The days are flying by quickly and we have experienced some very hot and humid weather.  For those who do not live out here in Minnesota, you may not know what it feels like to get battered with hot winds.  It’s like having a hair dryer, on high setting, on your entire body all day. 

Clayton took the kids fishing on Sunday evening and they came home with three nice Catfish.  I fried them up for breakfast in our own butter.  They tasted wonderful and rivaled any fish filet you can buy in a restaurant.  They all had a wonderful time.  I stayed home to watch our grandchildren  so that Jessi and Luke could go on a dinner date. 

On Monday, the Twins, Francesca and I headed for Watertown, SD to haul lambs to the sale barn.  It was 101 degrees but we were pretty spoiled having borrowed Clayton’s truck which has air conditioning! 

The sale barn had an unusual amount of feeder lambs, cull ewes and fat lambs.  We were the last ones to arrive with our load and I made Frenchy back up the trailer.  She  hasn’t lost her touch and I was thankful.  We ended up getting a better price than we had been quoted and the buyer treated us well.  The lambs averaged 56 pounds and there were 10 of them @ $2.60 per pound.  The 3 first time ewes he let us put in as fats with another one that did not breed this year and they brought $1.50 per pound.  Then the older cull ewes that the kids picked out for various reasons (bad mother, too old, bad teeth, fence jumper etc.) as ones that we no longer wanted, brought in 46 cents per pound.   Marisa phoned Fred to ask him how much he thought we received and he guessed wrong several times, but needless to say he was very pleased with our totals!

On the way home we stopped at a couple of stores and ended with a stop at Menards where Frenchy purchased a pretty big pool for all of us to enjoy; this was Peters’ idea having swam in our baby pool on Sunday.  It took all day yesterday to fill the pool, having had to turn the water on and off around watering horses and other livestock.  Now the kids can have another fun thing to look forward to at the end of the day.         

Yesterday, we loaded up the Redneck rig and went around to our bee hives and weed whacked, trimmed a few young trees, removed the last of the syrup feeders and hauled fresh water.  Marisa was brave and decided not to wear her suit because of the heat.  We ran out of twine in the weed whip and so after Fred arrived  home from work last night they went back to finish the job and bring one last pail of fresh water.  There was plenty of bee activity which was very pleasing.

Today I spent most of my time weeding the gardens with my youngest three kids and making mozzarella cheese.  It amazes me how much they talk during those weeding sessions and how much I learn about them as indivduals.  Not that I don’t spend time with them every day, but when we are out there working for an extended period of time, there’s really nothing else to do but visit.  I wouldn’t change those precious talks for anything.  The soil is unusually dry and very crusty due to so much rain earlier and then very quick hot dry weather.

The older kids were busy moving and building fence again for the sheep and milk cows and Maggie had the job of setting up more electric fence to rotate the horses to the other side of the farm.  At one point, Clayton pulled up to the garden on horseback to direct Caleb towards a waterer that was overflowing, patiently explaining to him how it should be accomplished, even as I was wondering how in the world my younger son would be able to do it.  It’s nice to have older kids around to help guide the youth and encourage them in learning new skills.

Now at the end of the day the girls are watering their flower gardens and the guys are all out weeding the hops and the kitchen now clean once again still smells of home made pizza baked earlier in the evening.  The weather was cool today and is supposed to go down to 47 degrees over night and be in the upper 60’s tomorrow.  Talk about a shock to the system.  The kids all took a swim today and are still shivering hours later!