Almost Finished…

I’ve been planning this post for a while. Colin had just started planting the wheat. Now I’m happy to say he’s one field away from being done with the soy beans. Colin finished up planting the corn on Sunday.

My Christmas/birthday present finally arrived…

Colin got us central air!! I will finally be comfortable in the summer. I will be able to cook/bake in the summer. And most importantly, I’ll be able to breathe in the summer. My lungs have such a hard time in the heat and humidity.

Elizabeth posted over on her blog the other day about how much she and her Grandma love the month of May. I do too (and not just because it’s my birthday month). Her post got me thinking, where’s our May? Ever since Colin got the wheat in (the end of April) it’s been cold and rainy (except the day we got snow!). It does not look like the middle of May here:

Leaves are starting and my tulips are loving the cooler weather, but the trees are still basically sticks.

Speaking of my birthday, I turned 50 on the 4th. It was quiet since we are in lockdown again.

Read Full Post »

Spring!

Spring has definitely arrived in Renfrew County. Hopefully it’s here to stay. Facebook has been showing me blizzards from years past. Meanwhile, Colin is talking about starting to plant wheat at the end of the week if it stays dry.

The snow drops and crocuses are finished. The bloomed nice and early. Now we’ve got ‘bluebells’, aka squill. They are really starting to spread nicely. I want the entire yard to be blue in the spring, just like the old houses in Toronto that we pass on the way to church.

So, I did a thing… I let Ella ‘trim’ my hair. Should have been about 3 inches. We started with wrist length hair…

My hair is now waist length! That’s a good 6 inches! Sigh, it feels short! But I will admit my braids look better because they are more or less the same thickness all the way down.

Colin’s been busy with his mobile seed cleaner. Last week he spent 3 days down around Carleton Place cleaning for his big customers. He loves those jobs. They are long days, but it’s large tonnage, good crops, and helpful famers. He’s actually short a few guys down there because their crops weren’t good enough with last year’s drought.

Gotta go and figure out something for supper. I’m still having so much trouble menu planning. Why? I’d really like to know…

Read Full Post »

Winter in the Valley

Well, it’s definitely winter now! We’ve had a few -25C (-13F) mornings, including today. We’ve also had more snow. We got a couple of inches yesterday even though the radar map didn’t show any?? What’s really weird this year is how light and fluffy all our snows have been (except for one). Usually our snow is heavy and wet and dangerous for roofs. Not that I’m complaining, I’m glad Colin hasn’t had to climb many roofs this winter.

This old house always looks good in the winter. I’m trying some different filters. The pictures never look like what my eyes see. This filter is called ‘antique’.

Too bad you can’t feel how crisp the air is and how different it sounds.

Last night after the snow stopped the fog rolled it. It’s really weird to get fog in February. But with the crazy cold this morning, it covered everything in frost. So beautiful.

Read Full Post »

Lazy, Hazy Days of Summer

Well, hazy yes lazy not so much -for Colin any ways.  The dog days of summer are upon us and Colin has been busy combining our hard red spring wheat.  He’s very happy with the harvest so far.  Considering the summer we’ve had that’s a bit surprising.

Lunch in the field at the ‘back end’ of the Poff Farm.  This farm is just around the corner from the Home farm, but it’s easier and quicker to bring lunch to the field.  It’s been so hot this summer without any real breaks (I need more than one decent temperature day to consider it a break), but you probably know that already – ha ha!  Colin had a thermometer in the combine yesterday (a decent day temperature wise) and it read 100F!  Imagine, 8+ hours in the combine at 100F.  No wonder he comes home with heat stroke some days.

We had an unexpected visitor Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.  We were woke up at 3:30 by Ella pounding on the bedroom door with a blanket over her head.  There was a “giant” bat dive-bombing her in bed.  I peaked in her room and yes, there was a large bat hanging off the wall!!  By now Colin’s dressed to come and investigate.  He sees the bat and heads downstairs for weapons (broom and dustpan).  Unfortunately, by the time he comes back upstairs we can’t find the bat.  We search around Ella’s room and can’t make it stir, so Colin assumes it’s left by however it got in (we still don’t know how).  Ella and I sleep the rest of the night downstairs on the chesterfield.  There was no way she was going to sleep in her room not knowing where the bat was hiding.  After breakfast we went up to have another look around and fix her bed (stuffies were everywhere).  I told her to take everyone off the bed so we could straighten up her blankets too.  Nearly everyone was off the bed when Ella picked up Lula

Lula has been Ella’s best buddy for most of her life.  She enjoys snuggling and a good game of chess.  But I digress…

Ella picks Lula up off the bed and guess what drops off Lula and onto Ella’s foot?!  One large, terrified, screaming brown (I think) bat!!!!!

