Splitting Wood

With fall in the air, the time has come to split wood. Dad and Benjamin fixed up the log splitter and have been going at it during all their 'spare time' for the past few days.

The log splitter is run by the hydraulics on the tractor. I think we are going to have a natural when that boy gets his learners permit!

The whole opperation. The unsplit stuff is to the left and the ever growing pile of split and waiting to be stacked is to the right.

John came out to supervise. He cracks the whip on them when they slow down... :D

Dad steadying the logs.

Benjamin running the PTO. This is a two man job for sure!

Especially when there is a really stubborn and stringy log that needs a little help being split!

I am already feeling warm inside, just looking at all that wood. Thank you guys for all your work to keep us warm!

Grapes

Nothing makes me feel so rich and bountiful as picking the grapes at the end of the summer. This year there were three times as many as usual!

Concord grapes are not very tasty eating, but they make great juice. One of these days I am going to figure out how to make a little wine with them...

Robins have this great attraction to grape vines for some reason, but we always chase them away if we see them nesting in the vines because they can cause disease. This spring a chipping sparrow nesting in vines. She was allowed to stay and raise her tiny family under the leaves. Of course, that was long ago and now the nest is catching overripe grapes!

It took me at least an hour to weasel my way into the vines and get everything. The vines grew so much this year they took down part of their braces!
Many thanks to Hillary for adding her artistic touch with several of these pictures.

The whole crop, well minus the few that were not ripe I left for the 'birds'. :D Three days later we canned almost 4 gallons of grape juice. I think we are set for Passover now!

Wheelies, playing, and the sorrowful demise of the iron...

Benjamin has been practicing wheelies on his bike recently. I got a few action shots of him up on the grass hill.

Being one who had a hard enough time learning to ride a bike the normal way, I was rather impressed!

Becca, Rosie, and John enjoying the lovely change of weather. I think Becca might need a little relaxation later!

Our iron developed a minor problem, it refused to stop heating, even when it was ready to use. The brave few who continued to use it compensated for the iron's lack of attentiveness by unplugging it every time it got too hot and plugging it back in when it started to cool off. This worked quite well, until someone forgot to unplug it when they were finished using it. It was not discovered until I started smelling something awful. This is what an iron with no self-control can do to itself when left alone for 20 minutes...

I guess it is officially time to start looking for a new iron. :D Speaking of buying things (well, sort of), if there is one thing in the world I like better than just looking at office/school supplies, it is buying them, which is exactly what I did a few weeks ago. Leah will attest that I was in seventh heaven the whole time! With the countdown to school officially on, I started getting the school sections ready and preparing an official place to store my supplies. I had to take a picture of everything all nice and new and well...

Let the school year begin! In a week that is...

Grandpa's Pizza Birthday Party

It is tradition to celebrate Grandpa Ron's birthday with a pizza party. Even when he is not here, and even when it is one month past his birthday. This year it took a while to have Grandpa's birthday party, but it was worth the wait. Hillary was able to be a part too because she was here.

Getting everything set up... I only wish Grandpa could have been able to see it in person.

This is for you Grandpa! Your birthday pizza party supper!

This is John's "Happy Birthday, Grandpa" grin. The only thing missing was the birthday boy himself

Candid Summertime

As the last days of summer come to a close the Hipps are canning, mowing, partying and pretty much trying not to think about school starting really soon. Below are a few snapshots from the last week here at the farm. Enjoy!

In the process of cutting and splitting wood for this winter, Dad and the kids made a nice little burn pile at the top of the driveway. One wiff of woodsmoke on a hot summer day at lunch time was all it took to turn the burn pile into an inspiration for a hotdog lunch. We cook our hotdogs one welding rods which are just long enough to keep out of the fire. Rosie is attempting to cook her's from the farthest distance possible...

When it is time for a break, there is always youtube. Taylor Swift music video anyone?

What is it about summertime and food? This dish was made with almost all home grown food, with a little help from our neighbors. Thank you, Laura for the squash!

Everyone pitches in and helps with the canning. Rebecca is the official tomato squisher. She, Leah, and Timothy are making quite the tomato canning team.


Early July's hay crop. We sold 200 bales last week which Dad and the girls loaded up. Check out that amazing hay stack! The board in the foreground is a bridge to the hayrack.

Trina!! Not only is she milking two cows, being a right hand helper with the canning and cooking, but also getting up at 4:30 am three days a week and going to her English 1010 class. You go girl! Oh and did I mention she made a difference yesterday, donating blood for the first time? Next time you see her, just give her a hug and tell her you read how amazing she is... :D

Running Water

I love running water. If I had to live without some of our common luxuries I would go without electricity and telephone before I would give up running water. Maybe that is because there have been times in my life when our running water did not work so well, and I have grown to deeply appreciate it. One of those times happened on Tuesday. Dad went to Omaha for massage clinicals and to pick up the kids from the airport leaving Trina, Leah and myself home for the day. No big deal, we had stuff to do and were enjoying our last quiet day. First thing I started cleaning up the canning stuff left over from the peach jam, including dumping the old canner water down the drain. I came back a few minutes later and it was still in the sink. Strange. I noticed the other side of the sink also had water in it. Hmmm... sometimes they do this airlock thing to each other, maybe I just needed to get a little air going on. Plunging the sink usually does the trick in this situation, so I went to fetch the plunger. On my way I noticed the bathtub in the old bathroom also had water in it. Wow, it must be the day for plugged up drains!

Sure enough, plunging did the trick, although it took alot of work. I literally felt like I was plunging all the water down, not just letting in some air. Oh well, at least that is taken care of. I plunged on the tub a little too, without as much success. I decided to come back to it later, a little water in the tub is no emergency. I finished the dishes and walked past the tub again. Now there is more water in it. Those girls, why didn't they notice it was not draining before they used it!! Some people....
Oddly, those girls had not used the tub. And the water in the tub strangely resembled the stuff that just went down the sink. Hmmm... Sure enough, the tests confirmed what was slowing dawning on my slow little mind. We had running water still, it just was running right down the sink and up the bathtub. It is a big tub but sooner or later... Trina bailed out the tub and we called Dad. He said he knew how to fix it, but he was not going to tell us over the phone (much to my relief) and to just avoid using it as much as possible. We soon discovered that it is easier to bail out the tub every once in a while than use the bathroom sink for everything.
When Benjamin came home, we all gave him big hugs and told him how much we missed him, and took him directly to the plugged drain. He is really quite the handyman. I am not sure what he did, but he started in straight away.
I guess the problem was actually somewhere in the basement. Trina assisted and ended up with a first hand look at what was clogging the drain. Or rather, she did not get out of the way fast enough when it all came out of the pipe... From this picture I would wager to guess a lot of it did not make it into the bucket.

Benjamin fixed the pipe and got it all put back together for us before lunch time. I love having a handyman around!! Oh, and he said there was, well, alot of hair and canning junk and other stuff that was causing the problem. I did not post a picture of it just in case anyone reads my blog on their lunch break...

They're Back!!

And ready to roll!! After a fun packed month with Mom in Washington, the kids made it home in the wee hours of the moring this morning. They hit the ground running though, look for more posts about some of the stuff they did on the first day home coming soon.

Now, to get this all unpacked in some orderly fashion...