farming

DO YOU BELIEVE IN CLIMATE CHANGE?

/ helbergfarmstories / 2 Comments

A very real question.  I for one do, and I am a bit worried about the changes in the very near future.  My way of dealing with this is to watch all the apocalypse movies I can get my hands on (ok, most of it is in fun cuz I love special effects – bad or good, they are fun!), the other is read up on all the science stuff I can.

The weather channel just today (1/19/17) came out with this doozie:

https://weather.com/science/environment/video/huge-crack-in-ice-evacuates-scientists-in-antarctica

So, has anyone watched the movie The Day After Tomorrow with Dennis Quaid?  This was the first “think” that came to my mind.  We have had huge record-setting averages, up and down just in 2016.  My experience tends to flow with Isaac Newton – what goes up must come down and the opposite.  When the shelf breaks off, it will be interesting to see the effects.  (Can you say insulated snowsuit?)

I love the latest inventions to combat some of this issue.

  1. Weatherhyde tents: http://weatherhyde.org/#press
  2. Specialized to keep heat out in the summer and heat in for the winter. Originally developed to help the homeless from severe weather – way cool!
  3. Oscar Mendez: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSOh21ooM_E
  4. Created a way to build houses out of discarded plastics. They look like brick but stack/build like legos – also way cool!
  5. Airbag loungers: https://www.amazon.com/Inflatable-Convenient-Compression-Portable-Suitable/dp/B01KHEIXH0/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&qid=1484842989&sr=8-21&keywords=inflatable+lounge
  6. I caught the ad on TV and was wishing they had thought of this when I used to go to outdoor concerts. All you have to do is open up the end and let the wind fill it for you.  Plus, it all packs up into a small carry bag – how fun.
  7. Zera Food Recycler: https://www.snapmunk.com/zera-food-recycler-composting/
  8. Gotta get me one of these! Yes, we have a farm.  Yes, we do our own composting – BUT – having one of these beauties in the kitchen (handy) while we are canning would be outstanding!  Put it in.  Let it sit for at least 24 hours.  Throw the fresh compost onto the outside pile.  No mess.  No fuss.  No smells.  Right now we throw it all into a huge bucket, then take part out to the compost and part to the chickens.  The compost pile would then take years to get it all worked down.  This little wizard does it in days!  I am still trying to figure out what is in the “Zera Activation Pack” that makes all this happen in hours (it also takes large bones, pits, meat and dairy???)?  If it turns out to be an all natural thingy – I’m in!  It’s an expensive bugger but imagine the turn-around time for the gardens!
  9. Bios Urn: https://urnabios.com/
  10. This may be a personal preference. Years ago most of my family decided that we would be cremated.  Dad is buried in a Veterans Cemetery, but mom was cremated.  We do not see the need for taking up earth space just for body parts.  Now they have this great thing – Bios Urn.  Using your ashes, they help you to create a tree – also in a biodegradable container (seeds if wanted).   You just put your loved one’s ashes into it, then plant it.  You now have a living memory and can help the earth all at the same time – love it!  (Pretty sure my tree would have to be crabapple- hee hee)

These are just a few of the fun new things I found in 2016.  Can’t wait to see what the smart, creative minds of 2017 come up with!

Oh, and if you ever want to check into the “bad” ideas, check out “Worlds Dumbest”  TV show.  It’s on TruTV and it is hysterical!  They present a lot of dumbest, but the partiers and inventions are my favorites.

Hope you enjoyed my take on ideas to help our world.  Please let me know if you have found any, know of, or have seen others.  I am keeping track.  Thank you!

earthday-2017

(Oh, and YES – I do believe that climate change is happening.)

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I LIVE IN THE PROJECTS – but not in the projects.

