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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

 

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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  🙂

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Last Week, Event Two

Overcast and really humid today.  It’s already 23C in the house at 10 am.  Not the ideal day for Colin to be processing our chickens, but it has to be done today.

Last Wednesday was crop tour day.

Here they are …

Did you notice what they are standing in?  That’s right PUDDLES!!!!!!

We got such a nice amount of rain on Wednesday.  You could hear the corn smiling!  We got a couple of inches that day.  Good thing the Farmer took an umbrella.

Here the soil and crop specialist is talking about the different layers in the soil.

 New type of tillage being demonstrated. Rather then till the entire surface of the field only narrow strips are. This is done in the fall, also mixes in fertilizer. Seeds are planted into these strips in the spring. The object of this tillage is to reduce soil erosion and leave undisturbed soil for microbes and worms to do their thing.

Local seed grower showing his new equipment. It is used to put fungicide or insecticide treatment on seeds. This new equipment will also be able to handle the newest technology, using biological solutions to solve fungus and insect problems.

 

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Menu Plan Monday on a Crafting On Tuesday -17 October 2017

 

Still fighting with the weather and the soy beans.  Colin is out there this afternoon trying again -fingers crossed.

My best friend from my stock broker days is going through some really tough times.  She lives about 3 hours away (everything seems to be 3 hours away from here).  She needed cheering up, so Ella and I hopped in the car and headed to Frankford to visit Tammy and her hubby Ray.

They took us to see the local hockey team, the Trenton Golden Hawks.  The Hawks played Stouffville Spirit (and won!).  We left before the end because Ella was getting tired.  It was my first hockey game.

Tammy has a stuffed friend named George who goes everywhere with her.  He wanted to help with my knitting.  I got about 2 inches done on Grandma’s Christmas socks while at the game.  I started my sweater that I got for Christmas (my sister gave me the ‘ingredients’) but it was such a fabulous visit that I didn’t even take it out of my bag.

The weekend was much too short.  I don’t think Tammy realizes how much I miss her.  It’s very lonely for that kind of companionship up here some days.  We had a good drive home and got home ahead of the crazy wind and rain.  I dropped Ella off at Grandma’s for a couple of days and Colin took me out for supper.  Look what I found in the parking lot:

Isn’t that the cutest?!

Oh yes, look what I found when I got home?  Besides the dishes and eggs washed:

When I left the light above the sink was an ugly, florescent bar light that was broken and didn’t work.  I now have a LED light that is positional and dimmable.  Being able to dim it is handy because we leave this light on all night.  Some of us don’t like the dark.  I know it really doesn’t go with the decor, but options are limited when you have no wiring to connect with and you are attaching to a cupboard.

Almost have both sleeves finished.  Looks like I’ll have enough yarn to take out the bottom and make it better, so it won’t roll.  Pretty sure I’m winning this came of yarn chicken.

On a very happy note:

Grandma’s casts are finally off -and it only took a couple of hours at the hospital.  She’s still not supposed to drive for a week or so and no long drives for a month.  The doctor also suggests she wear her wrist braces for a while because her wrists will be week.  She seems to be able to move all her fingers, that was my big worry after being immobile for 6+ weeks.

Wednesday:

sandwich

pork pie (going to use my Bavarian beef pie recipe)

Thursday:

pizza

McDonalds because Grandma wants her hair done

Friday:

pizza

leftover pork pie

 

Saturday:

?? Ella’s got a Halloween party so who knows

Sunday:

Steak

More great ideas at I’m an Organizing Junkie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Soybean Season Begins…

Today’s the start of soybean season.  They haven’t been back to empty any wagons so I don’t know how it’s going, but fingers crossed.

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What’s This?

Look at this:

And this:

Woo Hoo!!  Colin has gotten a fair bit of our corn and wheat into the ground.  He’s done about 3 days work in the last two (without a/c in the tractor).  Things are looking up.  Though it’s supposed to rain tomorrow and Friday…

Not that things are dry yet.  Here’s the back field we were canoeing in for my birthday.  Still really, really wet.

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Farm Girl Friday -6 May 2016

No one seems to be doing Farm Girl Friday any more.  Oh well, here’s my post any way.

Spring has sprung!

Colin and Dad are busy planting the spring wheat.  It’s rather dry out there and we could use about 3/4 inch of rain (gentle rain!).  At least with all the sunny, dry weather Colin’s not having to work too hard and actually comes in for supper most nights.

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