Joyeux Anniversaire Tanya et TJ

Today is Tanya and TJ's 5th anniversary. They decided to celebrate by ditching their kids and heading to Montreal for the weekend. They somehow managed a free upgrade on their room, to a really fancy one on the tenth floor, so if you look really close you can see them waving from one of the windows near the top of the Hilton Garden Inn. They are having a really good time and we wish them a very Happy Anniversary!

Yeah!!! 2009 New Brunswick Farm of the Year!!!

30 Years...

Tomorrow, February 23rd, will be Sarah's and my 30th wedding anniversary....Yikes!! Our darling children decided that it was an accomplishment worth celebrating, so last Saturday night almost all of us met at Montana's Cookhouse in Fredericton. We had a seat for Carrie, and big plans to take her with us, but in the end we left her on a table back at the inn. Oops...

It was close enough to walk, and T J had a bottle of Fireball, so we put on our matching leather coats and headed out. Tanya and Brad walked with us, Victoria drove Sarah.

"Welcome to the Cookhouse" says Moose and the little guy.

Cheers!

Jesse rushed through his chores and managed to get there before us. I think he picked the beer glasses!

T J picked his own drink...

Gilbert wanted to sit with Victoria.

Stacy was happy to sit with Brad.

Sarah was just happy.

Until they brought out the horns...

And it was nice to have Krista show up afterwards to help us celebrate. Was that around 8, Jesse?

Happy Birthday Bradford

 

Today Bradford celebrated his 2cd birthday. We went over tonight and had a piece of an excellent cake Stacy had made for him. 

Bradford enjoyed it too!

Wine...and more...

Today was wine making day..give me applause, it is my 5th Sunday and I have stayed the course. 5 batches made, and 2 stabilized with 1 batch ready to be bottled next week.

Here I am stabilizing batch 2.

And here is Sarah working hard as we rack over batch 4.

This is batch 4 as it is getting racked...are we really gonna drink this stuff??...at a wedding??

And this is batch 1...I guess it doesn't look so bad...

And there has been a lot of interest these days in prego belly pictures. Tanya says it is the new rage. So to do my part...

This while I was racking wine. Time on my hands I guess.

Hey, there are my toes!!
I think I might better start walking again...soon.

When you get chickens...

This is just a warning to whoever might be interested in keeping chickens, that it comes with a price. We were lucky last year, but this year we had a few rats come to visit. A little bit of rat poison every day for a week, then panic set in, so we fed them a whole package a day for 4 days. That did the trick. Now, a rat running in the other direction is not something you like to see, but it sure beats seeing a poisoned one staggering toward you. Or a huge one laying there dead, but looking like it might just stand up and chew your leg off. That's why we are happy to have Jesse around.

He punched this one in the nose and took it out alive.

And this one was big enough that we had to get a picture. Funny thing was, as I was getting ready to take the picture, Sarah called, and the phone vibrated and I screamed. Funnier still, Jesse laughed, dropped the rat and didn't notice, then looked down and saw a huge rat by his feet, and he screamed louder. You had to be there...
Tonight we also had Scott MacLean here. Sarah's nephew.

And I hope Scott doesn't mind sharing the blog with a couple of rats. It was nice to have him stop in tonight on his way to Ottawa, where he will be doing practice doctor stuff in the emergency room at Ottawa General for 3 weeks.

Carrie in Quebec avec Melissa

We talked to Carrie tonight, again on Skype...gotta love it. I think back to our first exchange, when Tanya went to St. Jean sur Richeleau back in '98, how excited we got the first time we managed to hook up with her on ICQ, when she sneaked on a school computer. Now we can have a video chat with Carrie in her bedroom at home, and I get text messages from her while she is on the bus on her way to and from school. She is doing really well, enjoying school, and her new friends. She has been swimming in her school pool while we enjoy sub zero temperatures. Last night they went into Quebec City and enjoyed the Winter Carnival.

And the view from Carrie's end...much better I'd say.

Lely Trip

Last Tuesday Jesse and I, and a bunch of other farmers traveled to Woodstock, Ontario, to look at Lely robotic milkers. Victoria thought it was Woodstock, New Brunswick, and was upset that we didn't stop in. We did fly over her house on the way home, and saw lots of familiar landmarks from Fredericton to Jemseg.

We toured 6 farms, with 1 to 6 robots, and were well fed on both evenings that we were there. We saw some very nice barns, and got lots of ideas.

A view of a cow being milked in the robot from the front.

Attaching.

Milking

6 Robots.

Lely Juno for automated feed pushing. This would be great for school tours.

Lely Discovery for scraping manure through the slats in the floor.

A happy and stinky bunch of dairy farmers on the way home yesterday. They put us together at the back of the plane!

Carrie has gone to Quebec avec Melissa

Carrie left last night for her part of the Quebec french exchange. She will be happy to be with Melissa again as they became good friends last fall when Melissa was here. Even Oreo wanted to go and tried to hide in Carrie's bag as she was packing.

Preparing for Carrie's departure, she had a bunch of friends in on Thursday night, and then on Friday night we went out for supper at Up to Par. The weather was terrible, but none the less, Tanya braved the roads and came down to enjoy a good meal with Carrie, Sarah and I. By early Saturday, we were ready to head  to Saint John, but we had to stop for a few last minute purchases at the mall.

Carrie also had one more wish....a stop at the bowling alley in Quispamsis. 

Carrie, Jennifer and Lexie proved to quite the bowlers. Tanya also came with Emma, Madilyn and Sarah.

Then the airport! Beth joined Jennifer and Lexie to say goodbye to Carrie, and also Danielle, who was heading for her exchange in Victoriaville.

 

Then departure at Gate 1! (psst...Saint John only has one gate)

And an emotional last Goodbye through the security glass....

And a last picture of Carrie and Danielle.

As we left the airport, the plane took off right above us, it would have made a great picture if anyone would have had a camera out. We honked the horn, and it was great to see the pilots and all the passengers wave. Lexie followed the plane for 14 minutes with her eyes, and then got over it. This is almost how it looked, picture a smaller plane from a different angle.

So, on a final note, tonight Sarah and I enjoyed (like really enjoyed) a candle lit dinner, our first as empty nesters. See the enjoyment in Sarah's eyes?

Carrie a Model?

Our little princess Carrie, was in a fashion show today! No, not overalls but apparently wedding dresses... She did come home with her hair all fixed up, we will have to search for pictures.

Please Don't Drink and Bale

Yikes, 11 days without a post here, and no one has complained yet!

Today I suffered the consequenses of too much beer in the hay field. Back in the day, we used to be rewarded with a beer for every load of hay we hooked up to the truck, so on one particularly good hay day, likely 18 or 20 years ago over in Hatfield's Point, after many loads of hay, I managed to drop a hay wagon tongue on my big toe. I lost the toenail then, but it never managed to grow back right. So today a doctor took a pair of pliers (he called them forceps) and ripped it off and killed the root. On the bright side, one less toenail to cut. Someone please get me a beer!

Happy New Decade!

Last night we had a wonderful evening ringing in the New Year. Family, friends, fireworks, and fun. All the kids and grandkids were here with the exception of Victoria, who is over in Newfoundland with Brad, to attend his brothers wedding. We missed her, especially when we were aiming the fireworks. Happy New Year!!