Randall and Elisabeth's Homebase

Harvesting potatoes at Blue Bay Farms Ltd.

2011-10-14T00:17:00.001-03:00

After a lot of wet weather, the harvesting has finally started.

Here are some pictures of the harvest. We have had great weather this week and are getting along great. These two pictures show the harvester and truck being loaded.

This next picture is of the wind rowers, the one on the right takes four rows and delivers them between the two rows that the harvester picks up. The wind rower on the right flips two rows in from the other side. That makes eight rows for the harvest to pick up. You can see it in the back ground.

When both wind rowers have done their job, this is what is left for the harvester to pick up. This field is about 85 acres.

After the harvester goes by, nothing left. You can see the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the back ground.

And here are the potatoes, it is what its all about.

Close up of the four row wind rower. You can see the potatoes coming off the conveyor in the back.

A look at the inside of the truck box. This box holds about 32,000 lbs of potatoes when it is full.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures of harvesting potatoes on PEI.

Mount Washington

2011-07-23T14:45:00.011-03:00

Finally made some time to update my blog. As promised, here is a more detailed story about going up to the top of Mount Washington using the Cog Railway. It was one of those trips that you only make once in a lifetime. It was very interesting. The Cog Railway opened in 1869 and used wood fired boilers for the first forty years. Then they switched over to coal.

This picture shows one of the newer models that runs on Bio Diesel. They manufacture these engines right on the premises. Powered by a 600HP John Deere engine., running on hydraulic motors. See picture below.

Nice view of the engine.

Here is a good picture of the track. The middle part is where the drive cog of the engine goes in, see next picture.

Next few pictures show the grade that the train goes up on. You can see the next train coming down the mountain. Returning passengers that had gone up earlier. It takes about 45 minutes to make the commute. and then we spent about 55 minutes on top of the mountain. And then 45 minutes to go down. On the downward trip, the brakeman controls the brakes on the passenger car. Otherwise the engine would not be able to keep it slowed down enough.

This is one of the steepest parts, where the grade was about 37 percent. We stood in the isle of the train and leaned forward. Was it ever comical, just ask the people that were there. Caleb had tears in his eyes he was laughing so hard.Here is a look back down the mountain. The halfway house on the left, the water tower below that and the station just beyond.Almost at the top, we came across the Appalachian Trail. Those little piles of rock are the trail markers. There were people hiking on it as we went by.On top of the world. The view was awesome. It was reasonably clear, visibility about two hundred miles we were told.

And the crew that did the trip. You definitely needed a jacket on topside.

from left to right: Randall, Pete and Kayla, Caleb in foreground, Mary, Jordan, Rebecca and Tim. Fun was had by all.

Hope you enjoyed the trip......................

Birthday/ vacation...........

2011-06-26T17:34:00.007-03:00

Our time on vacation.

Well, after many days on the road and having lots of fun, we are glad to be home again. After my birthday on June 10, I find out that one of the presents was a trip with the whole family to a vacation town in the State of Maine. Old Orchard Beach. We had a great time while there. Here are some of the pictures.
It was nice and sunny on the first few days and really warm. We took advantage of that by going to the beach. A five minute walk from the house we stayed in. The water was very cold, but that didn't stop the younger kids from going in. Damaris in the middle, Caleb on the left and Micaiah on the right.

The next picture picture is of the older ones playing a game in the kitchen. The house was huge, there was enough room for all of us and then some.
One evening Jordan got the charcoal BBQ going and we did smores on it. We were not allowed to have a camp fire in the yard, so we made it work with the Barby Q , it worked great, here is a picture with me and the girls enjoying some good smores.
We also spend a day at the Kittery Outlet Stores. A special place for teens to get cheap brand name clothes. But we also found a store we liked in particular. The Lindt Chocolate Outlet store. One lb of Lindt chocolates for 7.50 US. You can't go wrong with that.
The next day we went To Mount Washington for the day. Not all of us went, but here is a picture of the crew that went up. I will share more pictures of that adventure later. The view was awesome. Pictures may tell you a thousand words each, but they are very inadequate for this instance.
The last one shows the guys at the waterfall that we hiked to. It was the same crew that went up the mountain. And they are from left to right, me, Mary, Caleb, Tim, Rebecca, Kayla, Pete and Jordan. The actual waterfall was on top of the part you can see behind us, altogether it was over a hundred feet high. It took about half an hour of hiking to get to, it was well worth it.
Well, I could go on and on, but that will have to wait until next time. It was great to be able to spend this time together. I have many more pictures and memories. The whole family worked well together this week. It was very rewarding. I am very Blessed to be a part of this family!

