A couple of weeks ago I bought a used desk from Jennifer who lives in Diona about 75 miles southwest of the "farm". Our pickup truck was not big enough to do the hauling so our friends Claudia and Tom offered their truck for the task.
This turned out to be a girl's day out. Claudia and I left the boys at home and went on our merry way. It was a beautiful day, sunny with fairly mild temperatures. I had never been to this part of Illinois. We went through cities that I had heard of (Homer, Allerton,Greenup) but not visited. Most of the corn and soy fields are plowed now waiting for the planting to begin next spring.
When we arrived at Jennifer's we decided to load the desk after going to lunch and doing a little shopping. So off we went. After lunch we went to a near by winery, shopped antique stores in Greenup and visited this covered bridge near Greenup. As you can see it has been rebuilt. I thought it was interesting that the original bridge built in the 1800's cost around $11,000 and this structure was over $2,000,000. Claudia took this picture as well as others that she may enter in a photo contest.
Our
last stop before going back and picking up the desk was an apple farm that usually sells apple juice/cider but this year because of the freeze, that happened in this part of the country in March, the apple crop was really effected and there was none to buy. We did get some apples that were very good.
Our first real snow here on the farm a few days ago and it snowed another inch or so last night. No more mowing grass. Now it's shoveling paths to the horse barn where we park the cars. The car in the picture is Mike's. He is now parking in the horse barn also. The horse barn has two sliding doors, that slide to the right. We keep them closed to keep snow out. It is kind of a hassle because you have to open them to leave and then get out of the car before leaving to slide the doors closed, no automatic garage door opener. They are the original doors that Bob redid this last summer.
One thing about the snow is you can see the foot prints of the animals that cross various parts of the yard. Kind of interesting to see their journey in search of food and shelter. Nothing like the Wittig's in Juneau who have bears wondering around. Just rabbits, possums, mice, birds and maybe a squirrel or two. We don't have the resident squirrel we did a couple of years ago just a visitor now and then. I did hear coyotes near the house (very close) yapping last week. Just heard them didn't see them.
Bob has put the lighted tree up again in the yard. When I took the picture it was snowing and it made kind of an unusual picture. You can see it at night coming around the corner before getting to the driveway.
We have been busy with amateur radio this week. Provina Hospital had a disaster exercise yesterday. They pretended a tornado hit the corner of the hospital. We participated as an alternate means of communications. I was ask by the hospital to be an observer along with Red Cross, Emergency Management and the Fire Department. The club members set up a Net and folks listening checked in on the radio. Bob drove around to various points in town to check transmission. All went okay. As expected the hospital found glitches in their disaster plan but all in all it turned out okay.
We visited with Granddaddy earlier this week. He is doing fine and had gone to Wal Mart earlier in the day so he was stocked up on food for awhile. He and Bob watched a DVD that we got from Netflex called Entertainment. It shows bits and pieces from various musicals through the years. He really enjoyed watching and listening. There are two others that are on their way that we will share with him. The sidewalk also got shoveled but will need it again today. We will stop over later.
We are going to have dinner at Garfield's with our friends the Spanglers tonight. Tomorrow is the Amateur Radio Christmas dinner and Sunday is the Red Cross Christmas celebration.
The Christmas season is upon us.
