I'm Farming and I Grow it!!

First sorry I have been away for awhile. My computer caught a nasty bug, and has been in and out of the shop for about two weeks now. It back now and good as new!!!

Ok back to why we are here....

If you haven't seen this video yet then you must watch it...it is just too good!

Frist I want to say gret job to these boys....this was great. Second these are some good ol' Kansas Boys woot, woot!!! Third I love the fact that their clothes are dirty in parts of this, cause it really show what farmes look like when they are out there working.

Hope ya'll enjoy it! Have a wonderful Friday!!!

JP

I got tired

I got tired with my old look so I decided to change it up a bit.

What do you think??

Do you hate it?

Do you love it?

And what do you think of my new picture?

There are a few things that I don't just love about this new set-up, but for the most part I am happy with it....and anyways, I was needing something different.

Have a great weekend!

JP

Update's, List and Other Random Things

1. We are still in the Wheat field.

If all goes well we should be able to finish up with the wheat harvest this week!! How awesome would that be! We still have soybeans to plant behind the wheat but we are slowly making headway on that too. There have been years around here where some of the farmers talk about watching fireworks from the combine while cutting wheat, so getting it out this early is just great!!

2. My child is sleeping right now, but I'm sure he will wake up before I finish this post! More on him in a bit.

3. I currently have what's left of a dead possum in my yard thanks to my wonderful dogs. It's been there long enough that it no longer stinks. How sad is that! lol

4. My garden looks terrible this year. I was pulling weeds yesterday and oh my there are a lot of them. I also discovered while out there that I need to pick green beans...

As if I didn't already have enough to do this week.! :/

5. I have 2 mason jars full of dead flowers sitting on my table from before mothers day. I really should throw them out, but I keep finding better things to do.

6. I hear my child waking up, which means I don't have much time. :)

 7. I miss blogging. Over the past 6 to 8 months (really since Chester was born) I haven't blogged near as much as I use to. Partly because of him and partly because I took on another responsibility. I am now taking care of Children's Church at my Church and that consumes a lot of my brain time, but I soo love working with the kids. They are an absolute JOY!! and the helpers I have well they are just plain wonderful!

8. I <3 Mt. Dew! It's true, it's kinda my coffee!

9. I own 2 Kid Rock CD's (soon possibly 3) and 3 Nickelback CD's....For those of you that have known me since I was little that's probably a shocker, cause all I use to listen to was Country and well that's really mainly what I do listen to, but I but I do love me some good ol' rock music...But I don't listen to all the songs on their albums, cause there are some that are a little too nasty for me! My favorite music is hands down "Reddirt Country" or "Texas Country" what ever ya wanna call it. It's the best!!

10. I am a Missourian, born and bred. I Love everything about my home state, but after living in Kansas for almost 5 years now I would have to say that I am beginning to love it too. Now I will always be a Missourian, and it will always be my first Love, but I am gradually becoming a Kansan too and I really can't imagine living anywhere else. Hmm....never thought I would say that! lol

11. I quilt, and I love it!! Back in November I won a photo contest and with the prize money I bought myself a new sewing machine. I ha been using three different old machines that were either given to me or I got for a $1 at a garage sale, well I know why they didn't cost much cause they didn't work worth a hoot. So I finally was able to get me a new one and oh my was I glad I did!! It's amazing and I love it and use it every chance I get.

I made a quilt for my nephew who graduated high school this spring and I loved the way it turned out!

Here he is showing it off.

Now I only have 12 more to make to get all the nieces and nephews taken care of...I had better get hopping!

12. I currently have 2 totes full of baby clothes that need to be hauled out to the shed for storing. This kid is growing way too fast!

13.My child turned 8 months yesterday...

Yeah I know it's hard to believe it's been that long. He is now crawling all over the place (he does the army man crawl, cause he doesn't have time for the other crawling). We keep him pinned in the living room with laundry baskets full of clothes. If the clothes aren't in there then the baskets aren't heavy enough...

It's really not that hard to find the clothes I am doing laundry every other second.

14. We did a photo soot in the field where the wheat field meets up with the corn field. I took somewhere around 235 pictures and boy was it fun!

15.Chester can now pull himself up now and we do it all the time. He one very determined child and I am afraid we may be walking before long. Yikes!

