Hang Out Spots on the Farm

Hey there Dear Reader, glad you stopped in for another chunk of the Farm Tour, you've jumped through that usual portal and dialed back a day so join us for our celebration of moms on The Farm. My world isn't just the place where I live it is the people God has blessed me with to love and cherish. So join us won't you?

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We're hanging out below Cherry Tree Hill today.

My baby grandboy, Aksel, with his Aunty Anna, my baby daughter.

Kai came with a homemade card for me, potato stamps on the front and inside I was told he loves me more than bubble gum. Would that be Bazooka Bubble Gum?

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Dirt, Eric and Mike, sitting in one of our favorite sitting place around the Farm. Like everywhere else on the Farm down by the old cherry tree has changed over the years. The guys are sitting on the site of an old corrugated fiberglass greenhouse that finally fell apart and the lawn above Eric's head was the area I vegetable gardened when we first lived here.

That would be back when Stephie, my oldest, was younger than her son, Kai, whom she shares a snake with today. Out here by The Pond it is snake heaven.

The Pond is chock full of life and third oldest daughter, Elisabet aka EBet, is going out for a cruise around in the canoe.

And she is taking Kai with her.

She isn't living dangerously by not wearing a life jacket like Kai, but because this used to be a hay field before the beavers moved in in the sixties it isn't a very deep pond and in most places she could easily stand up.

One of the greatest purchases Dirt and I ever made was the canoe, Norrine has one just like it and we often borrow it in the summer for some canoe racing on The Pond.

Bet and Kai aren't being chased by an overgrown beaver, that is Fluffy Joe, he loves to troll along behind the canoe when someone takes it out. It does make it a little harder to sneak up on the wildlife when you are packing a bear behind you, but it seems to keep him in world class shape!

Clearly Aksel wants to stay in shape, he and Anna are entertaining each other on my newly discovered lawn art. Well the exercise ball was more artistic when both of them floated around the backyard before some girls, who were supposed to be working, decided to play soccer with one of them right into a rose bush. My house is too small for exercise equipment, even just big round sittable balls. So I tossed them onto Dirt's lovely mowed lawn. And wah lah, lawn art you can sit on. And the mower just pushes it out of the way.

Aunty Anna can't be tired because Baby Askel isn't, I think he is bargining quite well for some more fun.

It is a little early in the year for hanging out down here under the cherry tree, what looks like a clump of dry grass just behind Mike is actually The Pond fire pit but it is out in the water right now. Michelle, sitting here next to her dad, just said she felt as if her feet were below the level of the pond and actually, because of a ridge this side of the fire pit holding back the extra seasonal water, they are.

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But inspite of the excess water and my lack of weeding down here this year (I'm waiting for the fall planted bulbs to die down so I can really do some regrouping and change a few things, imagine that, me changing something I've done!) I like being down here this time of the year for a few of my favorites are planted around the old cherry tree.

Viburnum burkwoodii is named for Albert Burkwood, the co-developer of the hybrid with Geoffrey Skipwith in early 20th century England. It smells super delicious.

Even on this rather threatening cool day I can smell it from five feet away, can you or is your nose still stuffy?

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It is semi-evergreen so it looks rather odd with old fall colored leaves still hanging on it while it blooms. I bought it in the fall of o'four and while it was in the pot it had really brilliant fall color, but now that it has been in the ground for about three or four years it is exhibiting its semi-evergreen-ness and its fall color is rather disappointing but I am glad he is in the ground and thriving on Cherry Tree Hill.

Yesterday's talk on tulips was missing a little cutie, Tulipa batalinii 'Apricot Jewel' . She is one of the many fall planted bulbs that I chose to plant under the old cherry tree based on their natralizing habits.

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Tulipa batalinii is a species tulip and although not very showy and rather short, six inches, it will be more likely to naturalize. It won't multiply as much as the narcissus or the muscari will but at least it will multiply some and it won't burn itself out. Or at least that is how the theory goes.

Aksel says that the occasional sprinkles have turned into rain drops and he is headed inside where it is warm and dry and the Mario Cart awaits his brother and Aunties. Luckily today's Farm Camp isn't too far from the back door, and we have gotten in with the chairs put away just in the nick of time.

If you can wrestle one of the controls away from those who are genetically predisposed to game addiction, have at it. Check out those dialated eye balls! She is getting the hang of it (Chelle grew up on the Farm during the total ban of all video and computer games).

Owp she is really on to the whole thing now...!!!

And she won! Hurray!

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Hope you had a great time on this week tour of Vicktory Farm and Gardens, we didn't get very far that is for sure but it was just one of those days.

Be sure to visit more of God's great world here http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/

Annual Things We Never Seem To Do Annually

But some that we do do annually, that is what is on my mind today.

I was just telling a friend that October seems to be a time that the calendar fills up with lots of potential events to attend. This weekend was the date of the local Greek festival, a favorite with us girls, the Farm Fest in our county at several different locations, and a very cool historical happening.

We took advantage of the cool historical reenactment. No pictures though because not only can you not do flash pictures even the digital camera gave off too bright a light. Sure could have brought my old SLR film camera but then you still wouldn't have seen the pictures.

