Summer Fairs and Fall Harvests

I actually started this blog a few weeks ago, but since we have such horrible internet, it kept freezing when I would try to upload pictures, even though I had reduced the size and quality. So I gave up. Sorry. But now I am determined to get it done and it seems to be working as long as I only blog weekday mornings and put the pictures on the absolute lowest quality and size. So here we go…

One of the things I love about Iowa is the culture of farming. As we start our own hobby farm, it is fun to expose our kids to this farming culture and watch them get excited. In August, we went to the Iowa State Fair. I have to admit that I kind of liked the Big E on the East Coast a little better. It was smaller and more intimate and they had better "entertainment" in the form of a circus and acrobats and such. The Iowa State Fair was just so big and most of the entertainment was in the form of various competitions not always involving the most talented of people but there were some definite highlights. Also, because so many animals are judged at the fair, they only do one breed of each type of animal per day. So the day we happened to go, only the Suffolk sheep were there when we really wanted to see all of the different sheep as we made our decision of what to raise next year.

Oh well, we made our decision anyway. We have a starter flock of 5 Katahdin ewe lambs and 1 ram ordered. We'll pick them up next April so now we are trying to get all of our perimeter fencing redone before it snows. But back to the fairs...

The kids loved looking at the huge tractors on display.

Time to cool down.

All aboard!

There was a "grape stomp" for kids, but there were too many kids so we made do with squeezing the grapes in a press. The resulting grape juice was tasty and now I'm looking forward to when our grape vines start producing.

There was a building that was all about baby animals. They had babies of all different types and the kids loved it!

A couple of sheep had just given birth to lambs and they had a cow in the process of it.

This picture made Isabelle look way too old!

There was a helping hands farm that was totally adorable.

The kids had to walk around collecting fake vegetables, fruits, eggs, grains, milk, etc.

Then they got to ride pretend tractors to harvest their fields.

Emily needed some help.

At the end, they took their products to the market and got pretend money, which they then took to the "store."

Here they are with their loot from the store.

We told the kids they could each choose one ride at the carnival. We would have done more, but they were so expensive!!!! Miriam and David chose the cars and Isabelle did the bumper cars.

In the cow barn, there was a calf the kids were allowed to pet.

A few of weeks ago, we went to the Living History Farms Harvest Fest and did a walking tour through the ages of farming in America.

Our first stop was an Indian village where they showed how they gardened, harvested, and stored their foods. They also had a buffalo hide they were working on scraping and they showed the "summer teepee" and the "winter hut." Sorry, we weren't good about taking pictures that day so I'm limited in what I can show you.

Our next stop was the 1800's farm. They were harvesting potatoes using oxen. Previous to this, Jonathan has wanted us to have yaks because they are considered such a well rounded animal. They can be eaten, they can be used for farming, they can be milked, and their hair can be using for knitting. However, he was somewhat disabused by the notion after seeing and talking to the farmers. The oxen aren't very intelligent and they looked like a pain to work with. The farmers told us this was why everyone switched to horses 30 years later even though horses couldn't be eaten and were much more expensive.

So we moved over to the 1900's farm where they were holding a plowing contest. There were probably 10 different teams of draft horses from sets of 2 to sets of 6. What a difference between the horses and the oxen. The horses only required one person instead of two. The farmer got to sit on a contraption that was pulled behind. The horses kept the furrows straight (unlike the oxen which tended to go all over) and they were at least 20 times faster. They were also much prettier to look at. :) The picture above is a set of American Cream draft horses, which were the most popular in Iowa back in the 1900s.

We helped them harvest the field corn by throwing it into a buckboard wagon. Then we used a grinder to remove the kernels from the cobs. The kernels were for the animals, the cobs are used for fast, hot fires. The farmhouses in the different time periods were pretty cool too. In the 1800s farm, the women were using dutch ovens and pots over a wood fire to cook dinner. In the 1900s farm house, they were using a wood fired stove.

By the end of the tour, the adults were pretty pooped, but the kids still had plenty of energy.

We headed over to their apple festival where we pressed apples into cider and Isabelle won the applesauce eating contest. We sampled apple fritters cooked over a fire. So yummy!!!! Jonathan and I were impressed and decided that apple fritters sounded great for lunch when we got home.

