More Family History

My maiden name is Secord.  I am showing my son,Glenn his history, and proving that he was born to farm.  He has a long line of farmers on both sides of his family tree.  First we visit the family street sign.

You are looking at 90% of the road's length.  Not a long road, about 1 mile long, but in our name just the same.  My grandparents moved to the top of that far hill and purchased four 40 acre sections.   Their house sets smack dab in the middle of those four sections.

This was the home of William and Orpha Secord and their children; Norvin, Weltha, Lorna, Frieda, RE, William (Lee), Melvin Dale, Orha (Joyce), Donald, Eldon (my dad), and Elda Lou. 

Reniassance Festival

 I love to study history, Sadie loves to dress up.  This festival was the perfect place for us.  Glenn just loves to be about and learning, oh and some shopping.  I didn't get many pictures because I forgot to charge the camera battery before we went.  I thought we could have Glenn take over with his camera, but his card was full!  We just had a great day anyways.  Sadie was voted as honorary winner in the costume contest.  She made a beautiful princess.  Her cousin, Jessica made a lovely visiting noble.

We even got the kids to ride in the barrel.  Glenn said it made him a little dizzy.  Once this fellow got it swinging good, he grabbed on and made it spin.  The history goes along with the era art we've been studying at home.

In My Home Town

Here we are pulling into my home town, Wolverine.  I decide to take my kids to my home town and introduce them to some of their family heritage.  My dad's family moved into this town in the 1800s and my dad is still here.

It all starts with some fun with the cousins.  These are my sisters kids and Glenn building a fort in grandpa's back yard.

Karl, my brother stopped by to cut some wood for my dad.  Love that modern truck he uses for his everyday ride.  It's a 1950 Dodge, for those who wondered.

1775

April 18, 1775- the day Paul Revere made his historic ride to warn of the British.  Paul has found a place on our wall, actually our closet doors. 

Sadie is always helping to feed the family!  She is actually doing great at cooking.  It is amazing to me how well she is doing at life skills.  Wouldn't the colonist have had a cherry pie?

Here is our cherry pie.  The cherries were picked on the farm last year.  We love having cherries and other berries around to harvest.  You have to love the cow cut-outs we used.

Back to School

We love home schooling.  Glenn likes that he doesn't have to fix his hair!  He looks like this every morning.  We think he sleeps on his head doing some sort of spinning and twisting.

Enough about that hair.  Glenn was so excited to start all his new books, he got dressed, ate breakfast, did his outside chores, and was at his desk by 7 am.  What a good student.  He even told his dad (the only night owl in the house) that he will be going to bed early during school.  That means he wants his dad to get home earlier for their hang out and watch the discovery channel time.  Glenn has waited up for his dad every night from the time he was a small baby.  Not so much for Sadie and I.  We get up way too early for all that.

Great Helpers

Glenn is always so serious about his work.  He is helping us run electricity out to the pool.  This will be so much nicer for him next summer.  Glenn mowes for us and always has to roll up our extension cord, then put it all back when he's done.  The new water line will be handy for him as well.  He will have water close to his garden, not 200 feet away.  Again, stretching hose and rolling it up gets old.

Sadie is hard at work here, not all that common a sight.  Sadie is a girl who prefers to let you do the work so she can reserve her energy for more important things, like dancing.  She is a very good worker when she decides to help.  It might be that this job involves another favorite activity of hers, swimming.  Sadie loves her pool.

What's up?

We are running more water to the heifers so we can do some more rotational grazing.  My question is this, who is more interested in what the trencher is doing, me or the heifers?  I love how completely nosey they are.

I had Glenn take this shot for me.  It's me on the digger and our right hand man, Jay.   He came along to see what I was up to, and ended up shoveling the big stones out when I hit them.  But because most of the time he was watching and waiting, I had to get a shot of me working with him just watching.

