Missing Home

As I write this, I have been gone from home for 20 days. 20 long days and I miss it. I miss Barb, I miss Dakota and yes, I even miss Zoey. I miss waking up and looking down our valley at the turkeys and deer wandering around. I miss the sound of Zoey snoring. I miss my morning hugs from Barb, I miss our shower, I miss Wednesday nights with Dan, Bonnie, Kevin and Cheryl, my sore body misses our hot tub. I miss our happy hours with our neighbor. I miss having the fun that Barb is having with Forrest, Somer and Lily and I miss even working on the house.

It seems, the older I get the more I miss these things. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy coming up here, seeing everyone and helping out. The days go quick and before I know it, the fields will be all planted and Barb will join me for the next leg of our summer adventure. Part of me wants to just go back to South Dakota and enjoy the summer there. But I would regret that and wish we would have followed through with our original plans. So, when we are done here, we will carry on.

I also enjoy driving the country roads and seeing and photographing the local wildlife. And I got some good ones this week! My goal is to photograph each of the waterfowl species here. This week I got a couple of new ones. The Gadwall, Widgeon and Ruddy duck. All pretty in their own right. In this first shot you will see an out of focus pintail hen, but she was not the subject of this photo. The real subjects were the pair of American Widgeon in center. The drake has a distinctive light blue bill.

The Ruddy duck has been a favorite of mine since I was a small child as I spent hours watching them on the local pond in our neighborhood. 

Then there is the Gadwall. Not the most colorful duck in the world, but still pretty in its own right. One of my favorite stories about the Gadwall is when I took a guy out hunting who wanted to get a prime example of a species to bring to his taxidermist and have mounted. Every duck he shot that day he asked if it was good enough to mount. None were really prime examples of the species, so I kept saying no. He finally got a beautiful drake Gadwall, a duck he had never seen or shot before. After retrieving his bird, I excitingly said "You got your mount'in duck!" He seemed pretty excited too and when we got back to camp, he started telling everyone he got a Mountain Duck. The experienced duck hunters looked at him weird knowing there is no such species. I had to explain to him that it was not a Mountain Duck but a duck to take the taxidermist to get mounted. He got a rash of sh#t from his buddies the rest of the trip as they asked him what kind of ducks he shot the next day. 

A pair of Gadwalls

Drake Gadwall

Then there is the challenge of getting some aerial photos of each. My goal this week was to try to get some good shots of a flying Pintail. A real challenge, trying to get them in the frame and in focus. I am pretty impressed with some of my shots. I could not decide which ones I liked the best, so I included all of the ones I liked. 

Two pintail drakes taking off

Mallard and Pintail drakes  

Then I got this sequence of a Redhead taking off. These are diver ducks, so they run on the water when taking off. 

These last two here of Blue-wing teal and Gadwall

Besides the waterfowl, I got pictures of this yellow-headed blackbird and a couple of mammals as well. This moose has been hanging around on one of their pieces of property all winter and I caught this fox running across an open field. 

 

The weather this week has been a roller coaster. Tuesday, we saw a high over 80, Thursday the high was 45 with strong winds. Wednesday, we got a gift from Canada in the form of smoke. When we woke up in the morning it was bright and clear. By 9am, you could not even see a 1/4 mile. 

The rain is holding off allowing us to spend most of the day in the field getting seed in the ground.  Let's see, this week we got 240, 360, 280, 185 and 250 acres done each day. Farmer Bob got his seeder out a couple days so with two of them going they were able to get some knock off some acreage. My guess is that there is roughly 1,700 acres left. It will be close as to whether or not it will get all done while I am still here. 

I have been busy loading trucks and carts to get out in the field or for seed customers, The seed business is busy this time of year with other farmers arriving daily to pick up their seed.  They have a scale on the cart so you can tell exactly how much is going out and charge the customers accordingly.

A cart full of wheat

 Oh, Bob S and I even got to pick rock a couple of times this week. And no, not with a rock picker, with our hands walking through the field and loading them into the truck or tractor bucket. Good times. Reminded me of when I was a teenager and helped out some farmer friends back in the day. The only difference is that I am a lot sorer when I wake up in the morning. 

Bob S left on Friday morning, it was great spending the last 18 days with him. I have not seen him that much since we were back in high school 40 something years ago. His departure means I get to get back in the tractor and roll the pea and bean fields! Because they cut so close to the ground when they harvest peas and beans, they roll the fields after planting so any remaining rocks are pushed back into the soil and do not damage the combine when harvesting. 

You would think staying right here on the farm I would see DeAnne a little more often, but I only get glimpses or have brief conversations while passing from one task to another. I captured this shot while driving by in a pickup when she was mowing the lawn. 

Chase, Chris and Holly's middle child graduated from kindergarten this week. Holly is pretty camera shy, but I was able to steal this one off of Facebook. 

Here are he and Gavin holding up a couple of chickens.

I have received several complaints about not including enough dog pictures, so I asked Barb to send me a few. She sent this one of Zoey and Chloe playing in the living room. 

Then there are the furbabies here on the farm. There are actually 3 dogs and 2 cats. As far as I know, this cat does not have a name. We just call it The Cat. And then there is poor Remy, he is wearing the cone of shame due to an abscess on his paw.

This is Forrest's last week at our house and they made the most of it with more hiking, fishing and a cave tour.

Lily and Barb each with a bass and Forrest with a nice crappie that went home for supper!

Barb had this bird visit our feeder, we have not seen this species before, anyone know what it is?

That's it for this week. I will leave you with this picture of me (double chin and all) drinking one of Dylan's beers at the end of the day. I texted it to Dylan, who was still out working. He must have hurt his hand because the picture I got back was of him holding up one of his fingers. I hope he didn't hurt it too bad!