P.E.O. Meeting

I had a P.E.O. meeting last night while we were having snow flurries.  We got to the house and Sandy had her yard light decorated so pretty.   She served three kinds of pie with or without ice cream:  peach, apple or pecan and hot apple cider and coffee.  She had made some turkey favors for each of us.  

I enjoy having this group in our home once a year and decorating and making special foods for them.  The next meeting I have is in March.

Today the wind chill was -1 when we got up, and we've had snow flurries off and on. 

Boys Cleaning Their Toys

While we've been having cold, sunny days, Bill and Uncle Tim have been working on cleaning equipment to get it done and put away before snow - which is in the forecast for Mon. as I listen to the news tonight.  We are all done, but there are farmers still getting their field work done.  

Tomorrow and Sat. I'll be working in the kitchen at church.  We're having an all day Women's Conference on Sat. with 530 women coming!   I don't know what the menu is yet, but there is always a nicely decorated table of mini cinnamon rolls and muffins with coffee when everyone arrives, a very nice lunch and then snacks done creatively in the afternoon. On Fri., we chop veggies and cut up fruit, etc. The decorating team was getting started tonight.  Lots of work to be done!

Happy Halloween!!!

Where did October go???

We got completely done with harvest yesterday.  Just in time before the weather turned colder.  We had 50's yesterday and today it's sunny but with a high of only about 38. 

Tim has been traveling back and forth to West Bend to get tanks of anhydrous this week.  He brought them to the fields for Bill to apply them.  That took about three days.  I thought I was done ripping the corn fields and the bean field end rows Wed. night, but Bill called yesterday morning and needed me to do some more here at our house which didn't take long.  The only thing left now is getting the equipment power washed and put away before the snow flies.  The guys hate that job and always hope for a non-windy, slightly warmer day to get that done.

anhydrous rig

We're tired and getting caught up on sleep, laundry, mail, bill paying, etc.    

Harvest Time Activities

Friday was a busy day around here.  A water pump belt broke on my tractor so I ran to West Bend for a new belt and Bill put that on, and I got that 75 acre field done that night.  One of the semis had a problem that they were able to take care of too.  We have about a week of combining left Bill says and the weather looks good.

As I was ripping the field, I got to see this pretty little tree at the farm house there.  The leaves here have probably been at their peak this past week.  Many have lost their leaves already.

 


Peggy had picked up the twins (our niece & nephew) Thurs. so Matthew was riding with everybody and had lunch with us.   Bill's sister and niece, Ryanne, came Fri. night.  We were finally able to give birthday gifts to all 3 kids.

We had guys here at our machine shed putting new doors up.  I did a blog post last winter about the doors on our new shed having a delamination problem right away.  We've been on the list to get new ones for a long time since they had installed many doors with this problem.  They replaced one on Fri. and will do the other one tomorrow.  It'll be good to get this done.

Bill's brother arrived Fri. night so he has been doing my job since yesterday so yesterday I got to babysit our great nieces and took them to Community Orchard in Ft. Dodge - great fun!  I'll have several more pictures of our day in my next post.  

 www.CindyKCreations.com
 

Freezer Full of Fresh Chickens

It was chicken butchering time at Diane's house again.  Her husband's dad likes to raise chickens as a hobby.  They have a flock for laying eggs and every fall they raise some for butchering.  Back in Oct. 2012 I went over and took some pictures for a blog post that you can see HERE.  It was the same setup basically so I didn't take the same pictures again.  We did have the feather plucking table and packaging sink and table inside their shed since it was really windy and a little chilly plus chance of rain.

Diane's husband gutting and trimming

It took about 4 hours or so to do 32 chickens.   With several helping and having done it a few times before, it wasn't bad at all.

 



This time they used a Foodsaver to package them rather than the huge Ziploc bags.  This should work better with getting all the air out.





The kids helped some, mostly plucking the few feathers that were left and played on the trampoline.

This picture was taken last night.  Bill and Tim were out combining beans until about 8:30 or so.  Some of the beans in a field will be ready but not all of them so it's a frustrating Fall to not be able to get complete fields done.   

Harvest Has Slowly Begun

Crops around here are just barely getting ready and some fields are still a little squishy from recent rain even though we're having nice days now.  We were able to get started yesterday around 4:00 and combined only about 40 acres of beans.  We got a loaded semi stuck in the field at elevator closing time, but it was able to be pulled out by a tractor and made it to town just at 6:00.

In the mornings, the ground is usually wet so today we had to wait for the sun and breeze to dry things off enough to get started after lunch.  The quad trac's air conditioning went out on an 80+ degree day.  Waiting for parts for that.  At about 5:00 I was riding in the combine with Bill waiting for him to get the cart full and something started making a bad noise.  A big part had broken.  So I headed to West Bend for the part.  Luckily they had the part and we were able to get it before they closed.

Bill and Tim are out finishing up the field - behind our house.

Tomorrow they hope to combine a field of seed beans.  They require special handling and go into a grain bin.  I won't be needed - probably - since they hope to dump from the combine directly into the semis.    

I've been making some things for quick meals that I can freeze like spaghetti sauce and this morning I made chocolate chip cookies.  Next will be a batch of ham balls - they freeze well.   This afternoon I was able to get some things in our landscaping cleaned up for winter.