spring freeze coming

I planted some jumbo tulips I found in town last week.  I got them in the ground just in time to have freezing temps come in the next few days. Guess I should have waited a bit longer :) I'll have to make sure to cover them as we have frost warnings.  We did put a space heater in the greenhouse as I did not want to lose all the plants in there, so hopefully it works.

We have had a wet spring, though not overly wet but wet enough to cause flooding in areas and the Wisconsin River is higher that I've seen in a few years.  We passed this truck on our way to the chiropractor; he apparently did not heed the road conditions as he was coming around the curve.  He was pretty stuck that was for sure.  Glad he wasn't hurt; this is not the first truck that either went into the field or overturned the truck carrying a load of corn heading to the granary which happened last year, though I did not get a photo of that, and no one was hurt in that accident either.

On our way to Jim's treatment in La Crosse, we drive though a really pretty valley and usually when it's very cold out this valley seems to be the coldest in the surrounding area.  The fog in the valley was so pretty we had to stop so I could take a picture.  The creek doesn't usually have this much water in it and it was flowing pretty good.

I know spring is here, but it just doesn't quite feel like it yet.

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.

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!

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.

late winter storm

We had a late winter snowstorm; what we call a sugar snow, but we didn't go gather any sap that ran, we are done. 

Last Wednesday we ventured out in the storm to visit with our Amish Friends.  I think we were the only ones on the road, and we got to the area where the snow really drifts over the road. It wasn't too bad when we drove through it but at one point before I pulled out my phone to take a photo it was starting to clear up.

Now we are onto the cleaning up and onto planting the gardens.

dried grapes

Walking through the yard the other day and passing the grape vines, I stopped to look at the grapes that were still on the vines all dried up and half eaten by the birds  I was thinking about how nice it will be to see grapes growing on these vines again.

This time of year I get antsy for the grass to turn green again and the trees to get new buds growing. Sugaring for us is coming to a close, we probably will boil one more time and call it good, another syrup season done and in the books.  We have kept a record of every syrup season and this season by far has yielded the least amount of syrup bottled, but we are happy with what we did get and should have enough for us until next sugaring season comes. 

spring is in the air

Busy life here on our farm, new babies arrived, sap is starting to run, quilt retreats attended.  It's nice to see the subzero temps in the rearview mirror, and warmer weather in front of us.

Now the really busy work starts, gathering and cooking the sap down.  We have been tapping trees for 14 years and have changes over those years.  We don't use buckets anymore we use wine bags that we buy at an Amish maple syrup supply store.  We also don't tap as many trees and have cut down on the amount of taps we put in.  This year we tapped trees that we haven't tapped before and didn't tap trees that were not really good sap producers.

We love this time of year, going outside and taking a deep breath in smelling that fresh air and to me that is the first sign that spring is on its way.

winter sunrise

There is nothing like winter sunrises or even sunsets.  I took this shot last week as we were leaving our farm to go to town.  Everything looked hazy though it wasn't.  I think there was moisture in the air, and it was very cold that caused it to look hazy. 

It's been cold but finally starting to warm up, which is wonderful, no sub-zero temps hopefully for a while.

smoking hills and double rainbows

One morning at about 6:40 a.m. the hills were smoking.

We have been having rain off and on lately and the other day we had a beautiful sun shower that ended with a beautiful double rainbow.  It looked like the rainbow was coming out of our trees.

We had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, went to an Amish auction, I did find a few things to bid on but nothing way out of line.

I had meant to post this and now almost a week has gone by and I'm finally getting back to this post.  We received another inch of rain over the past couple of days.  I will not complain especially after the drought we had last summer, but we could use a bit of a break so that we can cut hay and have it dry out before we bale it.  

Life continues to be busy here.

storm brewing

A storm was brewing in as I wrote this post early last evening.  The clouds were simply amazing as I looked up to the sky.  We have been having rain and it has really made everything green up around here, so different from last spring around here.

The lilac bush is starting to bloom, we thought we had lost it a couple of years ago and had to cut it all down.

It's so nice to smell the outdoors again with the rains and everything blooming, a few reasons why I love the four seasons.