Life

Memory Speak

August 31, 2014 - 04:23 PM

Memories are wonderful if you do not have to deal with the past.
Unkown

Wolf Speak

August 31, 2014 - 04:22 PM

We are the sum of all the events in our life
Thomas Wolf

No One Has Time to Blog

June 06, 2014 - 11:26 PM

This time of the year it seems that everything is either not done or half done and never enough hours in a day or days in a week to accomplish what is on our list to do.

Berry season will be several weeks late this year due to the cooler weather we had earlier. Our vegetables gardens look like they are equally behind schedule.

Cattle are still to be worked, calves weaned and hay to be cut. We fetilized 87 acres so we can make a good hay crop.

Perhaps in a few days I will have time to share more. Read More...

Blogging Again

May 22, 2014 - 11:23 AM

Since September, 2013 we have not been able to blog as our website was updated. Finally it is finished and we can blog again. We look forward to sharing with you our life and the adventures of life on our farm.

M-A calf

We Are Still Here

September 24, 2013 - 10:01 AM

The summer ended with a period of extreme heat and no rain. NOT what makes anything go right on a farm and ranch. We spent all our time keeping things alive (plants and critters).

Our somewhat annual vacation was taken to California to Sonoma county north of San Francisco- wine vineyard country. Eva attended cooking classes for advanced jam making and together we attended the three day National Heirloom Farming meeting. It was a relaxed week away.

When we got home it was still hot and dry, but suddenly that was all over. 8 inches of rain on Friday changed everything. We went to the Avinger Wine Festival on Saturday and sold jams and Eva did several cooking demonstrations. Javier has been going to the Longview Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings. It has been VERY slow.

Now is time to move the mama cows that are ready to have babies closer to home so we can watch them.

Life is good and we keep on keeping on.

Looking Up Into Space

August 06, 2013 - 02:18 PM

Last night at 8:46 PM I looked into the sky and to the south-southwest appeared a brilliant small moving light. It was the International Space Station. It moved overhead to the northeast and in six minutes was gone. I have signed up for an email update of when the station is passes overhead during the evening hours. It is called Spot The Station.

I find great pleasure is watching something larger than a football stadium passing so far above me. How majestic it always appears. Some nights I lay on the ground and get the perspective of its passing from start to finish without having to move. Other nights I watch it and follow it on my Night Sky app on my iphone.

When I was 11 years old, in 1960, I stood in our driveway and watched for the passing of Echo. This was basically a metal ball that was America's first communication satellite. I was amazed than as I am today that I can watch something so far off in space. It broadened my view of the world.

Once, I had a science class in school, they said light never goes away. So occasionally, and still today, if I am out at night I take my spot light and point it to the sky and send a beam if light that will always be there.
I am unsure if this is true, but it makes me feel good to do it

ISS Link

Frost Speak: Blueberries

July 18, 2013 - 11:10 PM

by Robert Frost
Blueberries

"You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day:
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!"
"I don't know what part of the pasture you mean."
"You know where they cut off the woods--let me see--
It was two years ago--or no!--can it be
No longer than that?--and the following fall
The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall."
"Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow.
That's always the way with the blueberries, though:
There may not have been the ghost of a sign
Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine,
But get the pine out of the way, you may burn
The pasture all over until not a fern
Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick,
And presto, they're up all around you as thick
And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick."
"It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit.
I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot.
And after all really they're ebony skinned:
The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind,
A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand,
And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned."
"Does Mortenson know what he has, do you think?"
"He may and not care and so leave the chewink
To gather them for him--you know what he is.
He won't make the fact that they're rightfully his
An excuse for keeping us other folk out."
"I wonder you didn't see Loren about."
"The best of it was that I did. Do you know,
I was just getting through what the field had to show
And over the wall and into the road,
When who should come by, with a democrat-load
Of all the young chattering Lorens alive,
But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive."
"He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he frown?"
"He just kept nodding his head up and down.
You know how politely he always goes by.
But he thought a big thought--I could tell by his eye--
Which being expressed, might be this in effect:
'I have left those there berries, I shrewdly suspect,
To ripen too long. I am greatly to blame.'"
"He's a thriftier person than some I could name."
"He seems to be thrifty; and hasn't he need,
With the mouths of all those young Lorens to feed?
He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say,
Like birds. They store a great many away.
They eat them the year round, and those they don't eat
They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet."
"Who cares what they say? It's a nice way to live,
Just taking what Nature is willing to give,
Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow."
"I wish you had seen his perpetual bow--
And the air of the youngsters! Not one of them turned,
And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned."
"I wish I knew half what the flock of them know
Of where all the berries and other things grow,
Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top
Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop.
I met them one day and each had a flower
Stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower;
Some strange kind--they told me it hadn't a name."
"I've told you how once not long after we came,
I almost provoked poor Loren to mirth
By going to him of all people on earth
To ask if he knew any fruit to be had
For the picking. The rascal, he said he'd be glad
To tell if he knew. But the year had been bad.
There had been some berries--but those were all gone.
He didn't say where they had been. He went on:
'I'm sure--I'm sure'--as polite as could be.
He spoke to his wife in the door, 'Let me see,
Mame, we don't know any good berrying place?'
It was all he could do to keep a straight face.
"If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him,
He'll find he's mistaken. See here, for a whim,
We'll pick in the Mortensons' pasture this year.
We'll go in the morning, that is, if it's clear,
And the sun shines out warm: the vines must be wet.
It's so long since I picked I almost forget
How we used to pick berries: we took one look round,
Then sank out of sight like trolls underground,
And saw nothing more of each other, or heard,
Unless when you said I was keeping a bird
Away from its nest, and I said it was you.
'Well, one of us is.' For complaining it flew
Around and around us. And then for a while
We picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile,
And I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shout
Too loud for the distance you were, it turned out,
For when you made answer, your voice was as low
As talking--you stood up beside me, you know."
"We sha'n't have the place to ourselves to enjoy--
Not likely, when all the young Lorens deploy.
They'll be there to-morrow, or even to-night.
They won't be too friendly--they may be polite--
To people they look on as having no right
To pick where they're picking. But we won't complain.
You ought to have seen how it looked in the rain,
The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves,
Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves."

These blueberries must have come from Greer Farm

Farm Office Window

July 05, 2013 - 10:19 AM

The distinct advantage of living in rural America is lifestyle. If you live on a farm, it is even better since you have no close neighbors. This photo is taken from the farm office window, over the desk, looking out to a vegetable garden and two paddocks; one with a few heifers and cows and the other quarter horses and Pepper our Zebra. It is over 90 degrees now, but was mid 60's at sun up. I open the window for a long as I can before it gets real hot. I feel a slight summer breeze and hear so many bird sounds. Butterflies are ever present just at the windows edge. Purple Martins have a house I can see and they fly back and forth to feed the baby birds and to catch bugs. They make a pleasant sound. It is a relaxed place to work when you have to be inside.

Life is what you make it where ever you are planted.

Farm Life