Remembering

David Obgerfel had the morning service and reminded us to remember those who gave their life so we could worship freely. He told us the history of how this holiday came about. After the service Peoria had a tornado drill with everyone being ushered downstairs.
Mike Rieker had the afternoon service on Samson.
We had beautiful weather for the rest of the day and a lot of the family made their way to mom's for the usual volley ball then a camp fire. Braelyn and Taegan had to help grandpa with the tractor. Notice Braelyn is actually driving, Brave grandpa!

Emily arrived back with Dolly and her 3 beautiful kids.

The goats were taken over to the barn and stalled for the night. She had 2 boys and 1 girl. The boy with the dark head had to be pulled, he came backward and got stuck. Luckily Emily was there to save the baby. Check out how stocky he is. We had a very pleasant evening singing around the camp fire eating somemores, thanks to Phil and Anna.

Clean-Up

Today was the first day Dan was allowed into the gym building for clean up. Rachel set up a facebook page to keep people informed and volunteers came out to help both from church, family and the town of Farmington. Below are a few pictures of some of the helpers.

 Above they are bringing out the equipment and below is one of the helpers washing everything outside.

 The hallways were filled with filthy water. The power washer and guys with squeegees were used to clean up the sooty water.

 Below Ben and Logan are cleaning the floor of the locker room which had been turned into cabins for camps.

 Below is another of the locker rooms getting cleaned up with helpful workers.

 the girls below are pushing water with big squeegees.

 Breaking for lunch, Subway from the town of Farmington donated the sandwhiches, Diane and Rhonda brought the chips and desserts and Randy brought the drinks. We would like to give a special thanks to Subway.

 Dan felt that area cleaned up quicker and better than expected. At least that was one area done. Thanks to all the helpers. The kids came over for kabobs tonight. After supper a bunch of us drove to East Peoria to the Prayer room where David had the lesson.

Emily took her goat home today, Forrest is having a big invite so Emily took Sarah and Hannah Reinhard home with her, then as an afterthought loaded up Dolly the goat just in case she would go into labor. Well Dolly DID go into labor and had 3 kids. Emily sent a picture by text but I think there is no way to get it off my phone to the computer.

Melting Connection

Braelyn and Taegan came today to help grandma with chores. The first job was feeding the horses. Braelyn takes that job very seriously.

 She very carefully carries it to each bucket or feeder and dumps it in without spilling any.

 After the horses were fed the stalls were cleaned and floor swept. Both girls love to help with the brooms. Finally it was time for a play break at the play ground. Check out the volley ball form in the pictures below.

We spent a couple hours there before heading in for lunch.

After lunch and naps it was back outside on this beautiful day for more work. The skid steer was returned today in perfect working order. The first job we wanted done was to fill in the 2 huge pot holes (mud puddles) with gravel. Of course both girls wanted to ride along inside and help Emily with the controls.

While they were busy with that I needed to charge the golf cart, we ran out the battery today driving to the cabin field to feed, to the playground, checking out the newly mowed trails at the back of the property and down to the pond pasture to watch the goose family. On the way back it died and it had to be pushed up the hill. Well the last person to charge it had stretched it just a little too far and pulled the wires out some. Today when I connected the charger and turned it on the wires got hot and melted the connector. Thank goodness I discovered it was heating up before it started on fire. The new connectors are ordered but the cart is out of commission until the parts come in and we get it fixed. Next job on the list was to clean the cabin field up before the wedding company arrives. 

And the very last job for my hard working grand daughters was to sweep off the front porch.

This wouldn't be much of a horse blog without a few horse pictures. The pictures below were taken today. Eliza's filly meeting her half brother, Zalena's colt. 

 The picture below was a funny one. Eliza's filly decided she wanted to scratch her back so climbed under her mom and was rubbing her back on her mom's belly. 

Karin took a guest riding at Middle Grove this evening. She planned on riding Sangria while the guest rode Jennis but I haven't yet heard how the ride went. Mike and Diane are camping and left early afternoon for Middle Grove for the night. 

