After the rain, time for fun and travel.

We took K9 to the Annual Baker Creek Festival. After eating the healthy, yummy, chocolate coconut ice cream, his favorite thing to do was hug a tree, and it didn't cost any money.

Favorite thing? It was the tree...until he saw The Tractor! He absolutely loves tractors!

This is "Fluffy", our only indoor dog. She, like the other four dogs on our farm, is a pure bred pedigreed canine who cost someone else a lot of money. Like the other dogs, Fluffy was given to us. She is a Japanese Sptiz and very loving. She likes nothing better than sitting in your lap and being petted. So, inaddition to raising cattle and sheep, we raise children and rescue dogs.

We took a little trip to Portland, Oregon. Boarded the plane. It broke, so we de-planed back into terminal. Waited 45 minutes and boarded the plane a second time. Started to back up, but stopped. Whatever broke before, was not really fixed, so we de-planed again into the terminal. This time we waited hours! Six hours after we first boarded our plane, we marched back onto it for the 3rd time, and 3rd time lucky, we actually took off! K9, at 2 1/2, did not want to sit still or wear his seat belt all three times! Oh my, it was exciting. And he missed his afternoon nap and did not fall asleep until the final 45 minutes of the 4 hour flight. To add insult to injury, one of our suit cases somehow ended up in Seattle instead of Portland, so we had to wait for it to arrive at Portland. When I got it, it was wet. We did not get to bed until about 2 A.M. Missouri time. Alaska Airlines was kind enough to give us several discounts on future flights and miles on our frequent flier account. We survived, with bennies. 

Our priority the next day was hair cuts for me and K9. I found an awesome barber shop operated by Vietnamese barbers. Our daughter, K1, took us to this specialty kid's barber for his trim. He was definitely happy with the chairs. 

He settled on the police car. It, like the firetruck, had flashing lights and lots of buttons, knobs, and a moving steering wheel, not to mention an animated movie playing on a screen in front of him.

Why visit Portland, OR, in the month of May? To attend our granddaughter Sadie's baptism on Saturday, and to celebrate Mother's Day with K1's family. Here is Sadie holding her dog, Lucky. 

This is the real Lydia, not the flat paper Lydia who visited the farm last month. 

After Church on Sunday, we were able to see and talk with our son K7 via Skype for the first time since Christmas. He has spent the last 17 months as a Missionary teaching the Gospel to the people in Ghana, West Africa.  

Here he is actually helping a young man with his school homework...

He loves the people of Ghana, and wants to work even harder the remaining 5 months he has left on his Mission. He is supposed to return home in early November.

The weather in Portland has been mostly cloudy and rainy, with occasional sunshine.

If you look to the upper right of the green road sign in the middle of this pic, you will see Mt Hood rising into the clouds.

Standing in front of the doors of the Portland Temple. Our grandson Trevor is with us.

Two and half year old K9 is almost as big as his four year old nephew Trevor. 

It is a beautiful Temple... 

...and it is set in a beautiful green forrest. Why Temples? A Temple is the only place on earth in which we can be sealed to our spouse, children, and extended family for all time and eternity - a celestial family.

Family is extremely important to us. With the recent passing of Grandma and Grandpa, we have created a family cemetery on the farm. We are waiting for K7's return from his Mission this Fall, so he can help bury his grand parent's ashes. Families are Forever.

Variation on the kid's story book, "Flat Stanley"

My grand daughter Lydia's school class was doing the "Flat Stanley" book. Her teacher mailed us a "Flat Lydia" and asked us to take pictures of her doing stuff around the farm. She started off on the tractor, joined by many other kids and grand kids.

She helped feed grain to the calves, Tina and Holly, who we are weaning off their Momma's milk. The green spots? We took them to the Vet's for their basic vaccinations, and have their ears tattooed with their unique identifying number.

She played with Annie, our bottle fed calf.

The sheep let her get real close and scratch their ears.

Done with feeding the four-legged animals, it was time to take care of our feathered friends.

The geese did not hiss at her like they do when the other kids get too close to them.

Collected chicken eggs and headed indoors to fix our breakfast...

...a farm fresh omelet with bacon, cheese, red onions, green bell peppers, jalapenos, and cilantro.

Flat Lydia had a great time, and I had a great breakfast. No, she did not eat it - she prefers peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chocolate covered almonds.

 K2 & K6 helped pull the front yard fence up and put in more t-posts. It is a temporary fix until I can replace the entire front fence line.

This is the "little" pond up on the hill. It has, over time, filled out very nicely, especially after last week's flood rains. It has lots of bullfrogs, but I haven't put any fish in the pond, because of fear of toxic waste left over from the old dump. Oh yea, and lots of lead bullets...

Two and a half year old K9 having fun with a bottle of baby powder and hand-wipes. Mom swept it up, but do you know how slick powder makes a wood floor?

K8 feeding animals after the rains. It is so much easier to haul 50 pound bags of grain and grass cubes around various paddocks with our Honda UTV - what a work horse! And it's a 4-wheel drive, so we can go anywhere through anything.

Spring rains bring record flooding in Ozarks of Missouri.

The farm, a month or so ago, before the historical flood rains arrived. Trees were not fully leafed out, and the stream is just a black line inside the tree line.

Last weekend, a few hours after the first storm dumped part of the 12" rain stopped. The stream is full of rushing waves and the pastures were flooded. 

