Here is the update I included with this photo on the farm page: “God’s handiwork enlightens the sky as we apply #anhydrous to the soil of what is to be a field of corn this coming crop year. #plant17#heritagehappenings #justin“

All true.  The part I left out was that this is the first day or spring work.  So it signifies the beginning of a season of single parenting due to long work days for the hubs.  It means juggling kids’ activities alone.  Sitting on the sidelines by myself., cheering on my runners during their events alone!  The fight that ensues each night when I break it to the kindergartener that it is again….BATH TIME!  Ugh!  He hates bath time and he ain’t afraid to say it.  Loudly, with gusto.  This I have to endure alone. 

Also it means that those small honey-do items in the house will likely not get done until the end of June.  The reality of this photo taken on this day is that it is:

TIME OUT on LIFEand GAME ON for FARM WORK

I’m all in, I’ve got my uniform clean and ready, I’m a gamer and a veteran.

But the first day of field work each season is always a little bitter sweet.

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Here they are working on a project about how nitrogen stays in the soil. Yep.  I can’t tell you much more about it, though I have asked lots of questions. I guess I just don’t share that passion so it doesn’t stick in my brain, but seeing moments like these between two of the people I love the most just warms this mama’s heart.

Besides that, somebody has to worry about the nitrogen and the weed pressure and the fertility and the runoff and the levels and the pH and all of that good stuff around here.  These two seem to be the perfect fit.

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It’s our little tradition to pack our trailers and trucks and campers and hotel rooms full of food and stuff, moms and dads and lots of kids.  And lots of food.  Did I say lots of food?  Lots of kids eat lots of food.  We set up shop at the Illinois State Fair!

Yes, it’s about showing the animals that we have been working on.

Yes, it’s the big crescendo before school starts.

Yes, it’s fair food, and 4H milkshakes.

But a big part of it is these 9 kids right here and how blessed they are to have each other in their lives.

See, their moms have been friends for at least 167 years.  There dads were all AGRs (fraternity boyzzzzzz) and friends (2 at ISU and one U of I alum, but an AGR is and AGR:) 

  You see, this crew, we are deep and wide and long.  A win for one is a win for all.  Likewise a tough loss for one in the ring echos through the camp.

These kids rush from the cattle show ring to the sheep and over to the swine ring watching each other do their thing. Each willing to wash, carry or trim or lead the other’s animal if needed.  Each loving each other in a genuine, unpretentious way that makes their mamas and daddies proud.  

Friends since birth.  Through thick and thin.

YEAH!  IT’S ALMOST HERE!!!  

ISF 2016!!

SSS

(Sorry so sappy, I blame it on these photos we shot last year that keep popping up.)

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Each year my hubs plants millions of seeds, thousands, billions…technically not important here, and look what happens.  That there is God’s grace for us. 

I can’t deny the beauty of it all.  The lush green leaves contrasting with the deep black soil.  The new growth fertilized by the drying and dead remnants of last year’s crop. Beauty.

Acres and acres, miles and miles of fulfilled promises on the backdrop of flat plains and far reaching blue skies. Beauty.

We don’t have mountains or waterfalls or 1,000 lakes or rolling hills here in Central Illinois, but what we DO have is absolutely breathtaking….if you look at it with a thankful heart.

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My kids on the other hand are getting to experience it all.  Rhode Brothers’ Cattle are tied up in the barns at the Illinois State Fair.  The “Nine Is Fine” crew spend their time between the swine, cattle and sheep barns checking on a tending to their animals.  Bonding!

Show days tend to be staggered between the families.  Someone is almost always getting ready for the ring or showing.  So there is ALWAYS something to do.

Sometimes something to do looks like this.  

Back in the day, my girl like flowers in her hair.  Not anymore.  Fifteen year olds don’t wear flowers in their hair in the show ring I guess.

But they do wear blingy belts still.  And they do wear those cute numbers on their blingy belts.

This was a gilt she was working with.  We got out of showing gilts for a few years after this show.  Hubs decided that we needed to focus on barrows.  Gilts are very different than barrows. 

Loving on the pigs.  Important part of the job.

Can you tell I like the little numbers and clips.  Some moms have make up and leotards.  I get exhibitor numbers and boots.  I’ll take it.

