Pheasant Hunting

We woke up to light snow on the ground with it still coming down. The roads were a little slick on the way to church. Bill has gone pheasant hunting Fri., Sat., and today in the mornings. Fri. & Sat. he was helping train a friend's son's dog. These pictures are of pheasant hunting in 2006, taken by Bill's friend Randy. The 1st picture is of Bill and his dog, Sam. In the 2nd picture, Bill is in the foreground. His dad is the guy farthest away. We have lots of pheasants in this area. Hunters come from all over to take advantage of that! I put a pheasant breast in the crock pot early this morning to be ready for lunch. Here's the recipe:

CROCK POT PHEASANT

1-3 pheasant breasts
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 c. raw rice
3/4 c. water
1/2 env. Lipton onion soup mix

Mix soups, rice & water in crock pot. Place breasts over soup mixture. Sprinkle onion soup mix over pheasant. Cook on High 4-5 hours. (tastes like chicken - just kidding!)

Breakfast Feast on Sat. Morning

My 18 year old identical triplet nephews, Rob, Ross & Reed, like to come over to Aunt Cindy's house for breakfast feasts. We're trying to get several of these in before they are gone to college next year. They usually request LOTS of bacon, eggs, orange rolls and hash browns.

Thanksgiving in Blue Earth

We went to Bill's sister Karen's in Blue Earth, Minnesota for Thanksgiving. Bill's mom went too. The first time I went to Blue Earth, I was surprised to see the Green Giant! There is a Green Giant plant there. Remember you can click on pictures to see them bigger.















Brother-in-law Dave carving the turkey. It was moist and all of the other food (alot) was really good. Karen likes to cook and had made 3 pies, the turkey, ham, corn casserole, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top, mashed potatoes w/ cream cheese, chives, garlic & sour cream (yum) cranberry salad along with the cheeseball, rolls and Frog Eye Salad that Peggy & I brought.












Watching the turkey being carved. Bill with Taylor. Memaw with Matthew. He was sampling the turkey.

After we ate, Ryanne showed us the games she likes to play on their wii & Uncle Bill tried a few.

Happy Thanksgiving

I forgot that when "blogging", you should take step by step pictures of some things you do and realized I should've done that with making these yummy yeast rolls. Baking is kind of a lost art anymore, but I really enjoy it. Here are the rolls after rolling them out. They're ready to raise for about 3 hours in a very warm place.







Ready to consume! Our house sure does smell good after baking 3 dozen of these! We're going to Bill's sister's, with his mom, for Thanksgiving. She and Dave have 3 year old twins (boy & girl) and a 10 year old daughter. They live in Minnesota - 2 hours north of us. Happy Thanksgiving to all!









Last month it was spiders made with the Stampin' Up! Photo Corners punch for the legs and Scallop Circle punch for the main part of the body with a York Peppermint Patty in the middle. This month stampers made turkeys entirely with the Scallop Circle Punch and peppermint patty body. Snowmen and Santas are next! There's no end to what you can do with our punches!

Stampin' Up! Holiday Extravaganza Sale

For those of you who are stampers, you've gotta check out the Holiday Extravaganza Sale announced beginning today! Several bundles of stamping products priced at 20-50% off - only until Dec. 1 - that's next week! And while supplies last. The best way to look at the details and flyer is to click on my web site - upper right side of this screen. Don't forget that you can order online from my web site - click on Shop Now - (and browse the catalog) and that I do gift certificates. Stampers love to find stamps and accessories under the tree! Have fun shopping!

Cruise to Eastern Caribbean

We were on the Crown Princess for 7 days. It holds about 3,500 people. Mom & I had a stateroom w/balcony on Deck 12.



















Can you tell we're laying on the beach at Princess Cays looking up? I always feel like I'm finally on vacation once I see palm trees. The temp. was around 80 every day. Ahhhhh . . .



















Farmers' Market on St. Maarten. The vendors were selling mostly spices, sauces and clothing.














Magan's Bay on St. Thomas. Beautiful!
















Mom & me with Darren, the steel drum guy at a scenic overlook on St. Thomas.

Will post a few more pics of the trip tomorrow.

