Pictures coming soon...

I just worked on uploading pictures from family camp, but don't have the awakeness to write about all of them, so will work on that tomorrow...

Mom and I worked indoors today--making bread, yogurt, and apple things.  The guys worked on their auction sale treasures.   Also, some friends from Bismarck came out for more Kangen water as they're really noticing a difference in how they feel and didn't want to wait until Thursday to get more water.  :)  I thank God for the blessing of great water!

Tomorrow I'll be babysitting for the mile-away neighbors, so that will be fun.

For now, I'd best get some sleep...

It drizzled and rained ALL day!

What a blessing...

 

(I did not take this photo but thought it was a beautiful picture of rain.)

They wanted to come to my house...

 

When I got over to Zach and Paula's this morning, the girls really wanted to "Go to your house, Tora", so Zach helped me load them in their suburban and I drove them to visit my farm.  :)

 

After looking at the animals (they laughed at the noisy turkeys and tickled the calves with feathers they found!), we headed inside to visit my mom and to play piano....

 Johanna:  "I'm playing high notes..." 

 They were both fascinated for about 10 minutes with a book full of real-life pictures of forests, animals, and waterfalls.  Johanna had a ton of questions to ask my mom...  Tracy Jo just wanted to count things!

They're so much fun (except for when they argue about what's theirs, but that's part of growing up)!

My dad and brothers had fun today!  They went to a huge consignment auction at the edge of Jamestown.  My dad came home with a feeder-truck and Andrew bought a SEMI!  He plans to sell his smaller truck now that he has something better to pull his grain-cleaner with.  The semi is PURPLE.  :)  It's not a bright purple, just a nice soft purple. 

Mom kept busy with laundry and with getting ready for the weekend.  I think our plan for tomorrow is to stay home, so that will be a peaceful change of pace.  :)

God bless your weekend.~

Cattle are frustrating at times--very frustrating...

Before I tell of our wild morning, here's a picture of the tower of corn the boys made when they were husking some sweet corn for us.  :)

We had a request for 5 head of cattle to be butchered for our friends, so we headed up for pasture to sort out 5 animals and to try to get them loaded in the trailer and hauled to Linton.

 

First, we had to find the 5 we wanted to get rid of...

 We have to stop selling them pretty soon or we won't have cows to be mamas next year!  :)

 I decided to sell one of my bulls for slaughter too.

 So, one of my young first-time calving heifers was decided on to be sold as she keeps breaking out of the fence and just didn't stick with the rest of the herd very well.    White 30 was her number.  She was pretty wild!   Very very long story short, after getting her sorted off 3 times and she turned back and ran through/over the fence back in with the herd, we finally realized she wasn't going to go to the corralling where the trailer was waiting.  Andrew drove alongside of her with the pickup and I was able to just stick the rope out of the window and slip it over her head.  Andrew said to throw Dad the other end of the rope so he could try and tie it on the hitch of the pickup.  I don't think my dad appreciated that very much---having a wild cow on the other end of the rope and all!  He was able to get the rope wrapped around the hitch but it wasn't on very well and so he hopped up on the fuel-tank on the back of the pickup and wrapped the rope around the handle of the tank too and held onto it.   White 30 of course choked herself down and just stayed put for a while, catching her breath.  Then, she'd get up and ram the pickup and anything else in sight.  We were glad she didn't try climbing in the back of the pickup with Dad--she was that crazy wild!   To think we raised that animal!  I wonder what makes some animals so skittish? 

Anyway, Andrew went back to Mom and the stock-trailer and brought it up to where we were.  Dad quickly ran the end of the rope into the trailer where we wrapped it around a metal bar and held on.  Dad and Jacob got the cow up then again and by that time, Andrew had his 4-wheeler away from her (she wrecked a couple things on Dad's 4-wheeler too) and hooked the end of the rope up to the winch on his 4-wheeler.  He slowly pulled on it to get the cow coming in the right direction and she was finally in!  Whew!  The guys tired her up front in the trailer, as we had to get my bull in with her up front so we could close that gate and get the other 3 cows in back.

We chased my bull into the corralling pretty easily.  Then, while the guys were getting the trailer ready, I was going to close a gate that led into the alleyway so the bull wouldn't go in there before the guys were ready.  I walked to the end of the gate and the bull put his head down and charged at me.  I was grateful to have the gate there and was ready to hop over it to the other side if he decided to come to the back side of it, as I hadn't budged it yet.  Thankfully, he backed off and I just left the gate open.  I warned my dad about him, but my dad just walked in there and told the bull to go, and he did.  Hmmmmm....   Maybe he was mad at me selling him?  ;)

After that, we went way back out to the herd to sort off the other 3 critters.  Here, Jacob's keeping an eye on one of Andrew's young cows who didn't breed this year...

 Andrew, looking for Blue 11...

 Mom was in the pickup with me and we were keeping an eye on the other cow...

 This was after the wild cow/bull experiences, so we have good reason to look as though we were having bad hair-days!  ;)  We're just so grateful for all the times that God keeps us safe as we work with large animals...

Those 3 sorted off fairly easily and didn't give us much trouble at all.  Once all 5 were loaded, we all headed home---Dad pulling the trailer; Mom in the black pickup; Andrew riding his dirt-bike; and Jacob and I with 4-wheelers.   We were all hungry!

The rest of the day was, thankfully, much less eventful.  I canned apple butter; made another batch; cut up apples for yet another batch; then got some apple-leather going in the dehydrators.  My dad took the animals to Linton.  Mom had some business to take care of and the boys worked on projects.  They're excited about the large farm-consignment auction in Jamestown tomorrow...

Corn...

Today, we figured out how to use the vacuume sealer that Mom found at Nita's Attic.  We put up a few bags of sweet corn we cut off the cob.  We still have apples we're working on putting up too, so Jacob dug out the dehydrators from the basement so we can make fruit leather.  :)    My dad cleaned grain again today and Andrew worked on editing the video of Chris and Sarena's wedding, plus he and Jacob did some other work too.

We also flew a flag today...  Did everyone know that 9/11 is now called Patriot Day?

Playing library...

Today as I babysat Johanna and Tracy Jo, we had fun playing library for a long time, beeping all the books and taking them out of the room, only to turn around and take them right back to beep them back into the library system.  :) It brought back memories of doing that very thing with my little brothers a long time ago...

The girls took long naps, so it was nice to get caught up on some long-overdue correspondence.  After Zach got in to take over, I headed over to Lauretta's to show her the camp and wedding pictures I had.  A couple of her sisters were there as well, so we had a nice visit.

Then, I got home and Mom and Andrew had just returned home a while before me and were just getting supper ready and the boys were doing chores.  My dad cleaned grain all day.  It's a busy life!  :)

A lasagna garden...

My brothers pulled the old rose bushes out from in front of the deck so Mom and I could build up a lasagna garden there to be ready to plant pretty flowers in the spring.  :)   The soil there is rock solid, so hopefully this will work.   If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can learn more here:  http://ourgardengang.tripod.com/lasagna_gardening.htm.  We made several gardens this way at our other farm and it made the soil so beautiful!  Hopefully it will work again here.

I also got my room all back in order--yay!  It was a disaster with all my cake supplies/clothes everywhere, so it's nice to be able to walk in here again.

I didn't mention that yesterday all 3 of our menfolk went over to Braddock to help with and watch the annual threshing bee.  I was too exhausted/sick to go, but have fond memories of past threshing bees.  :)  Here's a picture of Andrew's outfit:  Fun times!