Christmas Shopping for Kids? Check Out This Great Author- Dahlov Ipcar!

Once upon a time, I lived in the rural town town of Freeland, Maryland, which to this day does not contain a stop light, and there stood a church called Middletown United Methodist Church.  My great-grandmother, Lizetta Norris Bedgar, donated the land for that church to be built and eventually my parents were married there.  Years passed and the congregation dwindled, until the doors were closed.  At that time, my Mom was able to get the copy of "One Horse Farm" by Dahlov Ipcar that was in the nursery.

Source of photos: www.islandportpress.com
 

Mom sent it to me here in North Dakota. The pages are tattered and the binding is taped together, but it is a treasure to my little family and one of our favorite bedtime stories.

In fact, I can barely read it without getting choked up, because it parallels the evolution of my family's dairy farm- from horse power to tractor power so closely and I imagine some of the men in my family, some whom have passed on and are dearly missed, having similar conversations.

I recently discovered that the book's author, Dahlov Ipcar, has MANY other WONDERFUL works as well!

My children will be receiving "The Cat at Night" and "Hardscrabble Harvest" this year.

 

 "The Cat at Night" tells of the adventures of a farm cat, while the farm animals (and the farmer) are fast asleep.

 Hardscrabble Harvest is a funny, yet realistic telling of raising a garden, and all the critters that can cause trouble on the farm.

I was also excited to find the board book versions of her Farm Alphabet and Wild Animal Alphabet for my 18 month old son.

The Island Port Press has re-released her books at:

http://www.dahlovipcar.com/

Dahlov's biography is so interesting as well.  She was born in 1917 in Vermont and went on to farm with her husband in Maine.  She is such an intriguing and talented individual, I wish that I could meet her.

Her essay "My Family, My Life, My Art" is a very enjoyable read.  She wrote "Everything about farming was beautiful in my eyes. I loved the Jersey cows with their softly shaded coats more like deer than cows -- their wrinkled white stockings, and their eyes that looked as if they had been outlined with black mascara." 

Ah, she and I have that opinion of Jersey cows in common. FYI- I spent a year serving as a Jersey Cattle Queen :)

Hope you find this helpful as you do some last minute shopping for the youngins' on your list.
Sarah :)

Flabby Farmwife Trains For 5K: Ten Days Left Until The Big Day!

Greetings from the land of temperature swings,


mood swings,

auger swings

and yard swings.

Just as fall was cooling down, it heated back up to 90 degrees, and then back to the 30's again.  We've begun harvest, and with a strange twist of events, the corn was ready before the soybeans. The combines and grain cart are rolling (except for some breakdowns) and the kids are enjoying these last few weeks with no snow and bitter wind so the swing set in the backyard has been as busy as ever.

This also means is that I am having to re-balance my entire schedule (and life in general) to accommodate harvest and had to figure out some new ways to squeeze in running.

However, I am STILL running!  I have to say that I'm pretty proud of myself for having stuck with any sort of athletic activity consistently for over a month.  This is a new record for me.

I set another new record last week too.

I forgot my phone when I went into the YMCA.  Which meant no Couch to 5K app.

So I winged it, and decided to push myself to run/walk a whole 5K (3.1 miles) just had to see if I could do it.

By golly, I DID IT!!! It took me 47 minutes, but I DID IT!

So for the next week, I'm going to "just keep running" (as I'm sure "Dory" would tell me)...



And I'm going to keep fueling up with delicious and nutritious beef...



(I didn't make this salad, some great folks at a restaurant did, but boy was it GOOD!)

 

 

 

My family likes this new exercise routine so much, even the farm cats want to go running :)

Looking forward to seeing some old friends and making some new ones on October 6th at the Beefin' It Up- Fuel For the Finish 5K!

 



 

Thanks for stopping by! - Sarah :)

Wilson Family Halloween

It was the wee-ist Wilson's first Halloween! Our little guy (4 months old now!) went as Curious George.  I made this costume with a $6 brown sweatsuit, a printout of George's face from pbskids.com that I laminated and some plastic bananas from the girls' play kitchen.  I put C.W.'s old brown gloves on his feet, and we strapped the bananas to them.  The bananas kept him entertained him the whole evening!

...and I was "The Ma'am in the Yellow Hat".  If you're not up on your Curious George facts, the "Man in the Yellow Hat" is who takes care of George :)

The wee redhead was "a pwincess wid uh cwown an uh wand".  If you don't speak two  year old, that's "a princess with a crown and a wand".  Earlier in the week she kept saying she wanted to "cawwy a WASP", but indeed, she meant WAND :)

C.W. was "Wonder Woman".  Yes, after much deliberation, this frugal farm wife coughed up 20 bucks for a few bits of shiny material held together with velcro.  In the past I have always made the girls' costumes, or used hand-me-downs, but this year precious sleep won out over what would have inevitably been a costume making all-nighter.

