Farmer Quote #6: Lots and Lots of Spoons

(as I unloaded the dishwasher after being away for a week)

Farmer: Did I even use a spoon while I was gone?

Brunette: Uh...Looks like there is just one in here.

Farmer: Oh yeah...That was the pickle fork.

The Gnome Did It

The Farmer loves surprises. He often comments that he can't wait until I leave again on a trip so he can do more projects. While I know I'm helpful...I'm good at holding things and handing him tools...and we work well together, there's something The Farmer finds gleefully exciting about surprising me when I come home.

Hey, this girl ain't gonna complain.  

So last week when I was in Portland for the afternoon and got a text adding "dry erase markers" to my shopping list, I figured something was up. 

It was.

I came home to this...

And this...

And this...

And this...

Gotta love The Farmer.

And not just because he hung all these items in my pantry and laundry room. I mean, there is this too. 

I then promptly broke open my newly purchased dry erase markers and left him a note showing my appreciation.

I also needed him to do one teensy tiny more thing...

Of course, The Farmer has denied involvement in any of these projects. So I blamed Carl, the imaginary boyfriend of our imaginary maid, FiFi. Oh, have I not told you about her? Yes, she is a real imaginary maid.

But, no, Carl wasn't to blame, said The Farmer.

Instead he blamed The Gnome.

Sounds good to me. I'll blame anyone The Farmer wishes if only to have The Gnome complete more projects while I have a leisurely lunch with a friend in the Big City. 

The Gnome did it. In the laundry room. With the drill.

Boys and Their Toys

The Farmer got a new toy this week. 

I think it looks like a giant spider. 

But no, it's a tedder. (Not a tetter...at first I thought Tet Offensive and realized I was a nerd. But this is spelled differently and has nothing to do with Vietnam.) And no, I didn't know what a tedder what until I met The Farmer, so don't worry if you are still wondering what the spider-y looking machine does. 

But before I can explain that we have to get this thing off the trailer. 

The Farmer used the SkidSteer and looped that safety strap around the two forks of the forklift. 

Then he added a safety chain to the front...just in case. Because, yeah, you don't want to scratch the paint job.

I normally drive the SkidSteer for The Farmer on jobs.

There was no way I was driving that machine today!

Safely on the ground (phew!), The Farmer started playing with his new toy. 

He had to play with the big arms that spin. Fancy!

They also lower to the ground and add two more tedders to the sides, which increases The Farmer's capacity to ted the fields by about 50%. 16 feet wide...wow!

The tedder is a vital part of haying. Day One of haying you cut the field. On Days Two and Three you ted the field, which essentially turns and fluffs the hay, allowing it to dry faster and evenly. Then after it is dry on Day Four (hopefully) you rake it into wind-rows and bale it. Dry hay is important because you don't want to bale wet hay...it has to be completely dry. This is why you bale hay only on sunny/hot days. If the hay is wet it can combust and start a fire.

You wonder why barns burn down? Not from little boys playing with matches. From wet hay.

So each of those disk-y things have pairs of forks that rotate and fluff the hay. And this new tedder has those hydraulic arms with two more disks of forks for a total of four tedder disks. 

Again, fancy!

After The Farmer was done playing with it we had to figure out a place to put it. We had unloaded it in the driveway that was out-of-the-way but not out-of-the-way enough.

Our solution?

The middle of the barnyard circle drive...so everyone could see it!

And yes, a few folks did stop by to see the new toy. They heard The Farmer had one and wanted to see if for themselves. 

Boys and Their Toys!

Tea for Fourteen

My mom visited last week and we decided to finally get the china out of storage and display it in our new china hutch. While we bought the hutch over a month ago, I hadn't quite gotten around to this step. That said, we only recently put the final touches on the new/old hutch as it needed a bit of work when we brought it home. 

We knew one of the doors rubbed a little, but upon further investigation the problem was more than just planing off the bottom millimeter of the door. We found a cracked middle support and the entire bottom of the hutch wasn't quite square. The Farmer couldn't quite figure out what had happened to it to create these issues until he recalled his days as a three-year-old climber. Yep...the bottom doors had been used as a stepstool from a youngster in previous days. So we took the back off. We re-squared it. We re-nailed it. We re-glued it. We added in another support in the middle. And we did plane off a millimeter from the bottom of the offending door.

And by "we" I mean The Farmer. I just held things. 

By the time we finished the hutch my mom was visiting in two weeks so I just waited for her to help me figure out what to do. Because, well, I have just a few pieces of china...

Disclaimer: Images may appear larger than in real life, but they really are this large.

Let me explain the drama around the "family" china.