Thanks to all who made this event possible, you did a great job!

Planting potatoes......

2011-05-26T21:23:00.007-03:00

Planting started this week, the rain finally let up enough to hit the fields. This picture was taken in front of our house. After all the rain we had, its hard to imagine that the dust would be flying this soon. Here you see Pete in the Case IH working up the fields.
This next two picture were taken at Wilson's. It is about 80 acres and these potatoes are going to enjoy the view of the ocean. At least for a little while.

And here is Klaas, planting away in this big field, trying to get to the other side. He did well, and planted about 45 acres today. At that rate we will be done in no time.
The next few pictures show how the sets go into the planter. It takes a lot of equipment to get the job done.The pipe on the far left is part of the fertilizer auger. It fills the planter with fertilizer.

Reggie, with a big smile on his face, fills the planter up with sets. It takes a crew of good people to get the job done right. And we are very blessed to have such a crew.

After today we are almost 1/3 done, so all is well in potato land. Will try and keep you up to date.

Coming soon.....spring

2011-05-22T14:27:00.004-03:00

We are hopefully going to start planting tomorrow. And if possible, I want to take pictures and post some here. It has been fairly wet here this spring. After a winter with lots of snow and very little frost in the ground, we thought that we were in for an early spring. But that was not to be.

Trees are getting their leaves now and the service berry tree by our house is almost blooming.

Not sure if that is late or not. But I'm sure that in most parts of the country, they are already done blooming.

Last week we had a lot of rain and specially the fields that were plowed in the spring are going to need some extra time to dry out. And the grass is so green, we can hardly keep up mowing it between showers.

You can see there are not too many leaves on the sugar maple in front of the house.

Last picture is for all you older kids that think that Caleb and Damaris don't do chores.

Here is the proof that they can work really well together in the kitchen and work well together.

Hope you have a great long weekend.

Room makeover.........

2011-03-29T22:07:00.007-03:00

I had to go back to some Christmas pictures of 2007 to find some before pictures. And I know its not Christmas yet. But its all I could find with some old pictures of the room.

Good times for sure.

And if you are not in the picture, don't feel bad, it wasn't on purpose.

And this is what it looked like after the carpet was stripped out.

It looks kinda bare, but it gets better. You know the saying. It has to get worse before it gets better. This is a good example. Elisabeth got brave and painted the fireplace. What do you think of the color? I think it goes well with the new carpet.
I think Damaris really likes it too, maybe she just likes having her cozy living room back.

The newly painted fireplace and the new TV cabinet thats built right in. Made a wall with shelves in the back for school books etc.

Everything is nicely put behind doors, except the sub. And the carpet is so nice and fluffy. Its really warm on the feet on the cold winter days, like we had lately. Well, hope you enjoyed the tour. Are you enjoying your spring already?

More Snow.........

2011-02-11T23:38:00.006-04:00

Hello my faithful followers and those that just found me again. It has been a great winter here, as long as you like snow. Lots of snow.

We keep shoveling it higher and higher. Soon I will need a longer handle on my snow scoop.
We had a few days that it warmed up a bit. An icicle formed on the purgola in front of the house. It was huge and beautiful, the way the setting sun was shining on it. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that.
Even along the side of the road it is getting filled up with snow. All the way along from our place to the end of the road, the snow must be piled ten feet high. The snowplow really winged it back the last time.

If we get a lot of wind now, the road will be closed in no time. But what a beautiful winter it is. I just love it. Tim and I are going to do a poker run tomorrow. It is a snowmobile trip. You have to collect five playing card on the way. And the one with the best hand wins a prize. Well, time to get some sleep and rest up for the big trip.

