Busy, busy, busy....

I was gone until Tuesday this week seeing a good friend of mine, but once I got back, there was work waiting for me on the farm.

One big project my dad wants us to do this Spring and Summer is to take out an old fence line (which has been there for so long that dad isn't even sure how old it is), and put in new posts. So, our two high school workers took the fence off the old posts Monday and Tuesday and then one of them helped me pull the posts out with a tractor on Wednesday. I didn't get pictures from that day because I was pretty busy. We had a really steep hill I had to go down with the tractor. I didn't know until the next day that one of the tractor tires wasn't even on the ground while I was trying to keep it from going over the edge into the ditch and praying the brakes were going to hold!

Here is the ditch we were dealing with.

The night after we had pulled the posts out, we were blessed with 1/2 an inch of rain. Praise the Lord!!! It also made our job the next day much better. We put in a temporary electric fence line. This meant two of us were on foot hammering in over 60 of these posts. We would take 5 posts at a time and then pick up the Mule at the end of that distance and drive ahead to leave it for the other person before we started with another 5 posts. However, the beautiful scenery made it well worth it.

Friday and Saturday were spent cleaning out a fence line next to my house. Many of our elm trees are dying and that means a lot of dead branches everywhere when you have 50 mph gusts of wind on a regular basis. Again, the Mule was a key element in our work day. It looked like our own mini-fortress once we got it loaded ;-)

While we were burning the branches, we went ahead and had our lunch outside. We dug our own little fire pit and roasted some hotdogs. This is how a true farmer/rancher roasts his hot dogs and keeps his hands from getting too hot next to the fire ;-)

These are just some fun pictures to end things. Mom and dad's dog has somehow learned to smile for the camera. My dog always looks mad or scared when I take pictures, so it baffles me that he sought me out when he saw the camera and then sat like this for me to take the picture.

And these two are pictures that have me really excited. I've had a peach tree for three years and this is the first time I've ever seen flowers on it....woohoo!!! Also, I have asparagus coming up and this will be the first year I'll be able to harvest it after I've allowed for the two years to establish its root system. I'm not very patient...especially when it comes to waiting for delicious food, so I'm really excited!