Barn doors and such

Me and Doodlebugs spent the last few days down on the farm while the guys put up the doors on the barn. Now I have all my equipment dry and locked which is a good thing. A lot of farms are experiencing theft right now due to the economy, I know they can still break in if they want to but at least they will have to work at it now.

While they were installing the doors Doodlebugs went fishing and caught a snapping turtle. I didn't have time to mess with it or we would have had fried turtle for supper.

I spent my time cutting new ditches down the drive way, mowing the pastures and removing tree stumps.

After we returned from lunch one day one of the guys installing the doors came up an said "I killed a snake that was coming put from under your bulldozer". I went over and pulled the snake out from under the dozer and wasn't very happy that he had killed a big black snake. We have a lot of field mice so I would rather have the snake then mice, but he said "the snake had to go or he was going". Anyway as usual Doodlebugs wanted to pose with the snake.

I didn't get any pictures of the garden but we are now getting plenty of ripe tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini and corn. The coons got 21 ears of corn the night before last though, now it's time to relocate the little varmints.

Until next time...

Tim

Dog days of summer

I thought I would introduce you to our dogs, below are a couple pictures of Ace, he was our first German Sheppard. Ace would have been 14 months next month, last November we had our first freeze and Ace went out on the pond after the ducks, he broke through the ice and drowned in the pond. It was several months before we knew for sure what had happened to him, I was pretty sure because I could see where the ice had been broken through and then refroze. It was not until this spring we found out for sure when I found him in the pond.

Doodlebugs was heart broken, Ace was a Christmas present for her and it took several months before she wanted to get another dog. When spring arrived I asked her if she was ready for another dog and she said yes, I called the people we got Ace from but they had just sold out of their most recent litter and the next litter would be this November. They were not sure if they were going to have one though due to the fact that they were getting married in November. Doodlebugs got on the Internet and found a litter in the next town over, we called them but they didn't have any males left, we decided to go ahead and get a female and hopefully another male from the same people we got Ace from. We went and picked up the new puppy, Doodlebugs named her "Princess Tia Von Taylor". Here she was when we first got her experiencing her first snow fall.

This is Tia now at 4 months of Age.

About two weeks ago the people we got Ace from had left a message on the answering machine, they had given one of Ace's litter mates to her Grandfather and he could no longer take care of her. They knew what had happened to Ace and wanted to know if we would like to have her. After discussing it with the family we decided to go ahead and take her. Her name is "Samantha ", she is a very loving dog but a little bit hyper. She is 14 months old and her is a picture of her.

Doodlebugs has been working with Tia and Sam trying to get them to know each other a little better.

The first week was a little rough, Sam was at a new home and Tia was not getting all the attention, they are now getting along much better even though Sam is very possessive of the food bowls. Until next time.

Tim

Family Reunion

This past weekend we had a family reunion (moms side) down home at one of my cousins place. His place is only about 4 miles from my farm. He cooked a whole hog on a charcoal cooker, it held seven bags of charcoal and one you put on the hog you never touched it again. It took 6 hours to cook, they got up at 4am and went to the farm where they got the hog, the farmer got up early, killed and dressed the hog right before my cousin arrived to pick it up. Below is the cooker and some pictures of the hog being sliced up.

Doodlebugs wasn't sure if she liked the head still being on him or not.

This was the interesting table to be at during the reunion, all the "old sages" were reminiscing about the good old days.

My cousin put the lake in around four of five years ago, it is really a nice place.

Doodlebugs and one of her cousins getting ready to go out on the paddle boat.

Even though the temp was in the mid nineties we had a great time with some great food, it just doesn't get much better than this. Until next time.

Tim

Let the fun begin

On Friday it was time to begin the excavation around the barn, I wanted to add a lean-to to my barn at some point in time and I also needed extra dirt to push up around the barn. I decided to go ahead and widen the north side of the barn access.

Now comes the fun part, playing on the toys.

After cutting out the north side I used my skidloader to haul the dirt around to the other sides of the building.

While I was excavating I wanted "Doodlebugs" to fish so I didn't have to worry about her. We picked up worms the day before but she ran out while I was moving dirt. To Keep her occupied and out of the way I put on an artificial worm on her line, bobber and all. I told her to just twitch it every once in a while, I knew she wouldn't catch anything, it was around 10am and already 95 degrees but at least it would keep here out of the way. "Daddy, Daddy can you help me get this fish off"? Guess I was wrong...

After getting the fish off it was back to work on the excavation. The almost final product.

Now my equipment has a new home!

After I finished moving dirt we went to mom and dads to play in the dirt(the garden). I had a couple of rolls of concrete reinforcement wire left over from when we concreted our driveway at our current home. I cut those up to make tomato cages, after we installed the tomato cages (didn't have enough), tilled the garden and planted 3 more rolls of corn.

Doodle bugs making furrows to fertilize the corn...

Doodle bugs and Nana (my mom) checking out the cabbage...

Doodle bugs modeling the squash...

That night for supper we had fresh grilled squash, fresh coleslaw and fresh wilted lettuce out of the garden.

Until next time have a great day!!!!

Tim