Three Cheers for "Splash Canyon"!!!

Dear Farmer and Wife took the family on a mini-vacation this weekend to Fabulous Aunt and Uncle's house. It was wonderful!  Fabulous Aunt took the Wife and children (and oodles of Cousins that joined us on vacation) to "Splash Canyon" Park in Oregon, Illinois.  It was AMAZING!
First of all, Oregon, Illinois is a little town of nearly 4,000.  It's riddled with history and beautiful houses, but then they have built a fantastic park system!  So it just keeps getting better!
Good luck finding "Splash Canyon", you have to know someone and know the area, the town has tucked it back there so that not just anyone is going to find it, meaning it's basically a local's haunt.  But we had a five hour bliss with eleven children ages 13 and under and three adults. Fountains that spring up from the ground, spray tunnels, a lazy river, and "Russian roulette" with dumping buckets of water...but that's not all!  The designers must have had a mother on the team because there were benches set up strategically in the shade AND a free library AND a park all in the same area!
Unfortunately, in Illinois "Splash Canyon" is something we can only enjoy about three months of the year.  It is worth enjoying!  Three cheers for "Splash Canyon"!!!  Three Cheers for Fabulous Aunt and Uncle!!! Three Cheers for vacation days!!!

A moment for a "spot of tea" on the tractor

Dear Farmer has been brewing tea.  WHY? Glad you asked!  Let me tell you...
He brews a "compost" tea to spray on the hay fields.  By spraying compost on the hay fields he is able to give the fields a healthy and fast dose of all that's good to bring the micro-organisms in the dirt to optimal health.  It's like if you or I were feeling "yucky" and we were to start taking a multi-vit...in a few weeks we'd start feeling better.  But if we were to eat right AND take the multi-vit in a few days we'd feel better.  The "compost" tea is like if we were eating right and taking a multi-vit...but for the field. Just like compost for your garden can get kinda stinky, the tea can a little too.  However, it gets really stinky because Dear Farmer adds to it liquefied fish.  Uber stinky and highly healthy-making the tea go from "good-for-field" to "WOW-for-field".  So, today Dear Farmer is driving the tractor spraying a "spot of tea" on the fields.  Making the grass grow healthy, so our cows are healthy, meaning our meat is healthier for you!

Sunday afternoon and Cows

Dear Farmer and the Wife spent four hours yesterday watering cows.  The cows have water-tanks filled by hoses off the hydrants, but the hoses failed and the tanks were dry.  A herd of mad, thirsty cattle is not the place you want to be on a Sunday afternoon, but there we were-getting cows water as fast as we could and in as many different ways as we could.  Farmers don't get weekends off.
While overseeing the pushing and shoving by the cattle, the Wife was able to get a little more experience being around the herd, and watched Dear Farmer and how he cares for these (ungrateful) cattle. The Wife did ask if she could be up on the tractor, instead of on the ground with the cattle...Dear Farmer said no.  Apparently Dear Farmer actually was USING the tractor, and the Wife would have just been up there because it looked like the safer place to be.  It really wasn't the safer place to be, it was just higher up.  The Wife watched the way the cattle bumped and jostled the tractor, Dear Farmer did not have an easy job!
 It was a long and dusty four hours, Dear Farmer and the Wife both had sweat and water mixed with dust and mud covering arms and necks, all over faces and in noses.  Ick!
"Did you catch the game?"  Nope.  No game could have been nearly as exciting as watering a hundred thirsty and mad cows.  Nope, we LIVE the game!  We're farmers.
 

"What kind of animal are those?" Dear Farmer answers..."Cows."

