All wrapped up in his work...

Today, Lance got all wrapped up in his work...

 

 

 

 

Happy Fall Y'all!



Now that Thanksgiving is over...

and Christmas will be here soon, there is one question that is on everyone's minds. Yep, the question of "What do I do with that pumpkin that's been sitting on my porch for two months?" Well, have no fear, because I have a few solutions to the problem!

Solution #1

Set the pumpkin out in your yard.

Waaay out in your yard.

Then let your husband loose!

Long range target practice!

Solution #2

 Even though it's too late for Halloween, carve a Jack o Lantern face...with your pistol!

Solution #3

If that's not enough, just blow it to smithereens with a homemade bomb.

Problem Solved!



Happy Falloween!

Yes, Falloween. Why? Because I'm a little late for Halloween, but it's still fall!

 For all you last minute trick or treaters, feel free to grab some candy while you read this post and look at some of my fall decorations.



 Here's my front porch decorations. I would've posted this earlier, but I've been waiting on these darn mums to bloom! Now that they're finally blooming, they'll probably be frost bitten, lol.

 I have a little bit of Halloween decor on my porch too. It will be taken down shortly though! Check out that Halloween rug, my Mom made it years ago!



 This wreath is hanging on my front door. I was going to hang a different wreath here, but the door wouldn't close, so I ended up making a new one!

 Here's my dining room table. Notice the peanuts and cotton bolls? Might as well decorate with what you have!

This is the wreath that I was going to put on my front door, but it was too thick for the storm door to close! So it's now hanging on the door going into the kitchen. We actually got this wreath as a wedding present 4 years ago!

Hope everyone enjoyed my fall decorations, thought that I had better post 'em before I needed to show yall my Christmas decorations!

I'm Dreaming of a White...

Christmas SEC Championship Game Day! (What? Well, that's what day it was!) Anyways, last Saturday we woke up to whiteout conditions! Ok, it was nowhere near being a blizzard, but it is rare to have any snow here, especially this time of year! There was panic in the parking lot at Piggly Wiggly over the milk and bread. And even though there was a prediction of "if you are an old person you will not survive this storm" (not really), as far as I know, everyone I know is alive and accounted for. We did lose a few chickens, but that had to do with a broken U-bolt and not the snow.

Here's a picture of our house with snow covering the roof and the garland on the porch. Obviously snow doesn't stick to mud.

Ah, thats a little more like it.

This is a very rare site. Usually the cotton pickers are in the shed by now, but since we're still picking, it's white from snow instead of cotton!

Here's the back of the old barn in the snow.

Yikes! The snow has deformed the cattle! No, not really. That's a zebu.

She looks a bit skinny. She just needs to get her hooves all over this hay across the road.

Boy, I wish the cotton looked this white when we were picking it.

And the last scene...our chicken houses in the snow!

Hope you enjoyed Winter Wonderland in Alabama!

Miller Farms Goes Nuts!

Since it rained a couple of inches over the past few days and we are taking a break from the field, I thought I would share some of the harvest pictures that I haven't had time to show!

We still have about 12 acres of peanuts to go, so hopefully the fields will dry soon. The peanuts should've been harvested in September and October!

Here is the tractor pulling the combine. The peanut vines that have been inverted are pulled into the combine and shaker pans seperate the peanuts from the vines.

The vines and other trash blow out the back of the combine,

while the peanuts get blown into the basket on top.

Sometimes (ok, a lot) the combine gets choked up by wet vines/dirt, and it needs to be cleaned out.

When that happens, we empty the peanuts left in the suck tube into these orange sacks, and we have been selling them to random people.

When the basket on top gets full of peanuts (3 tons)...

the combine is driven over to the dump cart,

and the basket is dumped into the cart.

The dump cart is then pulled next to a peanut trailer and is raised up.

Then it dumps into the trailer.

This trailer has about 3 dumps on it.

This trailer is full (24 tons of peanuts) and ready to be hauled down to South Alabama. We sell our peanuts to the Brooks Peanut Company in Samson, Alabama. They have a contract with the Mars Company, so if you eat a Snickers or M&Ms, you could be eating our peanuts!

Peanut pickin' days also bring out the scavengers family, friends, random neighbors, a road commissioner, and even a car load full of non-English speaking Hispanics.

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I didn't make it to the corn fields often because I was usually in the chicken houses, the peanut fields, or the cotton fields, but here's a couple of pictures of the harvest!

I found this little cotton stalk growing in the middle of the corn field! I guess cotton doesn't combine very well, haha.

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I promise to have some pictures of the house soon, it's still not completely put together!

A Cotton Pickin' Good Time

What does it mean when the fields of cotton are this white?

It's pickin' time!

Here's Lance picking some cotton right behind one of our chicken houses!

This is the view from the cab looking down into the picker heads.

When it's this time of year, even darkness doesn't slow us down! The only thing that does is when the dew falls. If there is no dew, we can pick all night, whoopee!

Nope, not an alien spacecraft, just Lance's picker.

When the picker basket is full, it can hold 3-4 bales of cotton. 1 bale weighs 500 lbs.

And it gets dumped into the module builder.

Not all of it makes it into the builder, as you can tell by the pile of cotton and blue bucket here.

This is what the inside of the builder looks like after the cotton is dumped.

And I use these levers...

To work this tramper, to pack the cotton.

When I'm finished packing, we pull the builder forward with a tractor. It leaves a nice, tarped cotton module behind. Each module is about 15 bales of cotton.

Then we call the gin, and they come pick it up in a module truck.

Then it's time to start again!