/ helbergfarmstories / 6 Comments

Let me clarify the title of this wicked blog:
• How many projects do you have going on right now?
• How many projects are you making plans to try to accomplish with the next 12 months (sometime in 2017)?
• How many projects did you plan a year ago this time, but suddenly it was 12/31/16 and didn’t get them done?
I too live in my projects. Sometimes I have a hard time sleeping because I cannot shut down the stupid hamster on the wheel called “my mind” at night. Yes, it is a hamster on a wheel because that sucker just keeps going around and around on things.

female-on-a-wheel-like-hamster

I have tried multiple ways to get it to stop at night;
• I keep a notepad/journal at my bedside so I can write them all down. Now, I was once told that by doing this I would then mentally release and allow it to flow out of my head. Reason being that it was now down on paper – permanent (so to speak) and I could let go. Ya, sure!? All this did was keep me up longer writing details of the project then, inevitably, coming up with new ideas off the original.
• I gave up on things like counting sheep because they just made me think of something that needed to get done in one of the critter pens.
• Over-the-counter sleep aids. Once in a blue moon, they do help me but most times not.
• A very good friend told me to picture a “purple cow.” Since this is not a normal color for a cow (but wouldn’t that be fun to see?!), you actually have to concentrate on it. IT WORKED – for a bit anyway. Then I started picturing that purple cow on my handmade cards with some great humorous statement about it. Then was the idea of a knit critter for kids of a purple cow with really long legs. Blew it again!

purple-cow

On average, I get about 4 to 6 hours of sleep a night. This is nothing new for me, as I did this a lot when I was younger. However, back then I was also working three jobs and taking part-time classes for business. I didn’t have any time for extra sleep back then. (Having a child that required special surgeries every year for 20 years didn’t help much either.)

multiple-tasker

So this year, just as the last ump-teen million, I have set myself some project goals for 2017. A brief part of that list follows:
1. Start seeds for this year’s gardens – greenhouse and outdoor.
2. Get the rest of the greenhouse cleaned up and ready to go for plants by March.
3. Get the outdoor gardens cleaned up and ready for plants by June.
4. Start new plots in the back yard (there hasn’t been a lawn back there ever, so we decided this year we were going to set up several vertical gardens. The whole area gets a ton of sun.).
5. Fix (maybe replace if we can afford it) the chicken roof. Stupid winds-from-hell took out a large section of the sheet metal. Think it’s in Kansas with Dorothy now?
6. Clean up and expand the chicken coop. We have the west side of the barn vacant. It used to house our goats, but since we do not have goats anymore; now would be a good time to put it to use again.
7. Cover the north exterior chicken pen with plastic (hard greenhouse pieces we have and then some 6-mil plastic for the sides that we can roll up and down as weather regulates.
8. Get my yarn projects under control and organized. Right now they are all stuffed in large plastic bags. Kinda hard to sell what you can’t find! One of my “night ideas” is to build a special wall in my crafting room to hold all of these in compartments and hooks (furry hat on a post, extras in the box or crate above on a shelf, etc., etc. etc…). However, it will take a full wall to show all of these in their individual categories.
9. #8 then took me into this one: Re-organize my craft room. It can look so pretty; then I get into a project like Christmas Cards and wow – I can demolish the room in one afternoon. I pull out everything for an “ordinary” card making session; then I get a dangerous idea. Something will pop into my hamster brain again, and I’m off! Pulling extras out of drawers and setting up more equipment (yep – have tons of that too: cutters, colors, designers and designing boards you name it, pretty sure I have it). It’s a disaster in there more than pretty.
This is only part of my list. Maybe one of my goals should have been slowing down some, or get more sleep?

wierd-cat-sleeping

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(Just out of curiosity, how many projects do you have going on or are planning on for this year?)

ARE YOU AN AVID LEARNER (or obsessed as I am)?

/ helbergfarmstories / 4 Comments

In keeping with last new year resolution – more fun shall be added to this, 2017, year as well.  So, this is my first writing spill for the new year – hope you like it!

*************************************************************************************

Well, the holidays were a blast but over way too fast.  The new year started out with discovering that my car needed a new battery…ON THE COLDEST FRICKEN DAY OF THE YEAR!!  So, now I am thinking this will be a year of “be prepared” situations.  The problem is, how do you prepare for what you don’t even know is coming your way?  I got out my crystal ball (ya, like I have one?) and discovered the following about myself.

crazy-crystal-ball

I was never a Girl Scout.  My thing was 4-H, and they are basically for farmers, creators, crafters, gardeners, artists, and taught very little in the way of preparedness.  Since that time (let’s just say it was a while ago), I have become a bit of a prepper by choice.  We (my sister and I) do the following:

