needsalt

We've spent the past two days visiting my aunt, uncle, and cousin George in Wisconsin with most of our family from Iowa.  My aunt and uncle own about 60 acres of grasslands and pasture lands with a barn, horses, midget horses, and chickens.  It has been a wonderful weekend full of good food, laughter, farm-related activities, and pitching in a hand where we could.

The farm is Anna and I's dream house/lot.  We'd love to have this many acres with a farm and farm animals.  The farm also has a great guest house that has been mainly for our small three-person family.  This place is really great.

Yesterday my cousin and I pulled a broken branch out of a tree with a tractor and a chain.  After several undistinguishable grunts we declared that we now needed a chain saw to slice and dice the felled branch.  It took minimal convincing for my uncle to realize the genius of a chain saw and we soon gathered the rest of the males in the family and headed to town to purchase the farm's new chainsaw.  The chainsaw isle at the local Menards echoed with our grunts and was followed by snickers after an employee recommended a purple chainsaw.  We rounded off our man-shopping with selecting a fiberglass log splitter.  We stunk of manliness exiting the store.

Today, my Uncle Sam, cousin George, and I put the chainsaw to work and cut several large branches all over the property then split the logs into firewood.

Anna has been able to spend time with the horses on the farm which included some riding and attempted training.  She was a little frustrated with the stubbornness of the horse, but really enjoyed being around horses again.  I'm sure she'll be writing a post shortly with more information, http://www.annabland.com.

Nora also enjoyed the time on the farm and playing with her cousins.  She is infatuated with Carter and Cade and loved snuggling with them and watching a movie at night.

We'll be heading home after Monday night with Anna's cousin in Madison.  It has been a really great second summer vacation.  While, we'd really like to stay on the farm forever, we will be excited to head home knowing that our house now has air conditioning again.