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Now that my economist hubby is home, he is finding things to do around the farm to occupy himself. Easy to do because everywhere one looks there are projects, half-done projects and projects-in-waiting. But instead today we went to buy a new refridgerator and some other clothes and shoes to augment our wardrobes. Fun day despite having to do battle now with the barn swallows. Yesterday Ken scared them out of one barn and thus they were “netted” out from returning. As a result, they are building with a vengeance their mud pocket type homes under our house eaves. I’ve been hosing the nests down with water after these swallows have put in a full day of carrying mud and building their homes. The reason? They are messy birds despite the fact they eat insects. A thought I had as I was walking along my gravel road, “What did barn swallows do before there were barns?” Seems they are wired to always build their nests under the eaves of houses or barns. I know this for sure, that the farm my GREAT grandfather came from in Telemark, Norway was actually called “Svalestoga” which mean’s “Swallows Farm.” Did these pesky birds travel over the Atlantic using ships as a home? For now, we seem destined to not only battle rabbits and deer (Ken saw a doe and fawn tonight in our backyard) but also these indefatigable swallows!!!
My husband arrived on time yesterday afternoon and I was there to pick him up at the airport, all according to schedule. Since I hadn’t heard from him from either Amsterdam or Minneapolis, I was wondering if there had been some kind of glitch I didn’t know about. Turns out he had sent me an e-mail message while he was over the Atlantic on his Northwest flight. I got it this morning since the message got caught in my Spam catcher. Hmmm…well, sometimes modern technology is helpful. In this case, overly helpful in catching a “foreign” address. Fun to walk around our premises and hear Ken exclaim about how things had grown. Not so fun to think about the outbuildings that need paint and so we will have to gear up for that once he is over jetlag. Wonderful to have him home finally!!!
Not a picture taken by me but I thought it was cute. If only my predator varmits on the farm were able to read a sign that says “KEEP OUT” do you think that would help? Nah! Wise old OWL, he can read English and he probably knows Ukrainian too! I have such smart students who use at least two-three languages fluently. I had hoped they would keep writing their blogs even though not a class assignment anymore. I do know it is their summer vacation. No rest for me, I am now writing a paper about a Norwegian-American man who was born in Norway in 1866. S.A. Olsness immigrated (legally) 20 years later to the U.S. and became very fluent in English. I am reading through his many daily accounts of all the years he wrote in his diaries. The last eight years of his life he still walked and skied to his mailbox for several miles, (he wrote many letters every day). He also split wood, shocked grain, hoed the garden and in his spare time, he played golf. He was 80 years old in 1946 and died in 1954. S.A. Olsness seemed a wise man in many ways, because he stayed active.
The orange fencing is odd to see in the summer because it is meant to catch snow in the winter time. Short of having electric fences around our precious corn patch my Mom planted, my Dad and I used this protective fence to insure against the trespassing deer who munched off about 25 stalks already. Stay tuned, I’ll show you the growth of the corn in a couple weeks. The old farmer’s adage is it should be “knee high by Fourth of July.” I’m not sure when it will be “as high as an elephant’s eye” but it makes for good song lyrics. (check out “Oklahoma!”) The white car you see is a Geo Metro I bought in 1990, it had great gas mileage but now it has been “put out to pasture.” The old combine will be used for scrap iron, the white barn in the distance used to house pigs that we had in the past. Life goes on especially when you protect it.
Much upkeep on an old farm and fortunately we have riding lawn mowers where we used to use push mowers. However, in the past we didn’t have as much lawn opened up in the back pastures where once sheep, pigs and cattle roamed. My niece is in the back southwest corner of our plot of land and the other photo shows my Mom, sister Karen and niece Sigrid by the bonfire behind the barns. Last night my Dad and I put up the winter fencing around the rows of corn my Mom planted to protect from the pesky deer and rabbits. This will help against the predator racoons who know just when to get the corn, right when it is ripe. Though we will have to employ more drastic measures with those varmits to get the corn before they do. Clever creatures, racoons. Life on the farm, ain’t it grand!
Last Sunday night around midnight I went down to the basement because of the fierce winds and turned on the tv to see what the alert was for our area. Coast was clear, I went back to bed. However, the following is something written up by some friends of ours who have a lake cabin close to Detroit Lakes. Their cabin was “totalled” after last Sunday’s tornado. I take their story to mean that whatever happens which seems bad, really eventually turns out for our good. The Trostads had wanted to rebuild but because of strict zoning codes on their lake, have not been able to make a bigger place to accommodate more people. Once insurance settlements are taken care of, they will have a chance to rebuild. I saw them today at church, was I ever glad they are alive and well!
