easter 2012

Ok, so I am pretty much two weeks (or more) behind about posting Easter pictures. These are mostly pictures from the house, dying eggs, and at mom and dad's barn hunting eggs with friends and family.
Dying eggs is a pretty big childhood memory for me. I always loved the preparation and time spent together, dressing up and going to mamaw and papaw's house to hunt eggs with all of my cousins. So here are some sweet pictures of my kids dying eggs...and yes we use coffee cups to dye our eggs in because that's what we did when I was a kid. I almost bought the little egg dying cups, but then thought no, the coffee cups have to stay. I distinctly remember my dad drinking a cup of blue egg dye instead of his coffee one year, precious!

These are the few pictures I have of the kids dressed up in their Easter outfits before the virus hit once we were at church (LOVELY)...

The last picture is of Jack with his wheat. He came home one day with a sock (yes, off his foot) full of wheat seed which he insisted on planting in this broken flowerpot. Of course we HAD to have a picture of him with his wheat on Easter morning.:) Sweet boy..
Jack talk -
Oh yeah, here is the conversation I heard Easter morning when Ben was dressing Jack - "Dad, boys don't wear white pants, pants aren't white they are blue or brown." " I know son." "Dad, I don't like this blue sweater." "It looks good Jack, you look nice." "But dad, the blue covers up my white shirt and I like my white shirt. Can I wear my white shirt over my blue sweater?" AHHH - like father, like son.

East Coast Steaks

I missed loading steers Thursday. We always try and load early before it gets too hot and the driver can get on the road. Ben left the house pretty early to meet the truck at the scales, so I didn't wake the kids. He did take a picture of the cab-over truck that loaded them up and took them on a trip up the east coast...

These steers are going up the east coast to New York. They are being marketed in Whole Foods Stores as all-natural beef, so it's a pretty good deal. ALSO - after lunch Sunday we rode around looking at different fields and made this beautiful discovery - little shoots of corn poking up out of the ground. Look close...can you see them?

We no-till plant all of our corn and wheat and 95% of our soybeans. In other words, we don't disk or plow the ground to prepare a seedbed prior to planting. All we do before we plant is spray a burndown herbicide to kill the winter weeds and plant into that undisturbed surface. This saves lots of trips over the fields, saves fuel, and greatly decreases the potential for erosion. Ben says we dont have enough topsoil anyway, we can't allow what we do have to wash away.

Life on the farm is fairy tale life for Whitney Haynes » Top News » CullmanTimes.com - Cullman, Alabama

This is a profile story that was recently published in our local paper. Life on the farm is fairy tale life for Whitney Haynes » Top News » CullmanTimes.com - Cullman, Alabama

Moving steers

We started the morning moving a group of steers across the road and closer to the barn. They were sold several weeks ago through Superior Livestock Auctions and are going to be loaded Thursday morning.

This group will be going to an all-natural farm in New York. A pretty long trip ...

I love this time of year when the grass is newly green and the calves are fat and shiny...

Moving calves went pretty well, then Ben had to doctor a bull with foot rot...

What is foot rot? Click here.

The green is KoperTox, it protects and seals the infected parts of the foot to keep it from getting worse. He gives anitbiotics to heal the foot and infection. Then we had to find and doctor a sick calf...calves get pneumonia, too. This one was pretty sick -

Ben was able to get a rope around it and doctor it from the four-wheeler. It had a pretty good momma that stayed close by.

All is well... After lunch Ben sprayed pastures and the kids and I went to track practice. This is a picture Ben took yesterday while he and Jack were spraying a field. They had stopped to refill and Jack washed his hands in the foam marker...

Just a weekend...

This is a post I had started several weeks ago, but had trouble with my camera - Mom cooked lunch Sunday after church for the family, mamaw and papaw included. It was so nice to visit together. If any more babies are born they will need a bigger table, mom says it's a blessing, I agree. Dad and the kids played in the basement before we had to go back to church for night service.

It's strange because growing up the pool table was not to be abused at any time.... now there is a grown man and two kids playing with a LEGO collection on top! Isn' it funny how the rules change for two sweet kids?! Nursery friends. I have a picture very similar to this of Jack and Amos.

Little kids singing (and Elli).

Sweet baby Lola and her daddy

Jack spent the afternoon putting out hay with Ben. I stopped by the farm to pick him and they drove up on the four-wheeler, like father like son eh? At some point we will have to have the you-can't-drive-that-fast discussion.

working boy

Ben finished turning out bulls with the momma cows last week. We are enjoying pretty wonderful weather lately and are really only feeding a few groups of cows now. Grass is green and there is a lot of it for mid-March. Bart is in high gear cleaning out litter from chicken houses and getting it spread on pastures and hayfields.
Believe it or not, as of yesterday we still did not have our yard repaired from the tornadoes on April 27, last year! We lost about 1,000 years worth of trees in one morning. So, today was the day to clean up stump holes, sow grass, and move part of an old fence. I had to post some pictures of my hardworking kids -

How about those winter tans?! We were dragging the newly tilled yard. Going VERY slowly with LK on board. The rest of the pictures are of Jack helping Ben pull up posts from an old fence (btw, he is 4!).
He stood at the fence and was yelling at the cows - "What are you doing Jack?"

"Trying to scare the cows." *YELL*
"O YEAH, that sounds scary, I think they are scared."
"No they are not, they're not shivering."
Well, I guess that's something we can work on. <

road trip

We took a road trip this week in search of one of these -

We'll use it to apply fertilizer and crop protection products to corn, soybeans, wheat, and pastures. We found just what we were looking for in Dale, Illinois. Ben had found several sprayers on TractorHouse that we were prepared to travel and look at. Luckily, we found this one at our second stop. Jack liked our first stop because it had a basketball goal. These were his rules, "You start on first base and I will be at second base, then I say go and kick it and then you chase me and then tackle me." So I guess he was glad there was a basketball, nevermind the goal.

Notice the Dixon Farms truck behind him! Our second stop was a great family farm about 70 miles into Illinois. Jack met Weston who's grandpa sold us the sprayer. They had a great time. Apparently Illinois farmboys play just about like Alabama farmboys - hammer and nails, rock piles, mud, etc. So, we found a good sprayer, just what Ben was looking for. Now we just have to get it home... Wish we could have picked this up too -