Current House

This is our current house. The new house is going to be to the left (north) of it and behind it so we'll be a little farther back from the road.

Grandma's Pumpkin Pie

Glenn & I stayed with Grandma & Grandpa a lot for 17 years while Mom & Dad were working at the Dairy Queen they owned. So we learned a lot about a lot of things at Grandma & Grandpa's house and one of them was baking and especially pies. I always say that Grandma was really patient with me. She had to work with me on how to crimp the edges of the pie crust for a long time. I would want to give up and have her do it but she would say "keep trying - you can do it". This is her pumpkin pie recipe which she would continually tweak- adding or taking out a little spice here and there or adding a little more milk to make more filling. Every time she made one she would say she had changed it a little from the last time she gave me the recipe. I think this version is pretty good!

PUMPKIN PIE

1 unbaked pie crust
2 eggs
2/3 c. white sugar
1/3 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. sorghum
1 c. pumpkin
1 T. flour
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg
1/2 t. cloves
1/2 t. ginger
1/2 t. salt
1 1/4 c. milk

Mix all together and pour into crust. Bake at 450 for 15 min., 350 for 45 min., and 300 for 30 min.

Things to look forward to . . .

Things we're looking forward to once we're in the new house:

• Not having to always use electrical "cheaters" - the things you need if what you're plugging in has 3 prongs but the outlet is only 2
• water pressure!!!!!!
  
• less flies and Japanese beetles around the windows & in the walls
• no buckling basement walls
• less or no drafts
• insulation!
• lower heating bills
  
• closets!!!
• bathroom on main floor
• laundry room on main floor
• (everything on main floor!)
  
• a normal size refrigerator
• new stove
  
• not having to get jugs of drinking water at the grocery
• level floors
• storage space
• less dust
  

Diane & Lacey

This is one of my favorite pictures I've taken recently of Diane & Lacey - my niece & great niece. Diane is a hair dresser with her own shop and Lacey is . . . 3 1/2!

Warm Trip

I'm leaving today for a week long cruise to the Eastern Caribbean with Mom, Uncle Dale & Aunt Dana and Uncle Neal & Aunt Jan! Should be warm and fun! Check princess.com, Crown Princess (the ship's name) Bridge Cam to see where we're at each day and what the weather is like starting Sun. I've scheduled a few posts for while I'm gone so check back!

Bill is going to an insurance convention in Des Moines for a couple of days. He took his Dad's place last year on the Board of Directors of a local ins. co. Wives are supposed to go too - oops! I will miss seeing the entertainment they're going to have - Tonic Sol-fa. It's a four-man a cappella group. They were at our annual Stampin' Up! Convention in July in Salt Lake City. One of them is from Algona where I went yesterday. For those of you feeling sorry for Bill, he's looking forward to watching Sci Fi every night, having the whole bed to himself and reverting back to his bachelor ways!

More Concrete

Today was pretty uneventful. Still too wet for Bill to finish anhydrous. He has about 100 acres to go. He did bookwork and I went to Algona to look at counter tops.

These are pictures of the concrete being done for the basement and garage floors.

Adventure

We didn't have an alarm set for this morning so wouldn't you know there was a fire call at about 6:30 - the old Plover school was burning and they needed help. The Rolfe firemen didn't have to do too much. There were enough guys there. I will probably never get a good fire picture to post. Bill says the firemen don't like "lookers" on the scene in the way. He says it used to be kind of bad here - sometimes several vehicles would follow the fire trucks!
I always like seeing round bales of hay out in fields so had been wanting to take a picture of the ones across from our house (to the west) before the farmer got them all moved. You can see the elevator in the distance. We can see it to the north from our house. It's on the south edge of town so that's how close we are to town.

In this picture you can see where I had to go to take the picture! I have been wanting to drive down one of these little dirt roads really bad for a long time! But Bill says it better be dry when I try it even though the Pilot is 4 wheel drive. I was just going to go a little ways to get the hay bales picture but soon found out I better back up! Easier said than done in mud! Notice what the sign says "Caution Minimum Maintenance Road Level B Service - Enter At Your Own Risk". At least I got a good picture!