On the way out, the kids got to roll some beeswax into candles to take home. We've been using them during our weekly "Pioneer Night."

When we got home, Jonathan whipped us up a batch of apple fritters.

They are so much better than the kind you get at a doughnut shop.

Next up... time to start making the applesauce. A friend of ours gave us a few bushels of free apples off a backyard tree. Unfortunately, no pesticides also means lots of bad spots to cut out. So what we didn't pay in money, we definately paid in time.

Canning in our house is a whole family affair. The younger kids washed and rinsed the apples. Isabelle quartered them. I cut out the bad spots. Jonathan cooked them. The kids and I rotated sending them through the strainer. And finally, Jonathan and I finished it off with the actual canning. In the end we had 24 quarts of applesauce.

The kids loved partaking of our labors.

A growing family...

I apologize to everyone for being so lazy and not posting anything in a long time. I was telling Jonathan I needed to get going on it again, but I wasn't sure where to start. Should I go back and tell everyone about our event-filled spring and summer? Too overwhelming. I'll suffice it to say, there were a lot of good times, a lot of hard work, and all is well. Now, on to the news.

This was our family at Easter.

We have 10 new additions to our family since Easter. First to join us, were our 5 new chickens- Buff, Golden, Tiger, Violet, and Ari (2 Buff Orpingtons, 2 Bantams, and 1 Auricana). They seem to like their new coop, especially with the electric fence around it to protect them from the evil dogs (the next door neighbor's "bird" dogs).

The chickens were followed by our 2 new barn kittens. Isabelle's is Oreo (with the stripe down the nose), and Miriam's is Peanut. They only stay in our barn half the time though. The other half they go back to visit their Mom and sisters at the neighbor's barn.

This past week we made a grand trip down to Branson, Missouri to pick up my new puppy, Eli. He is a Havanese, absolutely adorable, and very well-behaved. He is doing well on the potty training. He loves to chew whatever the kids leave down (preferably their toys, shoes, and books) so the family room is staying much cleaner as the kids are learning quickly to pick up their stuff.
And last, but not least, the virus in my tummy will be making an appearance this coming spring, with an expected date of March 1st, but I'm hoping for earlier.

Garden & Orchard Plans

Our internet is working again and so I decided to share with you our plans for our garden and orchard. The scanner wasn't too happy about all of the grid lines, but hopefully it will be clear enough for you to see. Our neighbor graciously helped us by using his bobcat to scrape up the sod in the garden area. It saved us many back-breaking hours. Unfortunately, it also managed to compact the our heavy clay soil so now Jonathan is using our new broadfork to break the clay back up. I would help out except I don't seem to weigh enough. I can jump up and down and wriggle it back and forth and it still only goes down a couple of inches. As soon as it is broken up enough to keep a rototiller from walking across the top, we'll rent one to finish breaking it up and to mix in the manure that our neighbor's horses have so graciously provided us along with some peat moss to help with soil structure. Hopefully, in the future we won't need a rototiller, but we have to get the clay a little more workable first. I'm already missing the easy to work sandy soil in Connecticut. But at least we don't have to deal with the acidity out here.


Here is the spring garden plan. The front right corner has the kids' plots. They were really excited to plan their own sections. We went through all of their options for plants and I had to do some explaining about what size each plant becomes and stuff, but they loved it. There were some common themes... strawberries, peanuts, melons, and cherry tomatoes, but they also each had something unique. Isabelle really wanted cabbage because she loves baked cabbage. Miriam chose broccoli because she loves eating the "mini trees" and David was adamant about having onions (both Isabelle and Miriam said "yuck" to that).

I plan on underplanting the veggies with "green manure" in the form of clovers, vetch, and oats. This will be a first for me so I hope it works. I'm also going to try for a few fall crops like peas and stuff that don't take too long to grow so this is what the garden should look like in the fall.

We are still getting the orchard area marked off, but we are picking up our first batch of trees tomorrow. The Elder's Quorum is helping out next saturday for their "Brotherly Service" project and the Young Men are coming out the following Wednesday. We certainly have plenty of holes to be dug.

How do we like Iowa?

