Thanksgiving

A bit slow with the Thanksgiving post but here we go. The entire family was at my folks and I do believe it safe to say, "a good time was had by all."

Lacey, Catie, Parker, Kyle & Kalynn at the game table.

The back massage line.

Story time by the funny guy, Parker.

Elliott always finds time to toss in a line...

Too nice to be indoors

I went hunting with my camera

Dad showed his lefse making skills and quite frankly, he is pretty good.

Deer Season

Deer season is now over for IL shotgun hunters. Kyle and I enjoyed two days in the field the Fri. & Sat. before Thanksgiving and two more days this past Fri. & Sat. The first season we saw fewer deer than normal but I was able to harvest a doe the evening of day two. Second season was more interesting in several ways. First the weather. We awoke to find the mercury suspended at the number 10 on Friday morning. The day was beautiful & sunny and it's surprising how long you can be in the cold... when it's not windy! We both got deer on Friday AM. The photo shows Kyle with his doe and mine is in the background. I bagged another doe on Friday evening.

Saturday was warmer but the wind! Whew, it never let up all day. The day started at 32 degrees, warmed up to about 36, then the wind shifted to the North and by the end of the day was in the 20's.. and still windy! We did have more success as I got another doe Sat. morning and Kyle doggedly kept at it until he got his second deer of the season late Saturday afternoon. We hurriedly packed our gear, our deer and made the 2.5 hour trek home, pulling our trailer with the 5 deer on board, arriving home about 10:15 PM.

The one deer I'd gotten first season is in the freezer of course. Now we get to tackle 5 at once! Perhaps there will be a photo later on that subject!

Fall Colors

Colors came later than normal this year. Just for fun, here are 3 photos from the few I took.

Basement Project

"Ongoing" takes on a new meaning with some of my projects. Including the current work in the basement which has been going on since... actually I don't even know. Brenda probably does.

Phase one is to create a laundry room - with storage. So it started by reworking some wiring, some plumbing, moving a floor drain, then putting up some walls and all the other things that go with a remodel.

Some photos:
Facing the south wall with stairway to the left. (Long ago)

Same as above with some drywall up, 6' wide storage area roughed in and floor down . (Recent)

Now looking in from the door to the left. (Long Ago)

And from the door & slightly right. (Long Ago)

Now the current photo...

Harvest

The past several years during harvest I work for John, a local farmer. My job is to drive his "auger wagon". When he as a hopper full on the combine, I drive along side while he unloads corn or beans from the combine on-the-go. Then I transfer the grain into wagons or a semi that will head to the elevator. This photo was after John had finished a field and we are actually parked.

This year was a good one for corn in Central Illinois. 200 bushels per acre and more. Some areas were much more. This auger wagon has a capacity of over 1000 bushels although we normally would put about 950 bushels in before transferring to the semi. That figures out to about 26+ tons of corn. The wagon weighs about 12+ tons so fully loaded we're pulling almost 40 tons across the field. We'd harvest a semi load in about 30 minutes.
Seeing any wildlife is somewhat rare other than an occasional field mouse or rabbit. Pheasants, once plentiful locally are a real rarity. I did see 4 deer this year and one coyote that came in and out of the standing corn on a couple of occasions to see what was going on. He was in no hurry so I shot several photos. Here is one as he was leaving the scene.

Getting Started

My first blog. Don't know exactly what I'm getting into here. Guess not knowing exactly what I'm doing really isn't new territory for me.

Anyway, here is a photo of Kamela & Sharon taken last weekend on our trip to So. Indiana. Kyle, Brenda & I left Friday after school/work and made it to the Shoals convention grounds in about 5 hours.

Saturday we enjoyed perfect weather and a picnic at Spring Hill State Park. Touring the old village with it's blacksmith shop, sawmill, working grist mill powered by a waterwheel was interesting. Among our purchases were some fresh, stone ground cornmeal and Brenda acquired a corn husk doll, similar to what Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about in her book, LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS. I must add that the part of Southern IN that we saw was very, very neat. Hilly, wooded, remote, quaint, rustic and not as humid, hot, buggy as it likely was just a month or two ago.

Sunday afternoon we headed home so that Kyle and I would be home for our respective vocations on Monday. Thanks to the celebration of Christopher Columbus and his travels, Brenda took part of the day off work. By afternoon, she was having withdrawal symptoms so headed into the classroom for a bit.