Wet Day

Bill worked until about midnight last night - long day. It has been raining along with a little sleet all day. Bill only needs about 4 more good weather hours to be done with anhydrous.

Tonight I had a Stampin' Up! booth at a vendor fair. We had quite a bit of traffic for such an icky night.

Now I'm on a 1 hour blogging bootcamp teleconference call right now - the 5th and last one! He's the guy that got me started doing this! Will post more tomorrow!

Anhydrous & House

This is Bill with the anhydrous rig. (click on picture to see bigger) He says he's gotten about 200 acres done today. On my way back from Pilates, I picked up tenderloins for us and took out to him. He said good thing 'cause he'd dropped half of the granola bar he had on the floor! Hate it when that happens! We're supposed to get a wintry mix starting tonight so he's still out there and hopes to be until about 10:00.
They're working on our basement walls. In this picture, you're looking at my craft/stamp room with a south facing egress window. It's about 16' x 13'. Nice! I'll also have a big room to keep long tables set up for my monthly stamp classes.
This is the floor over the basement. Bill is over by the front porch. Below the porch will be our new storm shelter - a room with four concrete walls and above it will be the concrete floor of the porch! I'll feel safe in there! The concrete guy said more people are starting to do this under porches. In a tornado out here this past summer, people and things were sucked out of basements (in Parkersburg). Bill is usually gone during bad weather - he's a volunteer fireman and they're usually called out for storm spotting.

The white building is our current garage which we're keeping even though the new house has an attached 2 car garage. Today they dug trenches for our electricity and gas lines.

New House

These pictures are of getting the basement started - digging, footings and poured walls. Any pictures can be clicked on to view larger!

Bill left at 5:30 this morning to see if it was cold/firm enough in the fields to get some anhydrous applied. He just called and has been running all day and was able to get more anhydrous tanks. Says he'll have gotten about 175 acres done in 3 fields when he runs out of tanks around 8:00. He'll be about one third done.

We had a craft day in our community center yesterday - a day to use the room and tables for free to work on any craft. Bill's mom (Peggy) and I made some of our Christmas cards. I took a crock pot of chili for lunch. It was another cold day so chili tasted good.

Has been a nice weekend. Diane, Lacey, Glenn, Amy and I went to a Pampered Chef party yesterday. Diane, Lacey & I went to a craft show and other shopping today. Bill was, as he says, "on his own" for lunch - and will have a late meal tonight.

Lacey & Diane

This was a fun day with Diane & Lacey, my Great Niece. We picked apples from a friend's tree. Lacey, and her mom, Diane, riding in the combine with Bill. Lacey's favorite part was dumping into the grain cart.


Bill had to get a new driveway made for the new house. It took lots of loads of dirt and packing. We have pretty deep ditches here.

We have our first snow showers today but at least not the 10' drifts not far away S. Dakota has.

Oops! Correction!

Ooops, for the farmers, found out at lunch that it was NOT the tractor that had electrical problems! It was the anhydrous rig. I'm still learning! I'm making several sympathy cards that need to be mailed, then heading to 2 banks and then Pilates class. We have had too many deaths of family and friends recently. Ronnie Griffin who introduced my mom & dad to each other in Sept., my dad's brother, Uncle Gord, and long time family friend, Willie Miller in the last few weeks.

Rain Delay

Farmers (& their wives) get to sleep in on rainy days which is nice! When we woke up it was still raining. We had a leisurely breakfast of bacon, eggs & grits. I was happy to find out that Bill likes grits too. :)

Just as we were done, 4 hunter friends from Wisconsin pulled in. They've taken vacation days from their various jobs to come here to pheasant hunt over a long weekend. They brought 2 Labs with them. This is their 7th year to come here to hunt. They're hoping the weather clears up - and it has quit raining!

Last night as the lightning and rain came, the 4 wheel drive tractor Bill was using had major electrical problems. So someone will have to come out today to repair it. If it had to happen, it was good timing.