This was the water's edge over a month ago (no, I do not let K9 drive!, but he loves riding and he insists he have his seat belt on before starting. The red eye glasses are for play, not vision.).

This was after a regular rain weeks ago, before the "big" storm hit.

Here is last week's 12" rain. I took this a few hours after the first wave of rain stopped, so the water level had gone down a little. Stream over flowed both sides.

Our bridge is somewhere under the water.

The intersection and bridge west of our house got flooded to a level as high as my truck's head lights - totally impassable until rain stopped and water started to recede. We came over to the bridge east of our house and the water had come up the dirt road past the gate you see in this pic. K2 was impressed.

The pond next to house over flowed a few times. The water you see running along fence below orchard was full of dead fish - 100% were small bluegill, which I'm okay with since their population is taking over the pond. I collected a bucketful of live ones to throw back in pond (don't know why other than I hate to see a living creature suffer). I did not see any bass or black crappie, but our 9 year old said he saw one of each. Not bad at all compared with the dozens of dead bluegill I saw.

A view from our back deck while it was still raining a little. The stream is normally on the left of the tree line, but...
We had State record levels of flooding all over the region. It was caused by the fact we had several rain storms over past month, so the ground was too saturated with water when this 12" down pour arrived.

I walked our pastures a few hours after the first wave of rain stopped. Another wave started up an hour after these pics, and the pond, stream and fields flooded again. We had quite a bit of debris washed up along the fence line, very similar to what we were trying to clean up before K7 left on his Mission. The fence itself survived better this time because the cattle panels we installed at certain key points worked as designed and fell down without stretching or damaging the rest of fence line. They were easy to clean off and stand back into place. With a few days of dry weather, we have already begun cutting up the bigger logs along fence and burning.

The good news is that our water gap fences survived the pounding. Yea! I am really happy about this, after all the time and money and effort of installing, fixing, and replacing the old ones.

We moved the main herd of cows into paddock #6, which had tall lush grass and clover. K6 (here) and K8 took turns going out into the rain (or breaks in the rain) every 12 hours to bottle feed our calf Annie, and take hay and grain to the two older calves we are weaning - Hollie and Tina. Look at the tiny island of green grass in paddock #4 (far left upper corner).

The pond over flowed several times. The water rushing down hill (upper left of pic) from our neighbor's long, steep driveway hammered our front yard fence so bad that the fence was almost pushed flat. The pond over flowed to the right, past the three potted trees.

But the rain finally stopped for a few days. The clouds moved on, the blue skies and sun reappeared, and life got back to normal. The pond is remaining full so far. Time to start mowing and weed eating again.

This little bull calf belongs to Flora (our first daughter out of Gwen). He is polled and red. There is not supposed to be any water flowing through this part of paddock #6.

Winter 2016, into Spring 2017

This is Jane, our friendliest St Croix ewe, after giving birth to the first of her two twin boys on Christmas weekend.

This is a little Jedi warrior using the "Force" to cast a spell on me...at a Vietnamese restaurant of all places.

A monthly requirement on the farm - burning another brush pile up on the hill. 

K9 covers his ears when the cows start mooing too close to him. They can be loud when they are hungry.

K9 playtime while getting ready for bed at night.

Three little bull calves in paddock #1, trying to figure out which one is the boss. My money is on the two-legged one!

Installing a new gate and holding pen system in our corral, so I can load and unload cattle in and out of a stock trailer by myself. Because of the sloping ground in our corral, I asked my friend Brian to scoop out some dirt, so the new gate will swing inward.

This is 2" to 3" of hail on the highway that fell in only 10 minutes a few weeks ago. The biggest was the size of a golf ball.

K9 loves tractors! It is one of his favorite words. He will sit on our tractor for half an hour pretending to make engine noises and driving around. He has at least 6 toy tractors, dozers, and backhoes (he calls all of them tractors).

K9 also loves "Fluffy", our only indoor dog. She is a Japanese Spitz, a $700 purebred dog that a friend gave us. All 5 of our dogs are expensive purebred dogs which were given to us by others.

My friend Jack dropping a few more trees for firewood and clearing out an area on the hill for future grazing land.

Some of our beautiful white St Croix sheep framed by red painted steel fence posts and gates down by the stream. In case you are wondering, I use International Red colored paint from Ace Hardware.

I took this pic from the Children's Ballet of the Ozark web page. It is from their production of "The Nutcracker" in December 2016. Four of our kids danced in it.

K6 and Daniel cleaning up the trees that Jack dropped earlier. All the firewood was donated: some to friends from Church, and some to strangers in need, like a 90 year old lady 10 miles north of town, and an unemployed lesbian couple who recently moved into town.

It is official - K9 can climb over any obstacle in his path. He is only 2 1/2 years old. Look out world, here he comes!

We now have three sets of twin lambs. Just the beginning. Should have a bunch more being born over next few months.

There is beauty to be found every day around us here in the Ozarks. This is looking out our front door at sunset.

This has been the mildest winter ever, and the grass is greening up months earlier than normal.

K6, the master pyro, at work, burning yet more brush piles. 

Two of Daniel's brother's, more neighbor "nephews", who are only 15 and 16, but so well trained in many job skills. Here they are welding gates in my new corral set-up. 

Here was a wonderful surprise found during my daily morning patrol around the farm yesterday, Saturday, the 11th of March. First time Mom, Flora, gave birth to this cute little bull calf on the stream bank after Friday night's freezing rain.