in honor of the first day of Fall: 

~Squash pie and Peanut butter cream pie (both sugar-free)~

I made another batch of soap from scratch (using a friend's beef lard, my goat's milk, coconut oil, lye, pink clay, essential oils, and pink Himalayan salt. We'll see how it turns out in 4 weeks.

 "They" have begun work on redoing the road corner to the south of our place. This is in my dad's alfalfa field. What a mess!  I helped my dad clean off the field of haybales so they weren't in the way (which means that I got my old job of driving the hay-truck).

Yesterday we went to our church's annual Harvest of Thanks celebration in Alfred. It was a great day of speaking, good food, and lots of music that praised our Lord.

And now, we're starting a new week. The guys are keeping very busy up at Steele, 6 days a week usually. They do have line 1 up and running, so are cleaning grain as they work on line 2 and then line 3 someday.  They are saving so much money by doing the work themselves (things like building conveyors).

Happy Autumn, everyone!