Pick your favorite sunset

K7 and I were driving home from his sign language and trumpet classes Thursday evening when we saw the following sunset. I had to pull the truck over to the side of the road, grab my ever handy camera from my backpack, and start clicking. I deleted several shots, but I couldn't make up my mind about the following shots (in sequence from beginning to end). Which is your favorite? We probably won't see another sunset the next few days because we are about to get more rain than we have had all summer! Hallelujah!!!

#1

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#5

Smells like cedar

Wednesday night as we gathered for family scripture study and prayer, I asked K8 to switch on this ceiling fan over our heads. When it came on, we all gave a grasp, because we could, for the first time in a very long time, smell the fantastic cedar aroma wafting through the room. Weird, but wonderful!

Scout shop

K8 and I visited the big city Tuesday to buy tons of merit badges and ranks for our Boy Scout Court of Honor tonight. The Scouts have been busy this summer, and K7 and K8 got their share.

We wanted to watch the new Bourne movie while in town, but we had to wait two hours for the next show time, so we

bought tickets and watched this documentary to kill time. Wow! Powerful and well done. Even I learned a few things I didn't know about. Should be required viewing by all registered voters this fall.
Oh yea, the Bourne movie was pretty good too. PG-13 for mild language and some not so mild beat-downs of the bad guys.

Sunset on Monday 27 Aug

That is our dairy cow Darlin in the middle of picture, with all the ewes off to the right.

I had to use this walnut tree to block the sun.

KT had homemade hamburger and bell pepper pizzas waiting for our supper when we got home. Yummy!

Heidi and her daughters

While mowing beyond the pasture fence Monday, Heidi headed over to see what I was doing.

I wish I had a grass cube treat to feed her, but no joy.

Her two daughters followed her. Her newest, the as yet un-named black heifer was pretty frisky, and her older daughter Sandie was running toward us in the other paddock.

Here is new daughter. Yea, I know - need a name for her.

Here is 11 month old Sandie.

Sisters!

I liked this postioning - Mother and daughters!

Monday, 27 August, mowing

I finally found time to bush hog behind our pasture fence along the stream.  It was overgrown and included some poison ivy. In this picture, I ran over the top part of an oak tree that had fallen in last storm. Our bull "Red" came over to see what I was doing.

This is the view back across paddock #3 with the sun going down.

I got quite a bit of brush, grass, and weeds mowed back to the tree line. I hope to soon have new fencing up around the south 20 acres, so this should be the last time I mow this area - the cows, sheep, and soon to be added meat goats will be grazing this stuff from now on. There are several acres of grazing land between this fence on the left and the stream on the right.

In some areas I was able to mow a wide swath such as this - other areas were narrow because of trees or the stream bank. There are two things to notice in this photo: 1) lower left has a bunch of chopped leaves which are poison ivy, which I somehow got a little on my right arm moving logs and branches; and 2) far right, across the pasture, you can see new light colored doors on our hay storage shed which were built by a good friend and his son this morning (wish I had thought to take pictures while they were working).

I came back after returning the tractor, and brought K8 to help me gather up all the branches and logs I uncovered or moved while mowing. He did not get any poison ivy on him. Can't wait to burn all these brush piles and finish cleaning up this area.

Happy Birthday K8!

We started his day with a leisurely breakfast of French toast and...

...chocolate Kid's Now shakes. Then the boys and I went off to do a service project for a few hours.

K8 wanted a Birthday supper at his favorite Japanese restaurant in the "big" city, where he ate a lot of shasimi! He received cards and phone calls from family, and got a pocket knife, some money and an iTunes gift card, which I suspect will purchase songs by Lindsey Whats-her-name, the LDS violin player.

Vitamin BLT

After canning 57 quarts of tomatoes over 3 nights, she decided to break out her dehydrator and "dry" the rest. Oh yea, she made me drink some homemade tomato juice one night - way too healthy tasting.

I saved this one juicy tomato for my healthy BLT sandwich. Yummy.

And of course, I washed the BLT down with this delicious cup of chocolate milk!

Tractor time

Yesterday evening, I took the tractor and blade into paddocks #1 and 2 to level and smooth out the ground where we had the septic lines laid two years ago. They had formed three big ridges in the ground that made cutting difficult. As you can see, the problem has been fixed. Yes, we'll get grass seed on it soon.

