WHAT’S IN MINNESOTA???

That was the usual response when we told friends that we were planning to vacation in Minnesota. We spent August 19-26 in my beautiful home state (Weldon’s first time there and his first vacation in 13 years), and the following synopsis and pictures will give you a glimpse of what's in Minnesota.

For one week, WE were in Minnesota, doing the touristy thing....

Minnesota is known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes or the Land of Sky Blue Waters. And to go with all that water? Perfectly warm, sunny days! We were smart to not vacation in January :-)

We took an informational cruise on Lake Superior (very impressive). We visited the Great Lakes Aquarium, the nation's only all-freshwater aquarium, and drove a few miles along the “North Shore” so we could stop and dip our toes in the cold water.

We took a train ride along the St. Croix River

and visited Lake Itasca where we walked across the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi.

We tried to stay off the main highways and always looked for a scenic route, where we saw farms ,

peat bogs ,

swamps ,

forests ,

and interesting weeds that Weldon couldn’t name.

There are agates in Minnesota, and Weldon learned the fine art of hunting the elusive gem. If he couldn’t find an agate, he was happy just picking up PLRs (pretty little rocks).

Although the state has all kinds of wildlife, big and small, the best we could do was hear the cry of the loon and see a bald eagle and a few deer.

Weldon saw a moose, but he doesn’t have a picture to prove it :-)

The MN State Fair is in Minnesota! Weldon was disappointed that Machinery Hill doesn’t exist anymore, but at least he got to visit the “Moo Booth.” Although the "real farm" milking cows wouldn't be there until the following week, we got to see the "4H cows" and sheep, poultry, rabbits, horses, and all the other attractions that make up the MN State Fair.

I was thrilled to find that Tiny Tim (also known as Tom Thumb) Donuts are every bit as good as I remembered,

and we saw the (90#) butter sculptures of Princess Kay and her attendants!

Now you're jealous, aren't you?!

Most important of all, my FAMILY is in Minnesota!!

What a fabulous vacation! Can we do it again? Can we?? Can we???

Since it's raining this morning (and I can't possibly vacuum or dust while it's raining outside), I thought I'd show you our new Ice Cream Shoppe :-)

In the picture above, you'll see Mama Patches and her 3 babies: Chocolate Chip, Orange Sherbet, and Creamsicle. (Ice Cream Shoppe ... get it??!) Patches had never been a very good mother and this time she totally abandoned her babies. Weldon rescued one that had been dropped in a mud puddle and he gathered all three to a dry location. The next day they were crying their little hearts out - HUNGRY!! What could we do but start feeding them with an eye dropper. After a couple days of that, we decided we had to catch Mama and make her do her duty. It took some doing, because she's never been very friendly, but we got her into an animal trap and put her babies in there with her. By the end of the day, all three babies were contentedly nursing - and I don't think they "let go" until sometime the following day :-) After 5 or 6 days in the trap, we decided we had to open the door and see if Patches would come back and continue caring for her babies. She did!! And what a fine mother she has been since then. And Patches even lets us pet her now and then. The kittens are fat and healthy and beautiful. Two of them are possibly adopted to good homes already. Yeah!!!

SUMMERTIME

Sure is busy here on the farm! I've made sweet pickles and dill pickles, strawberry jam and preserves, blackberry jelly, peach jam and preserves; I've frozen corn, green beans, black raspberries, blackberries, blueberries,and peach pies; I've canned tomato juice and chili sauce. Sure would have been nice if I'd cleaned out and organized the freezer before I started putting all this new stuff in there :-)

Besides food, there's always a lot going on with animals. We milk cows every morning and evening and chase them when they're not where they're supposed to be. This is a dairy farm, after all! We are milking 20 cows right now, down from 36 this winter. Those no longer being milked are out frolicking in the pasture, awaiting the birth of their baby calves.

Wild turkeys, snakes, baby birds, cats, and dogs have been doing their share of frolicking, also, not to mention all the bugs and other creepy-crawly things.

So much going on ... so little time to write it all down. Hope you're enjoying your summertime!!

LICORICE
I said I would write more about our "hilarious" kitten, Licorice.

This is her story:

She was the only surviving kitty of three born to Spitz and, once she started getting all of mom's attention, she became a little butterball. Her front legs seemed shorter than normal, so she was like a little "low rider" coming to meet us every morning and evening. She never meowed but squeeked and grunted, telling us a new story everytime we picked her up. Hers is a short story. She died this week of unknown causes. Perhaps there was a physical problem that kept her from meowing - a problem that grew, causing her to stop breathing?
Her daily stories made us laugh, but her last story made us cry.

We miss you, Licorice!

Tractor P u l l
On Saturday evening, Weldon and I finished chores early so we could go to a tractor pull in Winston-Salem. He hadn't been to one in 30 years and I'd never been, so we were looking forward to the event. When I first heard of tractor pulls, I imagined 2 tractors having a tug-o-war, seeing which one could pull the other over a line in the sand. Wrong :-) Instead, there are souped up pickups, 4x4s, garden tractors, and tractors that attempt to pull a weighted sled as far as they can. In the "good old days," farmers drove their tractors in from the fields to compete against their neighbors and win bragging rights. The sled they pulled got heavier as men jumped on it, and their distance was marked by a stick stuck in the ground. Today, the sled is weighted with a cement-filled form that increases the weight as it automatically moves towards the front of the sled and the distance is marked by a laser beam. And the tractors? At least some of them LOOK like tractors! but the vehicles (see list above) are big-boy, big-buck toys, built to look good and win. The engines can cost upwards of $60,000; one vehicle had a jet engine; the garden tractors (dust busters) don't have a single garden tractor part. My final comments: Loud! Strange! What's the point?! Weldon's final comment: We don't need to go for another 30 years!
(photos are from the United Pullers of the Carolinas website; from Gaffney, SC, pull)

Sonny aka Sunoco

Look at the last picture on my last post. See that cute, fluffy, white & black little kitten on the right named Sonny? Remember how I said he loves to play in the junk? The other day he fell in a bucket of motor oil!! Weldon and I must have spent close to an hour trying to clean him up: GoJo, Joy, Palmolive. We didn't have any Dawn! (I wonder what they used at the Valdez oil spill?) When we got him as clean as we could, we sprinkled him with baby powder and that fluffed up his fur a bit. I held him till he stopped shivering and then took him back to his playmates. He was so embarrassed! He wouldn't eat with the others and he just sat by himself on a haybale. The poor thing. He appears to be doing fine now - eating and playing, and we hope someday his lovely white fur will be white again. We trust he won't carry emotional scars :-)

Time for some MEWS!

It doesn't matter how busy we are, chore time always includes kitty time. Below, you will see Dagwood and Blondie. Dagwood has been sickly (a sad but natural result of having a "herd" of cats), but he seems to be getting better. This hot weather is hard on the little tykes.

The older cats don't have names, but since I came to the farm (9/25/04), I can't resist naming the kittens. I had never been around cats or kittens to any great degree, but watching them has become a highlight of my life on the farm. When they get hurt or killed, or get sick or die, I vow to remain detached and never let them into my heart again. Yeah, right .... To the left are mama Spitz and her baby Licorice. I'll write more about Licorice another time. She's a hilarious favorite!





On the right you will see our junk yard kitties: Sanford and Sonny. Instead of having her babies in one of the barns, their momma, Kit Carson, had them down the road apiece in a big pile of junk :-) Even after moving into the hay barn with most of the other little ones, Sanford and Sonny love to play in any junk they can find.