Country living and simple quilt projects

Because it's beautiful and makes me happy, I'm starting this post with a sunrise. One of the things about living in midwest farm country is that sunrises and sunsets are often dramatic and colorful and simply beautiful, writ large on an unbroken canvas.

Also being a farm, farm kids sometimes find unusual fun. Ryan got a load of rock delivered and the kids promptly decided to sled down it like snow. It didn't destroy the sled or the kids, by some miracle.

Also by some strange miracle, we actually have a church near us that has a barn dance in October. Here we are in a friends' barn, in the picture I believe it's "The Hokey Pokey". They also played some line dancing country, some swing, some rock/pop, etc. It was a potluck and was lovely.

We also have two new small, furry additions to the family! They appeared on the farm and have been tamed and brought in. This is Jinx. Her original name was Misty, but it just doesn't suit her. She's a kitten, so it's not like she responds to her name anyway.

And this is Altair. Yes, in this picture he's lounging in a liter box. I don't know why. I guess he finds it comfy?

I've also managed to get a little quilting done. This is a twin-sized scrap quilt I made from what I had sitting around in my scrap box. 

We also had a secret Santa exchange at work, so I made a quick reversible table runner.

New eggs, laundry stand, and Luna

It's fully winter here, except that this year the world mostly forgot to do winter. The expected high tomorrow is over 60 degrees, and it's February! So strange. We've had less than a foot of snow all winter so far.

Nevertheless, we've had winter activities. In farm news, our laying hens started laying and have been producing about fifteen dozen eggs a week. Hooray!

Sometimes Ryan gets a little help sorting and cleaning them all.

For the house, we built a stand for the washer and dryer. It was a nice weekend project, and I really like the result. Before:

In progress:

After:

I especially love the space underneath that fits our laundry baskets.

I also want to show that we've not only kept an orchid alive in the window of our bathroom shower, but we got it to rebloom!

For quilting, I've done a few smaller projects. First, we didn't have Christmas stockings for the kids, so I made some for our kids and also our nieces and nephew.

They were fun to make, the one farthest back in this picture is mine that my grandmother made me long ago; I used it as a template.

I also made a denim quilt with regular quilting cotton in between the denim, which I love. It looks like stained glass and is very comfy.

A fellow farmer friend of ours had a baby (shout out to Prairie's Edge Farm!) and I had a small quilt in progress, so I finished it for her and sent it off.

It ended up "busier" than I would have liked, but it will work. I backed it with super soft fuzzy fabric.

H did some sewing of her own, and made an Elsa dress for her doll. Maybe not a "beginner" project, but she was persistent and willing to take direction and help from me and she did a nice job.

In family news we're attempting yet another dog. The border collie decided to herd a car, so she didn't make it. We installed invisible fence and adopted a Great Pyrenees. Here she is the day we adopted her, two months old.

We've named her Luna and she's going to be quite a bit bigger than this. She was born in September, so she still has a lot of growing to do. Here she is chewing on a stick:

In family life, H and I took our annual ski trip again in December.

She got to the point that she was going down real hills (instead of the learning hills for kids) and went down about 7 different slopes up about 4 different lifts at Breckenridge. Go girl, go!

End-of-summer gardens, creatures, and outings

It has been a fairly dry summer at the farm, much to Ryan's chagrin. Pretty much every storm that has come through has petered out right at our farm and then fired back up once it's past us. For example, last night there was heavy flooding about 10 miles east of us in Des Moines, but we got 0.3" of rain, which is amazing! Farmers really do live and die by rainfall amounts, we pretty much never miss the weather on the 10:00 evening news! There have been some truly lovely sunsets, though.

There have also been a couple of nice rainbows.

We had a turkey that didn't get out of some of the rain a couple of weeks ago, and a cold wet turkey is not likely to survive. So we brought it into the garage to warm up and dry off. This is almost the only thing my hair dryer ever does!

The turkey made a full recovery once we had her dried off and we were able to take her back to the flock.

I also told you I would update you on my garden, so I took a picture of my garden this morning. "Horribly neglected" is somehow insufficient as a description...

The yellow cherry tomatoes decided to go nuts, and I did a bad job of harvesting my radishes (they are off to the left of the picture, out of sight). It's still a more successful garden than any I've ever had, so I will continue to get better at this garden thing. 

My morning glories did grow well up my back porch, this is the first year that some of the variegated variety have shown up!

I took a picture of a very large garden spider hanging out by our pumpkins (which are not in the garden)--she's a beauty, but didn't feel like posing for me.

Also in critter news we adopted a puppy. This is our fifth attempt at a dog since starting a farm (with varying types of failure), but is our first attempt at a puppy. She's a border collie mix, we think mixed with rat terrier since she is not shaggy enough to be pure border collie. She's very smart, but also very puppy-like and we've been working on house training and getting her to not herd the children around. 