The wind started, but very quickly it got really nasty. We heard the “roar”, glass breaking, a terrible shrieking sound, and crashing sounds, and we hit the floor beside the bed. We didn’t want to try to head for the bathroom because of the gas water heater. We tried to pull the mattress over our heads, but we couldn’t move it. Duane held me, and I kept asking Jesus to save us and protect us, over and over. AND HE DID! The wall to the bedroom from the living room where Duane had watched the door suck in and out was the wall of protection area God kept us safe through it. After it was over we opened the door to rain. The roof had blown off and in the daylight we saw it had turned the whole roof 180 degrees and set it in the back yard! And our screen porch no longer exists, it a patio.About every other place had a tree laying on their roof and damage from that, as well as many, many trees uprooted besides. There was talk there was a tornado imbedded in the wind cloud and that is what hit our place. I know it was a tornado over us and our neighbor, but thankfully they did not sustain much damage. I am so thankful it was us and not them. They live there year around. We could leave. The deputy sheriff said our place had the worst damage of any place in Becker County! Channel 6 came out and interviewed us about noon. God provided for a salvage crew who was there right away and had the whole backyard cleaned up that day and came back on Tuesday and got the roof out. We had wonderful neighbors next door who let us stay with them after the storm, and more neighbors who came to help any way they could the next couple of days as well.I also think about how blest we are we haven’t been sorting through everything in rain, or carrying it through flood waters! It is remarkable that pictures, etc. were still all pretty much intact in the living room and kitchen. A few things were knocked over or had some rain damage, but practically nothing! There was just a little drizzle the rest of the night so it didn’t hurt the inside too much. The insurance man says it is totaled. There are problems with zoning on what we can and can’t do, but we’ll take it one step at a time. God is in control. We wonder why it was our beloved cabin, but it really all belongs to Him, and He has a bigger plan. Our main concern, is to hear Him as He tells us what He wants us to do in all this. We want to give Him all the praise and glory through all of this! What a mighty God we serve!
The photos show the underpinnings of rural life and what sustained it during those early, critical years for the settlers on the plains over 100 years ago. The railroad forged through in order to bring merchandise for the new occupants’ houses and barns but also the same railroad would bring their grain produce back to the mills in the big Cities to be refined. While the farmers were busy building their own homes, they saw to it that their places of worship were built as well. Imagine hearing the church bell toll, it was glad tidings for the vast, peopled neighborhood to hear. Now where steam engine trains used to chug and whistle and where church bells once rang, it is silent. This church has been standing for over 125 years, it is more fortunate to be cared for by its parishioners. Graveyards along many a highway are left with only tall, stately trees and stone monuments of those earlier settlers where a church once proudly stood. Tomorrow in church, I will lead in songs that the earlier pioneers sang in their own native tongue, such as the Swedish songs “Children of the Heavenly Father” and “How Great Thou Art.” Also some Norwegian and Danish melodies all attesting to God’s goodness in nature and His bountiful favor on these brave souls. I am a happy beneficiary of such great traditions even though noone else seems to see just how remarkable it was for those pioneers 100 years before us to survive the open prairie lands. Seems it is going back to that with fewer people living in the country.
Fun to have my nephew visiting us on the farm and into everything. He likes swinging on the swing and being chased. What little six year old wouldn’t?
Last night when my niece and I were observing stars and catching fireflies, we saw two lights that looked like plane lights going from the northwest towards the southwest. Very close to the horizon was unusual and I commented to Sigrid that we can sometimes see satellites but I thought that this was odd. What we dismissed as two lights going tandem with each other was really the Atlantis space shuttle passing through. Its route was supposed to pass our way about 11:00 p.m. and it DID last night! Some people may say they feel close to the earth and I do living on the farm. However, after last night’s sighting of the Atlantis and today watching the crop duster plane top our treetops, I feel close to the sky!
Last night was a first for a lot of things when my family came out to the farm for a visit from town. We had picnic outside, played horseshoes, started a bonfire and lit firecrackers. My active 15 year old niece Sigrid is INTO theater and so she imitated “The Thinkers” straight face. (Over 30 years ago I had welded junk pieces together for an art project.) Finally, Sigrid was successful in catching two fireflies last night. I had not done that for a long, LONG time and Sigrid was good at it. The stars were beautiful and I caught sight of a falling one. The fireflies were thick out in the northern woods and so the stars and fireflies twinkled simultaneously. I’ll long remember this night I shared with my lovely niece Sigrid (a very good Norwegian name!)