Snow, and lots of it.....

2011-02-05T20:13:00.002-04:00

Hello all,

We are having a great winter. Love all the snow we got so far, and more coming tomorrow. I have not seen this much snow in the fields in a long time. Its great, you can go wherever you want. I even got stuck today, so much loose snow, I stopped and that was it, the sled just sunk. So Damaris and I had to put some muscle into it to get it out. Thankfully it wasn't too deep. And with a little pull from Damaris we were going again.

Damaris had fun too, she is really getting into driving the blue sled. Sometimes she comes on with me when we go on the groomed trail.
Andre, you are missing a good sledding season here. Not sure if I can make it to NB this year.

It has been great for sledding as well. The kids thought that it might be fun to sled off the roof. No fun just thinking about it, lets do it they said. And then climb up and do it again.

In the bottom picture, from top to bottom. Tim, Caleb, Rebecca and Damaris.
And fun was had by all.........

Home...

2011-01-26T22:15:00.003-04:00

We made it home again today. I just want to specially thank Mike and Klarina for providing us with a place to stay Monday night. It was really nice to catch up with you guys. If you happen to be out our way, you know you have a place to stay anytime.

Last night was our final night at a hotel. We met Matt and Amanda there and had breakfast with them this morning. So good to see them as well.

It was a beautiful sunny drive home the rest of the way.

Ahh, its good to be home...........

Hello from Washington DC.........

2011-01-23T19:07:00.007-04:00

Glad to bring you to our next place of adventure. We spend the last few days with Mary and Isaac.

While here we celebrated Mary's birthday, and Caleb's, again.

The first day we went to Baltimore and enjoyed the Medieval Times. It took us back to a time of Kings, Queens and Knights. With feasting, jousting, sword fighting tournaments.

It was our job to cheer on the Yellow Knight in his endeavors. He did very well until a wicked blow from a mace stopped him cold in his tracks.

Fun was had by all. Isaac had an interview in Boston and met us at the mall where the Medieval Feast was held. Then we all drove back to D.C. in the truck.

The next day we went to the National Gallery, where the Declaration of Independence is held. It was a bit of a disappointment for Caleb, there was no map on the back and we could hardly read it. But its a great piece of history never the less.

We also went to the Air and Space Museum. They are close together and we took the Metro to get there. We all had good exercise getting there and back.

We had a real good cup of coffee and a slice of Birthday Cake. It was real nice to be able to sit down at the end of the day. Here is a picture of Mary and Isaac's apartment building. They live on the Second Floor in a nice cozy apartment.

We took some groceries home and had a nice home cooked meal that night. Next day we went to church and had dinner with Isaac's parent. And tomorrow we will start heading home......
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Dianna and Jordan's, Portsmouth, VA

2011-01-22T18:32:00.004-04:00

Hello all, glad to see you checked to see what would be new. Today I'm updating a bit about the Spangler family. We had a great time there. You can see in the picture that Gabriel is getting a lot bigger. It was so nice to meet him for the first time. A picture never does it justice.

Babies first, and then the oldest brother, Micaiah. He has grown a lot as well. Caleb and Damaris played some soccer with him. There was no snow at all here, so soccer was no problem.

And was Ellyiah not the cutes girl you can ever imagine? Cowgirl hat on , bottle in hand. Look out world, here I come.

And Jordan came home as well in between. Dianna is doing quite well, specially considering just having had her baby in December. Next update will be soon, so stay tuned.

Update....

2011-01-21T11:20:00.003-04:00

Hello all,

Here is another update, finally.....

Starting with the long awaited pictures of Pete and Kayla. It was so nice to meet them at Dordt. I think you will agree that they are a great match.

We went to Hu Hot, Mongolian Grill. They had really good food. Pete said, it was his favorite place to eat. So we had to check it out.
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After that we decided to check out the falls at Sioux Falls. The water was mostly froze and it was really cold. It took some convincing to get this picture. Just picture the falls in the back ground.
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It was great to be able to spend time with Pete and Kayla. We wish them Gods Blessings on their relationship and the coming semester..........

