Summer Fun Ends When Corn Harvest Begins

*If you don't like looking at lots of pictures, then you run away now, cause this post is loaded with them! ;)

SO, I really have no idea where the month of July went to, but it sure did fly by...Shoot August is now over halfway done too! It doesn't really feel like we ever really slowed down since Wheat Harvest got over with.

We celebrated the 4th with our little firecrackers....

It's been so long ago now, I can't remember if we were done with wheat harvest or not.

I think we were and that we were still planting beans.

After that was done the guys were back in the hay field finishing up....

Hay seemed to drag out forever this year....and I still didn't get any pics. I got some back in the spring, but I didn't go and look for them.

After we were finally finished with all that it was farm show time...

Which means drive an hour to talk with all your neighbors. 

Fact: Caleb and his dad stood in the same spot for I don't know how long, but three different groups of guys came along and they never moved, just kept talking. Chester and I walked around while this was going on. ;)

Chester's goal was to climb on everything...

We came close to doing that!

This time of the year we don't check our cattle everyday, because they have grass to eat and water in the pond, but every Sunday we try to go for a drive (after we took our Oh soo important naps) and check some of the herds. If we are checking the ones close to the house we take the gator other wise we will take the truck.

 

When you have kids this is about as good as it gets for a family picture.

He love's opening gates....

I hope that continues to be the case when he gets bigger, but I kinda doubt it.

Then there was sweet corn, where Miss Sally got up close and personal with us.

 

I don't remember how many bags I put away that day, but all I can say is my how was a total wreck cause I didn't do anything else and pretty much let Chester do whatever he wanted to do....

But hey I have sweet corn in the freezer now!

Chester also dug his potatoes and too first place with both his red and white potatoes. He was very excited about it!

Then Caleb and I took a very much needed trip with no kiddos. I missed my babies, but it was sure nice to get away! 

We kayaked down a river in SW Missouri. It was our fist time ever using a kayak and we loved it.....I now want my own kayak for Christmas!!! 

On one of our Sunday afternoon drives I made Caleb help me in taking pictures of the kiddos. He wined and complained about it, and then he saw the pics and loved them and was so very glad we took the time to do it. I loved them all so much!  I will try and do another post and share them all cause they were so fun!

Every once in awhile we would get a rain, but it usually wouldn't last long and then the sun would come out and we would get a beautiful rainbow!

Somewhere in the middle of all this I was also taking picture of our friends son, who will be a senior this next year. We took farm pics back durning wheat harvest, and then at the end of July we did some baseball pics....

With fire!!

I won't lie these pics were hard for me, but by the end I kinda had if figured out and Love the way they turned out!

 

About a week or so ago we were able to make a trip to  NE Missouri to hang with my family and help my dad feed his cattle

 

And Chester got to go swimming with Grandma.

Caleb and I drove around and visited some of my favorite places

 We also visited the newest addition to the farm, Porkey.

One the way back home we stopped at the Missouri State Fair (one of my favorite places) where we saw a lot of Porkey's cousins.

Chester asked every pig "Hey pig, what ya doin' " 

Chester made friends with a sweet little girl and her pig.

And we ate ice cream....oh boy was it good!!!

And now with all the traveling and going out of our system, it's time to get back to work and start doing something. So Corn Harvest 2014 here we come!!

These are some pics I took from our neighbors field, but we actually started yesterday. The corn was still a little wet, but give it a day or so and we will be going strong, which is why the kids and I made a run to town yesterday to load up on food supplies so we will be ready to feed the guys when they are running all day long. 

 

There are days while we are in harvest that we are so very tired and ready for it all to be over and done with, but at the same time we love every minute of it. We love planting, we love tending to it and watching it grow....but we really love harvesting it and seeing the fruits of our labor. So we may look a little sleepy over the next few weeks, but we wouldn't trade it for the world.

JP

My Sweet Husband

Well the guys finished with the wheat harvest on Saturday right before it let loose and rained 3 - 5 inches on all our crop ground. So since it was so soggy Caleb hung around this afternoon and worked on my dryer some cause it was making some noises. 

After putting both the kiddos down for their naps. I head out to pick some green beans....

By some I mean a lot....

That bag is full too...
 
I will be busy for the next few days ;) 

Well when I'm about 3/4 the way done with my picking I come in to get a drink. That's when I discover that Chester has never fallen asleep and has since woken Iscel up...

