It was another mild day and Crystalie was fortunate enough to see this young deer, crossing the lake just off the end of our dock! So she was able to get a quick picture of it.

Yes we do have other animals around the farm, deer of course wander through the pastures all year, the horse and the llamas, don't really get to excited about it, and we have seen many times when the deer are on the outside of the fence grazing alongside the llamas. I however have never seen them sharing their hay bale with the deer as of yet!

Our weather is mild and we are expecting rain and fog, turning to snow sometime tomorrow.

Today, we were reminded how precious life can be when a young 9 year old girl that was known by our daughter Ricki and her family in Ocean Shores, WA died last night of a brain aneurysm, rocking there little community. Our thoughts and prayers are for you and the family who lost their little girl.

Well, it was a pretty uneventful day, and the picture above is of the old out house located on the Stanley Farm, where we celebrated Christmas yesterday.

This picture will become a part of a collection, which is various pictures Crystalie, has taken pictures of outhouses, at various friends and in our travels. Our small bathroom in the house has a little book with the prints in it, along with other outhouse pictures on the wall, an outhouse calendar, and some small outhouse replica's in various sizes and shapes.
All which were gifts or purchases at little shops, but it is a cute and fun collection.

Just another little secret about life on Coffee Lake Farm, and if you ever come to visit ask to see our little outhouse, it will surely bring a smile to your face!

The weather was mild and about 20 degrees, did a little shoveling on my roof, where some ice was building up, spread some salt over the ice to help it melt off the roof, also got my lights on my JD tractor to work, so if I have to plow snow at night again, I can see what I am doing.

Good Night!

Merry Christmas to All, I hope your day was filled with the joy and wonder of love and happiness.

We celebrated our Christmas day with the tradition of being with the Stanley family at the home they grew up in east of Aitkin about 7 miles.

We of course had great food and desserts and shared the joy of the youngest nieces and nephews opening the gifts they received. Lots of stories and lots of laughs, along with some activity outside, helping with some chores that Faith, Crystalie's mom needed done. But it was short work for the group of us.

Merry Christmas, from all the inhabitants of Coffee Lake Farm!

Well, we should all feel fortunate, that we have manners, (anyhow most of us) as at least we can all dine together!

When I feed the llamas grain on occasion, there is a pecking order that is well established, in the girl llama pen and it is as follows....

Dolly the oldest female, then Nina her latest offspring 2 years old is allowed to eat next to her, then she will let Lilly a younger female which is Latte's daughter sneak some out of the corner But she will put her ears back and give her the evil stare...if she is to aggressive snarfing up what she can reach. Latte, which is Dolly's daughter, is the last to get in, and it is usually after Dolly steps away from the feed bunk.


So be thankful, that the same logic does not apply at your Christmas Dinner, as you will find your mother eating by herself until she is full, and then maybe some of the children will eat before you do!

Guys, if there are any males in the pen, they are the last to get to the feedbunk!

Have a great Christmas Dinner and remember to be thankful that we don't abide by the llama pecking order!

We ended up with up 7-8 inches of fresh snow, no snirt just snow.

It even rained a little this morning on top of it all, but not much. The roads needless to say going to work today were slick with snow and slush, due to the mild temperatures.

I arrived home today, and got my 425 JD mower with a snow blade on it out and proceeded to plow out our yard. If it wasn't dark, I would have taken some pictures, so you can see how much plowing I end up doing it took about an hour and a half to get everything cleared away. Maybe Friday when I have the day off I will shoot some pictures. I have perfected the JD in to a great snow pushing machine, heavy duty chains, on the rear tires and rear weights to offset the front end weight of the snow blade, so I can push quite a bit of snow with the 55 inch blade.

Work was busy today with a couple of appointments and various job projects in the works, that require, a lot of detail.

Looking forward to tomorrow night, we invited our friend Marjorie and her dog Dutchie, over for our annual holiday get together! Sounds like Martha, (Crystalie) has a 3-4 course meal planned, so it will be special!

Temps today were in the 20-30 degree range, and it sounds like it will be mild tomorrow also, which will help clean up the roadways!

Well with any property and stuff, there is always maintance, so I spent sometime this morning taking care of some things.

I had to replace my wiring on my truck for my trailer lights, since the cold weather caused some of my wires to snap off on my connection on the back of the truck. Also took care of some repairs to one of our living room chairs.

Kind of a lazy day today, and enjoying the chance to watch some football on TV and also did some gift wrapping, for you know who.

Doing some research online for some John Deere information, in regards to hydralic pumps, for a project that I have Crystalie's Dad(Jim) gathering some materials for, since he is in the scrap business, he comes across a lot of metal stuff
So here is the shopping list I gave him...
A steel barrel in good shape
Some angle iron pieces
hydralic pump
a two wheel axle with wheels that can be resized
a piece of 1 1/2 inch pipe 4 feet long at least

So any idea's on what I am trying to make?
Post a guess...

