Well, we are still getting rain here - the rain we have needed all summer. I’m afraid it’s so late it won’t do us much good though. I have noticed several of my neighbors have started cutting their hay already. What little hay there is. I am going to try to wait as long as I can on mine.

This week we worked on cleaning up the pastures a little more. The pine beetle ravaged this part of the country a few years back and we are still dealing with the mess it left behind. I had pushed pine limbs, logs, and stumps into piles with the loader on the Mahindra. We have been trying to take the pallet forks now and sort them into piles that we can burn. Sure wish I had the forks all along. We also have several white pines that seem to be dying now and we are afraid they will fall on the fences. We have slowly been cutting them and skidding them with the tractor up to where I can load them on my ton truck. Now I have to find someone willing to saw them into lumber for me.

We are still doing lots of preserving of the garden vegetables. The second bunch of corn should be ready in a week or so. For now it’s mostly squash and tomatoes.
Too bad everything isn’t as easy as squash. I was up until 2 am canning tomatoes.
I believe we made 29 quarts. Today or tomorrow we’re going to pickle some cucumbers. Madison and Garett found a watermelon that was ripe while we were picking tomatoes, so we all sat on the porch after supper and had watermelon while talking about the farm. We have been trying to develop a business plan of sorts.

On my way home from Kingsford one day this week I saw a whole tractor trailer load of Mahindra tractors going north on US 27. One looked like a 7010 Cab - like I have been wanting to buy. Must have been 5 or 6 tractors on the truck. Maybe I’ll go see the Mahindra Dealer and work on a price a little more. It would be so nice to have air and heat, not to mention being able to put out rolls of hay even if it was raining.
Well I’m sure there is something I need to be doing… so I better go. Check back soon!

This entry was posted on August 22nd, 2006 by joelw at 2:02 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.