The big hit of the night was Wonder Woman's super hero partner..."Super Papa".  Straight out of the field, he donned a cape, mask, and T-shirt with iron-on logo, along with his Wheatgrower's stocking cap, Carhartt pants and muddy work boots, and was a REAL super hero to our little girl that night :)

Halloween would be MUCH more convenient for us if it was in, oh, maybe March, instead of smack in the middle of corn harvest, but all in all, it was a GREAT night for the Wilson family!

THANKS to Grandma E. for being our "official photographer" :)

 For a fun walk down Wilson Family Halloween memory lane, check out this blog post from last year.  I had just returned home from 21 days in Germany...what a difference a year makes :)

 http://farmeronamission.blogspot.com/2010/11/hello-again-readers-happy-belated.html

This Makes the Wee Redhead Happy

There are a lot of things the wee redhead (age 2.5) likes...

Ballet...

Being "pwitty"...

Tawkin' on da phone to Gwamma...

Pancakes with sprinkles at Perkins...

Her "yittle brudda"...

Most of all, her Papa...

 He took her along to help haul grain the other day.  We use two tractor trailers (aka "semi's") to haul our crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) from the field to one of two locations.  First, it may go to the grain bins, where the grain will be stored for a few months before being hauled to the grain elevator.  Second, it may go directly to the grain elevator, where it be stored or will go by train across the U.S. and possibly on a barge overseas.

Here is one of our trucks:

Here the wee redhead and her Papa are heading for the trucks...

(THANK YOU to our friend, Tony, who has been helping with harvest, for snapping these pics of how Jeremy got her safely from one truck to the other).

Here she is perched in her car seat with her coloring book, being her Papa's assistant grain hauler.

We didn't realize how much this day meant to her until this project came home from daycare:

It says "This makes me happy..."

Thanks for stopping by!

Sarah :)

Thankful Thursday: I sure hope that's my husband!

 
During harvest, every night, and sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, this dark figure appears in my bedroom long after I finally call it a day. He stumbles in all grubby, smelling of grease, fuel, dirt soil and whatever else he's had a run-in with that day. (Hopefully, not a skunk).  I would request that he shower, but I know he is so tired that he is capable of falling asleep standing up at this point. 

I do his laundry, so even in the dark, I know that he probably looks like he rolled around on the floor of the farm shop or was dragged behind a truck and that his pants may very well stand up on their own from being caked with mud. I also know I could likely plant a few acres with the soybeans, corn kernels, or grains of wheat that have accumulated in his pockets. Cleaning the lint filter in our clothes dryer is always interesting.

I have gotten used to this nightly routine, out of necessity.  You see, an infant will wake me long before dawn.  Soon thereafter the wee Wilson gals will stumble out of their bunk beds and expect "bekfest".  I have to try to force my brain to turn off and get some shut eye, or I will be Zombie Mama the next day, and believe me, she is NOT pretty.

As I'm lying in bed and this nearly unidentifiable creature enters my room, practically falls into bed, and puts a rough, calloused hand on my shoulder, the only thing that goes through my mind is, "I sure hope that's my husband!" :-)

After I put my hand on his, confirming that it is indeed my dear Jeremy, I say a little prayer that goes something like this: "Lord, I thank you for giving me a husband who works so hard to provide for my little family. I am so grateful you got him home safe and sound. In Jesus' name. Amen."

When harvest is complete, Jeremy and I will get a babysitter, go out to dinner, give ourselves a few hours to celebrate that another year of feeding families around the world is behind us, relish the fact that we have a lot to look forward to, and we will fall in love all over again :)

My Harvest Prayer

Dear Lord,

you know it was a fight,

morning, noon, and night,

to get this crop into the ground,

but in you our strength is found.

So we cared for every seed

to grow the food your people need

Now I humbly ask,

Please make the yields abundant and keep us safe in every task.

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.

Thankful Thursday: Mama's View of Wheat Harvest

Oh how I long to be behind the wheel of one of those big machines, be it the combine which collects the grain, or the tractor trailer (aka "semi") hauling grain to the storage bin or the grain elevator.  I only get to be a farm equipment operator on rare occasions these days. 

You see, as the only child in my family, I was expected to help on the farm and be son my father never had. 

