Workin' on the yard

Caleb and I got married last fall and since then we have been working on remodeling a house that was on the farm we had just purchased. It was a huge undertaking...much more than we had planned. The inside is mostly done, we just have a couple things left to do inside and when it is finished I will add them. All last week, in between doing the farm chores Caleb decided to work on leveling off the front yard.

Here is what the yard looked like before we got started. There was a mound that was pretty much strait in front of the door. The yard sloped back towards the house...so all the water after a big rain would gather under the house. This is part of the reason why we had to replace all the floor boards.

Hey look there's a sidewalk....

We had a little bit of a clue that the side walk was there, but I wasn't sure how good of condition it would be in, but it turned out to be in relatively good condition. When the house was built onto in the 50's the owners brought in dirt and piled it onto the front yard....we think it was suppose to drain water away from the house, but it really didn't work......all it really did was give termites an easy way into the house and cover up the sidewalk. There was probably 2 inches of soil on top of the side walk.

Here is what my yard looks like after it was finished.

All summer long there was a big pile of soil that had been scraped off the yard back in the spring and sat there all summer long. While hauling off the soil that he had just scraped off the yard Caleb also got rid of the large pile of soil.....and boy was I happy!!

Our Beans

On Sunday afternoon Caleb and I took our weekly drive around to all the farms.

The beans are about twice as tall as they normally are, now lets hope that they have twice as many beans as we normally do!

Where did he go??

There he is with his bean plant

Caleb was very happy and suprised with how big all the plants were. The beans may still be a little ways off from harvest, but the corn is getting close.

The guys have been working hard to get the combine in shape and ready to go for the harvest, but if they don't.....

...we have been working on a back-up plan harvesting.

Green beaners

I finally got all my green beans canned and put away. This is about half of what I put up. Now I just have to wait till all my tomatoes are ready and and the I will be working on putting them up in every way you could imagine....cause when my tomatoes start getting ripe they will be coming out my ears.

Aidan comes to visit!!

Wow, after a crazy busy weekend, we had a realtive slower week. Caleb's nephew Aidan came down and spent the week with grandma and grandpa. He had a great time time "helping" Caleb and Grandpa work on the combine and semi. Last night we went over to Independence to the park and zoo. First things first, Aidan, Caleb, Karen (Caleb's mom), and I went on the Carosel and it only cost 20 cents for all of us to ride.

After we got off Aidan helped Karen make it back to Calvin's arm.

After that it was playtime on all the awsome playground!

After playin' on all the fun slides Aidan and Uncle Caleb played on the old fire engine.....

...and then on the old steam engine.

After that we headed to the zoo and looked at all the little critters. There weren't alot of animals in the zoo but it was still a lot of fun!

Friday - Things never happen the way you had planned!

So when I got up on Friday I had so many plans of things that I was going to do and get done. I was goanna go over to Grandma and Pop's house and get some jars so I could finish some canning. I was goanna get the bike off the wall of the shop and see what needed to be done before it was road ready. I was gonna go fish for the big ol' catfish I saw in the creek....who is probably now gone cause we got so much rain the past few days....But I am very thankful for the rain we really needed it and it was an answer to our prayers.....I just wish I would have been able to get over there sooner to fish for that fish! I was also planning on getting the mower so I could start mowing the yard.....but alas I got none of this done. Cause as an farmer (especially one with livestock) would say whenever you have plans to do something, there is always something that happens that puts a kink in your plans......cattle get out, tractor breaks down, cow is having trouble calving, you find a sick calf......this is the problem we ran into on Friday!!


It starts when we go out to do a couple of small little chores before we leave. I remind Caleb that we have that dead cow still out in the barn and that we need to drag her off before she gets to stinkin' worse than she already does.....after a day in the wonderful August heat. You know it's gonna be fun when you have to rig a up a broken chain and a come-a-long type thing together so you will have some way to hook onto her. Then halfway out to were we were gonna take her.....as we are going through a gate the hook that is hooked to the bumper breaks....of course this couldn't be easy. In the middle of this Caleb is talking to one of our landlords trying to figure out USDA papers that needed to be at the office today. So I get out and head back to the stinky cow and I do what any good farmer would do....I find some wire and just wire the chain to the bumper. I also changed which leg we had the chain on....well actually I had Caleb do it....I didn't want to touch stinky!!!