A day out with Caleb and damaris.....

2011-01-14T23:44:00.007-04:00

Today we did some sight seeing around Norfolk. In the back ground you can see one of the big US Battleships built in the second WW. The Wisconsin was delivered to the Navy in 1944 and participated heavily in the war around Japan. Also saw action in the Korean war. After a refit was recommissioned in the early 80's and fired 8 of the first twelve cruise missiles fired on Irac.

She was decommissioned in the early nineties and now lies proudly beside Nautica, the Naval museum on the waterfront in Norfolk, VA. The ship was very impressive and we were allowed to check out most of the first three decks from the deck up.

We also toured the Virginia Aquarium today, after we visited Nautica. A great time was had by all. There were all sort of different fish to be seen. From Sea Turtles to Seals. From Clown fish in a small tank to Sharks in a huge tank. The nice thing was, there was a window in the front, so you could look right in. Really cool!

In the end, the kids ended up at the Ray pool, it had about a dozen fish in it that you were allowed to touch. And of course they all three of us got our sleeves wet.

Jordan came home today as well, he was out on the boat for the last four days.

They even swam over us in one area of the Aquarium.
Damaris had a close call with a Great White. But I think she was able to talk him out of eating her.

After a very exciting day, it was time to go back to Jordan and Dianna's. Now we are getting packed up for our trip to Iowa. See you next time................Thanks for reading.

Trip to the USA......

2011-01-10T21:57:00.010-04:00

After a couple of days of travel, we were able to spend a whole day relaxing. It is Monday today and we started the day of in the pool. And after that we went to the Lost River Caverns. They were close by in Hellerton and they were open this time of year. Took a lot of pictures, and here are a few of them.

After the caverns, we did the covered bridge route. We saw five different bridges. So many different kinds. Even one that was closed because it was sagging in the middle.

Tomorrow we plan on driving to Portsmouth and visit Dianna.

Who knows, maybe I will get a chance to update again soon. All the best for now..........

New Arrival....

2010-12-21T15:27:00.009-04:00

It is with great joy, and thankful ness to God, that we announce the birth of our newest grand son. His name is Gabriel Spangler,
Weighing in at a whopping 8 lbs 1 oz, 20 inches long. His proud parents, Dianna and Jordan are most happy. Bet Micaiah and Elliyah can't wait to meet their new sibling.

And here are some more pictures.

Micaiah and Elliyah look pretty happy.

And another nice picture of Gabriel Kayden Spangler.

Big Storm.......

2010-12-21T14:23:00.026-04:00

A BIG NOR'EASTER..

As I'm writing this the wind is howling around the house. The trees are swaying in the wind. All because a storm blowing in from the North East. We went for a drive at lunchtime and took some pictures. It was so awesome to see the power of nature at work.

North Rustico Harbour behind Doiron Fisheries.

The breakwater at Rustico Harbour.

Cavendish Beach at the main beach area, where we were walking this fall.

Damaris, facing the wind, almost blowing over.

A picture of the bridge by Joey's Deep Sea Fishing, the bridge is almost flooded.

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A few more Cavendish Beach National Park pictures.

A stubborn rock face sticking its nose into the ocean.

Wild water at the Park entrance

More of the same

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Hope you enjoyed these pictures of the storm.

MERRY CHRISTMAS ONE AND ALL.....

2010-12-11T18:45:00.004-04:00

It is the season to remember the greatest gift of all to mankind. Our Savior Jesus Christ came to give His life for all of us. We need to pass on to others what that means to us. How that makes us thankful and joyful.
I hope that all of you will be Blessed this Christmas and be a Blessing to others as well.
I know it is a little early yet, but it will give all of us a chance to reflect on the reason for the season. Many Blessings,
The Nieuwhofs.

Winter has come..........

