Not a project but this little guy has adopted us and now lives in one of the wood piles. He is the first chipmunk we have had and he is pretty tame...he comes up on the back patio, eats out of the various bird feeders and generally toys with the cats.
Showed the boy how to cast in the farm pond and.....
Poof..a nice sized hybrid bluegill. These guys are delicious if you fillet them, roll them in a light cornmeal seasoned mix and then deep fried. It brings back memories of my beloved Aunt Isa who used to cook my various catches for me when I was a kid and spent my summers on a lake in Michigan. I would get up early in the morning and catch a brace of fish and she would cook them for breakfast.
Judy has been busy and finished this bed spread and pillow shams for my mother..she sure does good work.
We completed the first cutting of hay this week and everything worked out great. It rained before we cut, it was supposed to rain after we cut (but didnt)..
We will have to fertilize and lime next spring but we still did okay this year..we will get one and possibly two more cuttings of hay this year and should have enough for the cows all winter.
To me its always exciting to have this activity around the old farm stead. We love old equipment and you just cant beat the sound of the old tractors and the buzz that surrounds haying time.
There is something about cutting the hay that brings renewal and promise for the future as well as the security of having hay in the barn.
We changed to square bales for ease of handling on our small farm. We still have some of the round bales but they are just too big for us to handle with our smaller equipment without being dangerous.
The beautiful Holly drove the farm truck while Chris and I bucked bales.....I'm still sore.
Having our own land has been unexpectedly fullfilling to us. We feel secure in the knowledge we can raise our own food, we enjoy being able to drive and ride various motorized things wherever we want, and we particularly enjoy being able to set aside some of our land for our nature interests. We are allowing some of our pasture to go back to a natural state and we are trying to increase our wood lot....for no reason other than we like to observe nature as it happens on our own place....very satisfying.
Chis and Holly felt the work load on this day..
A satisfying result is having hay in the hay mow of the barn....if you are like me you remember that smell and the fun of playing in the hay when you were a kid..and the itch!!
Bandit, the crazy dog has gotten lazy in his old age and likes to ride in the hay wagon, on the equipment trailer, in the trucks, on the tractors.....anything but walk.
I spent years (since the 70s) wrenching on motorcycles but we sold them all before we moved here and I promised Holly I would divert my energies elsewhere after a couple of close calls and one bad accident. So....those energies have been diverted to tractors and garden tractors. Chis and I tore down the old Murray and after we basically rebuilt the thing (still need to do the cosmetics) ......
He was able to mow Judy's yard and for a total investment of about a C-note....we have a functioning and useful rider and had a lot of fun doing it.
We are now in the middle of painting it with an International Harvester paint scheme. The headlight naucelle and grill will be IH off white while the rest of the tractor will be IH red with the IH while stripe one each side. It just has that boxy IH look dont ya think?
So that was our last few days....not countng the gardening, a structural fire response, a couple ambulance calls, a visit to some homesteading friends, licensing the stock trailer, .......you know, just a relaxing retirement!!
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