what spring brings

 Yay!!! Spring is finally showing up, and with that it brings so much to our farm.  Fixing fence is one of the things on the list that needs to get done before the large animals can be let out on pasture.  The storms we had caused some branches to come down and unfortunately a branch landed on our fence in the back pasture that needed to be repaired.  I actually like helping putting up fence and fixing fence, it gets me outside.

We make paddocks for the cows as we do rotational grazing for our cows, and when we do that, those cows seem to know that they are going to be let out of the corral.  We don't keep them there all winter only when spring gets closer as they will tear up the pasture so bad that the pastures will be pretty much ruined.

They kept their eyes on us the whole time we were putting up the electric fence that we use to make the paddocks.

Calves are new to the electric fence, and this calf whose name is Violet has to learn that the fence is not her friend.  Violet got out and it took her a bit to figure out that all the big cows did not follow her. (LOL)  We only name the cows we plan to keep.

Trees are finally leafing out, and our grapevines are looking good this year.

We purchased a greenhouse and I was so excited to get started with the plants we like to grow.  The black barrel is filled with water to keep the greenhouse warm at night when the temps dip low.  I also use the water to water the plants.

Life is going good; Jim has been slowly feeling better finally getting his strength back not 100% but almost there.  Treatments seem to be working and we feel so blessed.

some flooding

I could have posted about a dozen photos of the flooding we had about 10 days ago but decided on only two ;)

We are still having rain here; our grass is turning so green and I should get out to mow but the ground is so wet and saturated.   

Hubby did get out one day to plow the garden and plant a row of leeks, but the ground was just way too wet to plant anything other than the leeks.

Since my husband's diagnosis we have really changed our diet, cutting out sugar and processed white flour.  We have ground our own flour for years, but fresh ground flour is hard to use.  We found a company Sunrise Four Mill that is housed in Minnesota, and we bought a few bags of flour to try and I absolutely love it.  This is my plug for this wonderful flour, and I was not asked to do this LOL. :)  It is a bit spendy but so worth it, and my sourdough starter worked wonderfully with the wheat flour.

How is it in your area? Are you having a lot of rain?

make lemonade

 

I don't even know where to begin, so I'll just start from the beginning.  In December my husband went for double hernia surgery and later developed a cough that he just could not kick.  We thought it was just a bad cold and eventually it would go away.  As the days went by the cough lessened some but then his energy started getting to the point of not being able to walk up a flight of stairs without stopping halfway up.  So, off to the doctors we went and after the results of the blood work he was told to get to an ER asap.  We bypassed the two local hospitals and went straight to La Crossse where he was admitted and given a blood transfusion.  A hematologist and an internal medicine doctor came in and dropped the news that Jim had AFib, which the doctors feel was triggered by the anemia, and CLL which is Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and also an Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia. We believe he could have had this for about 3 years.

We are so blessed to live in an area with such amazing medical care in both traditional medicine and non-traditional medicine.  We have such a wonderful Church family here and family who are so supportive.  

I had planned to come back to blogging again but did not expect to do a post like this.  I guess I needed to put this out there and say it, my husband has cancer and that's that.  Our life has been shaken up a bit, but we are very optimistic about his outcome and when life gives you lemons the only thing to do is make lemonade.

catching up

Wow, Wow, Wow!!  Has it really been almost 4 months since I've posted last?  It's so hard to believe.  I really had no intention of staying away so long, but on my last post we were on our way to Texas for our granddaughter's graduation, and when we left for home, she came back with us and stayed for a couple of months before heading back to Texas to get ready for college.  In that time, we had 3 other grandchildren come to stay for a week with us as well.  We were busy, busy, busy.  Just as I was trying to catch my breath after everyone was gone, canning season started.

Our granddaughter thrived here on our farm, having lived in the city her whole life.  Though being around animals, large or small, she really took to it.  She is very calm around them and respects them.

Here she is helping to move the calves to another pasture.

We decided this year not to cut our own hay.  Hay is pretty cheap right now here in our area and seems to be everyone wants to sell hay, so that's the route we took.  One evening we unloaded the hay wagon and filled our hay mow with the bales.

While hubby did all the lifting of the bales, I sat and waited and enjoyed the view until my help was needed ;)

I didn't take a lot of photos this summer, it was just too busy and when I did remember to the moment was gone.

The strawberries were ripe when the grands were here, so strawberry rhubarb pie filling was made.

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I still have a few more things to put up, such as potatoes, beets and making sauerkraut.  

Hope your summer has been good as ours sure was, even though I didn't get any blogging done, I couldn't give up the time spent with grandchildren here on our farm.

happy Mother’s Day

 

I’d like to wish all mothers a Happy Mother’s Day!

morning sky

 

As I was making coffee this morning I looked out and saw the sky which looked so pretty.  Everything is green and the garden is very slowly getting planted, but we have had rain lately and the lawn needs mowing and weed wacked, it seems like it's been a long time since we've had to do that.

Living on the ridge we do get some really pretty sunrises and sunsets.

hay wagon trip

We picked up a used hay wagon and though it was a 2 1/2-hour trip there, it was about a 4 to 5-hour trip home.  We couldn't really go over 40 mph and so we took back roads to get home.  Here are some random shots along the way.  I finally pulled out my Nikon camera again, I have been using my cell phone to take pictures, so it was fun doing drive-by shots, just point and shoot.

Despite the long time it took us to get home, we had a nice drive through the country and sorry for the photo overload.

it rained

Finally, we got enough rain that the rain barrel is overflowing.  I can't believe that it's been a month since I've posted last, life just got in the way (LOL).  I guess I took a little break, family came for the weekend, we had a wonderful Easter, went to church, hubby had a birthday, and I just came back from a quilting retreat.  It has been a busy, busy April.  It definitely has greened up here and we have gotten over 2 inches of rain, and more rain seems to be in the forecast though last night we had tornado warnings, but nothing came of it for us.

Now it's time for planting.

fading away

 

I had to drive through the country, (no expressways here) and saw this barn along my route.  I actually had taken a photo of this barn a few years ago but it was in so much better shape than it is now.  So many barns in this area have either collapsed, or are about to, or are in the beginning stages of eventually collapsing.  It is so sad to see these old barns not being taken care of mostly because they are not in use anymore.

There are hardly any small farms left in our area other than the Amish farms and it seems like the old barns like this one are just slowly fading away.

elephant rock

 

I went to a quilt retreat last weekend and the route I took went past the Elephant Rock.  Living in the Driftless Area you will see a lot of rock formations that still remain after the glaciers came through.

The Driftless area is also called Ocooch Mountains where it's very hilly and rugged, this is the part where I live in, up on a ridge.