Traverse City, MI Trip

Mid-June several Farm Bureau Campaign Managers took the opportunity to tour a variety of Michigan farms near Traverse City, MI. This is the third year Mark and I have gone on this trip and we have loved every one of them!

On our way to Traverse City we stopped at dunes along Lake Michigan.

 If you look very close you can see the people standing near the water at the bottom of the dune. I wasn't able to fit the top of the dune in my frame it was huge!

 Our first day we visited an orchard, winery and hops farm. King Orchards was our first stop and they grow cherries, apples, raspberries and vegetables. Cherries are their biggest crop which they sell at wholesale markets and farmers markets. Their cherry juice concentrate is sold online. An interesting challenge that King Orchards has had to overcome is that although healthy bees are key to good pollination of their crops, the bees didn’t over-winter well there. Because of this, the Kings' bee keeper moved to Florida with the bees. The Kings now rent the bees at peak pollination times. They transport the bees by semi in their hives covered with netting from Florida.  (Picture above is a cherry picker.)

 After our visit to King Orchards, we enjoyed lunch and wine tasting at Black Star Farms. They feature two winery production facilities with tasting rooms, a distillery, an inn and equestrian facility. It was absolutely beautiful and booked every weekend with weddings. Another aspect I enjoyed in our visit to Black Star Farms was that they grow much of the food they use for their dinner events right on the property. (Picture above is a wine cave)

Hops plants growing up the wires. they will reach the top and grow out. Hops are harvest at the top of the wires in the fall.

 During our second day of tours we visited a robotic dairy and potato operation. The robotic barn we visited has been in use since last November. The cows are enticed to the milking area with feed pellets. They are scanned and the machine then knows when the cows were last milked and will either milk them or send them on. It also knows if the cow has just had a calf and will divert that milk into another tank for the calves. If a cow doesn’t get milked within a certain time frame the farmer gets a message on his cell phone with the cow’s number and they get her milked. The technology involved was very impressive. 

Spoiled cows! :)

Our final tour was a potato farm. They had a large, state of the art, storage cooler we got to tour. It was pressurized, temperature regulated and kept at 95% humidity. They designed and built most of the cleaning and packaging equipment they use to save money and for efficiency (picture above). Potatoes are on a five year crop rotation to prevent certain diseases. They rotate potatoes, green beans, corn, soybeans and hay.

After a full day touring Mark and I enjoyed kayaking with friends. We went 7 miles starting in a river (pictured above), then across a lake, had a small portage and kayaked threw town and ended up in the freezing, rough bay. Thankfully we didn't have far to paddle in the bay, the water was around 50 degrees! Brrr

Posing for a picture during our portage.

 Kayaking in town.

After many, many hours on the bus this ferry was a welcome sight! We rode across Lake Michigan in this, bus and all.

Summer So Far

June has turned out to be much busier than I planned for, here's a few pictures of our month.

We've been in training mode with the sheep for fair. So far they are doing pretty good and hopefully they'll cooperate well for Ethan at the fair. This is Max before his bath and hair cut.

This is Ethan and Amelia giving Max a bath.

This is Max giving Ethan and Amelia a bath.

This is Ruby after being sheared. She doesn't have the greatest personality but we're slowing calming her down and getting her to stand better.

"Come on heep!" 

Tug-O-War

Amelia found 3 little sparrows that fell out of their nest. One died and she brought this one in the house to feed it a worm. Of course it didn't eat the worm. It just closed it's eyes to sleep according to Amelia. :) Usually birds falling out of the nest doesn't end well, but this time it did. Amelia put the two live ones back in the nest twice after they fell out and they lived! They are now able to fly.

Our garden is doing pretty good. We had a couple things not do as well as I'd hoped, but over all it's packed pretty full and growing. New this year we did garlic, pole beans (on accident), spaghetti squash, purple beans and we put in a new strawberry patch. Around the yard we added a couple apple trees, pear cherry, and peach trees, goji berry bushes and purple asparagus. We have a small herb garden and 31 hills of pumpkins, gourds and squash. (I cut out almost all annual flowers this year to try and keep up with the fruit and veggies. We'll see how everything looks by the end of July! :)

My first garlic harvested. 

This little goji berry plant came in a 4 inch pot by mail. It now has one branch waist high and is getting fruit!

We have 16 of the chicks we hatched this spring alive and well!

