RUG HOOKING BLOG

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I'm a mother of four grandmother of seven and great grandmother of three. I live with my husband in the house that we built with the help of my brothers and will have been married for 57 years this February.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

I'M SO, SO, SO TIRED, MAN, I'M SO TIRED...

For some reason, I'm so tired today. It's not even funny.  I tossed and turned in bed and ended up in the middle of my king size bed, It never happens. I usually hug my side pretty steady and barely move from my spot by morning. This happened two nights in a row.  Season change is in the making and I'm like a werewolf I think... and it's not even full moon on September 8 yet...

I prepared a big pot of spaghetti for the boys' lunch and I was so tired today that I needed to lay down before lunch. I didn't slept well last night. I woke up around 1:00am and couldn't get back to sleep right away like I usually do.

This afternoon, instead of going to weed in the hot sun, I grabbed my faithful Canon camera and went for a painful walk up the fields. My hips have been bothering some for a while now and when I get up from a sitting position, I walk like an old lady until my joints gets oiled, lol... and I'm only 67.

It was hot and muggy as I walked by the farm and up the field and there was so much dust flying about. There has been so much activity going on for the last several weeks at the farm... Heavy equipment coming and going. My husband George is building a new tarp barn to store his hay as our small hot house for the hay collapsed last winter and was a total loss. There's sand being dug up and top soil being moved and composting cow bedding being moved, hay being cut and raked and baled and silage being wrapped. It's been a beehive of activities, not to mention, cattle pick up, milk pickup and cow calving. We had three calving in the last three days.

For the new tarp barn, a trench was dug and I didn't go take pictures, then the footing forms were put in place and  cement was poured for the footing and then forms went up for the foundation and again cement was poured and the the forms were removed and I  finally went to take pictures because I was too tired to weed in the heat.

Here are some of the things I saw on my walk to the this side of the fields and back. From the farm to the end of the fields is about a mile long. I only went a short distance.


The foundation is ready. The building is a wee bit wider than the old cement floor and the trench will be filled with sand for now.


A truck load of sand driven by a lady.


A load of round baled silage ready for wrapping


A big loader with bucket


The big rake taken a little rest.


 The liquid manure spreader without the pump attachment. That pump is behind the barn and I didn't take a picture of it.



George big patch of squash for the church. he has a good crop this year.


Some stored hay in the old unfinished horse barn


Reid going for another load  with the empty hay wagon. It holds 12 large round bales of hay


The tarp barn built in 2012 filled to overflow at both ends and more hay to store.


The tarp from the dismantled hot house hay storage that collapsed last winter in heavy snow storm.

Another truck coming with a load of either top soil or sand. I didn't ask George as he was busy wrapping silage.


Three long windrows of composting bedding that should be ready for next year.


The over flowing tarp barn



More hay to store


Big piles of sand from our sand pit



 The frame for my old hot house that we had to remove when we had our deep well dug. I miss my hot house. It now sit in one of our many old hay wagon.



I'm now at a split in the road and ahead is a freshly cut hay field. It's the second cut.


This field goes for as far as the eye can see


View from where I came from. You can see the old hay wagons all lined up.


When I turned left there is yet another pasture that goes for ever.


This field had been freshly seeded with the Brillion seeder. The seagulls are having a field day picking earth worm and insects.


The blue truck is coming with another load


At the road junction the white truck driven by a lady is returning empty and is going for another load while Read is coming in with a load of  silage bales.


A bi loader is going to the field to load dirt.


This machine is used to mow under the electric fences otherwise when the grass gets too long it shorts the electric fences when it rains and the cows gets out.


George wrapping silage.


Bales of silage waiting to be wrapped, and in the back ground is the old retired manure spreader but is still usable but unsatisfactory for our operation.


The very old snow blower going to scrap metal.



frames of the of the hay storage hothouse that collapsed last winter and steel rods all going to scrap metal.


I'm not sure what George uses this attachment for. It's parked by the barn and tweeds are covering it.



This is a rock picker and my husband also uses it to clear the fields from driftwood when we get a flood. Picking driftwood used to take days to pick up by hand, now a machine does the work.


This attachment can pick two large bales  at a time weighing around 800 pounds.


Another tractor attachment half hidden in the grass.


This attachment is used to lift pallets. The tines are flat.



This machine is a tiller.

The green plow is 8 feet long and is used in snow removal



A big bucket attachment


The old retired haybine


A manure bucket that was left unclean


The new haybine. That's the hay cutting machine. It cuts hay very fast.


The old Brillion seeder still in use.


The disk attachment


The plow that was used last week to plow the field lost one of the disk in the front,  in the field during plowing by an unexperienced operator.