Last night in spite of some of the family getting over a fever and sinus crud and one person just coming down with a fever, the whole family ended up at the Candle Light Tour at Fort Nisqually in Point Defiance Park. In the dark and in the rain. We have gone as a family several times in the past, always meaning to go every year. But each year that we go we add on a new family or new son as the case may be. It is cool.

Fort Nisqually was the site of a Hudson Bay trading post. Here is a paragraph from their web site:

Travel back in time with us and experience life in Washington Territory during the fur trade era. A Hudson's Bay Company outpost built in 1833, Fort Nisqually was the first European settlement on Puget Sound. With a diverse work force of American, English, French Canadian, Hawaiian, Irish, Native American, and Scottish laborers, Fort Nisqually was a bustling center of trade that expanded into a large scale agricultural enterprise.

On the first weekend in October, in the hours of dark, they host a guided tour through the restored fort which for the two nights is filled with people from 1855. Some of them are camped just outside the gate of the fort, they can be seen cooking their dinner, telling stories, disciplining children, making plans for trapping expeditions or what they are going to be picking up in trade. But they are never caught talking to or acknowledging us, even if they trip over us on their way to and fro doing their duties of day to day living.

As we go on into the fort we come into a small house with men gathered around the table and the women are gathered in a side room spinning and looking over sewing. Just outside of this house there was a new addition of a tent covering an area where some people from 1855 were having fun dancing to a fiddle.

Then we go across the yard of the fort to the Black Smith's shop, where two men were working at a forge, shaping a piece of iron work. On into the warehouse to see more 1855ians the on to the store for more conversation between the shopkeeper and a traveler. On to the Factor's house where they are always entertaining someone important and having a beautiful dinner served from the cook house which is out the back side of the house.

We all had great fun and it fit just perfectly into Kai's recent studies he has been doing with Momma Stephanie see We Interupt This... It was the Bowerman's first trip to the Fort (no new sons yet.) We are sorry that some of our other family members and friends from Friday night gathering couldn't make it. Some people believe in staying home when they are sick! Or need to get up early!

Most likely we won't be getting around to any of those other things this weekend some of us just can't get our act together and some are sick. But we are looking forward to our annual (and this time I mean annual) Leif Erickson day.

When I do Leif Erickson day I reserve the right to pick any ol' weekend in October. Our friend who introduced us to and who has hosted many of our first Leif Erickson Days is up at the Harvest Fest this weekend selling her little sheep. She always tries to aim for the weekend of Columbus Day for their family's Leif Erickson Day because some of us of Scandinavian decent and those of us married to the Lutefisk eaters, like to celebrate the real first European explorer of America. Check it out it is true!

We also include a little Irish food to humor those of us who have heritage ties to the Irish monk who was the actual first European to lay eyes on America, but he didn't stick around so he just gets a dish or two.

When our friends first invited us, my husband cooked their Lutefisk for them. My husband is Swedish (more on his grandma and grandpa on a later post) and they are all Norwegian but they had to admit that inviting Dirt was a very good thing because he makes the absolute best Lutefisk they have ever tasted.

I do believe I have the most accurate description of this foreign food (I am the Scotch-Irish, German, Dutch, Dane in the group) as (cover your ears if your sensitive) boiled snot with white sauce. Oh wait you heard that I shoulda told you to cover your eyes! Uh oh my bad.

Anyway we are having a Leif Erickson party on the eighteenth of October (time TBA) but most likely all day! You are all welcome to come just RSVP please as I would hate to run out of Lutefisk. Or meatballs, real fish, fried chicken, potatoes, beets, cabbage dishes, gelatin's of all sorts, pickled herring, lefse, hard tack, rye bread, Swedish dinner rolls, butter, cream sauce, cookies, cakes, coffee just to name a few of the things.

For fun I think we will be designing our canoes over into Viking ships for our not-quite-annual annual Christmas Viking invasion of the Irish settlement. So bring your ideas, I'll have some plywood and if you have some paint bring it too. We'll see if Dale will let us use his canoe too or his row boat but I think the canoes will look slightly more realistic.

But now I am going to bed because I think the girls have infected me. I'm very achy all over. But hey, it was inevitable. I hope in my pre-illness delirium I have not written too long of sentences and used too many commas or not enough out of fear of using too many.

Good night Gracie.

Diggin In

The Dirt Man
















The dirt claw, ain't it handsome










The island in the pond that Mike dug out, mighty fine job. Thanks Mike!













But more must be done. Chomp, chomp.










The black prongy thing under the yellow arm is called a thumb. The operator can leave it in this position and bring the bucket to the thumb or he can operate the thumb to move toward the bucket to grab something. Cool.









All this to make the orchard area a little less damp and squishy in the winter.











Soil comes out of the hole













And gets dumped on the lawn area.










Dirt, the man, smooths out dirt, the soil, to make a nice level lawn. Soon our yard may be more level than the inside of our house.

His job is done now onto the barnyard pond to make a hole for each breed and variety of ducks Bet and I are raising.


Big tools and friends with big tools are a blessing from God. Thanks Mike Bowerman.

Sons that help are a blessing from God. Thanks Mike Stone.

There are, with out a doubt, a lot of Mikes in our lives.

PS after way to many moments wasted trying to eliminate the large gaping holes in this post I pledge to never put the pics to the left again! Sorry but I'm done trying to make this look better.