Some things had to come down to make room for the house! This was an extra shed we had behind the garage, a very large tree and our storm shelter/cave. Lots of old houses have "caves" in their yard. We didn't use ours. We were very lucky that just as the tree came down, 2 guys drove by, stopped and asked if they could have the wood from the tree! SURE!!! So instead of Bill and I having that whole tree to clean up and burn/bury by ourselves, all of a sudden there were 4 of us working on it! They went and got a trailer that Bill loaded the logs on. What a deal for us! What would've taken us maybe 2 hard days only took a few hours! Bill had fun tearing down the old shed although he hated to part with it!

Sorry about the sloppy layout - still figuring this all out!

Glenn's Birthday

Diane with Glenn - lotsa candles on his DQ birthday cake! I have a funny picture of Dad with his 40th birthday cake and we had put all 40 candles on it. He had a frown on his face because of all the fire. I remember I thought he was really old! But Glenn has more than 40 on his!

Bill is applying anhydrous ammonia fertilizer to the bean fields. Carl is picking up the tanks of it from the next town and then taking back the empties for him. It's dangerous stuff if you breathe it. This is the stuff that people steal to make meth.

Bill and Carl came home for lunch. Bill called around 7:00 tonight saying he's going to be working late since storms are on the way and asked if I'd bring him a sandwich. He was working in our farthest north field which is about 9 miles away. We're already seeing lightning in the distance and now I hear thunder.

As I was coming back through our little town I laughed to myself thinking I should share with you that we only have a blinking red light in the middle of town - no stoplights (love that!). And whenever I cross the street without looking for cars from city hall to the bank (or anywhere else) - during the day - I'm still amazed we can do that - and I like it!

Election Day

I voted in Iowa for the first time today - new experience filling in dots on a paper ballot in a little curtained booth! I did vote for my husband for reelection as Township Trustee! I think he wants the job again!

It's pretty windy here today - but warm. Nice thing about wind this time of year - no raking! The leaves are gone! :) A bunch are in the basement of our new house.

Mom has had people ask if we have equipment in barns at our house or if Bill is going to build a building to store it. Our house is on 100 acres with just a detached 2 car garage - no other buildings/barns. This (picture) is the building they have for storing things. Alot of equipment fits in it - it's bigger than it looks - 58' x 108'. They can fit the 2 semis in it, the combine, a tractor, the grain cart, field cultivator, the planter, and the self propelled sprayer.

Going to a birthday party for Glenn tonight. Will post a picture tomorrow!

Corn is Done

This was written last night. We finished combining corn and stalk cutting! I didn't have any "incidents" to report today! Carl is still out there ripping the last field tonight. Bill & Tim took the corn head off the combine and put the bean head on to do one last very small, low field near the river. It was planted late due to being too wet. Bill went around about once and a hydraulic oil pump broke. The combine had to be left in the field tonight. John Deere will come out to repair it tomorrow. I didn't mention the temporary fix for the air conditioning problem on "my tractor" the other night - they took off this broken round piece and stuffed a wrag and corn cob in the hole to keep out the dirt until they fix it!

My start time this morning was going to be early because the wind was blowing which would mean conditions should be dry enough, but Bill called and moved that back to 10:00 due to the stalks being too wet still from the dew. He called again and said "after lunch now". We had planned that we would all eat lunch in town if we were all out in the fields but since I ended up being home all morning, I got busy and made chicken & noodles, mashed potatoes, harvard beets & fruit for lunch. Bill's mom used to make lunch for Bill's dad, Bill and Pam. Now that things have changed and I'm here, Peggy has retired from cooking and I do it for us and Pam. Carl eats at Tim & Bette Jo's house. They usually come home for meals and normally at noon. That way we know when to have food ready, they can wash their hands, etc. and everybody gets done and back out for work at about the same time. It works pretty good.

I saw lots of pheasants today. Their cover in the corn is quickly shrinking. Later this month I'll be posting a picture or two of pheasant hunting which is very popular here. Hunters come from all over the US. Bill has a Brittany hunting dog named Sam.

