Little Miss Butterfly

Lacey on Halloween. (she loves pink) She doesn't even eat the candy she gets! Uncle Bill said he'd take it!



















Along with the beautiful sunsets, we've had a big, full moon to watch rising as we finish up the last hours out in the field this week!! The pictures just don't do it though. The past couple of nights it's been orange.

Dave & Karen & kids are coming down today. Matthew was so excited about his day of riding here Tues. and wanted to come back the next day. Bill's mom is having us all over for lunch. I'm due at my tractor by 10:30 after stopping at the bank.

Some of the farm related companies around here drive around and find farmers working in the fields and stop and give care packages with granola bars, cookies, gum, mints, water, etc.! One stopped the day Matthew was here so he thought that was great to get a bag of goodies!

Good Weather Continues

Yesterday was another nice day but the elevator closed at 2:00 again so that's when the combining had to stop. The guys moved corn around in the bins. Pam & I got off work early so I went to the grocery for milk and bread and gassed up the Pilot.

Bill had a fire run to a bin that leaves and things were smoking on the bottom of it - an electrician was working on it - long story. Didn't take too long luckily.

Today we should be able to run a long time. Our elevator is closing at 2:00 but then they hope to haul to West Bend since we'll be working up that direction (north).

This first video is Jim in the ripper and the next one is Pam driving the tractor pulling the grain cart next to the combine as they're moving through the field. They call it "dumping on the run" - saves time. Pam has to pull off when the cart gets full and go dump her load into a semi.

I'm due out to my tractor at 10:00 so gotta go! The stalks get dry enough to start chopping about this time of morning - on a good day. We're to have wind today which can cause fires when the dry corn leaves get up next to machinery that's hot.

Yesterday

Bill operating the combine (nice view!).

Here he's full and stopped waiting on the grain cart. The semis were having to haul the corn from this field to a grain bin. It takes a while to unload and get back. The elevator closed at 2:00.

I was chopping stalks in the same field that everybody else was in. That was kind of fun. I had obstacles to stay away from and things going on to watch rather than being in a field by myself!

We were able to get 90 acres done yesterday with running from about 9 am - 9 pm. I had lunch at home early and got started at 11:00. When the rest got done with lunch, they moved the tractor to another field for me. Stalk chopping is all caught up. Jim got a couple of fields ripped and just has the one we were in to do. Bill says right at 300 acres left so we just need a few more days of good weather!

I took a couple of videos yesterday but they were taking too long to load here - just got a call from the boss and gotta go! Had some stamping business to do this morning.

Still Muddy

I encountered my first mud hole yesterday and then another bigger one. Bill had said it was ok to go through standing water between the rows but I almost got stuck - twice!




I'm not farming today due to having a stamp class here tonight. Have a couple projects to finish getting ready and food to make. Jim is on his way here from Kansas City to help for the rest of the week and Bill called Dave to come down so that I could have class.


This was across the road from where I was yesterday. I think they thought I was going to feed them when I took their picture.


Our nephew, Matthew, came down with Dave and has been riding in the combine with Uncle Bill! (click on the picture to see it bigger)

The skies are not looking good. Chance of some showers and then some really nice days again.

Halloween Fun

I had Lacey Halloween morning while Diane delivered the mail. Wanted to do a fun Halloween thing with her and had seen this snake on Paula Deen's show. It's made with crescent roll dough and filled with ham & monterey jack cheese but would be good with pizza sauce, pepperoni & cheese or other fillings too! I especially like how it cracked when it baked! Lacey had fun watching it puff up when baking. The recipe is at FoodNetwork.com and called Snake Bites.





























Lacey has been having fun playing with Play-doh here so I got her this monkey that you can press Play-doh out of its head, mouth and do all kinds of other molding of pineapples, bananas and things. She loved it and now wants one for Christmas Diane says.

Bill left this morning by 6:45 as the huge moon was rising and the sun coming up. Should be another good day for Harvest! I'll be chopping stalks all the way north on Bev & Jerry's ground, and the rest will be combining south of town near our house.

Blog 1st Anniversary

Can't believe I've been doing a blog for a year! It has been fun, and hope you've enjoyed it. Not sure how long I'll keep it going - will just see when I run out of good recipes, stamping projects and things to tell you about Iowa I guess!

My mom cuts out things from the Carmel area papers that I would be interested in so that I know what's going on where I came from. I got an env. from her the other day and was very surprised to find all of these great leaves that she had to have spent a lot of time pressing!! I've always loved Fall. We don't have very many trees with red & orange leaves here so not near the bright colors in Oct. as in Indiana. Seems like I had to do more than one leaf collection when growing up. No one else ever found the gingko leaf (yellow fan shaped one). There was a gingko tree at our church so I'm sure these came from there!

We've had a couple of dry days to work in the fields. Today was even sunny and warm! We got quite a bit accomplished even though the elevator was not open. Carl had lunch with us today: roast, potatoes, carrots, and pecan pie. My bread did not turn out right due to operator error!

You can see from the Comments that my brother-in-law is harrassing me about taking his job doing the ripping! Guess the other brother-in-law is saying the same. I say they'll just take whatever help they can get - and I live here! They're not picky either - Bill says things like for ripping, "just turn the field black" or how to chop stalks - just "off".

I have lots of other good pictures from my time with Lacey yesterday but will post them another day. This evening I enjoyed wacthing the big, full moon rise and another pretty sunset from the tractor cab - but didn't stop to take pictures!