Big Thunderstorm

It's VBS time at church, and while outside snapping pictures of the kids, I took this picture of a HUGE thunderstorm building way east of Heyworth. The church office is in the foreground. We say a few passing storms like this over the weekend.

The hay is in the barn

We baled hay last week. Well, we TRIED to bale hay last week. The 1982 IH baler I bought last year has been a bit of a pain this year. It missed 1 out of every 4 bales. This made for a VERY long baling day. We did end up getting 205 bales of good grass hay before we gave up. With just three of us raking, baling, picking up, and stacking, we were bushed at the end of the day. We ended up leaving a good amount of windrows unbaled.

This week we got the baler fixed. Regina figured out that we were missing a spring under one of the knotters. I fixed this and we got 84 bales of really dry nasty hay out of the remaining windrows. We stacked this up outside, because the horses wouldn't eat it. We need hay at the fire department training site to burn, so we may have enough practice fire fuel for a year.

Heather and Patrick and family visited back in May. How come they never come when it is time to bale? Anyway, Heather is a camera expert and she took some excellent shots. Here's one I'll share for you. This is the sunset we are treated to most nights, here on the farm.

Welcome to June. Wait, where was MAY?

I can't believe I've been away from the blog for over a month. The garden is doing well, and the hay REALLY needs to be cut and baled. We have gotten a record amount of rainfall this spring and early summer. We've seen 4 inches this week alone. The farmers are hating life over here in Central Illinois. There are a lot of fields that still haven't been planted, and even more that are under water. There will be a lot of corn lost this year. School is out, so the girls are having a ball running around the farm. If I could only get them to wash their feet before going to bed. Yuk!