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Posted on Saturday, July 06, 2013

Rain, Rain & More Rain

The rain had been coming for three days. It seemed like forever though. The creek remained in it's banks, but nearly over flowed two or three times. I had to take the 4 wheel drive tractor across the creek to clean out the ditch where we had put in some culvert tiles to make a crossing. The limbs had clogged the tiles and I had to use the back hoe to remove the debris so the water could flow through the tiles. The creek water was deep enough to hit the bottom of the tractor and splash me as I drove across. The tractor was heavy enough the water didn't push it downstream very much. On the 4th of July, we were supposed to have a car show for the Cruisers. I thought it was canceled and Linda and I sat at home watching it rain. A little before 10 AM, a phone call notified me that they were going ahead with the show in the rain. We went to the Park and there were only a handful of people that showed up, mostly our club members. Instead of postponing the car show, they decided to give everyone there a dash plaque, a trophy and a door prize. We never entered any vehicle, so we didn't take a trophy or door prize. The second wettest July 4th on record and we had a car show? Bizarre! The Nashville weather reports were that we had received over 8 inches of rain in the last three days.

I'm glad it didn't all come on one day. Finally, about 7 PM on my birthday, the sun came out and we were able to walk out the front door and view a double rainbow. For a few minutes it looked like the rainbow ended in our front yard. Seeing it in person, the colors were a lot more vivid than what shows on the picture.
 

Posted by Dave at 9:00 PM
Categories: Current Events, Farm


Posted on Saturday, July 13, 2013

Week Events

Linda and Stacey left Monday morning to go to IN. I had to mow the grass after a week of rain after they left. I spent most of the day doing that. During the week, I went to town and paid the excise taxes on some of our vehicles and brought the stickers back for the license plates. I also renewed my driver license while I was in town. We had been having problems with the HHR, so I managed to drive it to Don Franklin GMC/Chevy and have it repaired. They brought me back to the farm and picked me up when the repairs had been made. The HHR needed a new PCM, which is an acronym for a Power Control Module, that cost me $520 including the labor. But anyway, now it is running and we can drive the car. Linda and Stacey returned home Thursday and brought Julie and Kyle with them. They picked the kids up on the way home. Oh, they also had Pico and Poco. Pauline and Brent are in Louisville for the weekend to run a swim meet. Since we had so much rain here on July 4th, the town had postponed the celebration activities until this weekend. We took Julie and Kyle to the park and I let them play on the playground equipment while Linda and Stacey looked around. Then we let the kids get wet on the inflatable water slide the town had setup.
 
  
I stood at the end and watched while using a water hose to spray all the kids that were sliding down towards me. It gave the other people that had been working a break as I maintained order to keep kids from going too quickly and sliding into other kids. Julie and Kyle played on the slide for about an hour, until I could see a dark rain cloud headed towards town. They were getting tired and didn't argue much when we decided to go back to the farm. We just made it back before the rain came pouring down. After watching a cartoon movie, we headed back to town around 8:30 PM to watch the fireworks. We parked really close, opened the back of the HHR and grabbed our folding chairs, set them on the grass and a few minutes after 9 PM the show started. Julie started to try to back up, because we were too close to see it all, but we told her it was OK and to just slide down in her chair so she would be looking up all the time. That worked. The fireworks were going off right above our heads, about 400 feet up in the air. When the finale was over, we folded up our chairs and I drove back to the farm. Linda had to keep both the kids talking so they wouldn't go to sleep on the 6 mile trip. When I pulled inside the garage, Julie and Kyle wanted to go to bed! Linda and I knew we had done good when the kids were wanting to go to bed instead of arguing about staying up. LOL

