Thanksgiving and Family

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. Our oldest son and daughter-in-law and two daughters came over this year. We had smoked turkey and ham and wonderful goodies as well. Our daughter in law is a wonderful cook.

 

We got to spend a little time with our granddaughter shooting. This was the first time that she has done any shooting with a large caliber rifle. She is going to be a natural I think.

She was a little nervous at first, at least until grandma shot a couple of times. Then she picked right up on it.

Our son in the meantime, while we were playing, he was working at getting an area leveled out

for the calves that we have and decided to keep.

He spent most of the day today digging and moving dirt and I think it turned out pretty good.

The area in the above picture is where I decided to put the calves shed. Below is where he moved the dirt to create a road and flat area.

What a view they will have with the pond right there next to the area they will be. The best spot on the lot I think.

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

Bees, Bees, Bees

What a wonderful sight to see the bees out today. The sun was shinning and the temperature was about 58 degrees in the shade which means it was about 60 to 65 degrees in the sunshine.

 

I had walked by them a little earlier and saw them out and about, flying like crazy gathering pollen that is still available.

I saw some of the bees so full of pollen that they could barely get into the hive through the openings that they have available. The green hive in the middle and the one on the end are regular bees. The one in the middle are Carniolan's and the one on the end are Italian's. Both of these hives are doing very well right now.

The middle hive in the above picture and the hive in the picture below are two hives that we split this summer with two new queens. They are suppose to be the hygienic queens. We are trying to get these hives going to help produce bees that will clean the mites that effect the hives on their own. These two hives are very weak but still doing very well considering they got started late.

I am hoping that all the hives will survive the winter and go great guns next spring. I have them strapped down because we get some pretty strong winds here and I wanted them to be stable.

Hay Storage

Well we got our first load of hay yesterday and I got it put in the new hay storage area that Don and I and our two son's have been working on for about a year now. It is really going to be nice to get the hay out of the area that it is in right now because we have other plans for it. We would like to put some kind of tarp on each end to help keep the deer from having dinner at our expense and also help to keep the rain from getting the ends wet.

 

This was the first time that I moved the hay on pallets with the tractor. Usually Don does it but with his knee he can't right now. Going to have that fixed soon. Yeah.

To the right of the picture you can see some orange color, that is Chicken of the Woods mushrooms. They really like it there, they are also edible. This is a natural habitat for them. They are growing on an old stump which is hard to see in this picture.

 

I also got four bales of hay in the garden shed like I had planned and it is going to be really nice to be in a covered area while filling the horses hay bags this winter when it is raining. It is amazing what little things can make one happy.

Hauling Day

Today I got the dirt and gravel put into the garden shed. Don got a couple of scoops of dirt put in before his knee started to hurt him. He did more than he should have. Really sucks that I can't use my legs as I would like to be able to (added by Don).

 

I raked around the dirt Don got in first then hauled about three more bucket loads on the tractor into the shed. The first time I have ever tried to do anything like that.

I guess I didn't do to bad. Didn't break anything and it looks pretty good. After the dirt I hauled about three more bucket loads of gravel and got that raked around.

I filled it up to the bottom rail inside the shed. I know that with time it will pack down. It goes to just beneath the door.

There is a little gap under the door but not bad. Probably have mice in there this winter. Especially since I plan on moving some of the hay in here for this winter for feeding the horses.

All in all not to bad, if I do say so myself.

With a family that works together anything can be accomplished. Thank you to all of my family that helped with this project and other projects.

Garden Shed

The garden shed is finally done and looking good.

 

 

Had a beautiful day and was able to get out and finish painting it. What a job and I don't proclaim to be a professional so no comments from the peanut gallery.

 

Our oldest son did a wonderful job building it for us and just in time for the winter wet weather. I plan on using part of it for hay storage so I don't have to haul hay quite so far for the horses. As you can see from the picture above the shed is not to far away from the horses paddock.

 

 

The front looks really nice and clean. Can't see the door handle and lock which I like.

 

It seems to fit into the landscaping really good.

 

Like it was meant to be there or had always been there.

 

Now all I have to do is fill in some more dirt and gravel in the floor because it is still a bit lower than the center of our driveway and when the rains start it will get flooded and I really don't want that. Then fill her up.

Grizzly and Star's Barn

Finally got the G-boy's barn finished with the help of our neighbor. Since Don hurt his knee he hasn't been able to do much and has really slowed things down as far as getting the fall projects done before the rain's start. This barn being one of them.

 

We got the greenhouse plastic up around the outside for light like a window but will help hold the rain out. This should at least let the g-boys have some light in the winter when it is raining and they don't want to be outside.

