Canoeing on the Southwest Miramichi

On Sunday, 9 of us travelled to Blackville, NB, and spent the night in a lodge on the Southwest Miramichi river. We had won this evening and ensueing canoe trip with our success in fundraising for the Rona M-S bike tour, back in '07, '08, and '09. The Country Haven Lodge was kind to put up with our repeated bookings and cancellations and honour their donated prize with a smile. Byron stated that he knew Tanya better than most of his regular guests, due to all the emails and phone calls they had exchanged. The lodge was spendid.

Tanya, Emma, and Carrie by the river.

 Carrie and Emma on the swing before they broke it.

Carrie and Lexie with their new friends.

Jesse and Marty.

Sarah.

Chris and I.

 Special thanks to Chris for the spectacular cooking!

Tanya on time out.

Jesse, Marty, and Chris...Thoughts on this picture can be shared in the the comments at the end.

We enjoyed a great country breakfast Monday morning.

And then it was time to hit the river.

Carrie and Lexie wore ponchos, so they wouldn't get wet in the rain that quit as soon as we started canoeing.

I do think it makes Carrie look a tad large?

So much for the ponchos...

Emma wasn't so impressed...

Waiting for Jesse and the girls...

And a quick beer break before the home stretch. We also took this opportunity to leave on shore all valuables and extra stuff, as the young ones vowed to tip Sarah and I. They set up quite the gauntlet, but we managed to beat them through it, and dragged the canoe on to shore as all the other canoes floated upside down.

And supper in Doaktown on the way home, and a visit with Bruce the Moose.(no relation)

I think we all had a great time, and I now know why everyone speaks so highly of the Miramichi!

How much hen poop can a F-350 haul?..Or Dump?

First I must apologize for the quality of the photo. It might have been a good time to rotate the back tires, but I'm sure Jesse wanted to get all 4 wheels back on the ground before he called a professional photographer. We use the tractor hydraulics to dump the trailer, I wonder how many of his old girlfriends would we need in the back to keep the truck down when we dumped?
Saying a little prayer tonight for Scot, he goes in tomorrow to get that piece of his skull put back in, the one they sawed out (who would want to do that?) to relieve the pressure on his brain. Thank God there are people that would want to do that, he is doing well. Good luck tomorrow, Scot.

New Tractor

Well, we actually got a real one, but while we were waiting for it, and to have it set up, we enjoyed this one, with it's wheels spinning in the wind. Cute.
So this week we finally unparked the new John Deere 6330 and started using it. We haven't had the loader on it yet, but if it works as good on it as it does on the old 6120, we will be happy.

If anyone is wondering how we made out with all those wagons we picked up a couple of months ago, we have also finally got them all in use. The 2 tandem wagons went under the forage boxes we picked up last year, so that brings that fleet up to 5. Shouldn't have to wait for a wagon now, huh.

We picked up enough lumber to build 3 new hay racks. We had most of our haying done before I got them built, used 1 of them for 1 day, but the last 2 weeks of rainy weather allowed me time to get the other 2 built.

So we now have 8 hay wagons, just haven't a picture of them all in the same place. I am sure I will sometime.

We will enjoy seeing the one we replaced on several bonfires. we had a few beers as we built it, and might just have another as it burns.

Brigitte!!

It was great to have Brigitte, and her 2 children, Oscar and Xavier here for the weekend. She stopped by on her way home from New Hampshire. Not exactly on her way, but we were sure glad to see her. We did some great catching up on Friday night, and on Saturday we spent lots of time in the pool. Stacy was over with her kids, and Grandma stopped by too. The boys just loved visiting the farm. She even stopped and had a picnic lunch with Tanya and her kids in Florenceville on her way home. So good to see you, Brigitte.

Tractor Canada

Today we were honoured to be one of the farms visited by Dr. John Varty, Molly Daley, and Micheal Liew. AKA Tractor Canada. They are driving a farm tractor across Canada, and started out in Charlottetown, PEI on July 1st. They plan on interviewing farm families and are planning to do a documentary about farming, farm families, and food. We had a nice, long, enjoyable visit, and shared lots of thoughts. I just looked at their planned itinerary, and they were hoping to be in Quebec by today. I know why they are not. The next time we drive across Canada, we just might catch up with them. If anybody wants to meet some good people, find these guys and have a chat.

Happy Birthday Stacy

The weather can sure change in a hurry. After a cold weekend, yesterday and today have been so hot. I cleaned the pool last night, and it is filling now with the overflow from our spring. Carrie started working at the Evandale Resort yesterday. She was told that she was a great dish washer. Hmmm, we never noticed that here. Both Willard and Autumn lost their family jewels yesterday, but I'm sure no one wants to see pictures of that. But we do have pictures of Stacy, on her special day. The first one is really her, not Cecily. And the second one was taken by Brigitte.

Happy 27th birthday Stacy! We hope you had a great day. Did you get all those eggs graded?