Things are going really well here in Iowa. The snow is finally starting to melt and I’m amazed by how much of a thrill I get when I see green grass popping up here and there. We’ve planned out our orchard and garden and have pretty much everything ordered in anticipation of spring. When the satellite company stops zinging us in a couple of weeks for having maxed out our uploads (accidently left a bittorent running overnight) then I'll scan and post a copy of my beautiful garden plan.

Right now, we are trying to figure out design plans for our portable chicken coop. (We have 5 laying chickens ordered-- 2 auraucanas, 2 buff orpingtons and 1 bantam). We also have to figure out what to do with the rest of our land unless we want to have almost 10 acres to mow (or 10 acres of head-high weeds). Cows? Sheep? Or should we hire a local farmer to till and plant hay or alfalfa and then hire them to harvest it later? Or we could buy a tractor and do it ourselves, but time and money are issues with that plan. So much information to gather before we can make a good decision. And Jonathan and I are rather risk adverse so we will probably gather way too much info and then hem and haw for a while trying to make our decisions. We know that in the long run we want more farm animals, but how much can we handle the first year? And where do we buy and sell animals? We need to get in with the local farmers.

We have also figured out that we ultimately want an LGD (Livestock Guard Dog). They are really cool, but super expensive so we’ll have to wait on that one. In the meantime, we’ve promised the kids we’ll get a little inside lap dog (Jonathan prefers to think of it as an “alarm dog” for alerting us to when strangers are pulling up). I’m looking at the Havanese breed and the girls think they are adorable so they are super excited. They are also hypoallergenic which is a must for Isabelle. The girls also somehow extracted a promise from us that when the neighbor’s cat has kittens that they can have one. My one condition was that it has to live in the barn as our “mouser.” At this point they’ll agree to anything as long as they get to have one of their very own. As I’m typing this, I glanced out the window to my left and I saw a tractor driving down the road. It just makes me laugh when I see tractors as often as cars on the back roads. So far this seems to be the perfect location for us. Close to the city with all of its amenities, only a 20-30 minute commute for Jonathan from work, and yet we are out in the country surrounded by beautiful farms. I can think of only 2 downsides so far… a lot more driving to get to the Church/stores/friend’s houses, and more extreme weather. We are hoping to tap into the high winds eventually with a windmill and then we’ll feel better about the weather. And all of the driving has been fairly relaxing since I can pretty much count on at least 20-30 minutes no matter where I’m going, and the roads are fairly straight and empty. The people here in Iowa are amazingly friendly and welcoming. And it seems like everyone goes to Church. My favorite grocery store is even closed on Sundays. :) That never would have happened in Connecticut.

We've also enjoyed our property. With the snow drifting up by the barn and the natural slope away from the barn, it made a great sledding hill. When it was iced up, the kids could slide almost all of the way to the pond. Jonathan had fun ice skating on our pond when it wasn't too covered in snow. We've started doing "Pioneer night" once a week and I've had a lot of fun learning how to cook over a wood stove. I even made chicken and dumplings one night. And every morning I wake up to the sun coming over the trees and shining across our pond and field. Breathtaking.

The Update

Did Jonathan fix everything like I had hoped? Did the car ever get unstuck? Many have asked me those questions, so here is my attemp to enlighten you all. I had called the neighbor to get Isabelle a ride home from school, and since the husband was still home, he volunteered to come help with the car. After hiking up the hill to retrieve the keys, he start fiddling with the car. After ten minutes, I see it move and I'm thinking, "hooray". And then all of a sudden it whipped right around and slid off the driveway and into the dip between our properties. Oh my. The neighbor calls me on his cell phone. I'm just glad he and the van are okay, but he is profusely apologetic for making things worse. He tells me not to worry, he'll get it out when his son gets home from school with their other truck (which has all of the towing gear in it). In the meantime, he goes back to his house, grabs his skidloader (Bobcat), and uses the scoop the break up all of the ice on our driveway and scoop it out of the way. At this point I'm thinking its a good thing the car is off to the side because it means he can clear the whole driveway. Hehe. And he truly did a great job with the clearing. And of course, now that means Jonathan can get up the driveway with his car. So we cozy up in the house and wait for Jonathan and the neighbor to save the car. Jonathan's first action upon getting home that afternoon was to run out and work on the the car. Um, nope. Actually, his first action was to grab the camera and start taking pictures of the beautiful ice on the trees. Shortly after, the neighbor's son got home and before Jonathan could even get down the hill to them, they already had our car out of the ditch and pulled all of the way up to our garage. Hooray for them! They are my heroes! So here is my next lesson learned from the experience. It is important to have good neighbors, and especially a good working relationship with them.