I thought I had a picture of him standing, but I just have a video, and it's not on my computer...But this is him after he stood up. He was trying to get my phone, and once he had that he wanted my camera. lol

16. We did an impromptu family photo shoot the other day, because I really don't have any pics of all three of us. Caleb always tells me that there's no since paying someone to take our pictures since I have the camera and can do it...but he forgets that he has to make time for to take the pictures. So I put Chester in a cute outfit and got a clean shirt for Caleb and when I took him his dinner one day I made him stop for a few extra minutes to take a family picture. They may not be perfect, but this is how things are most days, so I wanted to get one in our "real life" setting.

17. I loved what Chester was wearing in this picture so much that I put him in that same outfit a few days later for his 8 month photos.

Well I guess that about does it for now. It has taken me half the morning to write this so I had better go put my little man down for a nap and go and fold some laundry and stuff some diapers.

If I get a chance I will post some more pics of Chester's Photo Shoot, cause they were really cute!!

Wheat Harvest 2012

Since we got some rain last night the wheat harvest was put on hold for a day or so, giving me a chance to catch you up on how it's going.

Well, this spring has been a busy one. After getting the corn planted we went strait into vaccinating all the cattle, build some new fences in some of the pastures and baling some lots of hay! In the span of about 2 weeks we probably baled about 1,800 large round bales of hay. And on top of all that the wheat got ready to harvest about two weeks earlier than normal, because of the warmer than normal temps we had this spring. So needless to say, there has been no slowing around here.

Well harvest got started last Friday afternoon. The combines pulled into the field and we started cutting, stopped on Sunday and then have gone strong all this week until today since we got about an inch of rain over night and it's all a little too wet to go. Thanks to the warmer than normal spring temps, the harvest is about two weeks or so earlier than normal, so even though the combines weren't going today the guys were still busy out there getting hay hauled and getting everything ready to start planting soybeans after the wheat is harvested.

I have been busy here in the house too, trying to sort through all of Chester's clothes and figure out what fits and what we will be wearing over the summer....

It's a never ending process!!

Ok, back to wheat...

We have been looking forward to this years harvest for a while now, cause it has been looking so good.

I took this a few days before the wheat got ready. By the time we were harvesting the wheat the bales were all gone and replaced by cattle.

There is a special scientific way to tell if the wheat is ready to harvest.

Take a head of it,

Shell it,

And pop it into your mouth and chew it.

Basically if it's crunchy it's ready.

Caleb and Pop were discussing if the wheat was "crunchy" enough...

And it was cause just a couple hours later they pulled in and they were off!

In all honesty they can tell a lot by chewing it. But after the cut some I head to the grain elevator to have the moisture tested. If the wheat isn't dried down enough you will get docked so much money off what you sell it for. Also if there is to much moisture in the grain when storing it, then the grain can spoil and will be no good.

In these pics Caleb was down digging in the soil to see if there was enough moisture to start planting beans. And there was, but there wasn't anyone to run the planter so it's gonna have to wait.

If he knows I'm taking his picture I will usually get a big smile from him.

If we have the man power we will usually have the combines unload on the go. You wouldn't believe how much time it saves during harvest.

And sometimes you can only get to one side of the truck so the will just do a chain unload.

So when we pulled into this field Calvin was stopped with the hopper fully loaded and instead of just pulling under the auger Caleb made the combine move to where he was going with the grain cart and when Calvin had to stop again to unload the wheat went spilling over the top. So Caleb climbed on top and they started pushing as much as they could back into the header so they could save it.

FYI: It's a lot easier to squat down and get these pictures when your not pregnant.

But when you are down there getting those pictures make sure the wind is blowing the right direction, cause if it's not you will have all this everywhere and boy is it itchy!!

So as of right now I think we are somewhere close to being about half done with wheat harvest and so far it's been going GREAT!! We are averaging somewhere around 70 bushels / acre on most of the fields. We have a few fields that we pastured cattle on that will probably only average about 40-50 bushels / acre, but in normal years 40-50 bushels is great in this part of the country, so there's no complaints here!

Alright, I need to get back to doin' some stuff around the house before my little man wakes back up.

Later,

JP

The Winner and Some Answers

Congratulations to LeAnna over at "Thoughts and Whatnots" she is the winner of the soap pump and Tumbler. If you haven't checked out her blog, then you should, cause it's wonderful!!! I will try and get those out to you sometime this week.