Ella’s screaming, bat’s screaming, I scream because she startled me.  Ella runs for my room and I grab the dust pan.  I corral the bat and Ella runs outside to get Daddy because I can’t handle this on my own.

Daddy takes care of the bat but Ella’s freaking out because it was in her bed.  She made my Lysol her whole room.  Even after all these years Lula is still taking care of Ella and protecting her from things that (literally) go bump in the night.  To be fair to Ella, it was a really good sized bat.  We’ve had a few in the house over the years, but this one was about 8 inches, which is bigger than most.  We still have no idea how it got into Ella’s room.  Hopefully that’s the last one.

Read Full Post »

Holidays 2020

 

Hi!  We’re back!  Did you notice we were gone?  We were very happy to discover last week that we could still go to our B&B/cottage for our annual Canada day holiday.  It was very last minute, but luckily I had already done the pre-holiday grocery shop.  And yes, I packed my air fryer -ha ha!  We often have trouble with the BBQ out there.  The air fryer does such a nice job (even on steak), so along it came.

Ella came out for the first day and a half.  She such a homebody (especially now), she’s also very lucky Grandma doesn’t mind driving 2 hours to get her and take her home.  As usual, Ella had a great time fishing with Daddy.  I hung out in the screened in gazebo, safe from the sun and the black/deer flies doing my knitting.  Even though she was only out for a day and a half, Ella caught 8 good sized small mouth bass!!

Not to be outdone, Daddy caught a nice pike with his first cast into the lake.  I lost track of Daddy’s bass/pike total after 15.  I caught 2 nice bass, but we didn’t have a camera handy.

Our traditional holiday selfie with my girl.  Another tradition for our holidays is really bad weather.  One year there was even a tornado warning!  This year it was hot and sunny the whole time.  The first evening we were there we did see this gorgeous rainbow.  There was rain somewhere, we were hoping it was at home but, no.

The rainbow was beautiful.  At one point it was a double and then the clouds moved some and it became a complete rainbow.

Before Grandma arrived, Carol took Ella out to the barn to meet the new additions.

Colin and I had a really nice time after Ella went home.  It was our first time apart in 108 days!  I think we are all (Ella included) starting to miss Ella’s weekends at Grandma’s.  For a treat, we ran into Killaloe to get lunch.  We shared a chicken fingers and fries and I got a Beaver Tail.  Just behind the Beaver Tails chip truck is a really nice park where the train station used to be.  The old bridge is still there:

There’s an old farmer saying here in Ontario.  They want the corn to be ‘knee high by the 1st of July’.  Even though we are really dry things are still looking good.

Read Full Post »

Day 46, and Counting

I feel like I’m failing at this pandemic protocol.   Every one else seems to have so much time and energy.   I haven’t even been doing a lot of knitting.   I did finish 99% of this sweater, but I really didn’t like how it turned out.  So I ripped it all out and found a new pattern.   It’s another top-down pattern.   Whoever figured out how to do set-in sleeves this way was a genius!  I like how it’s turning out.  I’m using the one bunch of yarn Colin gave me at Christmas.

I did re-organize the chest freezer and I organized (but didn’t clean) my kitchen cupboards.  Now my canned goods are upstairs instead of rusting in the basement.

Seed cleaning season is finished for the spring.  Colin has been busy out in the fields this week.  Today I had to take lunch to the field.  Colin is planting our spring wheat.  We could actually use some gentle rain, the fields are very dry.

Yesterday was a special day

It was Mom’s 72nd birthday!!  And before you say anything, Ella hasn’t been around anyone for 44 days and Grandma has only been to the pharmacy (she waits till it’s empty).  Also, there is very little virus activity up here in the County (thank God).  We’ve decided that it’s safe for Ella to hug Grandma again -which is what both of them needed.  Ella’s hair looks so red in the sunshine.  She wants to make it even redder, we’re looking into using henna.  Any one here use henna before??

I guess that’s about it for now.  I have more organizing on my to-do list, but we’ll see.

 

 

Read Full Post »

I’m Back

Hello!  That was some Christmas break!!  To be honest, I think I got a bit depressed after Christmas.  It was so hard and saddening to see the condition of my Grandma.  She has dementia (I guess, we seem to get a different diagnosis with every doctor).  She just sits in her chair and cries for my uncle if he is out of sight (aka, making Christmas dinner).  It’s so sad because my Grandma really isn’t there any more.  The only good thing is she remembered Ella, I was so afraid she wouldn’t.  I know that pain from when I was Ella’s age.  My Grandma’s cousin, Marie,  (like a great aunt) suddenly forgot everything, it was the early 80’s so we never had a reason.  She forgot me completely.  She called Belinda her ‘little friend’, we figured she remember her a little because Belinda had Marie for her middle name.  Grandma also remembers my Mom.  Mom calls every Friday and Grandma looks forward to her calls.