The new feeder we build is just right for them and as you can see, Grizzly was in a hurry to see what it was.

He really likes his new feeder and took right to it.

On each side we put on the new bicarb and mineral feeders Don put together last summer using pvc pipe. It really works well.

Grizzly found it right away and started eating the minerals like they were going out of style. He also found the bicarb feeder but only tasted it. Star on the other hand has been a little standoffish not sure what the big thing is.

Then he discovered there was food in it and as you can see he really got into it.

From the top down.

All in all I think the boys are really going to like the improvements we made to their home.

I think maybe next summer a new coat of paint.

APPLES, APPLES, WUAH, HA ,HA

What do you do when you have an abundance of Apples. We besides being thrilled out of your mind, you make apple sauce,  Apple chips, and Apple juice. There are most likely other uses as well, but these are the ones that we concentrate on. We just finished up getting two more Dehydrators full of apple chips on to dry.

We have already used over ten gallons of apples in drying, giving away, and eating fresh. We still have several trees to pick, this tree being the fullest. We gave our neighbor a box of about 3-4 gallons, we gave a full plastic grocery bag to our son, filled our Dehydrators twice (about 5-6 gallons). And we haven't made sauce or juice yet. 

The reason this poor tree looks so bad is that although we thinned the fruit this spring, we were not able to get to the center of the tree. Well the storms started before harvest and a couple of center branches came crashing down. You can sort of see them hanging on the lower left of the tree. We decided since the branches were not completely broken off, we would leave them to ripen.

Lesson learned; make sure to thin all of the tree of fruit!

OK, I may have been mauled by the girls a little last week, and of course I hated every minute, hey it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it!

 

TASHA GOT HER HORSE FIX

Tasha, Kaitlyn, and Tiauna were her over the week end and the girls got a little horse fix. Tiauna said this was her first times on a horse.

 Flash was a little on the spooky side, because of the wind.

 Of course Flash had to pose for the picture with Natasha. Flash loves his Tasha person.

 This was actually Tiauna's second time on one of the horses (I think).

 Being on horse back was exciting for Tiauna, and Flash was being very good for his Tasha person.

Dancer on the other hand, escaped most of the children attention.

BUILDING MORE AREAS

Our son, D.J. has been here helping us get things built that we have wanted for some time. The first thing was an area of covered Hay storage. We actually started building this area a couple of years ago, but then didn't get finished the first year and was then used for the pigs earlier this year. Well it is finally done (OK, not quite). I still need to build a little shed under the roof at the far end in order to keep my air compressor and dust collector out of the shop area. But it really looks good now.

 Janice and I had spread gravel in this are prior to the roof going up.

This will be a nice area where we can unload the hay onto pallets and run them in under the nice dry area. 

Our ladders will be stored on hooks on the wall like the one in the picture.

This is the 10x12 garden shed D.J. is now building for us. This took a lot of fill dirt and gravel in order to get the floor up to grade. 

This is going to be a real help by holding all of our garden tools, empty flower pots, Peat Moss and other gardening stuff. Things are coming along nicely, D.J. Thinks he will have the sheathing on it today. He already has most of the flake board on the roof and has started putting the T-111 on the sides (not pictured yet).

 This picture was taken when I was first able to get outside today.

This picture was taken at the same time by my lovely wife Janice. D.J is farther along in the process now so we will update this later.

 Progress!!!

 Front View.

The Garden shed is coming along very nicely. I am happy, happy, happy!



THANK YOU ALL

I just wanted to take the time to say thank you all for your views of our blog and your kind comments. We have on average between 15 and 50 views per day and those from all over the world. I just checked our audience and found nine countries listed besides the United States.

THANK YOU!!!



THE NEWEST GARDEN BED

Janice just finished the newest garden bed at our place. We still need to install the lattice around the bottom of the deck, but all in it's due time.

 This shot looking down from the deck.

 Close view, the Echinacea in the rear is the plant we intend on spreading more of, around the rear of the Elk Horn Cedar. We already have three more flats of them started from seed, the Echinacea not the Cedar. 

 In this shot from a distance you can see why we want to install lattice around the bottom of the deck.

We are also going to add another lattice panel on either side of the existing lattice with the Jasmine climbing. At this point I don't think we will ever be done making changes to our garden and home.

I also planted 30 Daffodil bulbs and a flat of Echinacea in a bed at the bottom of the stone steps (not pictured).
Since this post, Janice has planted two mature Echinacea and four flats of small Echinacea seedlings, around the back of the Elk Horn Cedar. I'll try to post a picture after the current rain stops.