  1. Try to grow most of our own food.
  2. Reuse, repurpose, recycle just about everything.
  3. Use natural and sustainable growing, farming methods.
  4. Learn every kind of craft we can get our hands into. The things we don’t know, my cousin in WI is pickup (she is so creative – even made her own bentwood chairs a few years back, now she’s into metal and welding – how fun is that?).  Our long range plans are that one day she will be here on the farm with us.  So double bonus!
  5. We can:
  6. Fish
  7. Hunt
  8. Camp out
  9. Could probably butcher just about anything for food.
  10. Process foods by canning, dehydrating, drying, freezing, and we are now getting into oven canning (too cool!).
  11. And the best thing – barter!

The best is barter!  We connect with those that can do things we cannot, or do not like to, do.  Absolutely love to share stuff!  It can be everything from my knitted stuffs, our canned stuffs, part of our side of grass fed beef, recipes, to even poo and wood chips for composting piles (yes, we have an abundance of both!).  In return, we get things like our hunting friends may share part of their kill.  Seeds are always exchanged.  Crafting techniques, (my friends Judy and Carrie are much better at sewing than I am so I will always get into what they are working on) and we will try just about anything once – twice if we like it.

I got hooked on this type of life years ago by accident.  Way back in the early 80’s I was more of a read-a-holic than I am now.  I came across a book called:

FOXFIRE by Eliot Wigginton, George P. Reynolds, and Kaye Carver Collins

foxfire-books-on-amazon

I do not usually promote books, but when I do it is because I love them or find them useful (I have more how-to’s than anything, and I do not own a single romance novel – boo hoo, hee hee. The very first one immediately hooked me. I went on to purchase the whole series (now up to 12 plus some anniversary additions) as each new one was published.

The way to explain how important I found these books, is to let you know that they were the first replacements I purchased for myself after our fire took everything. If you are into doing anything in a self-sufficient manner, I strongly recommend that you go to your local library and request the very first one. It explains how they all came about(Spoiler alert: It started as a way for a big-city teacher to reach his Appalachian class.). You may also want to be prepared for some fun and wild reading as parts of the book are written how the people of the area speak (or as best as they could reproduce it for the book).

Like I said – I got hooked.It is very detailed, includes numerous pictures, and is a major how-to on almost everything you could need to survive on your own or in a small community.

The only way to survive, thrive and become self-sufficient, in my opinion, is to connect with others. It may sound wrong but, if you think about it, there will always be something someone else has or can do that you may want or need. Even though I love to do tons of stuff myself, I cannot do it all (shocker I know!).I count on others to barter, share, swap, exchange (whatever you want to call it) to get by. However, I think we are exceptionally lucky that we have made connections with the same type of wacky sense of humor people that we are! This way, when times get rough (and they always do), someone in the group will always find something to laugh about!

little-girls-laughing

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AM I REALLY THANKFUL FOR THIS?

/ helbergfarmstories / 4 Comments
  1. 1. MY HEALTH: Who am I kidding – it sucks! My sister has started with the nick-name of Bionic Woman – ha ha ha – not funny! Almost all of my major joints (shoulders, knees) have been replaced with metal, plastic, and pins. My grandson gets a huge kick out of the knees when they pop out of joint (yes it hurts). You can see and feel it, and it goes “thunk” when it pops back in. He gets a great giggle out of it.
  2. MY FAMILY: They are all still here – THAT’S A GOOD THING MARTHA!! I am glad for that – I think? I have not been picked on for a while, makes me worry. One of our biggest family motto’s is: If we don’t pick on you, we don’t like you. It’s true. We grew up with very humorous, sarcastic parents and it rubbed off on all of us. Every year for Christmas, someone gets something that is a slam.
  3. MY FRIENDS: Actually, I feel sorry for them. We treat most of them AS family, so they get the same bashing – woo hoo! I hope they all know that we are always there the minute they need anything! They have been there for us during our darkest hours, and I would not trade them for anything in the world (oh man, got sappy when I was not going to do it – grr hee hee)
  4. MY FINANCES: hahahahahahahahahahahaha…AND THAT’S ALL I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THAT!
  5. OUR LIFE ON THE FARM: Where do I start? Oh yes – here goes:
    a. The break in one of our hydrant lines that has apparently been leaking for over a year now. At least we did figure out when one it was and that it was happening:
    b. The coyotes that just absconded with 3 of our chickens (so I guess they get Thanksgiving Dinner too – jerks!).
    c. The chickens that are molting. Down to about two eggs a day from, what was, about a dozen a day. Hey, at least we are still getting them!
    d. The freezer full of meat. This was due to the generosity of Sida. Side-a-beef that is. He was the property of the guy that leases our big field. He had come of age (and size) that it was time to provide for those that provided for him. Grass and grain fed. All natural. Yummy!
    e. The mild weather – NOT! This just is not right. Eighty degrees yesterday?? This is not my wonderful fall! This is also making everything really dry – double grr! By this time of year, we should have had at least a couple of rain or snow falls. Our rain barrels are empty.