So finally we get her dropped off where we wanted. As we were driving back Caleb thinks he see's one of the calves we had weaned earlier this summer….well it turns out it was just a cow, but as we go over there to look we find a two or three week old calf that has some how gotten sick and is in need of a shot. So we head back to the house and grab a rope and get Caleb's horse...the 4-wheeler...and head out for a little rodeo action. Well like I said things never work the way they are suppose to.....first things first Caleb is a farmer not a rancher so the whole roping a calf thing...well it doesn't really work so well. After wastin' a good amount of time we decide it would be better to get the cattle up into the pen. That's no easy task either. First we must get the calves we weaned in the spring into the lot and lock them up...then we finally get some feed and call the cattle with the truck. But of course all the ones we wanted to catch didn't come so Caleb takes off on the 4-wheeler and I guard the gate. After chasin' them all over we finally get them in and get all the calves sorted off and give them their vaccine's only after we ran to town to get the med's and a few other things we needed.

After that we had a little time to rest before leaving to go the rodeo down in Coffeeville. It was really nice to go out for the evening and relax. I got to eat a funnel cake, drink a Mt. Dew and watch a good Rodeo...what could be better.

When the day finally ended and we got home I was never more ready to go to bed!!

Thursday - Watermelon

First thing this morning I went out and moved my soaker hose from my green beans over onto my tomatoes. The hope is, I will have tomatoes running out my ears before to long. Caleb has been going around trying to get a hydraulic hose fixed on the baler. While he was workin on the baler I took off with my camera and got some pics of the old milking stalls in our barn. While out there I discovered the sick cow we had been doctoring died. Nothing lives forever...it's a harsh reality that you have to face more often then most here on the farm. But you also get to see so many more new births of animals that it keeps you from constantly thinking about all the bad times.

For dinner today we had leftovers with a fresh garden tomato sliced up....Yuck...I love growing them but I hate to eat them! I also cut up a watermelon that was given to us from Caleb's uncle Ben. I was told it was a "seedless," but when I cut into it, the watermelon looked like it was grown just for a watermelon seed spitting contest.

On Thursday night we Caleb and I went to a field day which was held by our local seed dealer. It was a good meeting but like most people we really came just for the food. I think Caleb got a lot more out of the meeting than I did. After we went through all the corn varities I started getting a little bored so I bot my camera out a started taking pictures.

Caleb and a good friend of ours. David is acutally trying to back out of the picture, butI still managed to get him.

Some of the beans we were looking at. They were a lot taller than ours, but they were also planted a lot earlier than ours and have gotten a little more rain than ours!



Caleb getting sick of me taking pictures of him!

Pop came over with the tractor and rake to to rake the hay on the field north of the house. I took off to open all the gates for him so he wouldn't need to get off the tractor. When I got back to the edge of the field I saw 10 turkey vultures take off from the edge of the field. Then when I got up to the field I counted 13 either flying around or sitting out in the field. The love freshly cut hay fields, because there is usually a few dead critters out in the that they can munch on.
When I got back to the house I had to get to work on folding laundry.....yuck!! Then I stared canning some more green beans. I got seven more quarts ready to go in the pantry. Hopefully I will get a few more quarts from my beans, after giving them a good soaking of water over night. Now I'm gonna put all the laundry away and then hit the sack, so I can be fully rested for another full day

The Start

Welcome to my life as a farmers wife. Some days are calm and some days are crazy yet I love them all. Right now things are slower, but soon we will be in the middle of corn harvest and we will be busy for the rest of the fall.

I have been working a lot in my garden....doing up corn, canning green beans, and soon canning tomatoes. Caleb mowed hay yesterday and today and is hoping that it will be dry enough to bale this afternoon.

We are praying that it will rain soon.....the corn would make a lot more and the beans need it to be worth a hoot!! To be a farmer it takes a lot of faith and trust that God will take care of you and supplie all your needs cause once you put the seed in the ground it's not up to you anymore but up to God. When that is where all your income comes from it takes a lot of trust and faith to make through each day.