So the digger machine was only half the fun.  I still had to do the end where we are going to tap into the existing water line and electricity.  I just kept telling myself how glad I was that I only had to do the end by hand, not all 150 feet.

More Silage

It all stars with my hard working husband Duane, his collection of silage wagons, and trusty old John Deere Chopper.  I don't know how old this machine is, but it's at least 20 years old.  Good thing he is such a good mechanic.

This year Duane went to the neighbors and helped him get his silage done, so he came and helped us. I love that sort of old fashioned sense of community.  This is actually more than a neighbor, Bob and his son, Gene are related.  Bob is married to Duane's cousin, Cindy.

Gene is in charge of bringing the silage back to the bagger and unloading it.  Remember when all 17 year old kids could do a good days work like a real man.  This new fangled idea that teens are in their glory years and lay around being waited on with money gifted to them is something I can not understand.  Our son is indulged, but he works hard for that treatment.  At 11 years old, he cares for all our animals (4 horses, 15 chickens, 4 dogs, and 3 cats), and does all our yard work (a 3 acre yard), in exchange he has a pool to cool off in, and a pony to jump, no allowance.  Okay, enough about how young people should have to work.

Out of the wagon and into the bagger.  The bagger packs the chopped corn and moves itself forward while releasing a little more bag to fill. 

The end result is a bag 250 feet long, by 10 feet round that is full of chopped corn.  The corn is sealed and will slowly ferment into a sweet smelling silage that cows love.  I have never been brave enough to try it, but my husband always takes a taste so that he knows how his silage is doing.  It does smell good.

The Chopping Crew at Work

This is the little tractor Zenz Brothers brings to pack down and push around our chopped corn in the pit silo.  For those who don't know, a pit silo is just a three sided bunker to store chopped corn. 

As the chopper works through the corn field, the skilled truck drivers follow behind and catch the corn. 

They have to keep running from the chopper to the silo in perfect rhythm so that the chopper isn't left waiting in the field.  Even with the slip clutch going out in the chopper on the first day, these guys managed to get 100 acres of corn done in just 2 days.  

So my final picture is our silo full and ready to feed our cows for another year.

It's in the bag

We have been saving our wheat seed for years and planting some back the following year.   Because I am such a naturalist at heart, and like the old ways, I love that my father in law does some of this stuff.  So here is the neighbor and the owner of the cool bagging machine watching the seed trickle from the gravity wagon and enter his machine. 

His machine is on a trailer bed to make it all portable.  He has recycled parts from an old mill and it's made into this cool  seed cleaner, sorter, and can even treat your seed if you like.  He can do the standard bag size, or as you can see next to my lovely dump truck, he can fill the huge bags we sometimes use nowadays.  On the other side of the machine, he has another auger that will dump it into another gravity wagon for you.  My father in law was tickled to see it because it reminded him of an old thrasher.  This is the first time we've had our seed cleaned and bagged.  In the past, he gathered it and left what he needed in the gravity wagon till the next spring.  When I get the bill and then my next years yield, we will see if I am still excited about this machine.

Feeding the Crew

Look at Glenn hanging out with all the farm workers.  We had 10 men to feed, if you count Glenn.  They all seemed to enjoy the chicken, squash, salad, and strawberry shortcake.  They said it was good, and left no leftovers.  Wow, can they ever eat.  Pearl and I made 6 acorn squash, about 10 pounds of pasta salad, and 4 chickens with extra thighs.  We are thinking about Lasagna for tomorrow.  They should be here for 3 days.  Of course after they ate, they said they might stay a week.

The Corn is Ready

Today is the big day we have waited for all summer.  The corn has matured and is ready to harvest.  We call on the Zenz Brothers to fill our silo.  Today we see their equipment is here and ready to go.  This might not be one of the big choppers they use out west, but it will sure make quick work of our couple hundred acres.

Then you add three trucks that stay on the move collecting the fresh chopped silage and delivering it to our pit silo, and the work goes very fast.