2010-11-21T15:01:00.004-04:00

Time to update, well actually, past time. It is time to get the snowmobiles serviced. Should have been done already, but we were really busy with farming. That seems to get in the way once in a while. Most of the outside work is done, just plowing left mostly.
I figured I would share these pictures with you. They were taken today, in front of the house.

For some reason it took a long time to load up. I hope that the pictures are actually attached to the post. It is supposed to warm up next week, so this snow will not last. But more will come later. Have a great week, and drive safe......

Visitors and more digging........

2010-10-02T12:11:00.005-03:00

We are having visitors this weekend. Omke Marten and cousins Rinze and Klarina. They drove up from Boston on Friday. So lots of fun here. I hadn't seen cousin Rinze since 1984. Funny how little they all changed. Its so nice to have them here.

Just a couple of more pictures of digging. These were taken while digging Satina's.

More digging......

2010-09-26T14:13:00.002-03:00

Just a few more pictures. We started harvesting Red Norland. The crop looks great, nice and clean. These pictures were taken at Houston's, across from the Toronto Road. If you look real close, you can see the Northumberland Straight in the back ground.
This is my view for most of the day, Seagulls and potatoes. You can see how full the furrow is from the six extra rows that the wind rowers put in between two rows.
Did you see that we made the truck a little bigger? That is the steel hood that came with the yellow dump truck. The guys cut it apart, welded an extra two feet in between, there is a tarp coming for it too yet. Looks good right?

Hope you enjoyed the pictures, have a great day......

Digging....

2010-09-23T21:56:00.002-03:00

Hey everyone,
We have started the harvest. Digging is going real well. we are enjoying some really nice weather. As wet as it was last year, this is so much nicer. It is also a lot easier on the equipment. The dust is something we gladly put up with, knowing the alternative.
Just to let you know, pictures will be coming,

And there they are, phone pictures,

May get some more later. This is just to wet your appetite....

Almost done....

2010-08-18T20:38:00.004-03:00

Well, the pergola is up, and the stone deck is almost finished as well. The fire pit is in place, and we are cooking with ...wood. It was so much fun, having everyone around the fire, a glass of wine, some hot dogs and marsh mellows.

It was a lot of work, and a lot of rock piles got cleaned up in the process.

Also, we really got to appreciate the view again. We hope to be able to spend lots of time there. And imagine, just sitting there , enjoying the outside and no mosquitoes.

Here are a couple of pictures of the fire pit. Mom ordered it online :)

It works well and looks amazing. You can see on the bottom picture the motive of grape vines. It shows up real nice in the dark, with a good blaze going.

Fun was had by all........

Fishing at Ben's Lake.....

2010-08-10T21:48:00.007-03:00

We went trout fishing on Saturday past.It was organized by Paul and Patty Lynn Larsen. They offered a fishing trip for ten with a BBQ to finish of, at the Christian School Auction. So the farm bought it, and we all shared. Klaas, Alice, Andrew and Kenneth. And from our family we had Matt, Amanda, Damaris and me. It was a lot of fun and it was guaranteed to be successful. After all, it was fully stocked with nice big Rainbow Trout.
Catching them was slow at first, as it was a warm day. But by four o'clock, the first fish started to come out of the water. The first picture shows Matt and Amanda patiently waiting for that eluding first fish. That happened as soon as Alice gave her rod to Matt. Go figure.Matt caught one, but Amanda's fish just went to the other side of the lake. Best thing to do would be to follow it I would think. Below, you can see some of our crew trying hard to be patient.
And after Amanda went to the other side of the lake to try, she had better luck. Isn't it a beauty?

Weighing in at a whopping 11.68 pounds, it was one of the biggest fish caught that afternoon.

Not to be outdone by her sister, Damaris soon caught her own big one. Weighing in at over nine pounds, it was quite a catch as well. She has tried her hand at fishing for trout several times before, but this time it was successful.

Petra Larsen may have been the smallest person there, but she caught one of the biggest fish that afternoon. It weighed an amazing 12.8 lbs.

But the biggest one was caught by Kenneth. It's no fishy story either. His fish weighed 12.87 pounds. He didn't beat Petra by much.