Well, that about covers it for this Thanksgiving. Can’t wait to see what the new year will bring – OH JOY!

jim-carrey-happy-dance

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WHY ARE THERE NO THANKSGIVING SONGS?

/ helbergfarmstories / 4 Comments

I have been digging around, and this is all I found:

1. Food, Glorious Food from the movie Oliver (yes – they consider this a TG song??)
2. Count Your Blessing Instead of Sheep – from the movie White Christmas (Christmas – Hello!?)
3. Funny Thanksgiving Song “Thanksgiving Overture” (done to William Tell Overture – it is funny!)
4. Thanksgiving Prayer by Johnny Cash (this one is a REAL TG song – yeah!!)
5. Thanksgiving Song by Mary Chapin Carpenter (love this one – beautiful!!)
6. My Favorite Things – by Julie Andres from the Sound of Music movie (sort of counts?)
7. Over the River and Through the Woods. Some try to say this is a TG song, sorry but I really think this one is more of a Christmas (especially since they use the words “Merry Christmas” in the song – DUH!)
8. This is a true Thanksgiving song and happens to be one of my favorites: Thanksgiving Song by Adam Sandler.
9. What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. This is also one of my favs, but I use it in many, many more circumstances than just Thanksgiving.

Well, you can only listen to these few songs so many times before you crack! So I am turning to old-fashioned Christmas songs to go with it. These together make me smile and bring back some really wonderful memories.

our-wild-turkey

(Wild Turkey that visited us earlier this year – hope you can see him on the fence?  He is kind of like Where’s Waldo in this pic – hee hee.)

our-turkey-whiskey

(This is our fat bird “Whiskey,” and no he will not be on the menu. He follows me everywhere, and I named him – idiot me!)

I remember helping dad with so many great yummies. Peeling grapes (I hated it), then cutting them in half to go into the fruit salad. We had to open them up back then because there was no such thing as a “seedless grape” – CRAZY I KNOW, BUT TRUE!!?? The fruit salad was always my favorite because I would sample the fruit as it was being cut into tiny pieces. Dad would shoot me a glare every now-and-then, but it would turn into a smile with a “Cut that out” attached to it.
We always had a variety of food, and there were always the potluck’s that came from other family and friends. See, this was also a HUGE football day back then so all the family and closest friends came over. I think it was mainly because of 3 things:

1. All the men fit into our huge living room.
2. All the women fit into our huge kitchen.
3. All the kids had the farm, barns, animals to mess with and kept them away from the parents.

Worked out perfect for all involved!

nice-fall-centerpiece

SO BRING IT ON THANKSGIVING!! I have a lot to be thankful for this year!

 

(Side thought: Has anyone else ever read Stephen King’s The Dead Zone?  What are your thoughts on it?)

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WHERE WAS I AGAIN?

/ helbergfarmstories / 9 Comments

Ok woman – get your hands back in that dirt!  Ahhh, warm, living, comforting soil!  Breathe deep, life goes on (hopefully), pull up your big girl panties and move along.  Seventy plus degrees – November 2016 – Colorado – WHHAAATTT??

If things were not going freaky enough, we are going to have 70 ° today and the next couple of days?  Now Colorado weather is strange, major part of why I love it here.  But seventy in November is just abby-normal!