My mother is the keeper of the actual "family" china. It is a cream design with raised scalloped edges and was a part of her father's family. Quite pretty. My mother remembers them from when she was little.

Until...

My great-aunt Jean visited from Texas one summer and she and my grandmother, Lottie, got into some sort of argument. My mother doesn't know what the argument was about - my grandmother never spoke of it. But the result was all the china was packed up and shipped to Texas. My grandmother wouldn't speak of the incident and no one was allowed to mention it. So the family china that was used for special occasions disappeared from the house until aunt Jean died and the china was shipped back.

It was stored in the back attic and never touched again.*

So where did this china come from? 

My grandmother bought it at an estate sale in the 1980s when she was in Arizona visiting her sister for the winter. 

I remember when this happened. Grandma made a big deal about it. While they were special dishes she didn't preclude anyone from using them on those special occasions. So yes, while I was merely a pre-teen I got to use the fancy plates. How fun!

She wanted them to be used, and while she knew she had 11 grandchildren (and a number of adult children) that might break them she wanted to enjoy them. So my grandmother declared that the first person who broke an item would inherit the china; an exciting yet scary proposition. You didn't want to be the first one.

My cousin Angie dropped the gravy boat the first celebration we used them. 

She inherited the lot. 

It was one of the few items specifically spelled out in my grandmother's will. 

Now the original set my grandmother purchased at that estate sale was not as large as what I have now inherited from Angie, courtesy of her daughter, Jennifer. 

But when Angie inherited the dish set it was missing a gravy boat and this was just around the time eBay started to emerge. And a lot of people were selling their gravy boats online.

The end result was a few more items that just a single gravy boat were purchased. 

Such as two gravy boats. (Just in case.)

So last week my mom and I unpacked:

41 dinner plates

26 salad plates

46 dessert plates

34 saucers

27 dessert bowls

17 large bowls

19 coffee cups

14 tea cups

2 butter dishes

3 covered dishes (1 slightly broken)

5 serving bowls

3 large platters

3 small platters

1 oval serving bowl

2 gravy boats

1 salt/pepper shaker set

2 sugar bowls

2 creamers

1 set of candlestick holders

and 

1 dinner bell

Lest you think I am greedy I decided to keep a reasonable number of these items as my china and the rest was packed up to be given back - as single items or in small sets - to family members. 

But thank goodness my mom was here because who knows how to arrange 27 dessert bowls in a china hutch?

My mom does.

So here's to you, grandma Lottie...

We're even using the correct cups.

And here's to you, dear cousin Angie.

We'll use the gravy boat and think of you every time.

*The mysterious argument was confirmed when my mom found the china in the attic after my grandma passed away. The boxes of china were all marked in my grandpa's handwriting, which was odd as they were the only items in the entire attic in his writing. And...all the dinner plates were missing. Hmm. I like to think those dinner plates never made it to Texas. 

A**less Chaps Have Returned!

Now the fascination may have come from reading too many Little House books, but haying season really is something to behold. You watch a field go from lush green grass to rich dry hay in a matter of days. You watch it be cut, tedded, raked, baled, and stored. It is a process, but one that allows you to see progress before your eyes. 

The Farmer started with a single bale being put into the calf barn last week. By the end he will have 4,000 bales stored in every crevice of his barns...all a product of his (and the crew's) hard work. 

Now that is a sense of accomplishment!

As the first load from the field came in last week it is the start of a tough evening of unloading this monstrous pile from the bale wagon to the barn.

While a number of things are automated on the farm (including milking cows, in case you are wondering...and yes, The Farmer still gets that question with frequency), "putting in hay" is not. The bale wagon delivers the bales in a nice tall stack, reminiscent of a huge Jenga game. 

Our job is to move these bales into one of the buildings.

One by one.

And to do this job, my favorite outfit of the year comes out of storage. Yes, my (girl)friends, the a**less chaps have returned!

Be still my heart.

The smiles that come with them ain't so bad, either. His smile is one of the things I love most about The Farmer.

OK, enough a**less chap photos (for now). There's a large game of reverse Jenga that must be played.

While I did help bring bales into the barn (through the door on the left), my job (fun!) also included pulling down bales from on high, using whatever means necessary. This often meant I got to climb atop lower bales and use a pitchfork to topple them from above. You can also pull loose bales from the middle of the pile, hopefully dislodging that bale along with a number of others around it. Amazingly, sometimes you'll pull down a whole section with one strategic bale choice, and other times that single bale just pops out without taking any of its neighbors with it. 

I should be really good at Jenga by the end of haying.

This photo seems appropriate to end on. It's my favorite view.