Iowa Summer 2016

After the tumultuous start to the trip things settled down a bit in Iowa.  The sweet corn was ready as soon as we arrived, so there was plenty of corn to harvest, cut and freeze well before cornfest. Katherine & Lee made their first trip out to Iowa since Nora's baptism, and of course Katherine made sure there were plenty of games and tournaments for everyone.

Cornfest was a blast.  Katherine organized the 2016 Dam Cornhole Tournament, and she and Lee gave it their best shot in the second annual sweet corn eating contest.  They were no match for me though, as apparently speed sweet corn eating is my calling. I finished my four ears in a record 1 minute 49 seconds, while Lee came in second, 44 seconds behind me.



Our second week was full of farming and fun.  Ellen & John came for a visit, we saw Margret and Alex Hoover ahead of Hooverfest (Margret had plenty to say about the election of course;-), plus we took on our big Pond project for the year.  We used the pile of huge rocks that came from the foundation of an old barn to build a retaining wall along the South edge of the Pond between the dock and the damn, and built a fan ramp up to the dock.  The most exciting part of the project was putting in the giant fishing rock, which was almost too big to move with the tractor and excavator (Ken went up on three wheels briefly trying to move it with the tractor, and we had to carefully roll it into place with some special maneuvering to get the right side facing up).  Something was missing though when we finished, the gravel ramp just didn't quite look right next to the beautiful rock retaining wall, so Kent and I came up with a plan to pave it with limestone (which of course Kent just happened to have a pallet of), and with that the project was complete. Just another day of life on the farm.



(click here for all the pictures)