We've even got a couple of little pullet eggs. The one in the middle is the pullet egg and the others are from the older hens. 

Anton and Elijah took swimming lessons the beginning of the month, both loved it. This is Elijah learning the back float.

Anton paddling away.

Amelia qualified for the State Hershey Track meet the end of May and participated in it a couple weeks ago. She did her best and was one of four 9 year olds to make it in the 9-10 age group for the 100 meter dash; and she's not even 9 til the end of July. :) 

Hershey Track Meet - 100 meter dash - 17.49 seconds.

Elijah had a birthday, 6 years old already! I don't have a picture of him with his cake. This is him open a little safe that he wanted for his birthday gift. 

May - Part 2

Before we get to far into June I'll finish up May pictures. 

Mark asked me to level off one of our fields while he planted another. I agreed and he kept Anton and Allison and I took Elijah. I figured if I couldn't figure out what I was doing he could help me out. :) I don't run machinery very often, we have lots of good help for that and with me, comes a crew of kids. Anyway, we pulled into the field to a tractor I had never driven with the accelerator which I've never used. I assumed Mark would ride with me a little while until I got things figured out. Well I got a lesson that lasted one SHORT round and was told to call on the two-way if I had problems. Thankfully all went well and I'm happy to say auto-steer is my friend. :) 

I was just about finished leveling off when we got rain. It wasn't much but we had to call it quits for a little while. We ended up going mushroom hunting in our timber and actually found mushrooms for the first time in the 15 years we've farmed it! (We have a problem with trespassers stealing them.) We kicked out three groups last year and put up "keep out" signs this spring. So maybe it's helping. It's so frustrating to go out to your own timber just to find people you don't know already out there!

Ethan and Amelia working together frying our mushrooms.

We experimented frying in olive oil and coconut oil. We liked the coconut oil better, it just had a "lighter" flavor we liked better.

Amelia started piano lessons this winter and had her first recital Mid-May. She did a nice job.

We made it to another race in Winterset. This was a Lorretta Lynn  Area Qualifier (see here to learn more about this national race). The competition is strong and there were several out-of-state riders here for the weekend. Mark was racing when Eljah needed to head to the starting line. So Ethan did a great job helping him and the kind guy parked next to us also helped him out.  

The class Mark likes to ride in (+30 B/C) which was on Sunday so he had to race the 450 B with a bunch of teenagers. He did great keepin up with the young bucks! :)

As soon as Mark was done racing he had to help Elijah. A parent can stand near the track to help their kid if they fall or encourage them.

Elijah did very well he got 4th out of 9 racers. This finish was good enough to qualify for the Regional Race.  (We didn't enter him for it, we couldn't make the race in June, so we didn't pay the extra fee.)

Ethan wrecked hard  in the second lap of his first moto and hurt his upper leg. Thankfully no major injures but it's still sore a few weeks later. He was out for the rest of the day. :(

Elijah was our big winner for the day. (Amelia thinking she's funny photo bombing)

(A picture from Mark's phone.) This one is Ethan  hauling his 1980's 3-wheeler back from the coalmine. He told me he hit a bump. 

 Another random picture from Mark's phone. The old blue truck smoked like crazy when they started it, not sure why, I just thought it was a funny picture. 

Anton, Allison and I joined Eljiah's class at the park the last day of school. 

Elijah had a wonderful year at preschool. So blessed to have such great teachers and classmates!

Amelia ran at a local track meet to try to qualify for the state meet. She won the 100 meter and will run this Saturday in Marshalltown. 

If your my Facebook friend you may have seen this one. One morning we got up and didn't find Allison in bed. After looking around the house Amelia spotted her in the the living room under the laundry basket. It was pretty scary for a little bit, I'm not sure what she was thinking. :)

I happened to be in Pella the day they were digging tulips, so I borrowed my sister-laws spade a dug a bunch for my yard next year. These were still in full bloom so we enjoyed them all week!

I chaperoned the band trip to Adventure land the last week of school. I was in charge of 5 boys for the day. We had a great time and hit tons of rides! If only we didn't have to run from ride to ride. :)

They loved the log ride rode it several times. 

This was another ride they liked.

They played a song while we were up there. 

I sat out for this ride, way to high and scary!

Ethan has been going with Mark most days since school has been out. In this picture he is running the skid loader keeping dirt away from Mark as he digs a basement for his parents.