I spent this weekend in Minneapolis visiting family and friends. One of the main reasons for the trip was to see my cousin who is in the Marines and is headed to Afghanistan in a couple of weeks. I hope and pray that he will be safe and that the (stupid) war will be over soon. I also wanted to my other cousin, Cody's, new condo (very nice!) I had coffee with an old friend from highschool, went shopping with my sister and step mom (bought some super cute shoes) and ate. A lot. Art worked pretty much all weekend so it wasn't as a relaxing two days as it was for me.

On a side note, my step dad (who was on a motorcycle trip through Arkansas with his brother) was in a motorcycle accident this weekend. He's pretty banged up but not so much that he couldn't take pictures of his trip in the ambulance. Those of you who know him will understand how really, really funny that is. But he should be up and about soon enough.

It's Always Something

Last night I stopped at our neighbors house and she asked me "have you been home?" I hadn't and she said, "you'd better go home". When I asked her why she said, "I can't tell you. Have you talked to Art yet?" At this point I made her tell me what was going on- Art had come home about half an hour before and discovered that the cows had gotten out. A lot of swearing ensued and I drove home, calling Art to see what he needed me to do. He had found the cows in the adjacent soy bean field and was hearding them back to the barn (they hadn't gone far). When they started walking the wrong way, he asked me to park down the road, come into the bean field and try to push them in the right direction without scaring them. Our neighbors came by to help, too. I'm walking around this bean field, calling "Cows! Baby Cows! Time to go home!" in a loud but unthreatening voice so that they know where I am, while talking to Art so I know which direction to move (what did we do before cell phones?). I was in the southern part of the field because that's where they were headed, last I had been told. So I'm traipsing through three foot tall soy beans trying not to step on any of the plants and because they no-tilled the ground (meaning that there were old cornstalks sticking up between the rows) every few feet I lost my balance and fell down. The dew had set in so my pants (and because of the falling, my shirt) were soaked through. At this point I'm also not trying to think about what might be living in the field that could potentially crawl on me (I may live in the in the country but that doesn't make me a country girl). I tried to call Art to find out where the cows were. No answer. I can just hear he and the neighbors' voices near the barn so I tried calling again. Again, no answer. I didn't want to yell out in case I spooked the cows so I kept trying to call Art while continuing to call for the cows. By about the eight call, Art finally picked up. He asked, "what are you doing?" This seemed a strange question to me but I answered him anyway and told him I was in the field trying to find the cows. He said, "But the cows are back in the barn. Didn't you hear me yell at you?" Well, of course I hadn't or I wouldn't still be in a bean field, falling over and wet at 10:30 at night. Why he didn't just pick up the phone when I called him, I don't know. But because the night was so still, he and the neigbors got a kick out of hearing me calling for the cows long after they were in the barn.

Sometimes I Impress Myself

Having tackled the re-inventing of my dining room table, the time had come to do something about the chairs. While in great shape, the cushions (covered in forest green pleather) were all cracked and showing an indecent amount of batting. A friend of mine showed me how simple it was to take the cushions off (four screws), take off the old covering and staple on a new one. Well, this was amazing to me. Here I've been embarrassed to have people sit on my cracked cushioned chairs and all this time I could have fixed it very easily! Of course I immediatly became overwhelmed by choices: vinyl, cotton or outdoor fabric? Print or solid? Soft or durable? My girlfriend suggested the inexpensive choice of shower curtains (the vinyl kind); great if you have kids and need something easily cleaned and relativley cheap. Having no children, I didn't have to worry much about that. I walked around the fabric store with no idea of what I wanted when I spotted a green plaid flannel. I knew at once that this was what I wanted; a soft, comfortable, worn (in a loved kind of way) looking fabric to go with my worn (also in a loved kind of way) looking house. I doubled over the fabric to make it a little thicker, but because the springs are old you can still see a bit of a lumpy quality to the chairs (kind of like their owners...) It only took me about an hour to recover the four chairs.

Big thanks to my friend, Heidi, who not only suggested this idea but also gave me the staple gun with which I could not have succeeded!

