Projects, here and there!

This is the work Mike has been doing to shore up the barn roof.
there will be a support post at each end and in the middle.
The middle has a bit of a sag, so he's going to have to
jack it up a bit to get post in place.

Monday, Mike took off early so we could pick up our first

load of hay( from one of two place we're buying it from)

We made two trips and brought home a total of 4 tons of

beautiful grass hay. We have yet another 6 ton to get from

another source and when second cutting of alfalfa is done

we have 4 ton of that on order as well. My Dad helped with

loading hay and unloading onto the hay elevator. I loaded onto

the trailer and truck while Mike stacked and Cortney drove.

I admit getting this hay kicked my rear, and boy did I sleep good!

A whopper of a thunderstorm rolled in yesterday afternoon!

Actually it was a combination of two storms withing half hour of

each other. The first was heavy rain and at the end was hail.

Thankfully it didn't appear to do much damage, other than knock

off some apples, and they needed to be thinned anyway. The

second storm brought lightening and thunder, high winds and an

additional 1/10th inch of rain, added to the 3/10th we'd received

in the first storm.

The tree in the front yard, which we'd planned to get taken down

last winter but life happened instead*sigh*, broke off two more

large branches. I think the plan is to top off the branches and

leave the trunk for this coming winter. It will be nice not having

to deal with broken branches all over the yard and we don't want

fall the trunk as if will leave divots in the yard, so will wait

for the ground to freeze first.

One branch made it to the ground the other is hung up in

the tree yet. One thing is certain this tree won't go to waste,

instead it will be added to our firewood stacks.*wink*

You can see the wildflowers I sowed in the right

of way( to the right of photo), although none are blooming yet.

To the left are hollyhocks( old fashioned singles) and sun chokes.

These run across the front of our main garden plot.

The poppys are just blooming and are one of my favorite flowers

in line with hollyhocks!