After that, we went over to Point Prim for a BBQ with Paul and Patty Lynn. There was lots of food. Amazing hamburgers and hot dogs, followed by a very tasty desert of Raspberry shortcake and Ice cream. After all that, we rolled home again, a wonderful day was had by all.

Monster Trucks.......

2010-07-07T23:05:00.006-03:00

Caleb, Damaris and I went to see the Monster Trucks when they hit Oysterbed Speedway. It was a big hit with the kids. Caleb even got a ride in one.

It was called , The Raptor, and it seated about ten people.

There were 4 Trucks all together. Not much of a competition, but it was fun to watch. Good reason to try the new lens on the camera. It takes very nice pictures this way.

It was the first time I ever saw them. So it was exciting for me, but other people that were at the event last year said last year was better.
Also that afternoon, another first. Chain races. Two carts chained together. The front car has power, but no brakes. Back car has brakes, but no power to the wheels. It was the high lite of the day. Specially the last race of the day, where they enter all 7 units in the same race. Had a big crash that took out three units at ones. Great fun.
This is the unit that ultimately won the race. The guy in the brake car is a drag racer. His comment? Thats the first time that I tried to slow down , instead of speeding up!

Oh well, fun was had by all.
This coming weekend off to visit Matt and Amanda, and Kings Landing....

The new door....

2010-06-20T22:17:00.004-03:00

Home Improvements..........

A few pictures of the house. as you know, we are getting a new door put in. Well, its in.
Yesterday, the window went out, and the patio door went in. Tim and his dad did the work. And they did a great job. It totaly changed the look of the house.

It was nice and refreshing today. We can now open the door and let some fresh air go through. We only had one small window in that room before, and it would get real hot in there.

And just to add a little color, here are some shots of the Wisteria. It is blooming beautifully this year. This was from the back porch, with the new lens on the Nikon.

And this one of the Clematis.

Hope you enjoyed these updates of our home.

Planting.............

2010-05-27T22:00:00.007-03:00

We are finished!!

The earliest ever done. Finished on Monday , May 24. I took a few pictures yet that I want to share. I hope you will appreciate them.

This top picture on the left shows the Rez-Till on the left and the planter on the right. These were taken in the last field we planted. We even had to plow a few more acres to finish the seed we had. To expensive to throw it away. You can see the plow in the picture below here on the right.

All three tractors working in the same field. Going from a green hayfield, into a planted field of potatoes on the same day. Bet it was quite a shock to the foxes that cross it daily.

Another picture of the planter on the bottom. Taken in a different field that morning. You can see how dry it was. We had a nice rain on Tuesday. It was very welcome. So now it is time to clean everything, do some more grading, spread fertilizer and all that other fun stuff that keeps us going all summer. I hope you will enjoy your summer..............

Where did April go.........

2010-05-04T22:13:00.005-03:00

Hey everyone, It seems that I missed posting altogether last month. But May is here now, and a new post in the making. I am going to show you the pictures of the recent renovations of the gardens in front of the house.
Tractor came in handy. It saved a lot of digging with the shovel. All the topsoil was removed.

We took out the bushes and transplanted them into new beds. First I scooped the sod of the lawn where the beds had to go. Then transplanted whatever mom wanted to save. Also with the front end loader of course. Otherwise there would not be enough dirt left around the roots. And we like healthy bushes and plants.

Here is a look at the new beds. We basically connected the Weeping Willow.

And went right to the Maple tree.

In the last picture you can see that I added rocks back in front of the house. The next step will be............

March is sliding by...........

2010-03-28T15:00:00.003-03:00

Today is a nice quiet day. I know I needed an update soon. So here goes.
Spring is in the air, and has been for a while. The ice is almost out of the Bay, and we lost most of the snow earlier then usual. That was too bad. But the spring was good so far. Not too much mud. Don't really like all the mud. You get everything covered in it. Although, Marten seems to thrive on it. If there is no mud, he will make it, or find it with his four wheeler. Or his newest toy, a four wheel drive S-10. He cut the fenders out in the front, to accommodate the bigger tires. Took the box off the back, and put a set of stacks on it. And boy will it fling mud.
It's a thing to see. He did manage to get it a bit dirty. Looks like he had fun doing it too.
We are getting quite busy with shipping potatoes lately. It was high time. We had a few weeks that is was way to quiet. But things are picking up now. Seed will soon start moving too. Then it will be twice as busy. Trying to please everyone is going to be impossible. But we will try, one way or another.
I hope you all have a great week. Enjoy the warmer weather......

