Sugar Creek Farm

The softball season will officially end on Wednesday. Coming up next, the county fair! The girls have been working on their 4-H projects and are now in the “scramble to get things wrapped up” phase before judging begins next week.

Olivia belongs to the 4-H saddle club, which holds twice-weekly “workouts” for horses & riders starting in May. It’s been fun to see her grow so much in confidence and ability in just the last couple of months. From the girl to told me so emphatically, “I’m not doing bareback!” to this…

Bareback at a trot, even!

A demonstration of the pivot…

And from the girl who also emphatically informed me, “I’m not loping the barrels, I’ll just trot thankyouverymuch!” to this…

3 years ago:

View from the cheap seats

Madeline at the pitchers mound

I promise, the softball posts will end soon! And then we’ll be back to the farming. But farm girls make the best athletes, don’t you think? 😉

I made Madeline a mix CD iTunes playlist (yes, I’m slowly stepping into the 21st century here), a bunch of songs to get her fired up and ready to compete. I hate to say, “She’s too nice”, like it’s a bad thing, but she is too nice sometimes when it comes to sports.

The funny thing is, out of all the songs I put together for her, the one she likes best is that 80’s old school LL Cool J rap, “Mama Said Knock You Out”. Only she changes it up a bit to “Mama said strike you out!”

Don’t you dare stare
You betta move
Don’t ever compare
Me to the rest
That’ll all get sliced and diced
Competition’s payin’ the price!

I’m gonna strike you out!
Mama said strike you out!

4 years ago:

Strawberry Haiku

Sweet ripe strawberry
Oh fleeting taste of summer
Staining fingers red

3 years ago:

Duck, duck, gone

A ball game every night this week, Monday thru Friday, and then 3 coming up on Sunday. But as I wrote last year, I love every minute of it. So fun to see how the girls grow and improve from year to year. Next year will be interesting when Rafe gets to play, too. We may just have to pitch a tent on the ball field.

Here’s Olivia at bat…

coming into 3rd…

One of her best friends was playing 3rd base on the other team – she didn’t get Liv out and they were making faces at each other 🙂

Olivia even got a home run last week!

4 years ago:

Daily deposit

I don’t have very good pictures of the flood. I took a bunch of video, which I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to upload to YouTube. Hopefully I’ll get that figured out, because I also did a little farm tour while I was at it. But for now I’ll post what few still photos I did take.

This is a picture from a couple of years ago. Notice the water level compared to the culverts under the road it flows through.

And here’s a picture from last Sunday morning. You can’t even see the tops of the culverts, and at this point the water had already dropped a couple of feet from its crest. Hard to believe our little creek could get that big!

We pasture the chickens on the other side of the creek. With the water over the road we couldn’t get there the usual way. Our neighbors on that side called that morning and offered to feed the chickens for us. We have the best neighbors! But Matt & I decided we needed to get some feed out there and started off in search of another route around. A couple of other roads we tried were also under water, but finally 10 miles later we were a quarter mile from home.

Here’s the view from the chicken pen. Waterfront dining!

And here’s the view looking back towards the barnyard. The creek flooded right up to that red gate.

Now the cows will have to stay locked up a couple of weeks until the grass in the pasture is back in shape for them to graze, and Matt has replaced all of the fence that the flood wiped out. The main concern now is running out of hay before we can get them back on grass! We’re on the hunt for some to buy…

Minor inconveniences compared to what so many are dealing with.

3 years ago:

Ava, 3 months

Our Sugar Creek travels from here to the south of Osage on its way to the Cedar River (which is flooding at record levels from Austin, Minnesota all the way down to Cedar Rapids, Iowa). Just before it reaches the Cedar it passes by what’s known as Lime Kiln Road. At some point some years back our county decided to re-route the creek and eliminate a bridge.

Last weekend Sugar Creek decided it liked it’s old route better.

It will be interesting to see what they do with it now.

Sugar Creek riding away into the sunset

4 years ago:

Spinach, yum!

Sorry to have gone MIA in the midst of all the weather phenomena happening around these parts this week! Most of my absence can be explained by the softball schedule, rather than the weather. We are fine and have experienced only minor inconveniences due to flooding, compared to what others are dealing with. Thank you to everyone that’s shown concern for us!

My aunt took this picture from her front door last night, and I begged it off her to share with you all. Isn’t it amazing?!? This would be about 7 miles southeast of us. They showed it on the news last night, and the weather guy said it wasn’t a tornado but a wall cloud. Sure looks tornado-y and scary enough to me!

More later…

Candy’s got the summertime nap down pat.

4 years ago:

Early morning at the chicken pen

This white rock hen was one of my very first, purchased as a day-old chick 4 years ago. White Rocks are nice hens, docile and pleasant to have around.

She’s never hatched out chicks before, though. We generally take all eggs out from under broody hens. But she must have hidden herself away in a nest somewhere on the farm other than the coop. And now she can be seen out and about with her 5 little puffballs. So cute! She seems to be a much better mom than the ducks, who typically lose the majority of their babies somehow.

3 years ago:

Sissy’s little helper

Found objects

2 years ago:

Fourteen

Clutzy, with a Capital C

1 year ago:

Dumb clucks

Burt says, “Good Morning”