I do not have, nor do I want spring fever right now.  I have been sucking in the Hallmark channel trying to bring back my happy-happy, joy-joy of the holidays…p.s. it’s not working – grrr!

I have been working on all kinds of crafts for family and friends for Christmas.  We purchased a ½ a grass-fed beef to present a great meal for the family Christmas Party.  I have been pricing turkeys and checking out recipes for all kinds of side dishes.  I WANT MY FALL WEATHER!

A lot of leaves have fallen, but a bunch are still hanging on.  My honeysuckle, and winecup still have flowers on them?  The California Poppies were over eight inches tall (until my grandson thought they were weeds and helped me by pulling them out – eeek, boo hoo, hahaha).

The Robins, Blackbirds, and ladybugs are all still here?  My Blue Jay’s and Chickadee’s have not shown up yet?  There has not been a single fluke drop of snow yet (by now we should have had at least one fluke flurry)?

dsc_0011

We put the heater in our pond for the fish, but now it’s just a waste of electricity.  The trees can’t make up their mind either:

So now I must trudge on!  Keep creating.   Keep cookie planning and prepping going.  Keep the mood heading toward holiday happiness. 

Maybe I will take this picture, blow it up and hang it on my bedroom ceiling.  This way I can wake up each day thinking it will be the holidays soon:

fall

Or maybe this one would be better:

frozen pond 2-3-16

Then I can remember what winter feels like. (Ok, I am sick – Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer – my likes in that order!)

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I WILL BE HAPPY – I WILL BE HAPPY – I WILL BE HAPPY??

/ helbergfarmstories / 5 Comments

This is my third draft of this blog.  The first was fear and shock.  The second was major anger.  Then, after I ranted on for over an hour (and over 15 pages – eek), I looked back at my first blog this year.  My promise to myself was to have more fun, a happier new year so here goes:

·         I am 57 years old.  Disabled single mother of a disabled daughter. (strikes one and two – disabled and female)

·         I have worked since I was 12 years old and even sold sweet corn for an elderly farmer in upper Wisconsin. (You never forget your first real job!)  If you count the chores growing up on a farm, then I have worked forever (started young with the responsibility of feeding the barn cats and farm dog). (One for the plus side – low-income worker)

·         I remember when Kennedy was shot.  Martin Luther King was shot.  Nixon did not go to jail for Watergate but got a full pardon from his VP turned President.  Carter, Regan, 2 Bushes, Clinton, Obama but none of them actually scared me – this one does! (strike three – believing in the good in everything idea.)

·         I/we own a gun and believe in our right to bear arms – pretty sure we are going to need it now. (oh, ouch, strike four – believing there will be a war on US soil within the next four years).

·         I believe in my right to voice my opinion, and not to follow any Hitler-type brainwashing scams. (Oh now I did it – strike five, compared to evil from the past.)

Now that I have struck out under the new regime, here are my goals for my/our future:

·         I believe in stocking up our pantry to the point of overflowing.

·         I believe in getting alternative energy on our farm immediately.  This may require starting small – but any start is a good start.

·         I believe in protecting all that we have worked so hard to obtain from any that will try to take it from us.

·         I believe in keeping myself and my loved ones as healthy as possible because the idea of any medical help is now gone.  This will include learning more natural methods and growing more of our own herbs and plants to assist in this.

·         I believe in getting to work on an underground root cellar (or bomb shelter) as soon as possible to store more things for family and friends.

Maybe the resurgence of TV shows depicting the way life was before the 1960’s is an omen.  Women and minorities have just lost all of their battles for at least the last five decades.  The big corporations are going to get bigger, worse, and do more harm than they have already done.  The small business does not stand a chance.  And, of course, Congress will be Congress.

The happy side to all this:

·         Hmmm, let me think on this a bit… OH, I HAVE IT – THE ZOMBIE APPOCALYPS IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER, AND I BELIEVE THAT RICK, DARRYL AND CAROL WILL SAVE US ALL!

 

zombie

zombie      zombie

WELL, THIS WAS A FREAKIE-DEEKIE FIRST FOR ME!

