Folks ask on occasion, well after the crops are in, what do you do all summer? My favorite answer goes along with their asumption. I'll ask if they have ever seen the 4x4 stickers on our farm trucks. Then I teasingly tell them that sticker means we work 4 weeks in the spring, 4 weeks in the fall, and have 44 weeks of vacation.
Many summer evenings in Iowa include swimming in the pond and getting together and hanging out on the dock.
Of course it's not summer in Iowa without sweetcorn. Since sweetcorn is kind of wimpy compared to field corn we had to water it to get it started and water it to get it pollinated. After fertilizing in the fall and spring we plant it in intervals to spread out the time it's ready. Even though we spray it a couple of times it can still take some weeding since it doesn't get as tall as field corn and doesn't shade in between the rows. Finally you have to compete with the racoons when it gets ready to eat.
Last evening both Ezra's and Elijah's families came over. They had a blast riding their motorcycles together as 4 year old cousins. They drive all over and getting them in a picture together on the go was like herding cats so I finally had them stop for a pose.
Late one afternoon this week I had Mark and Stacy's kids so I told them if they could help me get a little corn out of the bean field we would go to town and buy any ice cream they wanted from the Frosty Udder. Actually I wanted them to experience bean walking worse than I needed the corn cut out of the beans.
It's not summer in Iowa without a short haircut. I remember getting buzzed as a kid. I remember buzzing our kids and yep, Zach is getting buzzed by his dad.
Last Sunday evening our family was asked to sing for a service in Pella. Here we are running through our song just before the service.
Jan shops down south in Omish country some and is starting to get to know a few of the families and stores. An Omish mom and her three single daughters do meals by reservations. So last Saturday Jan asked them to fix us breakfast to celebrate a birthday or two. We drove to their farm and had a great meal as well as a great time together.
After breakfast they took us all out to their farm and showed us their work horses, buggy horses, livestock, machinery, and garden.
We are still busy spraying although I hope that job wraps up this week. BJ still bales hay about every day and Mike, Mark, BJ, and Kurt have been building a large pond west of Melcher. Below is a driveway that Doug and BJ helped construct for Mike and Sylvia who are getting ready to build a new home.
Even though we missed the pop up showers this week the crop is hanging in there. A lot of the corn is in what we call "dry silk" which means it has finished pollinating and is now in the "kernal fill" development stage. With our temps in the upper 90's the corn plant is maturing way faster than folks realize.
Well that's sort of beeen a rundown of our summer so far. I hope you folks are all enjoying your summer as well. Until next week take care and God bless.
No comments:
Post a Comment