But, while I'm blogging, I have to tell you my next story. Last Monday (one week ago), There was a storm predicted in the evening so the girls' ballet class was canceled and Jonathan called me from work at 4 to tell me he was coming home. I expected he would be home by 4:30. When 5:00 came and went, I started getting really worried. Before that I could put the delay down to traffic, or slow going with ice out there or some such thing. By 5:15, I'm trying to find out if there were any traffic accidents on the freeway and looking up the phone numbers for the police station and hospitals. Just as I'm about to make my first phone call, there was a knock on the door. There is Jonathan, looking like the abominable snowman. I frantically greet him with relief pouring through me. It turns out everything was fine until he reached our dirt road. At which point there were a bunch of cars coming back from it. One stopped and told him not to go down the road. It was covered with 6 foot drifts, no snowplows were running on it, and there was already one car stuck in the first drift. So Jonathan turned around and debated whether to go to a nearby friend's house. But we had a special family evening scheduled for that night and he wanted to be there. So he drove a half mile down to a place that sells tractors and asked if he could park his car in their lot. The owner was wonderfully friendly and even gave Jonathan a lift back to the head of our road. Jonathan pulled out his gear from his car... He had sweatpants to throw on over his work slacks, his second best snowboots, his second best jacket, a hat, and his driving gloves (thanks Mom & Dad, he loves them). He starting hiking down the road. Sure enough there was the stuck car, blocking the entire road, and yep, a lot of very high drifts. He stayed warm enough during the almost 2 mile trek through the beginning of a snowstorm except his hands and face. He said the cold wouldn't have been bad except for the 20-30mph winds. His major regrets were the lack of snow gloves along with a balaclava and flashlight. Luckily, it wasn't quite dark yet, although it was getting there by the time he got home. I was proud of husband for having the forethought to put gear in his car, and for bravely making his way home to me. We did have a fun night that night (although he was pretty exhausted and kept falling sleep during it). We had previously heard about and decided to emulate a different family who does a traditional "pioneer night" once a month. Meaning, they would pretend there was no electricity and would instead cook and live by wood stove and candlight for the night. The kids loved it and had a blast, and I learned a lot of things I need to do to be more prepared in case we ever do lose power; which we haven't yet this winter, but it seems like a whole lot of other people are having that problem. (Sorry to Rebecca who lost power for a day, and Jonathan's coworker who lost it for 10 days).

I'll try to get some pics posted soon, but we've been redoing our computers (putting Windows 7 on in the hope they will play more nicely together, which still doesn't seem to be working) and it means that we haven't put the camera programs back on yet. So in the meantime you'll just have to make do with my verbose accounts of our doings. But I do have to say just in case anyone gets the wrong impressions, I LOVE IOWA!!!

We have a problem Houston

As some of you may know, this winter has been abnormal (from what I hear) for Iowa. There have been extremely low temperatures, high winds and lots of school snow days. And for the most part we've ridden it all out very well. Jonathan has gotten to stay home a couple of days from work and on the worst blustery days we put a fire in the wood stove and play games as a family. We've also enjoyed that this house is so much more insulated than our last house. No more walking past a window and feeling a breeze.