Posted by Dave at 10:30 PM
Categories: Current Events, Farm


Posted on Monday, July 15, 2013

Julie's Jam

Julie and Kyle have been picking blackberries while at the farm. Kyle has been eating the ones he picks and Julie has been putting hers in containers and keeping them in the refrigerator. Each day she would ask if she had enough to make jelly and I would tell her not yet. This time, she had enough, so Linda washed the berries while Julie and I gathered up the things we needed to make the jam. Five jars were the first thing we placed on the cabinet, then the Jam & Jelly Maker. We measured out the sugar, then the pectin. Julie and Linda mulched the berries, then Julie poured the container of mulched berries into the jam maker, added a pat of butter and pressed the buttons to start the process. I placed a pot on the stove and put the jars in it, then Julie filled it with water to the proper level and I turned on the heat. Julie watched the timer on the jam maker and added the sugar when it beeped four times. Seventeen minutes later, we took off the lid and Julie began dipping the jam into the jar. I stressed the point that the jam was really hot and she would have to be careful. She did it without any problems.
  
Julie set the lids on the jars and I set the jars back into the hot water. We boiled the water for ten minutes and then Julie lifted the jars out of the water with the tool and set them on the stove to cool.
  
We listened for the jar lids to make the familiar pop sound as they cooled and sealed.
This morning during breakfast, I printed 5 labels for Julie to stick on her jam. We cut the labels and she stuck them to the sides of the jars.
  
Julie's Jam was officially finished. Oh, we opened one jar and tasted the jam, it was delicious!

Posted by Dave at 8:00 AM
Categories: Current Events, Farm


Posted on Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Swim Lessons

When Linda brought Julie and Kyle home with Stacey and her, I mentioned that we should sign them up for swimming lessons. The Twin Lakes Wellness Center in Albany was teaching classes for the week Julie and Kyle were staying at the farm. We called and made arrangements to go over later that day and pay for the lessons, which we did while eating lunch near the facilities. The classes are at 6 PM on Monday through Friday. The facilities are nearly new and the kids liked the looks of the pool before ever going in the water. Once they had their suits on and were in the water, it was like taking a bath, splishing and splashing all over the place.
  
It worked out nicely, they had a few minutes to play before the instructor called the class over to the edge of the deeper water. I kept sending Kyle back to the rope and telling him to pay attention, but he was doing better than the other boys in the group. Kyle was so small, his lower body mass let him get fairly cold and he wanted to quit early. We let him out of the pool to sit on the edge and then sent him back in when it was his turn for training.
  
Funny thing about Kyle being cold, when we were walking out towards the dressing room, Julie and Kyle wanted to go down the water slide. I asked Kyle if he wasn't too cold, he said "Nope, I want to go down the green slide!" OK then, we put a life jacket on him and they both went down the slides. That last picture is Kyle hitting the water as he exits the slide while Julie is climbing the ladder to get out of the pool.

Posted by Dave at 7:00 AM
Categories: Current Events


Posted on Sunday, July 21, 2013

Friends At Dale Hollow

Pauline and Brent came over early Friday and we all loaded into their Traverse and went to Albany and ate sandwiches and then to the Clinton County Wellness Center. It is the place that we were taking Julie and Kyle for the swimming lessons. Brent put his swim suit on and swam laps while the kids were taking lessons.
Saturday morning the phone rang early, it was Lana and Frank Dial on their way to KY from IN. They told us they had a caravan of people following them and wanted us to meet everyone on Dale Hollow Lake later in the day. We agreed. After breakfast, we readied our stuff, greased the kids down with sun screen, packed the coolers and left for the lake about 10 AM. Brent filled the boat with gas and I drove the truck with everyone in it and the boat behind. Boats were lined up waiting when we pulled into the dock area at the State Park, but after a short wait, it was our turn to launch. There were three other boats backed into the water's edge when I placed the Sea Ray between two of them and we moved our gear to the boat. In less than two minutes we had the boat running and I was backing it off the trailer, Brent was parking the truck and trailer. We picked him up at the courtesy dock and away we went to Eagle's Cove. After about a 10 minute ride, we stopped, anchored and went swimming. Time passed quickly as we were having fun, soon the people from IN were a little late, then they were about an hour late. We decided to get in the boat and ride over to where they were supposed to be launching at Star Point. We found them just leaving the dock, they said they had trouble checking into their cabins. OK, not a big deal, so we headed back to the original meeting spot near Eagle's Cove. Soon, Karen and Steve Wilson arrived with another couple, then Susan & Danny Rockhill, next were Lana & Frank with Jennifer and Jeff and their two kids, finally Bonnie and Donnie Cox with Julie and JR and their two kids. Those were the people I knew, there were two more boats that also joined us, but if you know me, I can't remember their names. The rest of afternoon we played in the water, drank and ate until time to head back to the farm.
Sunday morning was rainy and we hadn't planned on going to the lake anyway, so we took it easy and slept in. After breakfast, we took Daisy for a run. Linda had bought a box of peaches and she peeled most of them while we were messing with Daisy, so when we returned they were ready to make into jam. Pauline had brought enough blackberries to make 10 half pints of jam, so we did those too. We made about 20 half pints of peach preserves.
 

