StillwatersIowa

We started Christmas week deciding we still had time to build a pond. We stripped black dirt with the scraper. Mark dug the core with his trackhoe. This is Mike and BJ moving clay up the dike slope. Jan had our Christmas meal family style around one big table set up for 26 people. Here a couple of boys are either helping prepare or snooping supper. Opening gifts starts out with a plan but gets somewhat unorganized as the kids help open and play with each others presents. For the last couple of years Grandma has given new pajamas for Christmas. This was an attempt to get a picture but not all the kids thought it was such a great idea. Karl purchaced a blade for his IH 1566 so he was our official snow removal fellow for the week. Chris and her husband JP and three foreign exchange students from South Korea visited Iowa and stayed in the cabin. Here the boys are experiancing Iowa farm life. Pictured below are my cousin Chris and my cousin Sandy with Bianca in the back hanging on because h...

It's a quiet Christmas Eve at our house this evening. I have so many wonderful memories of Christmas Eve's of the past. One memory not so wonderful was 21 years ago tonight when our when our barn, silo, and cattle facilities burned to the ground. Another Christmas Eve memory I have is from when I was a kid. I would like to share that story with you. It's called A Ponderosa Christmas. Merry Christmas everyone. I was excited. We were going to move again. I remember my dad talking to me about tractors and chores. We were moving to a cattle and hog farm near Union Mills. We loaded up the family and headed out to check out our new home. When we pulled up to the house no one said much. It wasn't new by a long shot. In fact it was kind of run down. Behind the house was a small pasture surrounded by a huge grove of Ponderosa Pine trees. My dad talked to the landlords about the condition of the house for a family of seven and they agreed it needed work and promised to h...

Yesterday was Jan's birthday. She celebrated much of her day helping prepare and serve the Christmas Banquet at Pella Chr. High. For 20 years she would ask me to write a Christmas letter for her for her birthday so she could share family happenings with her family and friends. For years I wrote it as if she was writing it since I didn't think guys wrote Christmas letters. How things change. Since she has asked me to blog for her for the last year or so and since most of our family happenings are already posted I kind of consider this blog an extended Christmas letter. Since I don't want to get in trouble calling this blog her birthday present I did go find a large prelit Christmas tree on sale for 1/2 price for the cabin. Last Friday evening we went to this little pizza place in New Sharon for Jan's birthday. It was in a building I remember as Van Gendren's Kent Feed Store behind Wendall Knowler's service station. But that was over 40 years ago. In this pictur...

It's starting to look alot like Christmas in Iowa this morning with blowing snow, dropping temperatures, howling winds, and cancelled church. Christmas and gifts naturally go together. At our house Jan usually buys the Christmas gifts. So you might be thinking what's this "Dads and gifts" thing about? This is about Dads giving time to their kids, not just while working but also during the fun times. Cody enjoys being on the football field while Mike coaches. In this picture Mike is assuring him he still has all his teeth. Mark enjoys riding and racing motorcycles on his abandoned coalmine land with his family. Occasionally he and his family attend racing events and participate competively. Here Mark is giving Ethan some pointers as Ethan waits on the starting line. When BJ bought a modified race car I wasn't impressed. But what I was impressed about was that he used racing for family time, not family for racing time. Because of his workload and other family c...

It has been a wonderful fall. Harvest seems like it's been months ago. Fertilizer application and tillage for next years crop are finished for the most part. Most of us have spent the last two weeks moving dirt. Kurt and his friend Mitchell are helping BJ tile. Mike helped build a pond west of Ottumwa and is now building terraces. Mark is excavating with his trackhoe. I have been cleaning terraces and shaping waterways. In this picture Kristen and her little cousin Renae are helping Karl run scraper. FM business radios have always been part of our family farming operation. We have mobile radios in our equipment and talk in the field and even between jobs. Every family has a base radio so the girls can talk to each other, call their husbands, know what's going on if we're working at night, or turn it off if it gets boring. Here Ezra is calling Grandpa to tell him they have just put up their Christmas tree. Yesterday was opening day of dear hunting season. A couple of boys we...