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

Sunday Drives

Almost every Sunday after we get our afternoon naps Caleb, Chester and I all load up and go look at the cattle and along the way we will stop at the crop fields and see how they are doing.

Chester loves these drives, cause he get to get out and be part of the action.

At this point in the year the corn has made, but the beans are still going, so Caleb is checking to see how the plants are doing and if there are any bugs that are causing problems and determine if we need to spray for them....Thankfully it's cooled down and the bugs aren't a problem.

Our little helper is bring us a sample of what he found while he was out looking at the beans. As long as he picking the beans in the field and staying away from mine that are in my garden then I don't care!

If you look close at these two pods you will notice 4 little bumps, those are the beans. We don't often find a lot of 4 bean pods on our beans, but Caleb was finding a bunch in this field and that made one farmer very happy.  

Caleb is showing Chester what the beans actually look like. They are tiny here but they have grown a lot since then and the longer the freeze holds off the bigger they will get and the more bushels they will produce!

While we are out and about we also do some checking to see if the corn is ready as well.  How we do that is go out and pick a few ears and shell all the corn off of it. 

You can tell a lot by just hand shelling the corn. The easier it shells off the cob the drier it is and the closer to being ready to harvest.  The more accurate way is by using a moisture tester....it's that little thing there by Caleb's hands.

  

How it works is you take the lid off and fill it with a sample of corn...if your lucky you will have a good helper for this part!

 
Then the lid is replaced...

And then you just choose what type of crop you are testing and let it do the rest.  

On this day the moisture was around 17-18% and dry corn is considered around 15%. You don't want to harvest it too wet because if you take it to the local elevator then you will get docked on the amount of money you get when you sell and if you put it into your own bin then you have to run fans to dry it down so it doesn't spoil.

Since harvest is so late this year we have been harvesting some wetter corn and taking the dock, because we need to get it out so we can get the ground worked back up and wheat planted.

These pics were from a few weeks ago and since then the corn has dried down some....in between rains...so we have done some harvesting.

They were back at it again yesterday and they will be going today so I will give you some more harvest up-dates later.

JP