Photo a Day for 365?

Okay, so I'm not doing to well on this "photo a day" challenge thing.

Believe me, I have been taking lots of photos. Just not much time to edit and post them, with it being summer; family members moving; gardening, new baby livestock, etc. etc.  I  don't know what I was thinking!

Maybe I can post all the pics during winter; and it will feel like re-living my summer!  :-)

Tracy

Project 365 a photo a day for a year Week 1: May 10 - 17

Theme for this Project 365 is Thankfulness

Thankful for beautiful spring blossoms

Thankful for my wonderful daughter and son-in-law

Thankful for glorious colors throughout God's creation

Thankful for opportunity to own a business and help community

Thankful for the legacy of my grandmother's garden

Thankful for beautiful days and beautiful cars

Thankful for Kansas agriculture

Thankful for the sweet smell of roses

2013 In Pictures

Well, I haven't had much time to write on the blog this year.

So to close out 2013, I thought I'd just post a review of our year in photos.  It was a great year, and we are blessed.  May this find all my friends healthy and happy going into 2014!

(review photos bottom to top!)

NOVEMBER 2013

SEPTEMBER 2013

AUGUST 2013

JULY 2013

JUNE 2013

(family reunion - June 2013)

MAY 2013

APRIL 2013

FEBRUARY 2013

Spring 2013

It's SPRING!

Seems like we waited an awful long time through winter to get to warmer weather this year.  Our springtime was very late in coming.. it remained chilly and cold clear through the end of April, with late freezes and even some snow the first week of May!  This was just the opposite of last year, when it got unseasonably warm in March and never looked back... moving right into an unbearably hot summer.

I don't know if that means this summer will be more mild and cool, but I hope it at least includes much more rain that last year.

Because of the late spring, we are just getting around to putting the garden in, during mid-May.  Steven decided this year to cut back on what type of items we grow, just because many were not being used/eaten by us very often.  So plant what actually successfully grows here and that we will use, is the idea.

So we have, so far, peas, onions (lots of onions, we use a lot!), sunflowers, many tomatoes, peanuts, corn, bell peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkin;  as well as our perennials like asparagus, rhubarb, etc. The tomatoes, bell peppers and most of the cucurbits were all started indoors and set in the garden as plants -- good thing, too, with this late start.  The above pic was taken before we put in the melons and pumpkin, so most everything else is planted at the far north end of the garden.  I think Steven told me this year, just for trial, he made a garden plan that puts everything out by height -- with the lowest growing stuff on the south, up to the tall stuff on the north.  Will be interesting to see how that works out.

He has quite a few fruit trees started in pots as well.  Out in the big orchard, we did lose a couple of young fruit trees to the drought next year, so there are already plans to replace those.

We have been blessed with spring rains, and that has made the grass grow quickly.  

Since my push mower was not working correctly and my tractor was taken apart awaiting replacement parts, everything got to be waist high around the place.  Just this week I finally was able to start tackling that issue -- the tractor is fixed and I got the bush hog going for much of it. But it takes quite a bit of time.

We lost our bee colony over the winter and hope to get a replacement hive soon.

But we have lots of new babies right now -- 10 new baby goats; a dozen baby chicks (and two more hens setting on nests yet to hatch).  We have two hen geese also setting -- we are hopeful but not to expectant on the success of that.

I will try to do a better job of keeping with posts this summer to tell you of many big projects we hope to complete this year around the farm.

Thanksgiving 2012

Well, I haven't been keeping up on my blog, obviously, for most of this year.  I will try to get busy before the end of the year and do a complete "This was 2012" summary of our year.

But for today, I just wanted to post a few photos of our Thanksgiving dinner from this week.  My other two kids came home for it, and we also hosted my almost-96-year-old Uncle Paul, and his sister, my Aunt Ida.  It was a record-breaking warm day for Thanksgiving in Kansas, getting up to 75 sunny degrees.  Made for a beautiful day.

The boys had the table all set up the night before, fully expanded, with dishes at the ready.
(The room is mostly empty because we recently just got done refinishing the wood floor, and don't have everything moved back in yet)

Steven worked hard to make the Cornucopia centerpiece just right.

Our domestic Tom Turkey peaks in the window to see what is going on as we prepare dinner :)

Getting ready to eat. (Steven and I aren't pictured here)

I wanted to at least get one photo with Steven in it.
I'm fine with there being no photos with me in them :)

Coming soon.....

The puppy we acquired last spring, Titan, is now an all-grown-up handsome male dog.


Hopefully, he and our female, Lilly, will soon be blessing us with a litter of livestock guardian pups. Gestation time is around 63 days, they say. That is a bit earlier in spring than we were hoping, but she went into heat earlier than I had planned.



I'm sure sometime in early March we will have our hands full of fluffy white balls that will be a great mix of the LGD breeds of Akbash, Anatolian and Pyr. They will grow up around geese, chickens, ducks, turkeys and goats, and get accustomed to guarding the place.