No problem for me, I was quite the tomboy, so I grew up running farm equipment, helping Dad repair equipment, sand blasting, etc.  Even in our dating days and early marriage, Jeremy was teaching me to be an official farm hand.  I loved it, but it seemed that God had other plans, because we were only 5 weeks into our marriage when we got pregnant with C.W., which was such an answer to prayer :) 

So today, having been blessed with three little ones ages four, two, and three months, and two jobs off the farm, one with a farm organization, the other as a professional speaker, I'm not only booked up, but it isn't a safe situation to have such little ones around such large equipment with Mama's attention divided. 

 

I know my time will come, when the kids are a little older, and I will wait patiently for the "equipment operator" chapter of my life.  Okay, those of you who know me, know that, in reality, I wait patiently for NOTHING, but I'm hoping the good Lord will help me "embrace my place" and enjoy these precious moments with my little ones for the precious gift that they are. 

 

So here's a little glimpse into the view from Mama's seat, not the one high up in the combine or the semi, but from the driver's seat of the family pick-up that the children named "Hi Ho Silver".  I'm the official "go-fer"...I "go-fer" supper...I "go-fer" parts...you get my drift :) 

The day I snapped these pics, we were working on wheat harvest. Yields were disappointing due to the goofy weather we had this spring/summer, but I always say something is better than nothing to harvest.

I had parked on an approach (little driveway across the ditch) into the field. I knew that a truck would be arriving soon to get filled with grain, but I stayed there because I didn't want to leave the pickup running in the tall wheat stubble (can we say fire hazard?) and we needed some air circulation and the Curious George story on CD to keep playing :)

So there I was sitting, when the baby got hungry. Sure enough, as soon as he'd settled into nursing, I had to move the pickup. So I put it into drive and got out of the way of the truck. I think this earns me a gold medal in multi-tasking :)  Of course, I would NEVER do this on a road, but in a smooth field, for a short distance, it worked. And it made me laugh. Being a farmwife and mother, I am constantly doing things that I'd never imagined doing in a million years. 

I love my life :)

- Sarah

Early 1900's Kansas Wheat Harvest

Last April I spent two solid days with my husband Jeremy's Grandpa "Bill" Wilson at his kitchen table scanning farm and family photos and recording Grandpa's comments about them. They were two of the best days of my life!

Grandpa turned 90 this past November and he is still as sharp as a tack and VERY funny! The vivid memories of his youth are simply amazing and very humbling.

I am so grateful to Grandpa for sharing his time and memories with me and for showing me his precious photos and artifacts. I also have to say THANK YOU to his long-time girlfriend, Lorraine, (aka Grandma Bair), for watching my girls as Grandpa and I completed our task. C.W. and the wee red head were a very busy 3 and 1 then :)

I thought I would share some of the fruits of our labor with you. I hope you enjoy this little journey into the past to look at wheat harvests of the early 1900's. The Wilson family farmed in Kansas before they moved to North Dakota, so what you see are pics from the Salina, Kansas and Cambria, Kansas areas.

This is Jeremy's Great-grandfather, J. Harry Wilson:

Below, a threshing crew. FYI- Threshers separate the grains of wheat from the straw (stem) and chaff (the rest of the plant that surrounded the grain).

Below, Grandpa Wilson's brother-in-law, John Lang, with two of the mules who likely helped with harvest.

Below, Jeremy's Great-grandfather, J. Harry Wilson, ran this threshing crew in Salina, Kansas, 1905.

Here J. Harry Wilson's crew takes a break for a meal. He is seated on the left and is wearing suspenders. Grandpa didn't know who the rest of the folks were, but we agreed that the women standing in the back had a pretty big job on their hands cooking for that bunch!

This is a photo of the Lang and Wilson families. J. Harry Wilson and his wife, Susan (Jenkins) Wilson, my husband's great-grandparents, are standing in the back row on the right.

The pictures you've just seen were taken in Kansas, but Grandpa Wilson said that when his family settled on the farm we're on now in the early 1930's, his mother, Susan, would haul a load of wheat each year to a mill in Valley City (about 35 miles east of Jamestown) and have it ground into flour. The flour was put into 50 lb. bags and she would use 52 bags a year to feed his family and all the men who worked on the farm. Now THAT is some serious baking!

Time marches on and wheat harvest is upon us once again. Looks like we'll get started today if all goes well and this good weather holds.

These are the combines our family used to use:

And here is the one we use today:

We've come a long way since the early 1900's!

I hope that those who read this take a moment to consider the generations of knowledge and hard work that went into raising the wheat that makes the bread and other foods we enjoy today.

Sarah :)