Mint Farm

Yesterday, I posted pictures from the first day of vacation. Now I will post a few pictures from the Farm Management Tour. The first farm we visited grew several acres of mint. There are several hundred acres of mint grown in northern Indiana. This farm grew ~800 acres.

All the yellow wagons lined up are for mint harvesting.
The metal barrels are used to store the ment oil extracted from the mint harvest.

This is the mint extractor. It looked like a pretty neat machine. They put in mint vegitation and cooked the oil out of the foliage. Then they sell the mint oil for gum, toothpaste, and other mint flavored products.

There are a couple mint plants in the blue tubs sitting in front of the oil extractor. It is a pretty neat process.

Farm Tour - Tomatoes

Indiana is the #2 state in tomato production. Indiana is second, to California, thanks to Red Gold. The Farm Management Tour (day 3 of vacation) led us to a very large tomato farm.

This is a picture of their tomato transplanter. It takes 15 people on the transplanter and a tractor driver to plant the tomatoes. This was a really neat rig. It planted 14 rows of tomatoes per pass. On average, they could plant 50 acres of tomatoes a day. This farm raised over 600 acres of tomatoes.

This was the tomato harvester. There are roughly 10 of these in the US. It takes 12 people to operate the machine plus 1 tractor driver to pull the machine and other drivers to pull the bulk tomato bins.

How did these folks learn to raise tomatoes, you might ask? Well, just the way anyone learns to do something....ask someone who already does it. They take their personal plane and fly to California to learn from other tomato producers. Dad and all the sons have their pilot license.

I didn't get any pictures of any irrigation rigs on any of the farms, but there was also a lot of discussion of water management. This farm had 95% of all the farm under irrigation. They not only grew 600 acres of tomatoes, but also grew cucumbers, green beans, seed corn, waxy corn, and soybeans. It is amazing the variation of crops grown in that area versus down here in southern Indiana where it is primarily corn and soybeans.

Vacation

I originally took Monday, June 22 off as a vacation day, to use vacation that expired on June 30. Since it had rained, Lance asked me if I wanted to go on vacation somewhere. It worked out that this was also the time of Purdue's annual Farm Management Tours. This year the tours were in Starke and LaPorte counties (Valparaiso area). We decided to head up to northern Indiana and visit Lake Michigan, Dunes State Park and then go on the Farm Management Tour. It was hot, but we had a lot of fun.

We got to the beach early Tuesday morning. I fed Jenna in the beautiful scenery of Lake Michigan. As you can see, the beach was deserted. I think there were maybe a dozen people walking the beach.
The birds were pleantiful. Lance captured a neat photo of this one playing in the edge of the lake.

What a beautiful place!

Of course, Jenna had to get her feet wet. What kind of parents would we be if we went to the lake and didn't let her play in the water? The lake water was extremely frigid. I thought that may make Jenna fuss when the waves hit her legs, but she didn't seem to mind.

We got a new family picture which I thought was below, but it seems to have disappeared. It wasn't that great anyway, Jenna wouldn't look at the camera, because that meant looking into the sun.

Vacation - Family Picture

Here's what Jenna thought of vacation....she was all smiles!
Here is our attempt at a family photo. We are all squinty because we are looking directly into the sun.

Jenna wouldn't look up at the lady taking the picture, the sun was too bright.

I am proud to say that between SPF 50 sunscreen, a hat, and the umbrella on the stroller, Jenna didn't even get remotely pink. She is still just as pale as she was (which is a good thing)!

Vacation (post #2)

We went to visit the largest sand dune in Indiana. Old Baldy was beautiful. They will not let you walk on this side due to the erosion factor.
We had the second feeding of the day on top of Old Baldy can you see us in the shade?

The view from the top of Old Baldy. There are adults standing down on the edge of the beach.

Kids that ended up rolling down Old Baldy

Just a pretty view

Kisses

Jenna has really started smacking her lips together, passing out kisses in the past week. It is so sweet. She looks at you and "smack" she sends a kiss your direction. She has even been returning kisses!

Happy, Happy, Happy....

June is a happy, happy, happy month.

My calandar is full of wedding anniversaries. To all of you whom were married in June, we wish you a very Happy Anniversary.

