It is too hot

This is such a hot day. The alpacas, cats, and wildlife are wilted from the heat. Most of all I worry about our pregnant dam. She looks so unhappy.
I remember hot days like these back in the fifties. We didn't have air-conditioning so we played in the cool basement. That is where we played dolls. We had great fun in our little house down there under the big house. I guess I am aging, I delight in the memories I have of growing up. It is funny how I remember the good things with very little thought and the not so good things only if I really think about them. The bad things seem so much worse as I aged and was wiser.

The County Fair

There are some things that you do from your childhood and you continue to enjoy them, they make you smile and they make you feel like a kid inside. Last night we went to the county fair. It was a warm summer night, with smells of the barns, vapors of fair food and sounds of the animals, and people of all ages having fun. The Boone County Fair was very nice. It had the cleanest Midway and the "Carneys" were all in clean, yellow shirts. They certainly were a different caliber of people than we had at the Coles County Fair back home. I grew up in Charleston, Coles County, Illinois. We made potholders to raise funds for when the fair came to town. My Mom entered many items in the arts and craft part of the fair. As a kid, I won many ribbons on the projects she helped me enter. The fair was a major part of our summer. While I loved the animals, people, arts and crafts and the homemade lemonade, there were a few things missing that I have in my memories about the fair. There was no Black Walnut Taffy, no Bingo, no sulki horse races, no cows and no Vinegar French Fries. Everything else was great. If you know of a fair with the missing elements, please email me!

The Day is Great

It is a really nice start this morning, the birds are singing after a morning gentle shower. It is so nice when a gentle shower starts the day. I slept with air conditioning last night, awoke and immediately opened the windows. Country fresh, clean air!
I had planned a road trip that got canceled. That is like a gift of time when that happens. You have been planning and working to start the trip and a change takes place. Suddenly you are thrown off track and you have that gift of time. Now I am going to work on the summer day camp we are planning for next year. I need to research summer alpaca day camps. More to be added

Complaining Lady

It is to hot to write a post...more later!

Rain

We have had so much rain the last couple days. The wheel barrel is full, our lagoon is full and I am tired of it. Last night lightening struck and ignited a row of hay near our farm. Smoldering hay is so rancid and hangs in the air. It really bothers cria Royal Sigmund's lungs. After all he is only a month old. Though nothing is more miserable than a drought, rain can still bring you down. Rain in July means HUMIDITY in Missouri. That is such a difficult time for our animals. The air conditioning has been on several days and that makes all of us grumpy. I have a sister that is having a hard time right now. She is my baby sister and I just want to swoop her into my arms and make things right for her. I know I can't, so instead I sat down and wrote my kids an email about how special they are to me. I hope they really read what I wrote them. Too often we fail to let the ones we love know how much they mean to us. My eldest sister died in a car accident in 1981. I will never forget the morning she died and for no real reason I hugged her and told her much I loved her and how happy I was that she was my sister. That is the last memory I have of her. Sorry this is such a downer of an entry...Maybe the sun will shine tomorrow!

After the Fourth

It is always fun to have family and friends around to celebrate the holidays. Working up to the event is fun, as well. We ran in the fields with the alpacas, a new experience for our friends. Our friends and some family ate and shot off fireworks together. The teens and elders were all the same age for those few hours as they duc taped the plastic army men to the bottle rockets. They loved the danger of it all. We spectators were on a"high" from our friends as we sang patriotic songs and danced with sparklers to the sound of the the recorder played so well that one would have thought it was James Galway in our mists. We laughed, reminisced and entertained each other under the bounty of moonlight that filled the pastures. What fun...What a memory we created to be recovered on another Fourth of July!