Bathurst.............

2010-02-04T20:47:00.005-04:00

Once again , we were able to spend some time playing in the snow. Tim went with me this time. The trails are very good. All tough, close to the hotel there is hardly any snow, just like on PEI. But the farther in land you go, the more snow there is. We wanted to go to Mount Carleton today, but the trail was not open. After we talked to some guys familiar with that area, they told us that, as long as we didn't mind lifting our sleds over the trees, we could try it.
Not an option. we decided to head up a different direction instead. Saw lots of moose tracks, but no moose. however, we did see a couple of snowshoe hares. And a train. First time ever we had to stop the snowmobiles at a train crossing. Too bad it was dark, it would have made a good picture. The picture below is of the old railway bed that goes toward Nepisiguit, its amazing what they were able to do with only a couple of inches of snow.

This is a picture of the Miramichi groomer. He was a long way from home, they were helping out their sister club Nepisiguit, because the new groomer is not ready yet. It will be here and ready to go for Saturday. Too late for us to see it.

This one is of the TV Tower Road. This trail was freshly groomed with a bit of powder on top, does it get any better then that?

New Brunwick is going green with their power generation as well. You can see the wind turbines they put in place this past year. There must be about ten of them, at least. It takes some rugged equipment to get all the parts in place.

And this would be one of them. A rugged truck with a boom, to bring parts up the mountain trails, covered in snow.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story. But a picture only shows a small part of the experience. You would have to do this just once to know what its all about. I can tell you, the experience is priceless..........

New wheels.........

2010-01-23T19:36:00.006-04:00

Just a picture of the truck. I took it with my phone this fall. Hope you like it Andre. Just for you. You will be happy to hear that it gets dirty once in a while.

Hope all of you are having a great day.

Sharing a few pictures of the holidays............

2010-01-11T22:10:00.033-04:00

It was really nice to have every home for the holidays, it sure made for a full house. There was always something going on . We had early risers, and those that choose to go to bed really late. Board games, computer games, snowmobiling, although there was hardly enough snow for that. So much fun.

On left : Dianna, Jordan, Micaiah and Elliyah. Who at present live in New Jersey. It was so nice to see the grand children again. They grow up so fast. Two years from now, we hope to meet again for Christmas, DV. Then Micaiah will be four, and Elliyah 2.

And here we have Mary and Isaac, currently residing in Texas for the next twelve weeks. As part of Isaac's rotations. We hope that they will enjoy some warmer weather yet. It is very cold across North America right now.

.. .
Next we have Matt and Amanda, who live in New Brunswick right now. Matt just finished his engineering degree. Congratulations Matt. Now to find a job in the middle of the winter...............Good thing the Ski Hill is hiring.
After that comes Pete, he is attending Dordt College in Iowa at the moment. Facebook says, he just arrived.
The cute couple in the next picture are Tim Jones and Rebecca. They are spending a lot of time together, and are enjoying each others company. Rebecca goes to the University of Prince Edward Island.
Then there's is of Micaiah.
. .. ..
Box of Smarties in one hand, Merry Christmas shirt on and toys nearby. The look on his face says it all : Not sharing today, get your own.
And finally we have Caleb and Damaris, Caleb will be ten tomorrow, January 12.
Sorry, but I could not get all the text lined up with the right pictures. Its a nice little puzzle. Hope you can figure it out. Have fun, and again, a Blessed New Year to all.

Christmas 2009.........

2009-12-30T19:35:00.008-04:00

It sure was a full house here this last week and as half. We had the whole family home for Christmas.