Lion and the Lamb

On the walk this morning we see an unusual sight. Kind of reminded us of the prophecy the lion will lay down with the lamb only this was a goat and a dog.

 We are going with the number 5 today, Emily worked 5 horses, I made videos of 3 of them then pictures of the other 2 which add up to 5, horses were moved and pastures were mowed for 5 hours. Right after the walk the weather was cool so Zalena's colt was given a tying lesson While Emily was tacking up Zalena for a short video and a few pictures of her colt for his owners.

The next mare worked was Eliza so we could get a video of her filly which is for sale.

She is such a friendly filly, Today was only the second time ever to put her halter on and she didn't care at all.
I walked in to download the videos and saw a message from a lady wanting to see a riding video of Bonnie.
Emily had just taken Sunny on a trail ride when I went back to tell her she was going to have to ride another one.

After a very quick ride on Bonnie for the video she got busy on mowing the pastures and stuck with this job the rest of the afternoon.

After supper she had time to ride one more horse and chose Valiant as he hadn't been worked in a while. Valiant gave her a good workout. Some of his canter work is very expressive. 

We needed to move Eliza and Zalena over to the cabin field and when we showed up Mike was working on the cabin electricity while Diane was weeding her hosta beds.

Mark needed to get the snow tires off his van so we were working on that in the big barn and I noticed the dandelion fluff on the mower deck from today's work. 

It was a long day but we sure got a lot accomplished.

Giant Goose Ranch

Today was our scheduled day to tour the Giant Goose Ranch in Canton, IL. This place is over 800 acres with over 50 lakes. It is managed by Herman Brothers pond management and owned by the Hermans. The largest lake is over 2 and a half miles long, 121 acres 80 feet deep. They would like to put up an equestrian campground with permanent stalls in the future but today we were looking at the trails. Oh my does this property have trails, trails up and down hills, along side lakes, beautiful views, flat areas for a good gallop and tree lined trails that can be ridden 2 or 3 abreast. We decided that we are going to have to bring the horses out first to explore more of the land. Beth took us on the mule but some places horses would have been better.

 This place was named Giant Goose Ranch for a reason, every lake had many many nesting boxes with many couples of wild Canadian Geese pairs. Most of the goslings have now hatched and everywhere we went there were pairs of geese with sometimes 12 or 13 goslings in between the pair.

One Gander got pretty upset with us, his mate and goslings came swimming up for a handout and he didn't like it AT ALL. Who know geese had long pink tongues.

 We were given the 2 hour tour and still didn't see all the property. We drove in to Canton and ate lunch at the Asian buffet. That was delicious and only $7.50 each. We stopped at the Old School Center on the way home to show mom the devastation as she had only seen pictures. It is far worse to see it with ones own eyes. Dan is still waiting for the fire Marshall to finish the investigation so he can be cleared to start the demolition. As soon as we made it back to the farm, Emily and I teased Eliza and Holly and thankfully both mares said emphatically, "no." All the horses on this farm were de-wormed then Holly and her filly were loaded into the trailer with pregnant Prissy and pregnant Indy and Emily hauled them to Middle Grove while I drove to Big R's in Pekin for more beet pulp then Aldi's for groceries. When Emily arrived back here she noticed Eliza's filly was getting too hot so turned the air conditioning on in the barn and brought Eliza and her filly inside. When I arrived she was still hot so both were hosed down with cold water then taken back inside. Thank goodness for air conditioning. It was 91, sunny and humid.
We had to take 2 cars to church tonight, with Joan's family now back from Haiti they fill a van and the rest of us fill a car. Joan is actually back in Haiti trying desperately to get Mackenson and Berlica's adoption paper work done so they can be brought home in time for the wedding. They have been trying to get these children adopted for a long time.

Beauty for Ashes

The post below was copied from Facebook. 

I drove by the old school last night and I am still in shock by not only the memories that took place there, but the memories that have continued to be made there by the Meisters. Prayers and thoughts go out to them in hopes that from the ashes they will rise again! (picture taken from J. Crusen Photography) 

Written and posted on Facebook by Kristi John