/ helbergfarmstories / 6 Comments

Anyone with any type of outdoor yard or garden space should be able to relate to this. Freaky things you find in your gardens. I’m not just talking about bugs here! Check this beauty out:

odd-man-out-2

In a huge bush of yellow flowers blooms one wild card – a red one.  Same breed, just a different color.  So I think that old Mom Nature is smarter than us by a huge amount!  She doesn’t care what color it is, how big it grows, male or female; she only cares that it grows.

This plant/bush is HUGE.  It is another my sister started for me and my “dried flower experiments” (failing at that by the way – LMAO).  It has the benefit of growing up in a well-nurtured environment and has been living quite beautifully in the greenhouse (away from nasty hail and wicked winds).  This is my first freaky-deekie simply because it still simply astounds me how a flower of a different color can pop up totally unexpected in a single color batch.  Grant it, the yellow in here does have specs of red in them, but it is like this one went reverse on purpose – LOVE IT!!

Now my real freaker…the rosemary bush.  I have had rosemary growing and doing quite well in my greenhouse for about five years now.  I recently introduced a new plant in there about a year ago.  Both are doing beautifully.  Huge, dark green, lush, and smelling of Christmas trees (every chance I get I run my hand through the bush – just cuz the smell makes me happy!).

Now I don’t know tons about rosemary, just what I have been experiencing but this one blew me away.  I went to pick some fresh broccoli and, of course, had to go past my rosemary and SURPRISE:

flowers-on-rosemary-1       flowers-on-rosemary-2-3

BLUE FLOWERS???? WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?? This is the younger/newer bush also. The older, more established has never had flowers! I have taken cuttings off of it, started new plants for many friends – but again, never flowers. AND – the flowers do not have a scent? It may be the rosemary scent is so strong that I can’t smell anything else, or it maybe they would be embarrassed to try to upstage the pine smell?

Whatever the reason is for their appearance, I don’t care. I still think rosemary is one of my favorite plants/herbs. I don’t use it for a ton of things, but the fact that it makes me think of Christmas every time I am near it I just love it!

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone could have a small rosemary plant in their home? Then instead of wanting to get into arguments, we could all smell that beautiful herb, think of the holidays, and just feel comfort in the joy of company. (Ok, it’s cloudy/rainy here again and I get this way on these types of days – moody to the hilt – LOL!! Hope you enjoyed my little trip!)

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THE CORN ROAST or HOW TO THROW A PARTY – part 2.

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As the sun started to go down, the party was still going.  Uncle Vern (my dad’s brother) was usually tending to the grill by now, finishing up whatever was left to cook.  The “old hats” at the party knew it was time to break out the coolers to pack up their share of the food.  The kids were still all over the farm.

corn-on-the-grill

As the sun disappeared, more fun began.  The adults moved into the garage (it was called the garage, but it was also a workshop and had enough room for tractors and farming equipment in the back – all moved out of course for this shindig.), and the kids came down from the hay loft to start chasing things in the dark.

We had a great huge yard light.  It lit up everything corner of the center of our driveway (Picture a huge gravel circle with a house, garage, huge machine shed, barn and pump/tack house all around it – this was the center of our driveway – about the size of 10 full-size trampolines).

The garage doors were wide open, so it was easy for the adults to watch us.  The little kids, by now, were settling into their parent’s laps or finding a soft spot on the lawn to curl up on.  (Funny – I say “little” kids like I was so big – NOT – I was always the short one.  During this time I could have only have been around  8 or 9 years old – LMAO.)  We, the older kids, were now chasing fireflies (lightening bugs to some of you) and ducking from bats and moths that were compelled to go to the light.

fireflies-at-night

IT NEVER FAILED – a moth would get stuck in my hair!  I inherited my father’s thick curly hair – oh lucky me!  Even though mom cut it short every spring, the darn critters would still get all tangled up in it.  To this day, I can’t stand MILLER MOTHS!! Grrr!!!  They would crunch as you tried to wrestle them out – yuck!

miller-moth

Slowly but surely, the crowd would start to dwindle down.  The closest friends and family were always the last to shuffle out.  Usually, there were a few stragglers that would spend the night. Why not?  Our place was enormous, and dad was always up for cooking to a passel of people.  Guests always meant an awesome breakfast the next morning!

Exhausted but extremely content, mom and dad would shuffle us girls off to bed.  All the fun and joy from all the play of the day was not strong enough to keep our eyelids from closing.  Sweet dreams all around! 

