Farm Life

The Under Dog

Why is it so hard as individuals to admit defeat? Have I been defeated? Well, the answer is technically no, not yet.

Growing up I’ve always had a fighting spirit. I always knew I could do better and I was always willing to strive for better. I didn’t have to be the best at everything, I always wanted to outdo myself from the previous experience.

In 1998 I joined FFA. My mom thought I’d use horses as my FFA Project but I wanted a challenge. I had shown horses my whole life, I wanted to learn something new. That’s when we decided as a family on sheep. That first year I knew absolutely NOTHING about sheep. And every time I showed, county fair, district fair and a couple local fairs, I was last. I didn’t know how to properly groom and/or show a sheep to save my life.

County Fair 1998 – First show ever.

I wanted a learning curve, boy did I ever get one. It was funny, I was bottom. I couldn’t get any worse. The only direction I could go was up. A lot of people stood behind me and saw my determination. I had a start, stumble, and fall, more often than not… but in the end, my persistence led me to win Grand Champion Dorset Market Lamb, Grand Champion Dorset Ram, Grand Champion Dorset Ewe at my last Missouri State Fair as an FFA Member.

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The Day I Got Chased by a Turkey

Two Turkeys

Once upon a time I was doing an engagement photo shoot. We were walking around this little “faux” town that is near where I live. We were dodging another photographer so that we didn’t photobomb them and they didn’t photobomb us (although I’m not so sure they were being so decent).

There was a dog that ran up to us eating a dead chicken. Yuck! It stunk! So we were avoiding the dog and the dead chicken too, just so we didn’t have nasty things in the photos.

Then we walked over to the chicken coop. The chickens were okay with us and we were pondering using a building right beside them. Then………

The turkeys came.

At first we were talking to the turkeys, then they started gobbling at us and coming at us. We all wound up on the other side of a rock fence. We found a new way around the rock fence and they were still coming at us so we moved on.

And that is the story of how I was chased by a turkey.

Maybe not so scary, but we weren’t sure what the turkey’s might do to us in the moment.

I can now cross off being chased by a turkey on my life’s list as well as being flocked by a goose. I’m on a roll! By the way, Did I ever tell you I was flocked by a goose?

Sunday Afternoons are Made for….

Wow, November 1st is pretty awesome as of yesterday. First and foremost, hubby turned 33. Yup, 33 years ago yesterday his momma brought him into this world. And knowing him, she probably had her hands full at times. I know I sure do… whew :).

When we woke up yesterday morning, and remember yesterday morning we hit standard time so we gained an hour, hubby looked at me and said he was hungry. I told him I had the stuff to make pancakes or waffles, which did he want. He chose waffles. And here is the only picture I took of breakfast…. (homemade Vanilla that I sent a picture of to Karen asking her a question….)

From there we headed to my parents. Mom and dad’s fireplace was messed up and Hubby said he could fix it for them. We also did his birthday presents. No pictures, we did it in a hurry. And the most wrapping he got was in plastic bags. Yeah we went all out. Hey I mentioned yesterday that one of his presents is still in the trunk of my car.

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Thursday’s Food for Thought

Tbug and I were driving down the road one day. She’s constantly telling me this that and everything else. It’s a joke with my dad that it is payback for the years I spent talking his leg off about everything under the sun.

Anyway we drove past a corn field and she proceeded to tell me something that my Mother in law told her. Now I was not involved in the conversation where my mother in law is concerned, I just got the story relayed to me by Tbug. But supposedly my MIL said that a farmer plants the outside rows of corn for people to come by and take as they please.

I’m pretty sure I had to pick my jaw up off the ground. Then proceeded to tell Tbug that is not the case. Farmers aren’t out to give away free food. They are out to make food for consumers that is good quality to feed the masses. That farmer also makes a living off his crop, whether it be a crop of corn, soybeans (pictured above), dairy or cattle.

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Pumpkin Patches: Annabelle’s Fun Farm

I’ve always said that my falls just go by in the blink of an eye. I guess there is so much going on, but add three holidays in there and wow! Last year I really wanted to take Abug to a pumpkin patch and wanted Tbug to be there. This year same thing, but knowing how my October was the rest of the month, and the fact that we’re over halfway through the month already, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. In fact, it was a quick last minute decision to go to the pumpkin patch this last weekend.

This year we decided to drive to Welch, Oklahoma and go to Annabelle’s Fun Farm. A friend of mine went last year, she has a little girl who is 7 months older than Abug and then a little boy who is a couple years older and it looked like they had fun there last year so that’s kind of one of the decisions in this choice.

There was a petting farm area with a pony (which Abug hated… she loves horses but wasn’t crazy about the pony), goats (didn’t care for), pigs (didn’t like), rabbits (scared of) and birds (chickens, peacocks, etc).

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Want to Ride Along?

One phrase I can tell you about farm life… if anyone ever wants you to “ride along” with them… what that really means is, come be the gate b****.

haha. Okay so maybe that’s a bit harsh, but basically it means that you’re the passenger, you get to get the gate so the driver doesn’t have to get out.

And I’ve mentioned before I hate getting the gates when I am the driver... that’s why I used to always leave the gate open and drive my grandpa nuts. Now I drive my uncle nuts. But let me be clear, if the cows are up by the gate/road, I get out and close the gate, every time. It’s just if they aren’t up by the road or they’re in the bottom pasture, surely I won’t be there that long so I leave it open. Then I watch from the house. I too need to point out that there is a cattle guard that is supposed to keep them in. But to be on the safe side we don’t trust it. Sadly people are sue happy these days.