This is the old David Brown tractor and backhoe digging the base of the old silo. The silage was 30 years old under there and was still fresh  from lack of air and the heifers were eating it like it was fresh silage.

There are still some equipments I haven't showed like the Skid steer in the barn and the baler way out of site in the field.
All these photos on my walk from the barn to the fields.

I apologize again for the long post.
Thanks for visiting and commenting. I always appreciate everyone of you.
JB

Monday, August 25, 2014

LIFE IS FULL OF SURPRISES

I've been a poor blogger this Summer as you all know but I got a big surprise this morning when I was reading one of my followers blogs, Stephanie Faris,Tween Author.   I won a Quintet of Radiance Award. It really took me by surprise to be chosen amongst many of her followers.   My first reaction was this...Me ? No way... OMG. Really? Yes, that's me.  lol. To be chosen is special even though I usually decline all awards. This time however, I felt very honored and accepted the award. Thanks Stephanie and good luck with your new book.

Stephanie is a novelist and freelance writer and lives in Nashville with her husband.  She authored 30 Days of No Gossip and is available from Simon & Schuster's Aladin Mix  and 25 Roses which will be coming out in 2015.  Please visit her blog, you can order her book directly from her blog.


I tried to add this Award Button to my sidebar but was unsuccessful and I dragged it into a file and uploaded like a photo here on my blog.

Oh dear, now that I've accepted this award, I have to do the 26 words from A to Z  to describe me.

A-   accommodating  B-  Barefoot   C-  conscientious   D-  discerning  E-  ethical   F-  feeler
G-  generous              H-  honest       I-   idealistic           J-   just             K- Kind      L-  likeable
M-  married                N-  natural      O-  orderly             P-  prudent       Q-  quiet      R-  responsible
S-  survivor                 T-  truthful     U-  unique             V-  versatile      W-  wise      X-  xenophobic
Y-  youthful                 Z-  zealous

That was  a challenging rule.  I'll stop here. I'm surprised that I could find 26 words from A to Z to describe me.

  I used to share a lot of what happened in my every day experiences at home and on the farm. Things still happens and I don't want to bore you with what seems a normal day to me.

August is on it's way out and it just got here it seems. My daughter and her family came for a long visit and I had lots of fun with James and Daniel and I've been away from the computer more than usual. Those two little guys can keep a grandma hopping to exhaustion. Their mama was exhausted too, lol... James used my computer to view some educational videos in the evening.



James visiting my bigger heifer calves.


James and Daniel looking at a big cow. Daniel is keeping his distance


James and daniel watching a video on the DVD player.


I've made two batches of Lady Ashburnham pickles for the church fund raising auction again this August, got 2 new heifers calves and 2 huge bulls calves which needed to be pulled out.  Yesterday another  cow calf and my son pulled a dead heifer calf out.

 I've looked after a sick calf called Victoria and she is feeling much better today. When I went in to feed her she refused to get up. I took her temperature and it was 103 so I fed her a bottle of Calf-Lite with electrolyte. I took her temperature again at noon and it was 102 and again at 4:00pm and it was up to 104. My son Vaughan, gave her some antibiotics and she was feeling better in the morning.  She has been digging in the corner of her pen and sucking her own juices the dummy calf. No wonder she got sick.  She drank 2 bottles of milk this morning but this evening she wasn't too hungry again. She didn't even finished one bottle.

My son brought a sick cow for me to care for.  He thought that she had a displaced stomach as she refused to eat her grain and only gave a pint of milk at milking time and she looked very cathartic.

I said a healing prayer and asked Jesus to heal her.  I talked to her and  petted her and offered her half a scoop of grain and some hay and I got her water bowl running and she turned  her head and looked at me but stayed there starring aimlessly at the wall...

In the morning  I gave her a full scoop of grain, not expecting her to even touch it but she surprised me and ate it all so I offered her another scoop of grain and she ate that one as well. She ate her hay and drank water and peed and pooped.  I called my son Vaughan to come and milk her and he milked her and she gave almost 4  quarts of milk. She seemed to be responsive and even licked me when I was near her.  That was another  surprise.

Today I harvested the rest of my onions and put them in the gazebo to dry. I did a bit of weeding and came in the house to cool off with a cold beer my son in-law gave me  before he left and I looked like a hobo. I had just sat at the computer with my red sweaty face when the door bell rang. It was Father Laden at the door. He was our first priest in our new parish in the 1980s. What a surprise to see him at our door after so many years. He was visiting family in our area and dropped in to say hi. He lives in Ontario.

So yes, life is full of surprises.

Thanks for visiting. I love receiving your visits and comments. I'm running behind in visiting but I haven't forgotten you. I'll visit as soon as I can.

JB