The First Day

Oh, it dawned so nice and sunny, for which we were so grateful! 

I went to church this morning to get the year started right, and took the camera with me to take pictures along the way. 

I often see this mule, his partner, and a horse in their pasture together. 

I love to see the sun shining on them. 

They are staying well away from the road, but they were in the same field as Thursday. 

This is the week for kitties.  I saw another sitting in a pole barn, 

watching the road.  I didn't stop to get his picture. 

The Big Ditch is frozen, but I suspect only a sliver of ice on it.  It's very full, though. 

There is still a lot of water in Stranger Creek. 

We saw this guy on the way home from the park for our walk. 

Well, we saw him for a second! 

Love these farm buildings I drive by almost every day.   The road in front of them is busy, and 

I rarely have an opportunity to stop for even a second. 

We are off to a good start for 2016...hope it takes less 

than two months to remember to write it on my checks! 

Mama, Don't Let Your Fencelines Grow Up to be Grapevines

To wit: 

Oh, yes. 

That's a fenceline. 

My bad. 

There's a pasture behind there. 

I cut and I cut and I cut. 

That's what some of the grapevine trunks looked like. 

Those are grapevines!  Whew. 

You can see the pasture again!  

That's the brush pile way down there. 

These are mushrooms growing on a dead tree.  I'm going to take a better picture of this tree tomorrow. 

I worked on the pasture side of the fence, too.  This tiny beautiful little red plant 

is a young Virginia Creeper vine. 

Several of these guys were on the house porch (wooly bears). 

I stopped to take this picture on the way home... got out of the car.... The trees are getting so beautiful.  This pond is so peaceful. 

This barn sits above the pond. 

This farm is right across the road from the pond.  There are several barns and a granary. 

But the house is gone... it clearly was in that copse of trees... and the pasture had 

peacefully grazing cows in it.  There was an additional barn, I didn't get it in the pcitre... it is behind the trees, and would have been behind and a little to the west of the house. 

On the way home, I went by my friend Diane's to give her a sack of egg cartons I had found in a storage building at the old house.  This made me laugh out loud.  It's a BIG Angus bull.  

He is standing in between the supports of a sign that says "New Haven Angus", large 

cattle breeders here in Leavenworth County. 

There was a truck behind me and I couldn't stop (see him in the side mirror?) 

Here is what's really funny... he turned around pointing NORTH in the time it took me to deliver the cartons and chat for a minute... so he was facing me again as I came down the road.  This time, I pulled into a driveway, and calmly took the picture as I got the stink eye. Now you can read the sign that says "New Haven Angus". 

He's pretty photogenic. 

Jester likes his daddy a lot. 

Keith is going back into the hospital either today, tomorrow or Monday, he is finding out now. 

This is getting to be part of our lives.  

Please remember him in your prayers if you think of him this weekend. 

And these guys live about a mile from us, right down the road.  How I always would 

have loved to have had some alpacas.  Maybe in my next life.  

 And now I'm going out to cut grass for the last time this year. (I 

HOPE) 

An Old Farm and Someone's Chickens

I had to run to Garnett to get Nathan this afternoon, and stopped on my way back through the countryside to take picture of an old farm I often see when going that way.  I always wondered how many families lived there... the kids who played in the yard... the animals who lived in the barns.  The land is still farmed, but no one lives in the old home place.  Behind the white barn are three big machine sheds, empty.  There is a nice old red barn to the left of the white barn, and both are not in too bad of shape yet. 

 

I suspect the farmer who owns it is cutting part of the yard so he can get in and out of the fields, because it is not totally wild.

 

I love to slow down if no one is coming up behind me, to look at the farm and yard. 

 

While on the way home, I stopped at a place I had also seen often... open only from 3-7 PM daily... they are a family that sells vegetables and eggs.  The place is neatly kept.  A man came down from the garden to talk to me... he had a lot of tomatos for sale, but they were very small, NOT San Marzanos.  They were in good shape, and he said he had made three plantings and watered, and I looked up to his garden and it was VERY impressive.

 

I asked if I could see his chickens.

My pictures of the inside of the coop did not come out, but here is the outside, I thought it was cleverly done.

 

 

He actually has 4 coops, and here, as you see, adapted a machine shed as his fourth coop... it is divided in the middle.  The hens are White Rocks, and there is a Rhode Island Red rooster in with them (there are a couple of Rhody hens).  These breed sex link chicks, and he just hatched out a batch.

 

 

He took a big wooden box from work, and converted it into a brooder to start his chicks off.  Someone was supposed to come buy the white chicks you see here... his hatch was almost 50-50, pullets and cockerels.  I asked what he did with his cockerels, and he grimaced.  He told me this time he was throwing them over the fence into the woods if the guy didn't come buy them tomorrow.  He said he wasn't going to feed them when he couldn't get rid of them.  Hard-hearted, I know.  He was at least embarassed about it. 

 

He moves them from this box into another, bigger box to grow them on, then has a special yard and hut to put them into.  He had the same trouble with an owl that we did.

 

 

The bigger box they go into next... I think this is a great system.

 

I am trying to break the juvenile replacement layers of sleeping in their outside 4 x 4 pen, so have closed it tonight to get them to go inside the big henhouse, where they commonly go during the day.  I'm going to run out there now and see what's going on!  Keith is going to load into the haybarn the twelve bales we had delivered today, decent horse hay and heavy square bales!

 

 

 

The Old Homestead

We saw them clear up I35 Today on the way to Ames... the old homesteads along either side of the highway.  Big houses, some still maintained, and big barns... many going to ruin with boards out and leaning sidewise. Many still have there outbuildings around them... the old henhouses and cribs and granaries.  Here in another old picture I have you can see the family standing in front of the fine house... the big barn... the woodpile all piled and neat for winter use.  The outhouse standing just far enough away that odor would not drift.... it's a beautiful old farm, neat and well-kept.

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