This morning I put the bush hog on the tractor and tackled the heavy weed infestation in our chicken paddock. It is steep which makes it a challenge. All the fowl headed into their shed for protection.

We had put our goat Percy in this paddock a few weeks ago to eat the weeds, but we would have needed several more goats and several more weeks to clear it. I couldn't wait any longer.

Besides the steep incline, I had to maneuver around stumps, rocks, and...

...trees.

Then I had to constantly drive slowly down hill to get on level ground in order to turn gently back up hill to avoid tipping over. Even then, my front wheels slid sideways or came up off the ground a few times on the up hill route.

Yes, I should have moved the water trough and the stack of metal, but I was in a hurry to mow weeds and move on to several other tasks I had today. S took these pictures while trying to wave and get my attention to tell me it was time to drive to another town 45 miles away. We ended up being 10 minutes late to her appointment, but I am happy I got the weeds mowed!

The chickens and turkeys seem happy as well.

Our county road crew has been busy the past few days resurfacing our road with oil and gravel. This is a view to the east of our house.

And this is the road heading west from our house along paddocks # 5 and 6. We own the land on both sides of the road, but everything on the left of this photo is a long, narrow, hilly strip of land. It is about 1 1/2 acres in total. I am tempted to fence it and put goats or sheep on it, but there is no water. Any ideas on how to make it productive (besides putting a lemonade stand on it)?

Night shift

After a full day, S thought it would be fun to start canning tomatoes at 10 P.M. tonight. She went to an Amish produce auction this morning hoping to buy a bunch of peaches, but came home with 100+ pounds of tomatoes. She says that she will only do one batch tonight and finish tomorrow...

More brush cleanup

While out in the pasture with the truck, we picked up branches that were blown down during last two storms, as well as pulling big weeds out of the corral.

We added it to our growing brush piles along the stream. We will have several bon fires in a month or two, and then resume clearing this area that we started last winter. 

Another new calf!

Heidi surprised us yesterday, Monday 20 August, by delivering her calf a full month earlier than I expected.  It is a heifer! Looks black, but hoping she turns dark red. K7 spotted her within a few hours of birthing. By the time we got out to paddock #5 with the camera, the calf was still wet from Momma licking her clean, but standing and walking around.

K8 verified its a girl. A real cutie.

Family photo of their first meal together. We took some grain along with us just in case we had to bribe Momma cow to let us get close to the calf (no need) and if you have grain with you, make sure there is enough for Poppa bull,"Red", - or else he gets real grumpy.

A pretty day to be born. It was also the coolest day we have had in a while, in the low 80's.

Any suggestions on what to name her? 

Like Mother, like daughter! All systems are functioning and normal. A good Momma Dexter cow. A good birth.  Equals a really good day on the Wanch!

Movie Review

Move over Hollywood, because the Swedes make great movies! If you liked the medieval action film, "Kingdom of Heaven", you will love "Arn, The Knight Templar". It was released in Sweden as a series running about 4 1/2 total hours. It was edited down to 2 hours and released in America. Nobody saw it. I never heard of it until I recently came across a copy of the complete series - in Swedish with English subtitles! The movie is so great the boys and I weren't phased at all by the language barrier - we just kept clicking on the next episode to see what was going to happen to Arn and company. Yes, there are battle scenes and some blood, but also an incredible love story, faith in God, honor, hard trials and redemption. You get a dose of history, both the well known Crusader vs Saladin stuff you hopefully learned during school, as well as learning about unknown medieval Sweden. Hollywood prefers England & France with Robin Hood, Prince John, King Richard or King Louis, etc. The only old history Hollywood tells us about Scandinavia is Vikings (I own most of the Viking movies!). This movie has a great cast, plot, costumes, script, props, action, heroes, villains, and it was filmed in beautiful Sweden and sandy Morocco, with a few shots in Scotland. One of Sweden's biggest budget movies ever, and I am just finding out about it! We got rid of TV in our house about 8 years ago, so I do occasionally miss a few important things going on in the world...hey, have our astronauts returned from the moon yet?