To Lance, and all the other Dads out there Happy Father's Day. Thank you for everything you do for your families...you know, the fun stuff.... killing spiders, changing lightbulbs, mowing the grass, and lifting the heavy objects...thank you.

Happy Birthday to all the June babies out there. Happy Birthday to AnnaLee Leonard (my adopted Grandma), Sallie Rentchler, Angel Hofmann, Christa Hofmann, Ciara Schenk, Matt Schenk, and Grandma Marie Gumbel. Hope you all have a wonderful birthday!

Oh, yeah and who could forget....Happy First Day of Summer!

Chest High by the Fourth of July

Last weekend Lance, Jenna, and I were at our farm. Turns out, our corn is already chest high on the 14th of June. We are quite a bit ahead of most farmers this year.

Okay, you may think I am stretching the truth, but I am being honest. Our corn is chest high..... in Jenna's measurement. She was very excited about the corn. She played with the leaves, tried to eat them, and flapped her arms with excitement. She even demolished a couple stalks by shredding the leaves. Needless to say Daddy thinks she may be an agronomist or field scout one day.
I'm not sure what to think of this just yet.

Dad, look at this!

See, it's chest high!

I want to eat it!

Go to the Corner!!!

I never cease to be amazed at Jenna. She has started sleeping in the corner of her bed. I lay her in the center of the crib on her back and this is how I pick her up in the mornings.
Her head is in the corner of the crib. I have tried laying her on the far end of her bed and she scoots herself across the bed until she is in the corner. She also likes one hand in her mouth and the other on the back of her head. Uncle Matt says she is holding her thumb in her mouth so she doesn’t lose it! She also sleeps on the corner of her blanket at work.

Exersaucer

Jenna has become a lot more alert and active this past month. She absolutely adores her exersaucer. She spins the little butterfly and pushes the buttons to make the music play.

All the sights and sounds amuse her.

Even if her feet can't reach the bottom yet. She is still a few inches from being able to touch bottom yet, but she doesn't seem to mind.

Can't really tell her feet don't touch in the picture, but she is over the center and has a good 2 inches to the bottom of the saucer.

Patriotic Baby

We took some 4 month pictures over the weekend. Jenna was being a little patriotic.

She did a good job holding the flag, as you can see.

Until next time....

A Day with the Babysitter

Thursday was Jenna's first day with the babysitter. What an eventful day! We left plenty early so I could make it to work on time, which turned out to be a very wise idea. Jenna and I left home and started over to the sitter's only to find out I had a very low tire. I drove on to the sitter's and figured I would get air at the gas station down the road from her house.
Evidently, there was a watermain break overnight, so the street she lives on was closed... causing us to detour. Her husband had an air compressor, so he was sweet enough to give me some air.

He said my tire had a piece of metal in it, so I dropped by Raben Tire in Henderson, called Lance (who was headed through Henderson anyway) and had him take me the rest of the way to work. Guess what time I got to work....7:55. All that excitement and I was still 5 minutes early!

As for Jenna...she will have a little adjusting to do. Teresa said she would look around for me, then fuss. She wanted to be held and rocked to sleep. I told her my Jenna doesn't like to be held or rocked, how strange.

Meanwhile, she's back to work with me until next Thursday. Hopefully, next week will be less eventful.

June Already?

Ohhh my, is it June already? Where did May go? I guess they say time flies when you're having fun! What's new with the Hofmann crew....

Jenna got a little plugged up with the rice cereal so we stopped feeding it to her for about 4 days. Now she eats rice and apple sauce after her supper. She has adjusted to that pretty well.

We lay her on her back in the middle of the crib to go to sleep and when we go to get her out she has rolled over to her belly and scooted herself into the corner. Oh yeah, she is a thumb sucker too. We take her thumb away and give her the pacifier, she spits the pacifier out and sucks her thumb. We have decided to wait and fight that battle another day.

Lance has been working around the farm on the days it is actually dry enough to farm. As for me I am starting to get into the analytical part of my job and am working on summer projects (mostly building spreadsheets) to make this winter run smoother.

Jenna is going to start going to the babysitter on a part-time basis. I figure we will both ease into it. We will get adjusted to going to the babysitter before I get started making my summer farm visits.

Wednesday, Jenna will be 4 months old, watch for pictures later this week. Until next time...