Wedding Reception

Months ago, my cousin Austin and his fiance Lindsey asked if they could have their wedding reception on the farm. With an Aug. 3 wedding day we figured our biggest risk was extreme heat. Nobody really considered that rain would be an issue. As it turned out, rain was an issue. But only one of stress and worry, not something that got in the way of a beautiful reception. 

Many hours went into transforming our yard into a light-filled wonderland.

 We mostly watched the transformation, never quite sure what would happen next. It was fun to be able to watch and wonder.

 Thursday  night, before they finished hanging lights and before I went inside to put my boys to bed, I snapped this photo from our front porch. It turns out that lights are tough to photograph!

 Friday the final lights went up, the tables showed up, final clean-up around the farm happened. Friday  night a storm blew in - literally. The strands of lights that had been hung so carefully were whipping around, big branches from trees broke off, the power went out and the farm looked like a lake.
Saturday morning, the sun was shining and tree cleanup started first thing.

 At 9am on their wedding day the bride and groom made the decision about where their reception would be. The weather forecast was for at least a 50% chance of rain in the evening.

 They decided to go for it!

 Family and friends showed up to cover tables and put out centerpieces. Chairs were put on top to make sure the covering didn't blow away during the day.

 It turned out to be a long afternoon! Waiting around for a big event is kind of hard to do. Our entire family had to be at church at 4pm for family photos.

After our big Schmidt family photo I snapped this one of the happy couple. It's the only photo I have of the two of them together. Lindsey was gorgeous. Saturday was a hot and super-humid day. The kind of day that makes you want to stay in the air conditioning because when you're outside you feel like a wet dog. Yet, after at least an hour of all outdoor photos Lindsey looked flawless - it was amazing.

 The wedding ceremony itself was beautiful. Lovely music, readings, scripture, congregational singing, meditation, vows the whole deal. It fit Austin and Lindsey and I think that's what makes weddings so special. It's a reflection of the couple and that's always fascinating.
As soon as the happy couple left the church we rushed out of there to get all the last minute reception tasks completed.

 Guests came down the driveway, went through the food line right away and then found a seat. It took a while for 350 people to drive over to the farm, park, get food and sit down but I think it all worked pretty well.

 Her dress was amazing - a good fit for her and she wore it well, comfortable and at ease.

 The boys were in heaven because there were suddenly so many friends (old and new) to play with and show around the farm.

 The chickens had quite a few visitors during the evening.

Little Mabel gave our kittens lots and lots and lots of love.

The lights were amazing. A canopy of golden light gave the reception a sense of magic.

Sparklers sent the happy couple off into the night.

Holding two sparklers and taking photos is actually more challenging then I thought it would be.

Off they went - with blessings and well wishes from their family and friends.

So much water!

So it's been raining....a lot lately. It's odd, rare, unheard of. Unofficially we've had about ten inches in the last couple weeks. Last year we were in the midst of our record making 100 degree day spree. This year we've hit 100 degrees only a handful of times. 

After a good rain, there's usually a little bit of water here to play in. Last week, the water was moving fast enough we wouldn't let the boys walk in the middle of it!

 The area of our farm that used to be a manure pit (which has since been nearly totally/almost completely cleaned out) now simply fills up with rain water.

 And now we know that it can also be used as a swimming pool.

 We wouldn't allow them to put their heads under water and kept reminding them to not get any in their mouths. But, who were we kidding?!

 Mr. Axle just loves to swim around in the bigger pit area.

 While the boys played, I kept wandering away to check out the water flowing through the pasture.

 Levi was the first to get in the water, but Noah wasn't too far behind.

 It's literally been years since I saw water running through the pasture like this. It was pretty satisfying to see the creek alive and well again.

 The whole don't get water in your mouth thing went out the window when they started dumping water on each other.

 Oh well, nearly a week later and they're both perfectly fine. We build strong immune systems around here.

Our own flour

We have a lot of wheat on hand at the farm. And after some convincing, I got Ben to buy the grain mill attachment for our KitchenAid mixer. Woo hoo!  

During wheat harvest, he made sure to get a five gallon bucket of wheat for me. Then we cleaned it, with a little help from a big fan.

The wheat isn't 100% clean, but since we put a little in the mill at a time it's easy to find anything that we don't want in our flour.  Here's our first batch of wheat in the mill! I wasn't kidding about being excited, this was better than Christmas morning for me.

It makes lovely whole wheat flour. We've used it several times for baking with mixed success. The first bread I tried called for all whole wheat flour so I followed the recipe and ended up with a brick. Tasted good, but was too dense to enjoy.  I used it when making zucchini bread last weekend and when done with some AP flour it worked really well.

Changes: building a fence

For all but about the last eighteen months of my life, there were dairy cows on our farm. Those were sold and quickly the farmers started to quietly talk about getting a few head of cattle. Well, time has past and some more thinking has happened and now there's a plan to get some cattle to feed through the winter. But before cattle can hang around our place, we're gonna need some proper fences!

 First, get some pipe - thick and super heavy pipe, that is.

 Then get a bunch of bags of Quickrete.

 And make sure to bring your "big muscles" too.

 And remember to thank the good Lord for creating post hole diggers like this one!

 The wonders of machinery!

 Although, some of the holes might require some actual muscle to get just right.

 The pipes are heavy and the bags of Quickrete are heavy, so the job isn't totally a piece of pie.

 Check for level - nothing worse than a crooked fence!

 Oh! And life doesn't get much better than having a jug of water delivered to your work site!

The post setting phase of the fence is about half done so far. Good thing the cattle won't get here for several more months!