·:[ high hopes gardens ]:·
• • • • •

All in all, it has been one of those “full” days. I don’t mean full in the sense of lots of activities, but full of many meaningful and interesting moments. The day started at 6:00 am getting ready for Farmer’s Market. We wanted to try Grinnell’s market. It was also the day to pick up Emma from 4H camp.

The truck was all loaded for market, running just a tad behind schedule, but still ok. Linda was going to market, and I to get Emma and the truck steering column locked up. The wheels were turned sharply when the truck was turned off and the key would not turn the truck over, nor would the steering wheel move. I’ve had this happen before, but it was relatively quick to turn hard on the wheel to make it break loose. We tried over and over and started to feel hopeless about a truck full of produce and flowers and immobilized.

In desperation, I got out an old logging chain (forged in Duluth, MN) and tried pulling the truck with the tractor to try to break the impasse. On the second try it worked. Linda had a good day at market - sold all the flowers, lots of garlic and nobody complained about the prices!

It was good to see Emma again and learn of her week at camp. We had a sheep (Beatrice see blog entry for her arrival) that seemed a bit listless yesterday and when we got home from the morning activities, she was dead. She showed no signs of bloat or diarrhea, just went down. So we spent some time digging a hole to bury her. I’ve come to accept that death is a part of raising livestock, but it’s never easy.

The rest of the day we put up some more sweet corn (last of the season) and picked and peeled the remaining apples from the first three apple trees to ripen. We just peeled and cut up the apples and froze them to make applesauce in bulk at a later time. We did get a 92 inch continuous apple peel!

On our way back from the camp we stopped in at “Mousehole Days” in Melbourne to drop the key off to the new lawnmower for my lawnmower guy and fire chief to look it over and haul it home for me. Martin got the chance to sit in the firetruck and blow the fire truck siren!

Today Emma returned from a week at 4-H Camp and writes this blog entry. “I spent the last week in 4H camp and had a blast!

This is a picture of all the “everything campers” and I am on the end.

One day we got to herd the horses and feed them. The brown one was really fat because it was really friendly.

This is the high ropes course. I did the vertical log and thats a log leaning against a tree and you had to climb up it. I also did the post man walk where you walk on one rope and hold onto two ropes about 20 feet off the ground. One kid sat on the log for 30 minutes. We did a climbing towers and I got up about 30 feet off the ground.

This is when we were sampling pioneer camp and my friend and I set up the tent and slept in it.
There was this one guy and he would wait for you outside the bathroom door and take pictures when you came out. My friend came up with the name “Papparazi Dude” for him. My counselor and cabin mates were really nice. The boys were annoying. We had three campfires and they were fun. We had one dance and more Papparazi dude pictures. We went on a creek walk and covered ourselves in mud. We went swimming for 5 hours one say it was awesome. I want to go back next year.