Helper

We've got the garden in and planted and all the flowers around the house planted! Molly has been quite the little helper with all of this. She's really into watering:

Watering the rose bush--isn't it pretty this year?

Just the right amount.

She's really in the copy-cat phase & it's been pretty entertaining to see just how she "sees" us!

Gardening

My little helper & I got the cool weather crops planted in the garden this past Monday. We planted peas, onions, lettuce, carrots & potatoes. Molly threw a handful of pea seeds in a pile in one corner of the garden, so we'll see what that amounts to. Now we're just waiting for something to sprout!

Did I Mention...

We sold the heck out of sweet corn a few weeks ago! There were 4 families (including us) that went in together and planted about 2 acres of sweet corn this spring. It was ready to be picked the day we got back from our trip to MT, so no rest for us--it was back to work! When you sell sweet corn you have to pick it the same day that you sell it. When it's over 100 degrees every day, this means getting up and starting to pick as soon as the sun comes up. We would pick about 3 pickup loads every morning and then spread out through several of the local towns around here to sell. By my calculations, we sold somewhere between 500-600 dozen ears of corn! That's a lot of corn and we sold it all in 1 week.

It was quite the busy week--and a TON of work, but it was a great little money-maker project and our freezer is stocked with corn for the winter.

Start of the Garden

Last week I decided to start some seeds in the house so they would be ready to go when the garden is. I'm never able to get the seeds in early enough that the melons are ready before Sept. or Oct. when it's already kind of past their season. So...this year I'm really trying to do it right and get off to a good start.

I was REALLY excited to see that the seeds have sprouted into seedlings:


The bottom left is squash and zucchini with watermelons in the top four spots. The center two rows are all cantaloupes and the far right has some more watermelons and okra.

The summer squash and zucchini have really taken off:

I have a new garden spot picked out for this year and now I'm waiting for the grass to die so I can till it up and start fresh!

38 Weeks & Other Happenings

With 12 more days to go until my due date, I am feeling pretty good and my pulled ligament is getting better. Friday was my last day of work and that was such a relief! I'm so glad I was able to make it that long and they had a really nice going away party for me. I'm SO thankful that I will be able to stay home with the baby for awhile after she is born. Although I'm sure there are lots of people out there that could take great care of her, I think it's really important that she spends these early days with her parents & family, where she will be the #1 priority! The car seat is installed in the Explorer and the hospital bag is packed...so I guess we're as ready for her arrival as we can be!
In other news, Luke has been working really hard on the garden & it is now planted!! Although we are late this year, it looks great and I can't wait for things to start sprouting. Luke bought pepper & tomato plants on Friday and I think he got a little out of control! Look at this huge row of tomato plants:

Now for some peppers:

Luke has also had to take over the strawberry picking duties since I pulled my round ligament. He has done such a wonderful job though--we already have 5-6 gallons of strawberries in the freezer and there are much more to come:

I think I mentioned earlier, the cat had kittens in the chicken coop. Yeah, that wasn't the best idea...we tried to move them but she just keeps bringing them back. It's kind of funny to see one nesting box with eggs in it and the next one has kittens in it--what a deal:

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. We've had gorgeous weather in Missouri--hot but not too humid and even a nice breeze.

Pictures From Last Weekend

On Sunday, I finally started to get some energy & I went outside to get some fresh air. Luke was out hunting, so Kelly & I decided to check on the calves & the progress on the corral. Flash was there to help too: Since Saturday was Halloween, I finally picked the one pumpkin that grew in my garden. I never got around to carving it though:

Work on the corral is going really good. It's going to be so permanent and so sturdy that it will make working cows so much easier.

The calves got weaned this past weekend and got to be the first to use part of the corral. You can see the cows up on the hill and the calves looking longingly out at them:

This bull calf is our pride and joy of this years' calf crop. He's an AI calf out of Yield Grade and an EXT first calf heifer.