We took the kids to Living History Farms a couple of weeks ago, where they got to see some of how people used to farm. They aren't quite old enough to really make the connections and see how things are the same and how they are different from those farms to ours. 

At the fair this year the kids were old enough to start playing more, including the tunnel of squash (?) that they put up near the agriculture building. Here they are running out of the tunnel:

I'm biased, but I think those are pretty good pictures of both of them!

H and I just got back from our annual trip to Clearwater Camp's family camp, where we had a great time! The weather was just perfect.

We did some fishing, here I caught H right at the moment she had touched the fish and is currently saying "Eww!"

And we also tried archery for the first time, with some help from a counselor.

'Til next year, beautiful North Woods!

Lean to door and twister tool quilt

We're definitely into winter here now, with ice storms the last couple of days and snow storms due tonight. Ryan got to attempt our new driveway in the snow and said it is steep, but doable. 

Here is the driveway with less snow on it so you can see the gravel.

Ryan has also been hauling hay like mad, three bales at a time. We bought 25 bales from a guy about a 45 minute drive away, and we bartered a few cows for a flatbed trailer a while ago. Hay is fairly scarce and expensive right now (these bales were a steal for $50 each, the only nearby hay was not as good and $90 a bale) and a bale lasts about three days. 

Ryan hauls the hay to the cows using hunting sleds two at a time. We're getting quite a herd now, with almost all ages represented. 

About three winters ago on the coldest day of that winter (-13 deg. F) Ryan got frustrated with our lean-to door getting stuck in the ice. It actually got frozen to the ground. So he got out the reciprocating saw and cut it off the building. Then he propped it against the door frame and used a cinder block to keep it shut. I know I've mentioned it in my other "doing chores" posts. But a few days ago he built a door out of scrap lumber from around the farm and a window he picked up at a hardware store!

 He got it hung, but it still has some finessing yet to do. I think it's really cute and is a vast improvement over either no door or the camper/RV cast off we inherited. No joke; that's where the old door came from. 

On the quilting front, I finished a little baby quilt for a friend of mine who had a baby girl just before Thanksgiving. I used the twisting star ruler and a bunch of charm squares from my stash. I will tell you that before I used the twister ruler on it, it was actually kind of an ugly quilt. But I like how it turned out

And I'm still liking putting a blessing on the backs of my baby quilts. This one says:
May the sun shine all day long,
everything go right and nothing wrong.
May those you love bring love back to you,
and may all the wishes you wish come true.

In random house news, our cat Fumbles has a favorite napping place. Unfortunately it is the room where Z sleeps, so we use his carseat to block entry. This cat can pry the pocket door open with his claws and slip in, which inevitably wakes Z up.

Dusty, State Fair, & Other Goings-on

It appears it has been over a month since my last blog post, for that I apologize. I think I'll still blame pregnancy. It makes a good scapegoat. 

It is State Fair season, so we went and the biggest purchase we made was a cowboy hat for the munchkin. We've been wanting to get her one (like Daddy's!) for some time, but the state fair is really the place to get it. She didn't want a purple one, or a pink one, or a white one. She liked the black one!

After I took this picture I realized that I've taken this picture every year of the fair. This is on the sales grounds near the Varied Industries building, and Ryan is always carrying Hazel. Here she is at her first state fair, 3 months old:

And here she is at her second, 1 year and 3 months old:

Different carry methods, same general idea. Here she is again this year, 2 years and 3 months old:

I think when she's too big to be carried, these pictures will be replaced with her showing animals at the fair. Ryan is also not actually wearing the same shirt in all of these, but it does kind of look like he is. Apparently gray is a common color in his wardrobe. 

Our daughter is starting to figure out how farm chores work a little bit, which is still more adorable and annoying than helpful. She wanted to water the cows, so here she is tending the hose on the cattle water tank.

It actually makes a pretty good task for her, and she didn't get all wet or anything. 

Also about a week ago, we adopted another dog. Someone came too fast on the gravel road and Solo got hit. This was really disappointing because Solo was just starting to figure out life on the farm! We had only had him for a few months.

So this is Dusty, he is a 6 year old beagle. His given name was Destin, which was weird. He doesn't respond to it anyway, so we're still working on that. So far he's doing OK, he's adjusting to farm life. He also does well with a toddler, he comes from a household with other young children. 

In miscellaneous news, our plants are somewhat confused by the weather. We have been receiving steadier rain, so our french lilac and crabapple decided to bloom. Not like spring blooms, but definite blooms.

I took this picture on August 27th. Not this spring, just now. Crazy.

Yesterday we did our first foray into making cookies. This is using a Betty Crocker mix, but I did make the frosting from scratch. The little one thoroughly enjoyed it. 

We just used a heart shaped cookie cutter, and we ended up with some very misshapen hearts. They tasted great!!