One clue it will be pulled by my JD garden tractor

Weather today, about 2 above this morning, and a high of about 13 above, with clouds and light snow falling every so often, not in any amount though, supposed to get some snow tomorrow.

Well as you can see, they are all happy that they have their new hay bale, and enjoying the mild weather

As for my day, Crystalie and I went to St Cloud, to my brother Neal's house, for a visit with him and his wife Claudia and also their oldest daughter Michelle. We drove down for some serious shopping at one of Crystalie's supply stores--Crafts Direct. It was the first time for Crystalie to see the new house Neal and Claudia moved into this last fall also.

Well, today is Friday and Crystalie, had invited her Dad over for supper, as a treat for his birthday a few days ago. So we had a nice meal of roast beef and venison roast, along with roasted root vegetables and some fresh warm cornbread. For dessert we had chocolate pie, with whip cream topping and chocolate sauce dribbled on it, her dad's favorite pie!

We had a nice visit showing him all the pictures from Crystalie's recent trip to Ocean Shores where her daughter Ricki, her husband Grant(happy birthday) and with the two grandughters Rebekah and Ashley all live. The food was great also, Crystalie is a great cook, and loves to work in the kitchen when it is for someone special or for a family event! We all appreciate your efforts dear.

I got my bale of hay fed to the llamas and horse and I will post a picture tomorrow of all their happy stuffed bellies and happy faces. If they pull their noses out of the bale long enough, not that they are starving as you will see!

I also picked up more dog treats and some grain to feed the animals also, it is more of a treat for them, and with Christmas and New Years coming up, need to make sure they get their gift also!

Well, weather wise it was a a mild day by Minnesota December Day
standards, it was 10 above this morning and got to about 20 for a high A little bit of wind and partly cloudy, so it felt a little colder. But any day above Zero is a good day in December!

Well any dog owner knows when you are gone for part of the day, and come driving down the driveway you always have a welcome home committee. These two are the Official welcome to Coffee Lake Farm Greeters, Tootsie and Smarkle, they meet me about 50 yards from the house and then run alongside the truck, or in front of it sometimes.

They anxiously await for my door to open and then both of them have their feet on the rocker panel and their heads in my face, welcoming me home each and every time I am gone, for work or otherwise. It is great to be so loved

The next thing they do though is make sure they sniff around, to make sure I don't have some leftover lunch sitting close by. Since I am in my truck for work a lot, I eat on the go, so a few french fries or part of a sandwich, may just be laying around, is the thought that races through their little heads! If there is of course, they get it, which of course makes them even happier.

Tootsie is our whiner, she is constantly whining, about going out or coming in, and since she is older she really doesn't like to be outside unless, I am outside especially when it is cold.

Smarkle, is just pure puppy energy, she runs to do everything, when she follows my lawn tractor around she runs ahead and then runs back then ahead again, checks on if Tootsie is following, bothers her then runs way ahead to where she thinks I might go, if I turn she runs back twice as fast. Needless to say I wish she would share some of it some days. Her other passion is to retrieve of course, and we have numerous tennis balls floating around the yard, although many of them are under a foot of snow or in a pile of pushed up snow now. With the cold, they become frozen round ice cubes with her slobber on them, so now she has opted to play fetch with an old plastic batting cage softball size ball. Which is hard, but doesn't collect moisture and stays relatively clean. So if I stop in one place to long when she has the ball it ends up rolling between my feet or over them. Nice thing about this ball it rolls good on the compacted ice and snow of our plowed out yard, meaning it goes a ways before she can slow it down to pick it up! But of course she runs faster to pick it up, and then slows down on her way back to relish the prize she has retrieved. The problem is she can do this for along time, before she gets tired and it's to cold to stand around and play fetch, but we do a little every night!

When, I do my chores outside, they follow me around, and Smarkle, is always trying to get Tootsie to wrestle or play by chewing on her collar or grabbing on her back legs, but Tootsie just ignores her for the most part I have tried to minimize Smarkle's efforts by keeping her busy with me playing fetch or just petting her as we walk around the yard.

When I come in the house, they come into the back porch where there beds are, and I go to my treat bin that is outside and bring in a treat, and after they sit for me, which is like lighting fast, they get their treat and start crunching on them immediately. After that they settle down and a lot of times Smarkle will cuddle with Tootsie for a nice nap or the night!

There will be many more posts on these two.

Weather today about -5 overnight last night and about 15 above today, sounds the same for the next few days, maybe even a little warmer during the days!