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

Diggin' Tatters

So earlier this year I did a post about Panting Potatoes and I got a lot of response to it. My friend Carrie ask me to do one about harvesting potatoes and I am more than happy to oblige.

Usually the potato vie will grow and be full and robust and then bloom and then it will slowly die off and that's when you will harvest them, but that wasn't the case with mine this year.

Ya see mine had a problem with disease and I wasn't able to get out there and spray them near as much as they needed so the plants looked pretty bad and...

Some of them just died off. When this started to happen I decided it was time to get out there and start diggin' them.

Harvesting potatoes is really easy and young kids love it.

If the plants are still pretty strong one of the easiest ways is just to grab hold of the plant and pull the tatters out of the ground...

I thought I planted all red potatoes, but I ended up with some white ones. I guessing this was one of my shriveled up ones, other wise I have no idea how I got it.

If you aren't able to pull them, like I couldn't very much this year, then you will need to dig them. There are a few different ways of doing this...

You could get a potato fork...

 and use it to turn the ground over and...

 expose the potatoes, but...

Every once in a while you might get a causality. Throw this one on the top of the pile and make mash potatoes with it later, or if you have a lot of potatoes just chuck it.

(A potato fork is very much like a pitch fork, but the tines are flatter and straighter. You can get them at any farm and home store.)

Now even if you use a potato fork or you pull them, you will still probably have to get down on your hands and knees and do a little diggin' cause there will be some down there hiding from you.

What I found to work the best for me is to straddle the row and just go to town turning the the soil and bringing them to the surface.

Now I won't lie, I really thought I wasn't going to have many tatters this year since I had the disease problem but...

I was wrong. This what I got from one row so double this and well I have tatters coming out my ears!!!

O-well they keep pretty well. If you have a cool dry place that is best for storing them.

I have to settle with a just a dry place, cause there is no such thing a cool around here right now.

As you can see they are pretty easy to harvest, the only thing you have to worry about is not finding all the tatters when you are digging. So if you are having little kids help with the digging, you might want to follow them to make sure they found them all, cause I'm sure they will miss some along the way.

Once again if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Good Luck,

JP