november 10, 2012

i wanted to apologize for the lack of posts.  the last month has been great- our house has been filled with family, filled with love.   the growing farmer sons nana banana and papa drove down from pa to celebrate our yearly halloween party with us.  the dressed up and everything! nana was of course a banana and papa was a red hat lady. it was absolutely awesome to see them and i'm extremely grateful for all their help.  then this past week we were blessed again with the farmer sons auntie visiting us from wa.  she was going to help us with the baby ducks and make a duckumentary. instead we worked on the expansion of the orchard and hung out. farmer dad and i even got in a date for the first time in two and a half years.  some things change when we have visitors but for the most part we stick to our routine, we have too. there is only so much wiggle room with animals.  it's so amazing that they all wanted to take a "working vacation" and were more than willing to help. thank you!  we are so fortunate to have these people in our lives.  we love ya'll!

today it was back to the four of us. i can't say that we didn't feel the emptiness of missing everyone, but having an absolutely gorgeous day outside definitely helped.  we continued our work with the orchard expansion.  we cut prairie plants and farmer dad added posts. here is photos of our day...

i didn't take a photo of where we quit.  we didn't finish, but made good progress.

this is our man cutter.  farmer dad taped it because we have the tendency to break them.  this seems to help a bit.  then later after we whack everything back and let it break down a bit we cut it with our awesome tractor (thank you friends!  we love it!) 



i noticed this awesome prairie plant along the way. sometimes a field mouse would run by and i would yell.  not a fan.  but i have to imagine that the little creature is at least 100 times more scared than i.  when i was out there i was thinking of how grateful i am for this day, for the ability to be able to spend it with my family, to be outside and moving my body, and be surrounded by nature.  sometime around that thought i noticed the spider eggs. i couldn't in good conscience simply whack them back.  that meant almost certain death and   i was  almost completely confident that they are black and yellow garden spider eggs, which is one that i appreciate.  the farmer son helped me relocate them outside the future expansion and i hope they will hatch in the spring. 

after we were done working, we played some t-ball and then i embraced the moment of the remaining flowers feeding the fritillary butterfly (thank you for the proper identification of that one- i haven't stopped saying it since i've learned it).  please excuse the abundance of pictures, i really couldn't help myself.

it was a great day over here, i hope the same for you.

til next time,

farmer mom