Today was the first day that I ran into a problem with the weather (well, my friend got stuck on our driveway once, but it wasn't me so it doesn't count). Apparently, long steep driveways and ice storms don't play well together. Today, Isabelle's school had another "no buses on the dirts roads" day so I had to drive her a couple of miles to the nearest bus stop on the hard-paved road. Coming back I turned very slowly into our driveway, only the front of the van turned and the back didn't so I started sliding sideways toward the rather large ditch. Luckily, the brakes eventually kicked in and stopped the car just in time. With my heart pounding, I slowly tried to back the car up. After a little sliding, it responded, we got back in line with the driveway, and thinking I was homefree I started up it. About 1/3 of the way up, the car was no longer going forward, just free spinning. I decided to slowly back up to the road so I could get more of a running start and I was thinking that if I placed one of my tires in the middle of the driveway where the gravel was peeking through the ice I would getter better traction to make it up the hill, right? Well, this is where I made my first mistake. Oh wait, it was the fourth. I'll get to the first 3 later. My mistake was that my "backing up" consisted of simply letting my foot off the brakes slowly and letting the car slide back down. Which would have been fine, except that I didn't think to put the car in reverse first, it was still in drive. So as I angled it slightly to the side, so my tires would be in a better spot for traction, my back tires caught on good traction, but my front tires didn't. As a result I started fishtailing to the side. At that point I tried everything... angling the tires different directions, drive, reverse. Everything resulted in more fishtailing. So I finally gave up and decided that we would just walk up the hill to the house and Jonathan could fix the car when he gets home tonight. This was all well and good until I came across my first mistakes.

When we went to get in the car earlier, I realized that I had forgotten to change Emily out of her pajamas with footsies, over which shoes don't fit. "No big deal", I thought, "I'll just carry her out to the car." Unfortunately, that now meant carrying her back to the house, without being able to set her down at all. So we start up the hill. I remind Miriam and David, "don't pick up your feet, just slide them along the ground and pretend you are wearing ice skates." They take a few steps, and then slide back down to the car. They take another couple of steps and slide back to the car again. Oh dear. So I take Miriam's hand (while holding Emily in my other arm) and I help her up a few steps. Then I go slowly back to David and help him up a few steps. Back to Miriam, then David and so on. Halfway up I realized my second mistake... I didn't grab a blanket from the car to wrap around Emily. She isn't working nearly as hard as the rest of us and generating body heat. And now she is starting to wimper from the cold as the wind starts picking up more and more. The others are starting to complain about cold hands as well (no gloves). I'm grateful I had managed to put hats on most of them. We continue our long trek. Then the neighbor's dogs come running over excited to see us. While they keep Emily happy and laughing, their exuberance does make it more difficult for the rest of us to stay upright.

After 30 minutes of slipping and sliding, we finally make it to the door only to realize that it's locked and I don't have a key. We normally go in and out the garage door, except that the button for opening the garage is in the car, the car is at the bottom of the hill, it's too far away to open the garage (the signal doesn't reach that far) and we never bothered to put a garage door opener in the car since it was programmed into the console so it isn't like I can carry the device closer to the house. Oh dear. I decide to check all of the doors in the hopes that one was left unlocked. I check all of the upstairs doors... no luck. I know I have to go to the downstairs area, but the hill is steep and I don't dare take Emily down it with me. So I find a sled that was left out and place her in it to keep her off the ice. I start down the hill with the dogs sliding next to me. I quickly realize I'm going to end up on my backside at this rate, so I sit down on the ice of my own accord and try to guide myself with my hands and feet. I admit, it was fun and exhilarating to slide down the small but steep hill with no sled. I'm praying that when Jonathan was splitting wood last Saturday, that he left the back door unlocked. I get to the door. There is ice all over it. I try the handle. It's frozen. Thankful I have gloves on, I knock the ice off the handle and off the seam of the door. I try again. It turns! I'm into the understorage area. Now comes the true question. Did he lock the door between the understorage and the house? He's supposed to, but I'm still praying he forgot. I feel my way through the darkness to the door. It's open!!!! Hallelujah!! I rush through the house to the door I had left the kids at. I open it to a screaming Emily. The dogs had decided to lick her. Miriam was bravely trying to protect her sister by shooing the dogs away. Hooray for Miriam! In fact, it is a double hooray since Miriam, herself, is afraid of big dogs, but she was willing to take them on to save her sister. I'm feeling so proud of her. I get the kids in the house and loaded up with hot chocolate. I quickly make arrangements with the neighbors to pick up Isabelle after school and I call Jonathan with full confidence that he will fix everything tonight.

And here ends my first experience with a Midwest ice storm. I have learned the importance of preparation and proper clothes and gear even if we are only going 2 miles to a bus stop and back. And I've learned that the most dangerous place for us is our own driveway. Luckily, that means that if we are going to get stuck anywhere, it is here, and at least we can walk home. Next time I just need to make sure I have a key. :)