Amen,
Linda
Memorial Day May 28, 2012
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Amen,
Linda
Author Archives: Dayphoto
This Week’s Sunday Stills Assignment—-Songs in Photos
I was afraid I could not do this week’s assignment….a song in photos!
Then I got an inspiration—
The Sounds of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel
Lest we forget…..
Linda
The Adventures of Fuzzy and Boomer on Friday — Mom Gets a Present
Shannon found a rooster! She brought it over to our house. The poor thing is in pretty bad shape…someone cut off his comb and his wattles;
he had no tail feathers
and had been de-clawed.
Mom asked Shannon where she found this damaged rooster. He was running down the highway as fast as his legs could carry him, so she stopped and walked back to where he was hiding under a big weed along the bar ditch and just picked him up.
He is very tame.
He is also in a healthy condition (considering).
“You have just saved this bird from being killed,” Mom said.
“I know he could have been smashed on the highway.” Shannon replied.
“Hummm, no. I think you have a rooster that escaped from a rooster fighting ring.”
“Well, he is safe with me now.”
She put him in her car and took him home!
So that wasn’t a present for Mom
Both Boomer and I thought that was good, we don’t want a rooster here.
The next day…..
We went down to see how the rooster was doing and we found out that Shannon now has A TOM TURKEY AND TWO TURKEY HENS!! (Mom forgot her camera!)
They were living in a tiny, tiny cage so Shannon and Buddy told the people they would give them a home.
Now that is an animal paradise…7 hens and a rooster, one tom turkey and 2 hens, plus three dogs and two cats that had been dumped at their place!
We have three hens and two cats and us…that works for Boomer and me. It is just the right amount of animals at our place.
Dad is working on getting all the pinto beans in the ground, he has decided not to plant alfalfa this year; he is putting everything into corn and pinto beans. That leaves one alfalfa field. Next year he will plant one of the big fields into alfalfa, if the water situation is better.
We went out and changed the water while Dad planted.
No present for Mom out there, but it sure was pretty.
The next day….
Mom went over to visit a friend of hers and see her yard. She has several acres of beautiful plants. The cactus beds were just blooming. Mom says Sheryl’s yard is the local botanical gardens.
No present for Mom there, except the beauty of flowers for the soul.
Two days later
Mom told Dad that she had to use her last two strings of twine on the chicken pen. Two of the strings had gotten old and were hanging down causing the chickens to think they had a couple of new toys.
Dad got a big smile on his face and asked Mom to come with him out to the new tractor shed.
Off they went….there in the middle of the drive way sat….
A PRESENT FOR MOM!
Delighted Mom asked him where he found it.
“Oh, I had it stuck back here out of the way” Dad replied.
“Well, this is just perfect….I do not have to wait until first cutting of hay, and I’m not using a good roll!”
Mom happily picked up the loose wobbly roll and carried it to her shed!
Boomer
and I did that happy dance with Mom!
Fuzzy
Only Two Left, Only 2 !!!!!
There are some things on the farm a person just can’t do without, a shovel for one. I always seem to be in need of shovel….the scoop shovel is a good example. It’s very good for grain and then a separate one for cleaning out the chicken house and the barn (no mixing of shovels for food items, now, ya hear!
Then there is the shovel for the irrigation water, each field has at least two shovels in it….one for Terry and one for me. We like different types of shovels, the shovel that fits best on your shoulder and has a nice weight in your hand is what you look for.
Then I have a shovel for the yard…this one has a large shovel so I can dig up clumps of stuff in one or two digs, not a whole bunch of little ones.
I also have a little red shovel that I use for my water trough flower beds.
And I have two rakes….a leaf rake and a regular rake. I only need the two. They are for yard work and that is all.
There are other implements that are more than necessary but used only for that particular thing…like planters for planting and the lawn mower.
But the thing I use the most for all sorts of things is….
BALING TWINE!!!!
And I only have two left! (WAIL)
Baling twine is what I used to put the top on the chicken run with, baling twine holds my vines to the trellis, baling twine has been know to ‘tie the gate shut’ until one of us could get to town and get the proper latch.
Or to close the garage door until the opener can be fixed ….. that was three years ago and we still have that on the ‘to do’ list.
Baling twine is the farmer’s (at least us) answer to what others use duct tape for.
And I ONLY have two left!
How this all came about was last year when Terry decided to sell the cows, he decided that he would sell ALL the hay, since we wouldn’t need any to feed over the winter. We kept enough for the chickens and Misty’s goats, but that was it.
Gradually the bales were used and I stored the very precious, to me, twine so I would have some when I needed it.
I’m so glad I did.
Terry should cut the alfalfa sometime the first of June (depending on the weather), he will bale up the hay and haul it into the yard. He sell the hay….BUT I’m requesting several bales to hold me through the year. And on those several bales will be two strings of baling twine!
Linda
(P.S. No! I can not go out and cut off any length I might want out of the baler….I can’t EVEN think of that….{{{ shudder}}}!)
Crop Update
This has been the most unusual of years!
Terry is planting the pinto beans right now. He is taking his time — only planting one field, watching how the water is acting and assessing if he wants to get several more acres planted , if there isn’t enough water that would be foolish on our part.
He has left the 20 acres of alfalfa for later on in the year…hoping for more water. When the sweet corn and the wheat starts to come off, those farmers stop watering that field and the field sets until next year.
