Hold on, it's almost August?

June flew by in a whirlwind of busyness and haymaking.

Moving the beef cows

Moving goats - this old one is bit slower than the rest....

 128 more broilers arrived on the farm

We spend most of June and July making hay. As usually, we had plenty of breakdowns. We also had several fields of hay that got "washed" after we had cut them- but we are gratefully for the rain that provides moisture to keep the grass growing!

Also in June, we celebrated Laura's high school graduation with an ice cream social here at the farm. Unfortunately it was a rainy day. So after our church service and before the party started at 2:00, we made short work of cleaning out one end of the garage and hanging tarps. Though it was a bit cool and damp, we all had a great day... (And due to the rain- I forgot to take pictures of the actual event, so use your imagination: Theme colors were bright blue and brown, with a bit of western decor, a picture board, and some centerpieces of flowers and grass from the fields . We had chocolate and vanilla ice cream with a wide variety of topping options.)    Laura started taking classes from a local tech college last year and will continue working towards a degree this year- along with training horses.  

Speaking of Laura- this summer, her horse riding lessons have transitioned to horse training lessons. She has the opportunity to work with some young horses her teacher owns. Twice a week Laura heads to SLR to work 3-4 horses. She is really enjoying it. She is also using the arena that the previous post showed. Hopefully it will get some sand added to the top soon and be an even nicer place for her to work Poco (her horse). 

The second week in June was our church's VBS. I taught the 1st-3rd grade class, Laura helped teach the Pre K & K class, and Grace was in charge of craft time.  The theme this year was "On to Victory" and so most of the lessons were about battles that the Israelites were involved in.  I tried to make my lessons interactive and fun- so we marched around a wall of boxes (for Jericho) and the kids enjoyed demolishing it.  With Grandma's help, I cut out soldiers so we could have a visual of the ambush at Ai, a step ladder and tape measure assisted us as we figured out how tall Goliath would have been. Here are a couple pictures of my story props: 

The Israelite camp for the battle of Jericho.

A very mini version of Jericho: 

I found some pretty interesting information out about the walls of Jericho: if you are interested you can read about it here: Walls of Jericho

Ai before the attack

Ai after the ambush. (Do you like how we set the city on fire??)

Our Forth of July began similar to last year, except this year there were three teenagers setting off firecrackers early in the morning. Not only did they do it here, they also visited Nate's and Grandma Fran's. It rained during chore time that evening, so instead of a campfire we grilled the brats and had a picnic on our front porch. That evening lots of fire crackers, bottle rockets and other explosives where thoroughly enjoyed.  Uncle Frank was up for the week, and we enjoyed his visit!    

Since we use rotational grazing practices on our farm, we do a lot of fence moving during the summer. Also this month we've been working on building some new fence for the sheep and goats in some land that had been logged a couple years ago and now is growing up to a jungle. It's been hard work, but the goats are loving the brush.

I took this picture after while moving fence one evening.

(I tried to use my panorama setting- but it distorted the photo a bit)

Daily chores take a good share of the day, and then there are the gardens to keep up with as well. We are starting to be able to enjoy some of the veggies from our garden (yum!). Yesterday, we froze our first picking of green beans. 

We played music three days in a row a two weeks ago. We played for a county fair, for a outreach picnic, and the following evening was our town hall music night. 

Playing for Fair Time Chapel 

Grace and I just got home a from serving at a Bible camp in Northern IL for a week. - It was a great week, and I'll try to share more about it later. 

This week Nate, Grace, and Matt are going to grazing workshop for 2 days, and then this weekend some of us are very excited to be heading to the Lake Itacsa Music Fest (near Bemidji, MN). We always enjoy this festival and if you don't have plans for this weekend you should consider coming! :)