Willow Ridge Dinner

Last week, the P.E.O. group I belong to had a social meeting at the Willow Ridge Country Club in Ft. Dodge. The Iowa Central Community College culinary students prepare and serve the meals there on Tues. & Thurs. nights. In March they were doing Italian.

I had the Caesar Salad which has the Parmesan round under it and the shrimp dish with spinach pasta and chili sauce. The bread they served with three dipping oils was very good. The dessert picture with strawberries is Panna Cotta.

Iowa Central is the college that Ross & Reed went to for a year for criminal justice.

The Country Club is high on a hill with a beautiful view, and
they have outside seating. I've heard their Sunday brunch is very nice.

Many Trees are Planted

This first picture is one of the new red buds. This one is in the front yard and there is one in the back yard. The trees in the pickup are the austrees. The third picture is of one of the new crabapples. We put one in the front yard and one in the back. All six rows are planted thanks to being able to borrow the truck & trailer and post hole auger from a local farmer and Tim's help. Bill helped Tim plant 20 trees today. They don't think they want to plant any more trees for a long time.


We do hate it that we can see town now, but we're glad to get all of these trees going so we'll have some wind protection sooner rather than later.

Road Trip for Trees

Karen, here is the answer to your question - we have a large pile to burn!

Next picture shows our house with no trees to the north side - very bare!!

Yesterday we borrowed the pickup and trailer in the third picture and went to Kelly Tree Farm in Clarence, Iowa - about 4 hours away. It was a nice spring day for a road trip with leaves just starting to come out on the trees as we got a little farther south.

We're going to have two rows of austree willows which are very fast growing on the north side of the new grove, one row of techny arborvitae, two rows of Norway spruce and one row of white spruce for now. Once the stumps are gone that are on the house side, we may put another row of white spruce or something else "pretty".

We also got two pink flowering crabapple trees and two red buds which we planted in the yard tonight.

In one of the pictures, you can see some pink flowering trees at the tree farm. They're peach trees! The last tree picture shows some austrees that are only about 5 years old. We're supposed to plant ours and then cut them off waist high. We have our work cut out for us the next few days!

We asked Kevin at the tree farm where a good place to have lunch would be, and he said they really like their little Mill Creek Cafe in town. It was cute and they had a choice yesterday of vegetable soup, breaded tenderloin or a poppy seed chicken casserole with sides of roasted potatoes and grape salad (yum - the kind with cream cheese & brown sugar) and a little piece of a good quick bread. Bill had the tenderloin and really liked it and their potato chips. They had 4 homemade desserts. We split a banana dessert. We were glad we found out about the cafe rather than eating at a chain restaurant that you can go to anywhere.

Today at Our House - the Grove

Bill started working on our grove situation a few days ago. Out here you really need one on the north side of your house and buildings to block wind and snow. We have just had a small, scraggly one with more trees dying each year.

Bill did lots of research and has decided what kinds of trees would be best (we hope) and how far apart to space them, etc. He has the trees ordered. More about that when we plant them.

He's working on cutting down all of the old ones. The first picture is looking east to west and the second one is from the road looking east. The last is a video of one of the pine trees coming down.

Our yard has really greened up in the past few days. We figure we'll be mowing this week. Bill had put fertilizer on it in the Fall and then we never got any rain. Our yard is still fairly new so we hope it fills in and thickens up this year. We also hope we get a nice amount of rain this summer for the new trees, the yard and, as always, the crops. Not too much or too little, no hail or bad wind - we don't want much do we!

Farming Update

NW Iowa has finally gotten some rain! We've had a little over an inch and very little sun in the past few days. The farmers would still like to have a little more rain to make up for last summer and fall's drought and almost no snow this winter.

Speaking of farmers, a few days ago when it was warm and sunny and had been dry, we actually had several out working their ground! We're not sure why - it's way too early! We could still have a blizzard before planting time. Crop insurance will not cover a loss if you plant before April 13th I think it is. We all know how expensive fuel is so it's not smart to have to work the ground twice before planting.

Bill has been getting our planter ready. He had a couple of guys out yesterday to do some settings on it which took most of the day. He's added some equipment that will automatically turn off or close the seed boxes if he goes over some rows that have already been planted which has to happen at times. The equipment is getting smarter and smarter!

Today Bill and Tim are both at different farming classes.

I worked yesterday and will be babysitting Diane's little one tomorrow. Our cookbook committee has been working on the final proofreading of recipes. We're hoping to send the cookbook to print in April. I've been asking businesses to be sponsors and have a few more calls to make.

Tonight Terri and I are going to Pizza Ranch in Pocahontas for the every other month church women's birthday celebration. This time it's for Feb./Mar. birthdays which includes me!

Dallas Trip - Part 3

Sunday in Dallas we went to Glenn's church - Bull Creek Cowboy Church. The people there have been good friends and support for Glenn & the boys, especially a guy the boys call Grandpa Larry and his wife. This church has lots of horse related activities for the members. Glenn & the boys go to the Tues. night Men's Bible Study some.
































After church we ate at a really good barbecue place near Glenn's house. The meat is all smoked and then they give you warm barbecue sauce that was good. It was a kind of sweet, not too spicy sauce. The dessert there was fried pies so we had to try them. Bill had apple of course, I split a cherry one with Glenn, Reed had chocolate, Rob had peach, Ross had vanilla and Mom had cherry. The fruit ones were warm and they had soft ice cream to put on them. Pretty good!

Glenn pointed out the No Smoking sign on the smoker!