End rows . . .

give me a headache! First thing when I started today, I about had a heart attack. They had told me that I probably could/should leave one row of stalks on the very edges (next to the fence or standing corn) but after having about 3 days' experience, I thought I was good enough that I'd be able to go ahead and get that row for 'em! Right away today doing that I scared myself to see I was going by a light pole pretty fast! But missed it - whew! It wasn't close to me but it was very close to the end of that 8 row stalk cutter that sticks out!

I did get better with the end rows today but it sure helps when you're doing them in the daylight - and in straighter fields!! As of this year, we have a 24 row planter which means 48 end rows all around the field. A couple fields are mostly end rows! :) I also moved to another field on the road farther this time - but there was no traffic where we were.

For the farmers, I'm driving a John Deere 4440 and Pam is in a John Deere 8300 with the cart. Pam and her husband, Carl, help us in the Fall. Pam has helped the Kemnas for about 30 years and she is GOOD at what she does! Carl was ripping most of today in the IH 9370 four wheel drive tractor. Bill farms with Uncle Tim. They make a good team. Tim is usually hauling and/or filling bins during Harvest. We have two GMC Volvo semis to haul with. They are matching with white cabs that say Kemna Farms on the sides with Colts blue trailers. But Bill and Tim each claim one and can tell a difference between them - kind of like twins.

We're very lucky to have others help us out some. Bill's brother, Jim, from Kansas City takes a week off of work to help. Our brother-in-law Dave took 3 days off work this past week and ripped. Kyle, a bank VP, took Fri. off and ripped. He has also helped nights and on the weekends. Glenn helps occasionally.

Last night Carl brought the stalk chopper to the field I was going to be working in and to be nice, got started on the end rows for me. He had been around about once and heard a bad, loud noise, saw smoke and liquid coming out of the tractor. He shut it down immediately and called for help. A big part of the air cond. broke! I was so glad that happened to him and not me! We are too close to being done, and with rain coming in about 3 days, to stop and get it fixed, plus it's Sun. So for today, with temps. going to be around 70, they told me I better wear my bikini with all the glass that surrounds you in the cab! It wasn't bad though - I had the side windows open most of the time and that was kind of nice.

Our equipment all have old CB radios in them so when you're close, you can talk to each other. Unfortunatly, my radio has something wrong with it and I can only hear but not talk! So I can't complain about the end rows or the guy that designed the layout (Bill, the planter) - and they make fun of the Colts and I can't say anything!

We only have 20 acres to go so my job in the stalk cutter will end already tomorrow. And I'm just getting it all figured out! There were many stars in the sky when we quit tonight. It was a good day.

Harvest's End

Bill says that we have 90 more acres left (this is out of about 2500) so the end is in sight! For those of you who aren't farmers, we started combining soybeans in Sept. Once they were done, combining corn, which takes longer, started. I wish I would've had this blog up and running at the beginning of Harvest so that those interested could read along as it happened - and I could've told you about my very first experiences learning to drive a tractor to do my first job in the fields - stalk cutting! It's been a little different than using a riding lawn mower!

My brother, Glenn, was my patient teacher which was a good thing. He had me practice using the clutch many times until I could start smoothly (which didn't take too long) and practice turns. Bill would've told me how to do it, stayed with me for a couple rounds and then said "see ya, be careful and have fun!"

But I still have very little experience, so will be writing about it for a few more days since "things" happen every day. Tonight was the first time that I have done stalk cutting in the dark! Yikes. Not good. One time I had stopped to stay out of Bill's way - he was in the combine. I had just put in the clutch to stop but then tried to find the dimmer switch on the floor for the lights so I wouldn't blind Bill - with the same foot! So when I took my foot off the clutch to dim the lights, uh I kind of popped a wheelie! (in B2) Not good.

Last night evening - before dark - I had to move from one field to another - on the road! - for the first time. Thank goodness I only met one car!

I will be adding pictures of things as we do them once I figure out how to do that! After Harvest is done, I'll be posting some stamping, some recipes and tell you how our new house is coming along with pictures of it.

New Blog!

Some of my friends have been wanting me to start a blog so I'm going to attempt it! I enjoy reading others' and hope you will like mine! I plan to share some recipes, some stamping projects, pictures of our new house as it's being built and let you know what's going on here in Iowa. Please leave comments!