Posted by Dave at 6:30 PM
Categories: Boating, Current Events, Farm


Posted on Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Wednesday Boat Trip

Brent came over with his family this morning to go back to Dale Hollow. Linda had picked up ingredients for cooler hoagies so Pauline and her made them before we left. It was cloudy, so I checked the radar and the forecast before we pulled the boat out of the pole barn and headed to the lake. It was my turn to fill up the gas tank on the boat, but I got off easy with it only racking up $48 and change. A few minutes later, I backed the boat down to the water, everyone climbed in and Brent drove the boat away from the trailer. I parked the truck and trailer in the lower lot and walked back to the courtesy dock where they picked me up. This time the meeting place was about a 30 minute ride across the lake and towards Sunset Dock to Jolly Creek. We were just slightly behind Lana and Frank Dial with their daughter's family riding along.
 
We pulled into Jolly Creek and anchored then went swimming while more and more boats joined the group. Some were having private conversations while others were in a large group.
  
We spent most of the day right there, mingling with others and visiting different boats. We even stretched a ski rope from one boat to another to keep people from drifting away. LOL There were about twice as many people as are in the picture and several more boats, just slightly out of view. After saying so long to everyone, we returned to the farm and Julie and Kyle decided to stay with us the rest of the week. Pauline and Brent left for their house around 6:45 PM.

Posted by Dave at 10:30 AM
Categories: Boating, Current Events


Posted on Friday, July 26, 2013

Small Lake Crew

The phone rang early this morning, it was our neighbor Stevie Riddle. He had just finished working the night shift and was buying some sweet corn. We asked him to get us two dozen ears. He delivered it to the house about an hour later at 7:30 AM. We had some hot biscuits and freshly made peach preserves that we shared with him while we talked. After Stevie left, we slowly prepared for another trip to the lake. This time it was just Julie, Kyle, Stacey, Linda and I going, so we didn't need as much stuff, but it was more work without Pauline and Brent not being there to help. Everything went smoothly and around 10:30 AM we were boating away from the dock area and heading out on fairly smooth water. We called on the marine radio to see if any of the people from IN were still at the lake, but received no replies. We were on our own today, so we found a nice cove and went swimming. Everyone was wanting to eat, so we went to Wisdom Dock and tied the boat to the pier and went inside. Once done eating, we rode across the lake to Pusley Creek and took some time for swimming.

This is where Julie and Kyle spotted a yellow butterfly floating on top of the water. They watched for a while, then decided it was in trouble and they would help. Julie and Kyle were both afraid to touch it, so they gently splashed water till the butterfly was near the boat. Linda lifted it out of the water and laid the butterfly on the boat cushions.
  
We all watched as the butterfly began drying out and slowly flapping it's wings. It fluttered into the air, but only made it far enough to land on Stacey's shirt as everyone watched closely. It was a good chance for the kids to see it up close.
  
Once again, the butterfly fluttered into the air, this time it flew a little farther and landed in the bottom of the boat. I took a picture of them on the back of the boat before we left the area.
 
The boat traffic had picked up quite a bit as the weekenders were arriving. The butterfly rode along with the boat for a good ways, then finally flew off as we headed towards the dock. Julie and Kyle were glad it was going to be OK.

Posted by Dave at 7:00 AM
Categories: Boating, Current Events