Mom is always asking me about the kittens, so here are some updated pictures of the 2 kitten we have that were born in June. Stripes is my favorite:

Here's Cinder. She's kind of elusive:

Well, that's about all for now. It's gorgeous this weekend--70 degrees today. I wish I felt more up to doing stuff outside. I bought a bunch of daffodil & tulip bulbs that I've been meaning to plant--I got 3 planted and gave up. Maybe I'll be up for it tommorrow. Luke is busy working on the last stretch of corral & Kelly is outside enjoying the sunshine & hunting.

My New Chore

I have a new daily chore, but it's one that I'm really happy about: picking strawberries! For the past 5-6 days my strawberries have been going crazy.

I usually get 2 of this size containers per day. I've made strawberry shortcake that was delicious, had strawberries on my cereal, and made strawberry jam. The jam was my first experience canning and making jam so it was quite the time. I think it worked out really good though. I'm going to taste some today.

This makes me really excited about my garden this year. Hopefully it's an indicator of things to come although my strawberries require very little work and lots of rewards. I'm not sure that will be the case with the rest of the garden since it was already a lot of work getting it tilled & planted.

Last Weekend

Last weekend seemed like we were going non-stop with working on all our projects that we hadn't been able to do because of all the rain. Now that the nice weather is here (and it's gorgeous, I must say) we were very busy!

One of our projects was to work all our cows & calves. The fall calves finally got weaned and the spring calves got shots. We set the cows up on a synchronization protocal so that we can start AI this coming weekend. Well, not all the cows. Apparently our pain in the butt bull that kept getting out last fall did a pretty good job of getting some cows bred. We were hoping to have everything switched over to spring calving for next year, but now about a third of the cows are bred to calve this fall. Not much we can do now. Here's some of the spring calves. They were very curious:


After the cows were all taken care of, Luke spent a good portion of the weekend working on the lawnmower. He really had a good time, if you can imagine. But, we were finally able to mow the yard and it looks so much better!! I've been working on adding a new flower bed to the front of our house and finally got it finished. The big pink rosebush was all that was there before. I put in the blocks, weed mat, mulch and planted 4 new shrubs. I think it looks so much better!! Now Luke wants me to do this around the whole house...we'll see.

So far the chickens haven't been bothering it too much and they better not! I'm sure this weekend will bring many more projects so I will try to take more pictures.

November?!

Can you believe it is November already? Where has the fall gone? I'm happy that it is November 1st. That means I will be going home for Thanksgiving in just 22 days, that the Christmas season is only 1 month away, and it will soon be 2009!


Not too much is going on around here this weekend. It has been gorgeous weather so I cleaned out some flower beds, moved & replanted some bulbs, and dug up and replanted a shrub that was by our front door and didn't have any room to grow. Luke worked on the fence around the hayfield. We haven't grazed this before so the fences needed some work. We just finished moving the cows over there and they were really happy to have some lush green grass!

Hope everyone else is having a nice fall! Kelly Jo says hi!

Melons!

I was mildly disappointed in my garden until a few weeks ago when the melons really started growing! Last week I had 3 cantaloupes that were ripe so I've been having cantaloupe for breakfast every morning. I gave one away to the neighbor and there are several green ones still in the garden. It's really easy to tell when they are ripe. They smell REALLY good and the aroma is really strong througout the entire garden and they actually break away from the vine on their own. This one here is getting close....
Although I haven't had any ripe watermelon yet, I am also very proud of them.


Here is the biggest one that has taken cover under some weeds & grass. I have a feeling we are going to have more watermelon than we know what to do with!

Red Hot Chili Peppers

It's Luke & my rookie year gardening, but we grew one heck of a chili pepper plant! Due to the late frost we had, only one plant survived. This maybe was a good thing though because all these peppers came from this one plant (and its still full of green ones!).

Does anyone have any ideas what to use them for? Luke wants to use them for chili this winter but we're not sure how to store them. I have a food dehydrator, should I dry them? Any advice would be great. Thanks!