The Archives - December, 2011
We're just a family following Christ, living in a ~95 year-old house out on the prairie (and yes, we do have peach trees), rearing a couple of Godly sons and all the while trying to not make the locals laugh too much at our attempts at farming. Poke around all you want and feel free to drop us a line anytime.
2011 Christmas Card
Cards will be going in the mail soon, or you can download a PDF version right here.
Mr. Bean
Tyler needed some work done on his cello recently, so we drove up to Chicago together, and while waiting, went out walking around the city, including a visit to the "sculpture" which, while it has a real name, everyone calls "The Bean." We had a good time together, and enjoyed some great food and saw one of the "Occupy (whatever)" groups that were just starting to form across the country. We heard many were arrested later that evening. (c:
Go West, Young Lady!
Beth was able to take a week-long trip with her parents out to Idaho last month when they came through on their way to their second home there. She sent back some beautiful photos, and the scenery in the background wasn't too bad, either.
Harvest, 2011
This year's crop was field corn (for animal feed or ethanol) - it wasn't ours, we just rented out the field to a farming friend. The yield was a bit over 230 bushels of corn per acre, which ain't too shabby.
We had friends from Chicago down the same weekend, so the day after harvest, we did a little trap shooting together, then got the 8N out and let everyone take turns driving it around the cornfield, including seven year old Sammy - it was his first time ever to drive anything with an engine, and he had a mile-wide grin when he was done!
He and his siblings all wrote thank you notes, and his included a drawing of the 8N:
The next week, I hooked up the plow to the tractor and started plowing down the corn stubble on about 10.4 acres. The 8N pulls what is called a "two bottom" plow, and each moldboard cuts about 14" at a time, for a total of 28" per pass. You can do the math, but my field is about 1,200' long... Needless to say, it took a while - just over two weeks of working on it a bit each evening, maybe 20-25 hours of actual seat time. I had several breakdowns, too, so I felt just like a "real farmer."
Dining Room Almost Done
Our friend who does flooring installation happened to have some leftover tongue-and-groove flooring available at about half-price, and it turned out to be a very close match to the original pine flooring we had refinished and used in other parts of the house. So, we had him over a week or two ago to do the install, and now the dining room really looks classy! All that's left is to finish refinishing the tin tile ceiling and install them.
Ya'll drop us a line when you can, now!