Oh, and it was the year of sequined shirts.  She’s going to love reading this post about all things from the past like:
1. sequined shirts
2. jeans that are a little too short with her boots (because of skinny butts and long legs!)
3. gilts
4. flowers in her hair
5. BRACES!

Illinois State Fair 2016, we are excited for you!!  We won’t pack our hair flowers this time!

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1. Showing pigs is addictive, just as a warning, if you try, you might just love it! 

2. Our show pigs are always born in January or February of the show year and shown in the summer.

3. Our pigs ultimately end up in our freezer come fall.

4.  Show pigs have a good life.  They are cared for very, very well.

5. We don’t breed our own pigs, but buy them in the spring and sell them for meat or breeding in the fall. We let someone else, who loves to go out in January and February to care for a ginormous grouchy sow as she gives birth to 152 babies (not really 152, but many) have that pleasure.

6. Pigs each have their own personalities with likes and dislikes as well as eating/drinking/pooping habits.  Like human babies, eating/drinking/pooping = important to monitor.

7. Show pigs make for some fantastic bacon on a lazy Saturday morning in January when breeders are schlepping water to a ginormous sow laying under a heat lamp with 152 babies. I’m gorging myself with thick, black pepper laden slices of bacon.  

8. Our show pigs make some great convenience food when I cook a pork burger in 7 minutes flat to feed MY 152 babies and their friends.

9. Pigs prefer to drink from a nipple system in their pens.  (I should post some pictures of that.  Pink curly pigs’ tongues around that nipple contraption is a funny thang!) Also, the word nipple makes me giggle.  

10. Pigs like you to scratch their bellies, rub behind their ears and lay with them in their pens, while the fans blow on the two of you. 

11. (Bonus) Pigs are smart.

My oldest son was playing hide and seek at the 4H fair with his buddy.  I think hiding next to a 250 lb hunka hunka of love is a great hiding spot, don’t you?  Thanks to my good friend for catching the moment with her camera.

This is Boss Hogg. We heart Boss Hogg.  He is a gentle giant.  He loves the kids.  He is kind.  He is big.  He is pink.  (technically he is white, but it’s my story, he is pink.) 

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I am sure the hubinizer knows just how much rain we have had here in the last month exactly.  I’m just going to say, it taint much! In the hot sun, in the heat of the day, the field corn will curl a little like in this picture. It’s kind of like us squinting our eyes, it just reduces the bright sun’s influence.  

I am so positive the farmers reading this would not choose to describe it like this, but hey, it’s my blog!  Our corn has been doing a lot of squinting these days.  Sadly, it’s been focusing it’s efforts on squinting and wiping sweat from it’s brow and not putting much energy into growing full, healthy cobs full of juicy kernels.  We shall see, but some of the crop looks a bit iffy to say the least.  

On another matter, no matter the weather, this 1972ish golf cart is our number one go to entertainment around here.  This belonged to my husband’s grandparents who used it to tool around their yard and pond.  We inherited it many years ago and it is a staple.  

My advice:  if it’s feasible.  BUY ONE OF THESE BABIES FOR YOUR KIDS!  It’s fairly slow, you almost can’t tear it up (though we have done some damage over the years) and it’s cheap to run.  

Just do it.

You’ll see a lot of this baby on my blog.  I should name her.

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We have to tear out all of our old flooring. Boo Hiss.

The floor you see here is the third floor we are tearing out of our kitchen.  We had:

1. hardwood

2. linoleum

3. underlayment

3. this linoleum type stuff

4. black foamy, sticky yuck

This floor covering is very, very old.  Great Grandma who lived in this home for 40 years starting in the 40’s doesn’t remember this flooring.  So it is OLD!  

This flooring was what my kids’ great great grandparents walked on.  Wow.  Call me sentimental, but that is neat history there.  

We also had to tear out carpet from what we call our great room.  The carpet was a breeze. After the carpet, we had to remove the underlayment.  Whoever built this house for the hubbinizer’s grandma did a fab job.  They put more nails in that floor than I can fathom.   Each nail had to be pulled by hand.  We called in the troops and everybody started pulling nails.  Even Grandma MiMi. She’s a trooper….

 Our Tack Strip man on the crowbar.  Eight year old destruction on the loose!

Seriously, it’s 2012, and ramming a little claw-nosed crow bar under 25689300000 nails is the best plan we had?  Where is the inventor of the drill bit that digs these babies out with one pull of the trigger?  

This is the black-foamy-sticky-yuck that’s left on top of the original wood floors. 