(Since we do NOT irrigate from an underground aquifer, but from reservoirs, all the water that is used on a farm passes on down to the next farm below it. This is how all farms from Montrose, Colorado, to Grand Junction, Colorado, are irrigated. Nothing is wasted and all is put back into the canals so that eventually the water ends up in Arizona, Nevada and California. That is where our water comes from….we get our water from Blue Mesa Reservoir and the Ridgeway Reservoir….people on the Surface Creek Bench get theirs from Grand Mesa)
The water from the sweet corn and wheat fields should allow us to have enough water to plant the alfalfa. We just might not get the acres we had hoped for into pinto beans, we will just have to wait and see. The decision to plant the rest of the pinto beans will be made by June 1st. after that it will be too late to plant the seed.
The other strange part of the farming this year is the heat…we build heat up until we are smothering around 90* during the day –with 20-25 m.p.h. hot winds ( the heat is very early for this time of year) and then cooling down in the high 30s or low 40s at night, making the corn turn purple. The purple color is leaf injury, although it doesn’t kill the plant.
The last two nights we were warm enough (48*) that this morning we saw the crown of the plant starting to green up, which is a welcome sign.
Well, hope I didn’t bore you…farming is a huge part of our every day (and sometimes worry at night). Often times people get to thinking it would be easy to be a farmer…just get some land, plant some seed, harvest the crop and make money.
I wish it were so easy.
Still those people are right in lots of ways—it is a good way of life. At 68 and 63 years of age Terry and I can’t think of anything else we would have liked to do (although we both worked in town in really fun jobs to support this way of life) and we can’t imagine doing anything different for the rest of our lives.
Thanks for stopping by….
Linda
The Ring of Fire Solar Eclipse 2012
The Ring of Fire Soalr Eclipse happened right on time yesterday evening. I had a hard time trying to figure out how to take a photo of it
- First I tried regular glasses that turn dark when you go outside
- Then I tried sun glasses
- Then Terry remembered his welding helmet….nope, it needed an arc for it to darken
- Then he remembered he had his OLD welding helmet
IT WORKED! But only for our eyes….I couldn’t get the camera to get a decent shot through the tiny vision glass.
But we got to see the eclipse even if I couldn’t take a photo.
The whole thing was really cool…and will not be back to our section of the earth until 2045…I’ll be surprised if anyone living here on our farm will be alive at that time.
But one never knows……
Linda
This Week’s Sunday Stills Challenge is the Color Pink
For this week’s challenge on the Sunday Stills site, we are to photograph something the color of pink!
I had a great time with this…I have lots of pink around the house, the yard and with the two granddaughters, but I settled for:
Just a few pink things!
Have a really nice Sunday!
Linda
The Adventures of Fuzzy and Boomer on Friday — Summer Work
Golly Geez, this summer work fun!
This is my second summer here and I love every second of it.
We do ‘stuff’ all the time! ALL THE TIME!!!
Well, I know we do things in the winter, but this is just so much better!
For Instance—-
We, meaning Mom, Fuzzy and I, went down to Shannon’s to work in her yard. Shannon was building some raised beds so Mom went down to help her and to put the soil in the beds while Shannon went to work.
I played with Rock, Balou, and Houston in their yard and Fuzzy stayed out and helped Mom. Mom made me stay in the yard because it has a fence and I have a great curiosity to smell lots of things so she put me in the yard with the others so we could play.
Shannon’s cats helped Mom.
Sunny hung around the old stump where some dried catnip was…he sure likes catnip…rolls in it and eats it and everything. I took a huge sniff of the stuff….it only made me sneeze, so I don’t get the fascination.
Willow just lay down by Mom and Fuzzy he doesn’t get that catnip stuff either. What he likes is to just be next to people so he can get a pet and a rub now and again.
That was cool….we were there for 2 ½ hours.
Then when we got home we went to the pinto bean field to change the water…I always like that!
Mom tells me I can play around the area, but if I hear the four-wheeler start I had better be back as fast as my legs can take me — if I want a ride home.
There were a couple of little girls out in the field with us, so that means Hank was with them…we sniffed around lots of stuff, then I headed off to the equipment area, and Hank hung with the folks looking for mice. Fuzzy stayed right with Mom and helped her chase water.
I was a little slow getting back to the four-wheeler so I ran in right behind them…well, not to ‘right behind’, but really close.
Then later on Hank (he’s in the photo with the others in the truck) came over to build bottle rockets with Dad (Grandpa). He walked over with his family. They walk down the bottom of the bean field, and then up the side between the bean field and the corn field…..it’s a short cut they like to take to get from their house to our house.
Hank and I played run, and chase until we got too hot and tired.
Sammy hung out with us
But Monkey spent most of her time trying to get back inside so she could lay around on the carpet.
Mom told Monkey she could be outside with the family, it was good for her. She didn’t listen.
After that Mom, Dad, Fuzzy and I went back out to set the water for the night.
The sunset was really cool.
I stayed right with everyone so I could ride the four-wheeler back in. I was a little tired after all the running I did today.
I sure enjoyed this day…Good night everyone!
Boomer
My Yard in May
Weeds and all!
Linda
May 15, 2012
We had another high wind come through again. Wind without rain.
Just wind.
Our cottonwood tree must have decided it was time to shed a couple of limbs so as the wind blew, down came some limbs.
Thankfully the branch that holds the rope swing was not the one shed. And the climbing branches are still there, just waiting for one or three little grandchildren to climb on.
These two branches came from somewhere up top, lightening the load just a little bit for this wonderful old tree.
Linda
Life on a Colorado Farm 