Also I thought I would take this time to answer some questions I have gotten about making these projects.

Straws - Where did the come from? Well I got mine one amazon. I don't get the chance to go and do much shopping and there really aren't that many stores around here in the middle of no where (I'm not complaining, cause I love living in the middle of no where!) So I googled them and had a really hard time finding them, but I did finally come up with some on amazon. I kinda thought you might be able to find some at Bed, Bath and Beyond or another store like that. One of my friends was gonna check out Target, but I haven't heard if she had any luck.

Grommets - once again I googled them and ended up finding them on Amazon. When searching I typed in "Rubber Grommet 3/8 BD or Bore Diameter (I can't remember which it typed)

Hope this answered some of your Questions. Thanks for Playing!

Janet

GIVEAWAY TIME - Mason Jar Soap Pump and Tumbler

So if you have seen my last two post, then you will have know that I showed you how to make two different project with mason jars...

A Soap Dispenser and A Mason Jar Tumbler Lid.

Now one lucky person will get to win one of each!

the winner will get...

One Soap Dispenser Lid and a pint size jar...

And one Tumbler lid, one straw, and one pint size jar.

Straw will be your choice of color - Pink, Blue, Green, or Orange and either Dots or Stripes.

If you have your own jars and would rather use them, please let me know cause that will make shipping a lot easier!

Rules:

Just leave me a comment telling me what your favorite summer drink is?

One entry per person

*You can earn a second entry by blogging about my giveaway and then leaving a second comment with a link to you post.

* You can even get a third / fourth entry by sharing this contest with your friends via Facebook or Twitter! Be sure to share the link, then come back and let me know you did with another comment.

Entries will close at midnight on Friday, May 25th, 2012 and I will announce the winner on Monday morning.

Good Luck!

JP

DIY - Making a Mason Jar Tumbler Lid

So a while back I was on Etsy (another site that may just be evil, but I love it!) and on the home page they were spotlighting a store that was making these...

Mason Jar Tumblers...

I fell in LOVE with them then and there!!

Hers had plain lids, as do most of mine, but I had a fun lid and ring set that I though just looked soo cute!

So how to make these darling little drink holders, well they are even easier than the Soap Dispenser I showed you the other day.

So here we go...

Tools: Drill with a 7/16 drill bit and tin snips

Supplies: Pint or Quart Mason Jar, a Mason Jar lid and Ring, a Polycarbonate Drinking Straw, and a Rubber Grommet. (I will talk more about what that is in a little bit)

Start with screwing the lid on the jar and then drilling a hole through the top.

Once again make sure to have a hand holding the jar while you are doing this.

Also, I did this in an old ice cream bucket because it would catch all the little metal shavings that were made when you drilled through the lid.

See all those little shavings, you don't want them flying around your house if they don't have to.

Also if you have any little pieces still hanging on you will want to take your tin snips and clip it off.

Next you will need this little guy.

This took me a while to figure out what it was, when I saw it on the one for sale on Etsy.

Well this is a...

Grommet.

WHAT?!?!?!

It's something that is used in auto mechanics. That's all I know about them and that's probably all you care to know about them.

This is important if you are going to make this you need to make sure you get the right size, or it wont work for the straw to go through.

You will need a grommet with a 3/8 Bore Diameter (BD) or Inside Diameter (ID) (that's the middle where the straw will go through)  The straws have a diameter of 3/8 and fit perfectly in there once they have been installed.

Once you have those little guys, you will just take them and carefully push them in to place. Be careful with this, because you don't want to cut yourself on the hole...it's very sharp!

Now wash everything up and make sure all the shavings are out of the jar, then fill the jar with your favorite drink, screw the lid on, put the straw in and sit back and enjoy!

That's an order!! :)

This is my big iced coffee drinking jar, that is currently filled with sweet tea, but whatever.

FYI: if you use the quart jars for the glass, the y don't fit in cup holders in your car....grrrr!

So stay tuned, the beginning of next week I will be doing a give away with both of these DIY projects!

Have a wonderful weekend, I know I will. Little man and I are heading to MO to go and watch my oldest nephew graduate from high school (tear). I think this means I'm getting old! :)

Janet.