All the work will be worth it when the new floors are in! 

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When you show pigs you need MANY items to get going.  One of these things is “bling bling” jeans and a shiny belt.  For the record, this belt doesn’t cut the mustard, but is going to have to do (says mom.) Look at that cool clip to clip of her number, yup, gotta have one of those special clips too!!

We are at national show here that is held at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. There were over 1000 pigs here for this event.  Pretty awesome I’d say!  The temperature is 102 so that’s rough on all these pigs who are already out of their element by being at the show, but you know what? PIGS DON’T SWEAT!  So you gotta keep them cool or they keel over.  Read—very bad deal for show pigs to die! 

Look at all of those fans!  The barns weren’t really all THAT hot, with all of the fans going.  The kids and adults were very, very busy watering down and washing off the pigs to keep them cool during this heat.  

The picture above is just one of the reasons we dove into this pig showing business.  Daddy and daughter sweating it out, working hard, taking care of something outside of themselves.  We walk, feed and wash these pigs 2-3 times a day.  That’s what SUMMER BREAK is for us. You know what, we love it!  It’s teaching hard work and responsibility and animal husbandry.  Love it.

The show ring is the center of it all.  We primp, wash, clip, spray, feed, water, walk, exercise and weigh the pigs in anticipation of the moments spent in the ring.  The showmanship is important too.  Presenting the pigs just so to the judge.  Such a fun dance it all is! We don’t have the best of the best hogs.  We are just beginners, but we are still competitive even at a big show like this.  At county fairs, now that’s more comfortable territory, but it is all great!

Little man is always right there in the heat of it all.  A pig bit his tiny arm this summer trying to eat the marshmallow he was holding. Luckily he just had a little bruise on his arm, but he was m.a.d. that the pig slobbered on his flip flop.  Though he will tell you each time he sees a pig in a picture book: “pig bite you,” that doesn’t stop him.  He’s in it to win it.  Or maybe I should say, he’s in it because we are.  Slopping the hogs with dad looks fun doesn’t it?

Though the middle guy doesn’t want to show pigs this year, and didn’t want a pig of his own, he is there to help.  (A bit of parenting advice from me: buy your kid a hog sprayer like this.  I mostly only see orange ones, and it’s probably not safety tested but it’s worth HOURS of entertainment for kids of all ages.)  We are making this a true family event, where we all have a role, we all work hard, we all take care of the livestock and each other.  Most of all why we love it…we are doing it together!    

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A little history for you…when we were first married, we lived in a nice mid-sized tenant house on a nearby farm.  It was just perfect for us.  We fixed it up a little and lived with it’s imperfections, as it was an old house.  In fact, I guess you could say we sort of loved it’s imperfections.  It was down a long lane, with only Amish folks for neighbors, which was a little unnerving, because I wanted to know I could call my neighbors on the phone in the night when I was terrified.  Which never occurred, so not an issue, but yaknowwhatImean…..  seven or so years into our marriage it was time to move into a different school district to be “home.”  Our oldest was entering school in a year and we HAD to be in our home district!  Multiple generations of this family went to our home district, so it was unthinkable that we wouldn’t!     So, we moved into my Hubby’s parents’ home and they moved to a new home.  This made our kiddos the sixth generation to live here in this house.  Now THAT is awesome!  Hubs and I knew from the day we got married and lived in that little tenant house, that we would want to raise our kids right here in the country, right here where their history was.  Right here where are roots are.  It’s pretty cool when two people agree so whole-heartedly on those important kind of things, ya know? 

So when a cousin brought us this photo she had found of Hubs’ grandpa swinging on our front porch, I was elated.  My baby plays right there in that spot. In the footsteps of his great grandfather.  Though I never met him, his grandfather was a kind hearted, genuine man with a love for farming and a heart of gold.  Many people say that my husband resembles his grandfather in many ways physically and in temperament.  He must have been a great guy then!

I am thankful for all that Great Grandpa did for this family and for this farm.  I am thankful for the path that he established for our family and for the integrity that he engrained.  I wonder what he would think of farming in 2011?  I know he farmed with no cabs, no air conditioning, no gps and no variable rate technology.  How things have changed in 100 years!

Maybe I ought to go sweep the inch of dust off that old porch floor now and read a few blogs out there on my iphone?  Grandpa would be pretty amazed at that I am sure.

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