  •   No worries about tomorrow. 
    •   No fears about the night. 
      • Just great memories until the next family corn roast!

corn-roast-yum

THE CORN ROAST or HOW TO THROW A PARTY.

/ helbergfarmstories / 3 Comments

A kids’ life on a farm can be amazing!  We were lucky that we had such a fantastic family with such great family and friends.  When it came time to bale hay (yep all small bales only back then), plant crops, pick rock, fix fence – whatever – a load of people would show up to help.  In turn, we would help them with their tasks (chicken butchering was more fun that rabbits – but that is another story).  The amazing part was a large number of people that would show up to help.  

My father was a cook-a-holic.  He loved being in the kitchen, at a grill, where ever as long as he was the cook.  The highlight of every year was our annual fall corn roast.  It started out simple enough, a small thank-you-type afternoon with family to show our appreciation for everyone’s help.  Soon, family extended to friends, then extended to friends of a friend.  The roast went from a small charcoal cooker, closest family (Aunts uncles, cousins, etc.), drinks and a quiet evening; into a full blown whole day event!

 It starts at the crack of dawn.  My sisters and I get dragged out of bed just as the sun is trying to rise.  We get thrown onto the back of the flat-bed wagon, which is still damp from the morning dew, and hauled out to the corn field. Thank goodness we never put away our winter mittens!

The machine corn pickers have already been through the fields.  They pick up most of it, but not all, for the canning company (hee hee – I know where your canned corn comes from!).  They flatten everything as they go.  Now it’s our turn.

corn-picker

Dad drives the tractor this time (we all know now that baby sister CAN NOT drive a straight line – or is that would not?), and all of we girls jump off and start picking up the leftover cobs and throwing them onto the wagon.  This goes on for about an hour or so; then it’s time to head back up to the house.

Dad pulls the tractor up next to a shiny horse tank.  We help him to unload a portion of the corn.  Dad has the garden hose running in the tank at the same time, then tops it all off with a ton of ice cubes (I have no clue where they all came from because our freezers could never hold that much – the mysterious Ice Fairy?).

Dad and a couple of my Uncles took an old metal drum, cut it in half (length-wise – I know you have seen these because they are on almost every farm now), and turned it into one huge grill.  The coals get to the right temp and the corn, husks and all, goes on.

outdoor-cooker

(This is sort of what it looked like, but no wheels or wagon.  It had welded legs on the bottom to stand on)

People start to swarm in.  Some have brought their own food to cook or share – several salads, hamburgers, hotdogs for the kids, sodas, beer, chips, you name it, it all starts pouring in.  By now it is only about 10 a.m.

The day finally starts to kick into full gear. 

·         The grill is in high heat and cooking away.

·         The ladies (moms mostly) are running stuff back and forth from the house to the grill.

·         The kids are running amok everywhere.

·         Our main job for part of the day was giving the no-horse kids rides.  This was done by plopping them up in the saddle, then leading the horse around (boring, but our job – plus the kids LOVED it!!)

·         The volleyball net goes up; the lawn chairs come out, and all the games begin.

Everyone eats and people are scattered everywhere.  It is mostly a lawn type of activity (at least that’s where all the kids get to sit, our choice.) after all.  Once Dad is sure most everyone had been fed, he checks the wagon.  The last of the corn is off the wagon and in the ice tank, so it’s time to move the wagon.  Now was a great time for young and old alike.  Everyone piles onto the wagon in groups (can’t hold more than about 20-25, and there are over 100 bodies here now).  It’s hay/wagon ride time.  Dad’s favorite part!

Everyone on the wagon is having a ball, but I loved to watch dad.  His face would light up when he would pop the clutch to make the wagon jump.  Everybody would fall back and bust out laughing – especially dad.  Our farm was very hilly.  He would drive up and down the hills on purpose just to watch the riders flopping all over laughing.  Then it was back up to the yard to get another group and repeat.

  wagon-ride

(We looked very much like this except for one HUGE difference – DAD ALWAYS WORE A BLACK FELT COWBOY HAT – no lame weed woven thing for him! LMAO)

(To Be Continued Next Wednesday 10-12-16.)

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