I want to thank Elizabeth for checking up on me and encouraging me to come back.  Some times it feels like I haven’t anything interesting to say.

Hmm, I just checked my Ravelry list and you can tell I’ve not been my self lately.  I haven’t finished any projects since the new year.  Now that large gatherings have been cancelled for the rest of March, I’ll have to get back to my knitting.

Hope everyone is doing well and keeping safe (and calm).  Talk to you soon!

Read Full Post »

Combine Season

It’s that time of year again…

 

https://play.streamshark.io/r/m/bnqfcvhxz/AG6OXPaY/embed

 

Rats, I don’t know why I can’t embed a non-youTube video here.  Oh well, just follow the link for the song please.

I was going to tell you we were well under way with our soybean harvest:

But he actually finished up the last of the beans before lunch AND even came in the house and sat down to eat his lunch!!  Yesterday went better than planned and it didn’t rain enough last night to stop him. Finally a time where things not going to planned turned out to be a good thing.

Look what I did yesterday:

I went up to our furthest farm and towed the flex head home for Colin.  It wasn’t too bad.  Just one spot on the back side road where I met oncoming traffic right where a bunch of mail boxes crowd the road.  Even though I’m wider than the lane, no cars or mail boxes were hurt!

At lunch I found out that he wanted the wagons moved further down the field closer to where he’s working.  He actually thought to himself “can I teach Paula to drive the tractor over the phone?”.  I may have started something!

Wednesday we had our homeschool trip to Hugli’s and as per tradition it was cold, and windy, and snowy!  It really came down a couple of times.  But I didn’t mind, snow is much drier than rain.  Ella had a good time.  Her buddies Keifer and Ephraim and Landon were there, they make her less serious.

Speaking of home school friends, tonight is ladies’ night for the home school moms.  We’re going to get wild and crazy without the kids.  I made pie  🙂

Read Full Post »

Menu Plan Monday -17 September 2018

Even though we are still boiling and counting down the days until the nice weather comes back, we’re heading into Fall fog season.

All fogged in at 8 am Sunday morning.

It actually got a bit foggier after the pictures.

Three hours later and we can see the trail, the highway and all the way back to the next side road.

Ta da!  The neighbours suddenly appear.

Our mornings will look like this for about the next two weeks.  It also coincides with the start of duck season.  It’s a little disconcerting to be out wandering around in the fog listening to the sound of gunfire.  It’s a weird, muffled sound, sort of like the play for Remembrance day.

Not really sure what’s up for this week.  We have a ‘park day’ planned but we don’t always make those, especially when they are up in Petawawa.  I have a new dress cut out, so hopefully I can get some sewing done.  If the promised cool weather arrives I can get some baking done too.  I’m tired of buying cookies from the store.

 

Monday:

everyday meatloaf -new crock pot recipe

Tuesday:

Cesky goulash and crispy German potato pancakes

Wednesday:

leftover meatloaf

Thursday:

leftover goulash

Friday:

roast chicken

Saturday:

venison steaks

Sunday:

hot chicken sandwiches

More great ideas at I’m an Organizing Junkie

Read Full Post »

Menu Plan Monday -6 August 2018

I guess I shouldn’t have complained about the heat last week because yesterday was miserable and today is even worse.  The house/outside was already 77F/25C when I got up this morning at 7, of course it feels even worse because of the ridiculous humidity.

Happy Simcoe Day (or Civic holiday if you want to be ‘modern’).  As per usual, the Farmer is working on a holiday weekend.  In fact, it’s so hot that Colin got up at 5:30 to do this…

Some days we could really use a cherry picker.

They are trying to finish the outside work before it gets ‘too’ hot.

And of course, after days of stagnant weather, the wind picks today to start to blow (from the wrong direction).  I got roped into holding a corner (get it ‘roped’) while they tied down the sides.

Blah, look at the haze hanging over the fields.

Thank goodness for the pool, too bad you can’t work and sleep in it.

Look what Colin brought in for me last night.  The first tomatoes of the season.  This dry weather has not been good for the garden.

Monday:

sandwiches

steak souvlaki 

Tuesday:

grilled cheese -need to order Ella more cheese from Great Lakes Goat Dairy

honey garlic chicken (freezer) and crockpot mashed potatoes

Wednesday:

sandwiches

leftover souvlaki

Thursday:

sandwiches

crockpot meatloaf (new recipe) and baked potatoes (toaster oven)

Friday:

pizza on BBQ

leftover meatloaf

Saturday:

hamburgers

Sunday:

???

More great ideas at I’m an Organizing Junkie

Read Full Post »