Out and about...

This is the sign giving the prices for picking individual flowers from these flower fields. Beginning with the tulips in early spring to sunflowers and other flowers of fall, one can come here and pick to your hearts delight. It is totally an honor system which must work quite well because they continue to offer this. When you are done cutting the flowers you would like (with knives that they provide below the cash box) all you do is drop your money in the box and off you go.

The cash box is mounted on the pole just below the sign.

Right now the gladiolas are in full bloom.

These are the sunflowers but they have a ways to go. There are only a very few that are open.
For the farmers who are looking at this blog, we thought you would enjoy a few pictures of harvest.

Seeing a truck in a field is a rather unusual sight because most of the farmers haul the grain with tractors and trailers as you see in the next two pictures. (I think this truck is normally used for hauling wood...that's what it is advertising on the box)but here they are using it to haul the grain.



This rig is almost right behind the combine baling the straw.

Photos from our back yard

Chiara at 3 months

I 'borrowed' these pictures from Sharla's blog. It is hard to believe that Chiara is 3 months old!! We think she is pretty special!

Canadian Work Team!!

God sent us a wonderful team from Canada to help accomplish a multitude of tasks these past two weeks. It was such a blessing to have such a willing, flexible team. Here are a few of the jobs they worked on and completed! Thank you so much, team! We really appreciate all you did and are so encouraged by the work that is completed because of you!! To see the team picture please go to the Canada day celebration pictures on a previous post.
Several people worked on window frames and shutters. For some reason I cannot download all the pictures I took. We are so thankful for Ronda and Marilyn and some of the guys who worked most of the time doing this rather mundane job. I will keep trying to get the pictures to down load!!
Lloyd, Jerry, Heinz, Russ and others worked very hard in the hot sun on the roof with the German construction workers early in their weeks here. This was a difficult job! Thanks for your willingness to do this, guys. We SO appreciate you!!



Cleaning and then laying bricks after the down spout drain was put in.
My dear, dear husband! Working hard laying those bricks!

Madonna and Marilyn made about 40 of the 46 apple pies for English Camp's 'Christmas in July' Day!

Still smiling...they surprised us with pies for dinner that evening

Arnold and Walter took on the task of building a camp fire ring...a dream come true for Jesse and others who have looked forward to this for years!! This is the beginning...leveling ground and getting ready.

Lots of hard work went into this. Here the posts are set and Betty is staining them in prep for the benches.

The camp fire circle was completed! Like I said earlier, it is a dream come true! It is going to be a beautiful setting for many campfires to come. The seating capacity is around 100.


Ruth and Darlene worked on the garden/yard as well as sanding and staining windows and many other things.


Gordon, Darlene and Betty have every reason to be smiling! They completed this room during the two weeks they were here! Jesse has been trying to get it done for months but because of continual interruptions, it was an unfinished frustration!! Thanks to these three, the papering (a complicated way of doing things here), painting and flooring is done and the office is ready for use! This picture was taken as the last nail was placed into the last corner of the mop board! Thanks, friends! for sticking with this room until it was finished!

Guess where we're going?? Ladies afternoon out and we are going shopping!!

On one of the last days the team was with us, we had the chance to take them to France to tour this castle and also to take in a few sights and towns. Another fun day! You can kind of see the castle on the hill in the background in the first picture. In the foreground are famous vineyards in France.



Meanwhile, the construction to add another floor to Palmgarten continues. It is progressing quite quickly.

Unplanned activity at Palmgarten residence!

When I took these pictures I told Jesse...'I know we are not laughing now, but someday we will!' On Wednesday night, I woke at around 1:00 am to a thunderstorm and pouring rain. We had left some windows open to cool off the dining room so I decided to go and check to make sure everything was OK. As I walked into the dining room, I saw water pouring from the ceiling. I ran back to our room and woke Jesse and so began an all night battle for us. First we hauled out buckets and buckets of water and then when it finally stopped raining we had a HUGE water mess to mop up. Thankfully, our friend Rosemarie came along to help. Jesse and Rosemarie made a funnel out of a sheet of plastic to try to funnel the drips into a bucket. (These pictures were actually taken the next am when we had another down pour at around 10:00 am.)


This all could have been avoided if the contractor and his men would have covered the roof like they were suppose to. (If you look closely you can see the water coming down from the ceiling)


When another downpour started in the am, we could not longer keep up so the fire department had to be called in. What a difference it made to have them and their machines go to work! By this time Jesse and I were so exhausted we could hardly see straight. We did make it through the day but boy! did we sleep that night!






As a result, there is a lot of water damage in the apartment above the the leaky area area. Please pray as now ANOTHER big project to clean and redo this has to be fit in before the start of school!

Construction at Palmgarten

For the next few months, construction is underway to add a floor to the top of Palmgarten residence. Here are a few pictures as the walls are being hauled in and put into place.