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| Sunny days + clear, cold nights = good ice |
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| The bucket serves as the goal. |
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| Score! |
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| A future star on our farm club. |
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| By noon the ice had developed a number of crossover cracks. The pond is only four feet deep, but the prospect of a polar bear dip held little appeal. |
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| This tree blocked a little too much of the sky from our kitchen window. In the winter time you want all the sunshine you can get during a short day and a low sun. |
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| So, since I had extra hands available, down it went. "Daylight in the swamp" was a term loggers used in the old days when a big tree went down and opened the canopy overhead. |
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| That evening we burned our brushpile....(yes, those are Christmas lights on that big spruce) |
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| ...brushpiles, that is. I told Mik to flash his headlamp at passing cars so nobody would call the fire department. |
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| A little too big for roasting marshmallows. |
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| Somebody had raspberry jam with her breakfast. |
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| We had pretty much the whole gang together .... |
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| Grandpa cleaned his plate... |
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| Cranberry sauce this time. |
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| While we were putting away chow.... |
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| ...something really important was happening at the hospital. |
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| Momma happily resting after a job well done! |
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| Our second grandaughter. |
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| Being a grandpa is not hard to get used to... |
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| We planted all these trees as small saplings.... |
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| Sampo finally got grandpa's old tractor fired up. Tractors are a only a very short step from the sandbox. Every boy wants one. |
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| Sunrise |
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| A touch of frost on the grass. |
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| These four guys were turned into delicious, nutritious, grass-fed steaks and chops a few days later. And yes, I know that they are cute and that I am heartless. |