That's when I quickly head back out to finish picking, cause I knew if I stayed in to long Caleb would sneak out and I wouldn't be able to finish picking.  

Well after I finish picking I come into this...

Daddy and Little Miss have passed out in the chair and Chester was asleep in his bed....

It was heaven...

That was until I jumped into the shower and woke him up....but it was nice while it lasted!!!

Now I must get to work on snapping some beans....

Later,
JP

Sunsets and Siloutes

 I know it's been forever since I have posted anything. Ya'll probably thought I dropped off the face of the earth, well there have been days when I wanted to just so I would have to deal with anything, but really that wouldn't have done any good.  Needless to say it's been a little busy. Pop, Caleb's grandpa, had heart surgery about a month ago and we have all been crazy busy taking care of all his farm work as well as figuring out what is the best thing for him when it comes to his recovery. 

On top of all that the weather hasn't really been our friend this spring when it comes to planting the corn. We are "normally" (whatever that means) planting around the beginning of April and here it is the end of May and we are trying our hardest to get it all in the ground.

Well we are in the field and going, and while I was delivering seed to Caleb this evening I made him pose for a few pictures.

 

  
If I could have had them on top a hill without the tree rows behind them, I think they would have been even better, but oh-well. They work for me. 

Hopefully I will be back a little more often. 

Love ya all!

JP   

Let the Planting Begin!!

It's that time of year again it's Christmas...

Wait, it's not Christmas, it's spring time...

Crazy woman!

Oh, did I saw Christmas, what I really meant to say was corn planting time. The red tractor and green planter confused me with Christmas.

And to be honest I am pretty sure Caleb is more excited about about planting corn than he ever is about anything I ever get him for Christmas. I guess I should start buying him seed corn for a present...lol

Anyways, it's true we have started planting corn. Our ground finally got dry enough to plant last Saturday afternoon, so let the madness begin!

They were calling for rain possibly on Tuesday morning, so bright and early Monday morning we thought we had better get started.

So all hands on deck when we start going...

Even the smallest hands on the farm had to do their part...

But their part was to sleep in the car seat while momma worked some ground.

Caleb and I got up at around 5:15 yesterday morning and headed out to the field.  I fed and changed Stinker before leaving the house and then put him in his car seat and away we went. He fell strait back to sleep and slept till just before we got relieved from our position.

He thought riding in the tractor was pretty cool. After our hired man took over for use we went and crawled into the planter tractor with Caleb and rode with him for a while. Chester thought it was pretty cool, but didn't like the fact that he couldn't touch any of the buttons or the steering wheel (auto-steer isn't as cool to little kids as it is to us big kids).

When we start going it's all hands on deck and it go like crazy time. This field isn't all that big, but we got 3 tractors running in it at one time.

Tractor 1 is field cultivating...or he's tilling all the weeds under.

Tractor 2 is smoothing everything back out so we can have a nice seed bed to plant in.

Tractor 3 is Caleb and he is planting. He really doesn't like to share the planter with anyone. He's kind of a planter hog..lol

Here's little man and I when we were taking dinner (aka Lunch) to Caleb in the field.

If I look tired, well that's because I am! 5 am came early and I only got to have a little bit of coffee.

My job most of the day was to run around like a chicken with it's head cut off...aka be the gopher (or go-for) person.

One of the things I had to do was go to the John Deere dealership and pick up some parts. One of them was this little rubber strap that holds the seed box lid on. I'm pretty sure the guy helping me had never seen a planter, cause I had to show him in his picture what this was, and I need to get another part for the planter and he had no clue what I was talking about and even when I gave him the phone to talk to Caleb about the part it took awhile to get him lined out with what we were needing. Oh well at least we were able to get the parts we needed and get going. There was another lady there fetching parts for her husband and John Deere had it all messed up and their big planting tractor was down so they couldn't go, so it could have been much worse than a dumb service guy.

We were able to go all day and we made it over a lot of acres, which was GREAT!

We had the alarm set to get up and do it all again this morning, and at 4:50 am Chester wakes up and fusses a little, so I go in and put his pacifier in and that's when I hear some rain coming down. It wasn't enough to keep us from getting up to go so Caleb heads up and gets the planter ready to go and I stay and sleep another 30 minutes then I got up and got Chester ready to go and then it started to rain again and this time it was enough to keep us out of the field. So I took Chester back in and put him in back in bed. That's how it goes sometimes...lol

We really didn't get all that much rain so hopefully we will be able to go again here after while if we don't get anymore!

Later,

JP