Understanding that there is a disconnect in society between the animal and the food that is eaten, Dear Farmer is more than patient with questions from customers...
"Where do the eggs come from if you don't have roosters?"
"How do you get the chickens to go in the coop at night?"
"When do the cows know it's time to birth?"
But the best was when we had a couple of visitors pull up in our driveway, a husband and wife.
They were having an argument, and waved us over to help them.  Dear Farmer and the Wife walked over to the car, pretty sure we were about to be giving them directions to somewhere else.
They were, however, arguing about what kind of animals were grazing in the fields.  The wife in the car said they were cows, the husband said they were pigs.
Now, there's a first. Even in city schoolbooks we thought they had pictures of the different animals...but apparently one of them hadn't paid attention. Dear Farmer, kindly answered, "Cows."  They thanked him and drove away.  Just in case anyone out there drives past our fields...we'll answer your questions, no matter how strange they may seem.  But we will publish the strangest ones we've ever heard in a story like this. {smile}

They want to be "House-Goats"

So Honorable Son No.1 has a milk goat, and the Wife has the two kids.  Well, the Wife enjoys the goats grazing the yard in the evenings(goats eat the weeds)and the goats also play with the children after dinner(socialization).  So, she would let them out of the goat-pen and into the yard just before dinner and have the children put them back into the barnyard just before baths.  The children had gotten a little lazy, and casually forgotten to put the goats into the barnyard a couple of evenings...which turned into a week.  The goats, being goats, found unique places to bed down for the night.  The Kubota RTV, on top the pallets by the feed bins, and finally the deck on the house.  On the deck they could look into the house through the windows in the dining room and the patio door in the living room.  They saw all the fun the people were having and the food on the table...they made a decision...they wanted to be "house-goats".  The goats, now when they were out in the yard, began haunting the back door...that is how people got in and out.  They felt they should be allowed in and out of the house as well.  The Wife didn't think that "house-goats" were a good idea...though all the children voted to let them in, Dear Farmer used his veto-power and sided with the Wife(smart Farmer).  The goats are now being penned in the evenings and bed down back in the barnyard.  However, when let out, they still believe that they should be allowed in the house.

Great Joke!

What's the difference between a piano, a tuna and a pot of glue?

you can tuna'piano, but you can't piano a tune.

What's with the pot of glue?

thought you'd get stuck with that one!

Heard this from Honorable Son No.1, who heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend.  There's a lot of days when we're just so tired from working, we forget to laugh.  Laughter, however, is needed in the Wife's life.  If the Wife doesn't laugh, she gets really cranky...and that doesn't make for a happy family.
So when Honorable Son No.1 called the Wife with this joke, well...it needed to be shared!  Laugh with the Wife!  The dishes will be easier to wash, the children will seem happier, and the laundry will still need to be washed. On the farm the jobs seem endless, it's good to laugh endlessly as well.

When the GPS doesn't take you to your destination...

Had a couple of out-of-town friends coming to visit today.  They had never been to the farm before-we've always met up with them at other locations(church, birthday parties, conferences).  This time they were in the area and coming to our farmhome!  We were excited, even cleaned the house for the occasion!  Dear Farmer was on the phone with them and willing to give directions, "No", they said, "Just give us your address and we'll use the GPS."  In the country, the GPS doesn't always work.  Many times I believe the programmers just think "it's a gravel road/small town why put those in?" Well, people do still live wa-a-ay out in the middle of no-where...so it might have come in handy.  Anyhow, the company didn't arrive.  And didn't arrive.  And just when Dear Farmer and the Wife were contemplating how lost they probably were...there was a phone call.  The company wasn't just lost, they had landed in the next state!  ( I had to put that in bold for the effect of the story...really, our farm is on the stateline, they weren't too far away.) They had plugged in our address, but incorrectly-driving past our house...and far down the road...before realizing they were totally in the wrong place.  The GPS was telling them to keep going, but they knew they should turn around.
Now some of you may say, it was the fault of the person who was programming the coordinates, not the GPS...and some of you may say it was the fault of the GPS because it didn't recognize the coordinates that were programmed in didn't exist.  Either way, the company did arrive.  But too late to visit more than a couple moments before their next appointment. (BUMMER)
Dear Farmer did look like a very un-happy little farmer-boy...but he will get to visit with them another time. {Sigh} The house needed to be cleaned anyways.