The house is quiet as Dad and 5 kids went to help ASK work on her roof, and Levi is milking. Very soon here I will wake up little ones and we will dive into the day full throttle, with lots of things to do, places to go, people to see. Before that, though, I want to post a few px that the kids didn’t use this week plus some new ones from Thursday and Friday. Busy blessed days.
This goes back to hay days – taken on Monday when Jan was cutting and U. Earl was tedding. Yes, that’s a word, even though Live Writer didn’t know it. I looked in Word, and learned that tedding means to spread or shake up mown grass in order to dry it when making hay. I sure didn’t know that word before but I do now!
What a great show!
[Jan is from S. Africa; his name is pronounced /yon/.]
What a treat then to have U. Earl eat his lunch in the cool house with us (it was 90+ out that day!)
Tuesday getting ready for baling.
At some point Jan came and raked the hay into windrows (Jacob blogged about it; I didn’t even know it happened. Not sure where I was.).
Wednesday – baling. Aaron in tractor on left, Levi in truck, Andy in tractor on right.
Wish this pic had turned out better, but I like it anyway.
And a story about that young man – I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but Josh has taken quite a liking to Andy. So Wednesday afternoon I got Josh up from his nap a little earlier than usual so he could watch the levee being baled. Josh was on the kitchen bench looking out the window for a few seconds, and Andy was stacking hay in the barn – that little squirt (Josh) recognized Andy in the tractor and got so excited! He just kept saying, “Andy, Andy, Andy!” and pointing to the tractor. We went out, and he got a squeeze from Andy, who is very patient with Josh’s antics and seems to kind of like him a little too, and we watched the rest of the hay stacking. We went in for supper then, and waved good-bye to Andy as he headed off to finish his work. ‘Bout broke Josh’s heart when Andy left, though, and he just couldn’t understand why Andy had to leave. And he still gets excited for every green tractor that drives by - “Andy!”
Dad & I always have a big salad for supper…Tori does such a good job, and this one was so pretty.
Thursday night we all went to the lower pasture to get it ready for the cows (except Levi who was at CDL class).
(I followed the truck, walking.)
Weed-whacking under the electric fence so the weeds don’t ground the charge, thus rendering it useless.
Destination: the bridge. Objective: repair the floodgate.
Tall grass!
Trying to get Josh to look at me: “Look at Mommy’s nose, Joshua.” So he touches his nose. And Jewel giggles and joins the fun. *sigh* Oh well, it’s cute anyway!
These three had so much fun wading! Which ended up with them all soaking wet…which is fine because it’s SUMMER!
Now. I will confess something. When I first married Dad and he would help Grandpa fix the floodgates, I was completely mystified as to what that was. It took awhile before I figured out what was going on. See, there is pasture on both sides of the creek, and the creek is the water source for the cows. But cows like to walk in the water, and they just might decide to walk right on down the creek to the neighbor’s land, which isn’t a good thing. So there is a fence that goes ACROSS the creek. When we get a lot of rain, many fields drain into the creek, and it rises. Which means it brings lots of branches, tree trunks, and so on down the current with it, and that fence is usually destroyed (see pic above with Ben standing on the big log. Debris to the right comes down the creek with flood waters.) Which means the fence breaks. Hence, it opens, making it a GATE and not a FENCE. See? A gate is merely a section of fence that opens. And this particular gate is opened by floods, so it is a FLOODGATE. Even though most of the time it’s a fence. So when it is repaired, it is repaired with sections of old wire instead of one tight firm wire which would soon break anyway. And each time the creek rises and the floodgates go out, they must be repaired quickly so the cows don’t get out. Today, summertime, it’s not so bad, although Dad never really enjoys this job. Wintertime – it’s not so much fun at all, especially if boots are leaky.
I tried to get a pic of the floodgate, but the wires didn’t show up very good. This is the best I could do. Dad is working on the middle wire, and the third wire is barely visible right by Kate’s head.
Here are all three wires on the bank, with relatively new wires. Down the bank and across the creek is old gnarly twisted rusty wire.
The north end. Takes teamwork!
Friday (yesterday) Dad took off at noon. He & the kids finished the floodgates and weed-whacking, and then he & Jacob moved the cows down before supper. After supper we all worked in the garden awhile.
Muskmelons look good!
Watermelon.
Candy onions :)
Tomatoes are coming along.
Yellow zucchini.
Grandpa’s Marvelous Tomatoes!
Must burn up those potato bugs.
Beautiful sunset. Kids were playing 500 in the front yard; they said the lightening was awesome, and we heard thunder rumbling around all night, although nothing was close and we got no rain.
Cutest little guy!!
Little league in the park with Dad :)
Ready for bed.
And that’s it for the week, up to today which was another long full day with a lot of memories and pictures – but that’ll have to be another post.
Good night.
Ruth,
ReplyDeleteI love seeing the pictures of your family all working together! And thank you for explaining the flood gate. The kids were in Missouri one time wading in a creek that had a section of fence stretched across it (you could just barely see the top of it), and I remember thinking how odd it was to have a fence through the water like that. Now it all makes perfect sense! Tori's salad looks great! She has inspired me to be a little more creative! :) Glad to see your week went so well! ~Kristi