Beastie Boys

We have a joke here in our family.  It’s about head size.  Bigger heads, melon heads, pumpkin heads, etc, etc, run in the family.  This is the oldest boy, his head is LARGE and in charge.  “Big Head, Little Hole” was our joke when he was little and I was always cramming his melon into those cute little baby shirts. 

 

Well, he has met his match mister!  BZ (his name is really Cesar, but he doesn’t answer to that) BZ must have been the previous owners’ kid-slang for Cesar.  Anyhoo, BZ wins the big noggin’ contest here.  Hands down!

I love this blurry, fuzzy impromptu picture of the Boy and Beast.  They are pals.

Beastie Boys! Holla! Woof!

Your Crack Is Showing

I couldn’t avoid a good hiney joke.  My husband recommended a title like…  “Dry Ground” or “Crack in the Dirt.”  I however, had to GO THERE!  Your Crack is Showing….that’s me:)
I digress….
This is the sweet, little, dirty hand of my 7-year-old.  That’s the good news.
The bad news is, his hand is being swallowed up by a huge crack in a corn field caused by the hot and dry weather we have been having here in Central Illinois this summer.
Big deep cracks are not a welcome site around these parts.  We’ve got no use for ‘em I tell ya.  The corn doesn’t like them and the farmer doesn’t like them.  But little boys think they are kinda cool!

 

Guess The Combine Part

For some of you this will be easy, for others, well, not so much.  See if you know what these parts of the combine are.  I took these pictures when the baby and I went to visit the guys in the field yesterday.  It was an absolute lovely day here and they were taking corn out of a field near the house.    The baby and I were out putting in some sweat equity hanging out with the guys  :) and took a few weird shots.  Did you catch that sarcasm?

Answer: A window to the “hopper.”  This is where the corn goes after it goes through the combine. 

Answer: Corn Head.  These are the tine thingies that lead the combine.  They are mean.  Don’t go near them, they’ll gobble you up!

Answer:  Deck in between corn head and combine.  It gets a little piled with husks.  They always blow these off before tucking the combines in at night to prevent fires.

 

Did you get them all right?  I hope you did!  If not, well then maybe you learned something new. 

 

We’re From the Country

After writing the last post about harvest season Opening Day, I just can’t resist this.  We find ourselves singing it often.  I find myself annoying my children belting out this song!

 

It’s a We’re From the Country type of season.

 

Kids are singin’ it now!  We’re all shouting it out!  Harvest in the country?  Bring it on!

 

Bring It On Home

This here, is what we do.  We started the day before yesterday.  It’s a big deal.  Trust me.  A VERY big deal.  I like to call it Opening Day.  The excitement is palpable.  People are giddy with excitement, the place is a hopping!  Okay, giddy with excitement doesn’t exactly describe a bunch of farmers, but you get my point.

Harvest time really is a big deal, it’s when the fruits of our labors are counted and tallied, semi load by semi load.

    

Just in case you are a farming newbie…there are two combine there, they dump into that tractor that has an auger wagon attached to it.  They are talented folks!  They dump into the auger “on the go!”  It’s a bit of a sin around here for the combine to stop much.

The auger to the semi, the semi to bin or elevator for storage.  That’s how we roll!

 

Happy Harvest season all!

You Tube, the Ultimate Learning Tool

 

I was working on this this morning, making a dream come true playing Good Hearted Woman on the bass?  Is this normal for a thirty something mom of 3 to be doing on a sunny Saturday morning?  Ummm…prolly not. 

 

Ye Old bass needed tuning, so instead of getting up to tune it with a piano, YouTube to the rescue!  How cool is that?

 

Bow, bow, bow, bow!  Happy Sunny Saturday!  Harvest is almost here…can’t wait!

 

A Beast on the Loose

These two are our welcoming crew.  When visitors come here, these two don’t often miss them.  They are buds, stuck together like peas and carrots, carrots and peas.  They aren’t big barkers, but they sure can chase a mean buggy.  Poor, poor Amish buggies that pass our house a million times a day get a little escort from these guys, especially the big one.  I wonder what the occupants of the buggies must have thought the first few trips by when we first got that big guy.

 

We got him as a full grown boy.  We thought long and hard about getting a new dog.  I got a hankering for a new dog one Saturday morning and drove two hours the next day to pick up this beast.  You can’t tell it from here, but he is 145 lbs and on his hind legs, he is taller than a grown man.  I enlisted my poor dad to go pick up this monster with me in a van.  When the owner let him off the chain he had to stay on, he was a runner and a bit on the hyper side.  In case you didn’t know, hyper + 145 lb + paws the size of dinner plates=a nervous new owner.  He, right off scratched my dad and made his arm bleed with those enormous claws and then continued to run and run and run! No so good I’m thinkin’.

The previous owners were very concerned that we had enough space for this guy to run.  I tried to convince her over the phone that we were good.  She was emphasizing the importance of this, until I sent her a photo that was taken from a plane.  Then she KNEW we were a fit!  I understood why she felt that way once we saw him in action.

 

Remember that two hour drive I told you about, it suddenly seemed like a 200 hour drive with a dog like that loose in the van! Needless to say brother calmed down after the first half hour or so, but that head was a bit intimidating as he rode the whole time right between the driver’s and the passenger’s seat.  That head, THAT HEAD is no joke WAY bigger than a basketball!  Cesar, as they called him, rode steadily all the way home, roosted in the middle of us, heads in line.  He was good as gold and has been since the day he arrive here on the farm. 

 

He spends his time following us around, licking the baby’s face, trying to sit our laps and sleeping.  Lots and lots of sleeping! 

 

The boy hasn’t been one minute of trouble.  He’s loyal and protective.  He’s good with the kids, but will make a grown man think twice before entering our yard.  That’s our boy! 

They love to play in the ditches on a warm summer day.  Hi guys! 

 

But they can be a little camera shy!