At Last!

[cue Etta James]

The hay is done!

We baled our third cut this weekend- about 140 bales. It is the best hay we've made all year and the most relaxed. We weren't worrying about rain (apparently we're now in a draught), we weren't rushing to beat the rain, we just took our sweet time knowing we had another week of beautiful, warm, dry weather. Afterwards we sat on the porch looking at the clean field, revelling in the fact that it will be another eight months before we have to worry about hay again.

The last wagon load of the year. Plus the (former) fence line

We also started ripping out the fence around the back pasture. We built it a few years ago but with the last batch of really ornry pigs and the goats we housed two years ago (as a favor to a neighbor...never again), all of that did a number on the fence. We also want to make it stronger to better keep in the cows. We spent most of Saturday pulling up posts, digging new posts and mowing the fence line (or, former fence line, I guess) We also decided to cut down a couple of big trees. I believe they are cotton wood trees and they really are sh-t trees. They're a really soft wood so everytime the breeze blows we lose branches. They are also the last to leaf out in the spring (and quite spindly, they grow, like, 12 leaves) and the first to lose them in the fall. They were ugly and in the way, so down they came. I had the job of clearing the debris; of which I had a lot of fun tying a chain around the trunk, lifting it with the tractor and bringing it to the brush pile. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture, but there is another one that needs to come down so I will try and show you all how amazing I am in some later post.

Labor Day Weekend

The long weekend passed with much of the same; laundry to be done, house to be cleaned, but thanks to some friends, no mowing. Friday night, friends stayed the night on their way home to Chicago. They arrived a few hours before Art and I got home from work so, because of their love of mowing grass (and the sight that our lawn hadn't been mowed in a couple of weeks), they mowed our yard. All of it. I got a call from my friend (it was her parents staying with us) telling me "I just wanted to let you know that my parents are mowing your lawn". It was pretty funny but greatly appreciated!

We also dog sat my parents' dog, Ringer over the weekend while they celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. Ringer and Buddy had a great time together, although I had to talk Buddy into being a bit more entertaining. He's too much like his antisocial parents, I'm afraid. But once they got to know each other they had a blast. Linda was not as impressed by Ringer and, being top dog in our house, had to express her dominance a few times. She's also what I like to call a 'fun hater'. Buddy and Ringer would be having a grand old time running and jumping all over each other when Linda would notice their activity and run over and ruin it. So she was relegated to the upstairs while the other two played in the dog yard. I couldn't let the boys have free reign of the farm because Ringer, perhaps due to his Australian Shepherd breed, likes to kill things. I let them out to see how he would do and he made a beeline for one of my chickens and would have eaten her had she not been smart enough to wedge herself between a wall and some gates. She was traumatized and may never lay eggs again, but Ringer was pretty pleased with himself. It was a lot of fun seeing the three dogs together, but as each of them was more needy than the other and as I have only two hands, it made me glad I only have two dogs.




I also cleaned out the garden. The pumpkins were pretty much dead and looking really scraggly so I mowed them down. I cleaned out the tomato plants; I forgot to stake them before they got too big (not my best moment) and I just couldn't get the tomatoes before the bugs did. There isn't much left in the garden except sweet potatoes and green peppers but it'll be apple season before I know it so I'm always glad to be done with the garden about this time.

Art made me a yard cart! I had been begging for one so that I didn't have to carry the garden stuffs to the compost pile (yes, I'm lazy) and he finally got one for me! Somehow he found an old bomb cart (yes, a bomb cart. They used them to move bombs around at the armory in Rock Island) used some scrap plywood for the floor and sides and voila! a garden cart I can hitch behind the lawn mower. Now if only he can install a hydraulic lift to dump it...




We also baled about a half a load of hay and started on the much needed fence around the pasture.

The best part of the weekend is that Art fixed the dishwasher! We discovered a leak about six weeks ago and he just hadn't had a chance to fix it. I hate the chore of dish washing only second to vacuuming and consider it akin to slave labor, so I'm very, very happy!