July 12 - He is Healing!

Today is the big day! Shea finally gets to get the pins out of his arm! We are beyond excited that this part of our summer is almost over! Before he went to the hospital we got these pictures of his cast. We, of course, all wanted to draw on it, but when we started with a silver marker, Shea thought he would draw his x-ray on it.  

If you look at his wrist area there is a black stripe through the bone, that is where the break was. For all who know Shea will understand the sense of humor behind this cast. His excuse was it kept him from getting bored.

Dad's encouraging message to Shea!

He is so happy to move his hand normally!

School field trip...at least that was what Garrett said for his reason to go to town.

They are out! Praise God we are all done, and he had a perfect healing! We ended up not having to do any physical therapy because he was active enough!

July 4 - Happy Independence day!!

The day of memorial for the greatest time in the history of our country is one of celebration all over. Way out here in the boonies is no exception. Both years we have been here, we seem to pack as much into this day as we possible can. These little towns around here sure know how to celebrate! There even was a huge bluegrass festival in Fossil, OR that we went to last year. 

This year we went over to Monument, OR where they host a community day, with a parade, lots of fun games, booths, contests, and in the evening an amazing firework display.  Janessa took so many fun pictures with her camera of the day.

Our astronomer wore this around all day, and had it stained on his face for 3 more. 

The bumper ball challenge was pretty intense between these two!

A very popular part of the day!

 Later in the day we went to Spray, Oregon to have a pot luck down at the river with our friends from church!

Then back to Monument for fireworks, Janessa got some amazing pictures!

June 30 - Putting in the River Screen

 Our orchard has two pump stations, the north pump and the south pump, and in the summer when the river starts getting low we change the pump in the river from a foot valve to a floating screen that pulls off the top of the water. This year we had a picnic and made it a family event. After the adventure of getting it in, the boys got their kayak and we spend the very hot afternoon playing in the river.  

The water from the river gets pumped into this tank, often used as a swimming pool, as it is several degrees warmer than the river.

Here is the screen coming in on the front end loader.

Even Shea gets to play with this toy, as you can see he has a plastic bag duct taped around his arm.

June 27 - Lots of Help

Some very good friends came out to get some cherries today, they have 7 kids, and immediately 6 of them wanted to help me on the tractor. We had a blast, and I don't believe I have ever loaded the semi so fast! I had all I could do to keep caught up and take pictures at the same time.

June Cherry Harvest

One of Janessa's many job descriptions for the orchard is photographer. She takes all manner of pictures of the fruit on the tree, harvesting, fruit in the trailer getting ready to ship and some pictures of our life and certain projects that are going on. She has an amazing eye for a good picture. I have gathered a few from cherry harvest for your pleasure. Please enjoy!

The cherries have to get cool as soon as possible, so we lay them across the floor of the semi 6 or 7 in a row, by the next morning they are down to 32 degrees. Let me tell you a freezing cold cherry on a hot day is one of the best treats you can have!

The fun, challenging part of the harvest is keeping count of each one of these totes, it took me a week or so before my count was right every single day :D

After the cherries are cool, we stack them into these bins. Each bin can hold 30 totes of cherries.

My all time favorite cherries are the Rainier, I ate way too many. There was about 3 times more Rainier cherries than any other variety.

This plant is one of our worst enemies in the orchard, Poison Ivy/oak (depending on who you talk to).

During cherry harvest, there are literally millions of wild daisies blooming all over the orchard!

Dad getting ready to prime the pump.

Garrett and his big puppy, they sure do love each other!

Here are some of the earliest apples.

A mixed load of cherries.

Garrett, Gabe, and I spent the morning cleaning up the mess we made on the day before, then moved on to making another one.

Garrett is doing his "weight lifting", he has 40lbs in each hand, it's surprising how fast this trick becomes the easiest method of carrying the totes.

Our fork lift died the first week of cherry harvest, so we had to do a little bit of double stacking by hand.