Country Corn maze---here we come!

How exciting!  After 5 years of wanting to take a little road-trip to the Warroad, MN area, tomorrow Andrew and I are actually going to do it!   :)   We've volunteered to help the Krahn family (Green Pastures Farm on my sidebar) with the last weekend of their annual corn-maze (http://www.countrycornmaze.org/), but I have no idea what we'll be doing.  This weekend is the "Dress like a cowboy/cowgirl" weekend.   FUN!   We will be gone for a few days, as we plan to stop and visit some other friends on the way home too, so I'm just warning people like Hristiyan ahead of time.  ;)

ALSO, today is my parent's 33rd wedding anniversary!  :)  I barely saw them though, as I headed for work this morning just as they were getting up, and then they went to Bismarck this afternoon and will be spending the night in a fancy hotel with order-in food service.   Andrew and I will be gone before they're home tomorrow too, so I wrapped their present tonight and they can open it whenever they like. 

I shall say farewell now.  I still have some packing and laundry to do.... 

God bless~

Family visitors...

At noon, my dad told us that we'd be having company later in the day.  My grandma B. called to see if they could come for a visit as they haven't been here since last summer!  It was nice to have them here for a couple of hours.  It's hard for Grandpa to get around, so he stayed in their vehicle and my parents and I hopped in with them (my dad drove) and we went to show them the cows in the pasture.  :)

 

We saw several Sandhill cranes flying around up there.  They were actually just sitting at the top of this hill, but when I got out my camera, they headed for the clouds.

 The cows still have a little grass to eat.  They're spread out over a thousand or so acres right now.  We're hoping they can stay up there until the beginning of November.

 Grandpa Earl (from my perspective in the backseat)...

 Grandma Marly and my mom, and a cow's head...

Sometime recently while my grandpa has his dialysis 3 times a week, my grandma has taken up the art of fancy-scarf making!  :)  She gave me the pretty green one (pictured below) and my mom picked out the 3-colored brown/grey/white one.  They're very pretty, fashionable, and special because they came from Grandma! 

Goodbye tree stump!

I didn't see it, but I hear that my brothers took the tractor with the backhoe attachment on and got rid of the huge old tree-stump that's been in the middle of our north field here at home.  :)  My dad had tried burning it a while back and just the middle of it burned.  He tried knocking it down with the loader tractor, but it didn't budge. SO, it is a fine thing that it is now out of the ground! 

My dad was busy cutting down the sorghum/sudan grass today.  It will take a while for it to dry down now before it can be baled.  Thankfully, his back is better!

My mom was busy with clients.  She also went out and searched for eggs and found 9 more than the 3 I'd found in the nests this morning.  I made an 18-tiny-egg (and 2 large) omelet for supper tonight.  :)

Planting for the future...

It was just lovely outside this afternoon!  I took a shovel and dug up the flower bed right by the house, then planted the autumn bulbs that arrived in the mail 2 days ago (when it was snowing).   Lord willing, there will be daffodils, crocuses, tulips and hyacinths blooming in the spring!

I also cut up all the ripe tomatoes and cooked them into freezer-tomato-sauce.  Then, I put on a pair of disposable gloves and set to work cutting the ends off of the hot peppers from our garden and getting them in labeled freezer bags for the future.  The trick of it all was to find out if the variety of pepper was hot or sweet, as I neglected to write this information down on the marker sticks where I put down the variety!   Most of them were quite hot!!

All the rest of my family went to Bismarck today.  My dad had to see the chiropractor as he threw his back out again somehow and has been in a lot of pain the past 3 days.  My mom needed to deliver some water to some clients and she and Jacob got their driver's licenses renewed and new pictures taken (you should ask them how they like their new pictures).  ;)   Andrew had some business to do too, something with vehicle titles or something. 

SO, I had the house to myself most of the day.  I listened to "Fiddler on the Roof" as I worked... 
  
"Tradition, tradition....
      ....And who does mama teach to mend and tend and fix,
          Preparing her to marry whoever Papa picks?
             The daughters, the daughters...."

More surprises in the chicken barn...

While feeding the chickens this morning, I found 13 tiny brown eggs in the nests.  Yay!!  Andrew says he could eat 6 of them for breakfast and I'm sure he could.  :)

It was so lovely outside today compared to the past 2 days.  The sun was actually shining.  It did freeze last night though.  I had to break a thin layer of ice on the water troughs this morning.  I guess it's time to finish up all those projects we wanted to accomplish before that "W" season comes rolling around.......

We stayed home...

It was very wet and cold this morning while doing the chores!  My clothes were soaked by the time I was done with the 40 minutes worth of feeding hay/grain/water.   Later, I went up to check the cows and was slipping all over the road.  It was a good thing that there is 4-wheel drive in that pickup, as a few spots were really bad.

 I guess I'm glad we stayed home from the wedding, although I was very much looking forward to going.  This is the 2nd wedding we've missed out on in that family due to bad weather!  We pray for Josh & Camille's new life together to be blessed!   They've been such good friends for a long time, so it's so special that they're married at last.  :)  Here's a cute picture of them: 

We did have a peaceful day at home, so that was refreshing.

SNOW!

It's been a blustery day and I'm so glad that we picked our garden produce yesterday!  Yes, we even had snowflakes falling through the sky.  Nothing stayed, but the storm is not over yet either.  The wind is howling and raindrops are hitting my window.  We may not be going to the wedding tomorrow after all (it would be a 5 hour drive)...

 

My room was so cold today that I washed my windows, then covered them with plastic for the winter.  It's a bit warmer now.

 

Mom, Jacob and I oiled all of the squash (it helps them to keep longer as mold doesn't grow well on oil), then hauled them to the basement.  Mom also cleaned all of the cayenne peppers we grew and I turned most of them into Cayenne Tincture.  We made turkey enchiladas for our noon meal and a meatloaf (with our new hamburger!) and hubbard squash dish for supper.  Delicious!

 

My brothers put things into the Quonset that they didn't want to freeze (the sprayer/pressure washer....).  I went out and picked a few more bouquets before the flowers are all gone for the year.  It was also time to bring all of my dwarf fruit trees back in the house from the deck.  One of my lemons is starting to turn yellow now, so that's fun!

 

Here are a few pictures that I took of the header Dad bought yesterday...  

 

 The local John Deere dealership is redoing their lot, so it was a big mess yesterday... 

 Here are the squash we picked...

 ...and some more squash!  It's a good thing that some of us like squash a lot and that the others tolerate it.  ;)

 The last Dahlias of the season...  
Isn't the lawn a lovely shade of green right now?  The recent rains have done wonders for the grass.

 Farewell, summer flowers.  I will miss you!

Now I have to remember the good things about cold weather...  Things like-----the flies die!