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Farm Tour: Do Farmer’s have computers?

Growing up I’ve been presented with some extremely amazing opportunities.

  • I learned to drive a truck at 4 years old in a freak lightening storm in the middle of the night, in a hay field. And it should be noted that not one bale got wet and I only drove over like 2 or 3. Hey I couldn’t see over the steering wheel at first. I had to sit on my dad’s hard hat.
  • At 6 years old I could fly across the field in a Chevy S-10. I slid the seat all the way forward and could reach the break and gas. There’s good stories there too!
  • At 12 years old I was driving a Standard Transmission like you were supposed to hitting the clutch and shifting gears.
  • I learned to drive a tractor sometime around that same time frame.
  • I learned the value of hard work and persistence.
  • Animals get fed before you do.
  • I’ve traveled all around Southwest Missouri, Columbia, Sedalia, Kansas City, Louisville, KY, Washington D.C., All over South Dakota, up to North Dakota, all over Oklahoma, Southeast Kansas, Northwest Arkansas, Northern Texas and even out of the country to Costa Rica.

So what? People get to do things like traveling all the time. Well mine is all thanks to Agriculture. I’ve traveled where Agriculture wasn’t involved yes, but because of agriculture and farm life I’ve had more opportunities and experiences than I could imagine.

Last Friday I got provided with another opportunity because of Agriculture but also because of blogging. The Missouri Women’s Bloggers teamed up with the Missouri Farm Bureau to do a Southwest Missouri Fall Farm Tour.

Emileigh from Flashback Summer, Me, Pamela from Thrive Personal Fitness, Trent Drake (Production Agriculture Farmer), Alicia from The Sensible Family, Fawn from Instead of the Dishes.

This is the second fall tour that the Missouri Women Bloggers and the Missouri Farm Bureau have done. The first was up around the Kansas City area.

I met Laurie through other means of blogging last summer, early fall and instantly fell in love with her blog, because well it’s about Agriculture. I pointed her in the direction of the Missouri Women Bloggers and she was actually able to attend the Fall Farm Tour in the Kansas City area. While they were on their tour, they were eating lunch and a local the Chief of Police in the town of Garden City posed the question, why tour farms? (If you want to read about that, you definitely should!)

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Hay!

The other night I was sitting in the house doing homework. Between reading and studying I was about to go nuts. Hubby had taken Abug outside with him, so I snuck outside to see what they were up to; that’s when I heard the tractor running. We lucked out, some really good friends of ours brought us their tractor over (plus mower, second tractor and baler, Thank you Jared & Karen!) to do some fall haying. Our mower is broken (again).

I looked out in the field where the tractor noise was coming from and they were moving the other bales off the field from the summer cutting.

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FarmFest, Friday’s & a Public Service Announcement

You know… the other day I thought I was one step closer to being famous so I could be on Dancing with the Stars. I don’t really want to be famous, I just really want to be on Dancing with the Stars. Sadly I walked into my comps study group the other day and learned that a guy I had at least 2 classes with didn’t know what my name was. So does that cancel out one person recognizing me in public based off of my blog?  Just a thought/question….

I briefly mentioned in passing that we went to FarmFest on Sunday. Dad was telling us that he went to the first one and it has greatly changed in the last 30 years. While at FarmFest we found Abug new boots. She finally got a pair of Square Toed Boots. Square toed boots became popular when I was in college (the bachelor’s degree round). I SWORE I’d never wear them, they were hideous, etc etc. Now that’s pretty much all I own. We’ve learned on many occasions I like the taste of crow I guess.

Ok this picture… someone has major talent. I can’t even draw a smiley face. My great grandpa came to this country from Greece as an artist and I can’t even draw a smiley face.

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A Thank You, A Restaurant Review, & Auction Items… oh my!

If it weren’t for my family and friends I’d probably be bald by now. Yes, I just said that. Let me explain. Fall of 2013 I was presented with an opportunity that lead me to the road back to school to work on my Master’s. (I am forever grateful for this opportunity too!) My Bachelor’s Degree is in Agriculture, my Master’s will be in English. I sometimes get asked what I plan on doing with that…

Now first, before I give you my answer… when I was an Agriculture major I used to smart off that I could talk about Cows, Sows, and Plows. Sometimes I’d use it to the advantage of, Well at least I can talk about Cows, Sows, and Plows. Other times I’d smart off that I could talk about more than Cows, Sows, and Plows.

So now when people ask me, as long as they know my smart aleck side, I’ll smart off that I will now be able to eloquently write to Cows, Sows, and Plows. ha!

Some days I need to just learn to keep my mouth shut :). What am I going to do with this… well there are lots of plans in the making, hopefully one of them pans out!

But for now, I rely heavily on my family and friends to keep me sain, especially this fall as I prepare for Comps. I’m not going to lie, I’m scared of general comps.

Thankfully my mom is able to watch baby girl for hubby and me on Tuesday’s, Wednesday’s and Thursday’s. I’ve stated in the past that when I was growing up I got the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my grandparents and I wouldn’t have traded that for the world. Well, this is one of those opportunities that my baby girl is being blessed with also.

So last Wednesday I made plans with my mom to get her the squirrelly girly and she offered to meet hubby and me for lunch. We took her up on the opportunity. When the restaurant she suggested didn’t pan out, we opted to try another one. Joe’s Pizza, Pasta, Sub Italian Restaurant. Upon first impression of the name, we assumed it would be fast food Italian but it was in fact the opposite. It was a sit down meal.

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