It was a blessing indeed. Good food and good company. The only one not happy was the turkey. A lot of boardgames were played.
Coffee and hot coco were used to ward of the cold. Not that it was freezing mind you. The temperature was mostly above zero for the last week. It was more a wet cold. We did have a few flurries for Christmas. So at least it was white instead of just wet.
Yesterday the temperature dropped way down, and the wind picked way up. Then the snow came and we had a snowstorm. It was great. A person should have at least one snowstorm during the holidays I think.
Then came today and we had to say goodbye to Mary & Isaac and Matt & Amanda. Even when they left, it was still blowing pretty good. The bridge was closed to high sided vehicles. But, by the afternoon, we got word that they were well on their way.
So now we still have Dianna & Jordan with their kids, Micaiah and Elliyah. They are staying until Sunday. Pete is home until the 11'th of January, and that leaves Rebecca, Damaris and Caleb home with us.
From our family to yours, we wish you a very Happy and Blessed New Year. And hope that the Lord may grant you health and happiness in 2010.......

.................HAPPY NEW YEAR..........

Snow..............

2009-12-06T20:38:00.003-04:00

Yes, the snow has arrived. It is after all December. I hope you are all ready for winter to come. Snow tires on the car. Shovels ready, etc. We enjoyed a wonderful snowy day at home today. We played a board game, made a snowman, drank specialty coffee's and had a lot of fun in general. 'Tis the season. I hope you and yours will have a safe and Blessed Christmas..........

No, they are not black and white. Its the snow, its so white, the camera has to get used to it yet. A view from the front of the house.

Can you see the snowman? It is about six feet tall. It was perfect snowman snow.

New Post.....

2009-11-28T23:36:00.002-04:00

What to write. It seems like time just flew by this fall. Busy every day. Right from the day we got back from our trip to the States.
All the potatoes are out. The crop is really nice this year. Good quality, good yield. Now all we need is a good price.
Ellie and I are taking Caleb and Damaris to Halifax tomorrow. A bit of shopping, swimming, watersliding, eating and sleeping in a hotel. Back on Tuesday. So to all of you that still check in once in a while, thank you.
Hope to post some more news soon.............

Here in Cape May..........

2009-09-09T13:46:00.006-03:00

Life is pretty good here, between spoiling the grand children and ourselves, we are quite busy. We are all doing great. Took lots of pictures. And thought I would share a few.
A picture of Elliyah
..and yesterday was Micaiah's birthday, he is 2 years old now.

Pake holding Elliyah...

West Cape May Point, as seen from the Fire Control Tower, a restored watchtower from the second WW. There were 14 of those situated around Delaware Bay, to protect shipping and munition factories up river.

The beach, at West Cape May Point. Notice the gravel beach, home of the Cape May diamond, a see through seaglass when polished lookes just like diamond.

A typical house in downtown Cape May. A lot of these are turned into B&B's. It is a very picturesque town. With a lot of history. Cape May recently celebrated its 400'th anniversary. It has been a favorite resort town for many famous people through the centuries............

New Baby......

2009-08-30T17:05:00.007-03:00

Dianna and Jordan had a baby girl on Thursday August 27'th. Her name is: Elliyah Jade Spangler. She weighed: 7 lb and 13 oz. Length: 19 inches long. And blond hair.

Jordan and Elliyah..
Isn't she cute?

..These pictures courtesy of Dianna and Jordan..

p.s. See also new post below this one...............

Family reunion 2009............

2009-08-30T16:01:00.007-03:00

This was our family logo that was embroidered on all the T-shirts and sweaters.It was a nice touch. Made for a nice group picture as well, (see below).The festivities were held from August 18 to 25. We had a lot of fun. Spend a lot of time together. Got to know each other again. Specially Tetcy, Ray, Craig and Joe. It was so awesome, and so much fun.
I took lots of pictures, so I don't know where to start. But in general, we saw a lot of family pictures like this putluck supper we had the first day. It looked really nice to have every one wear the same colour.

The campfires were a big hit every night as well. The weather cooperated really well.
One of the highlites was the trip to Flowerpot rocks. It made us remember Mom and Dad, and how this whole reunion thing got started. Caleb and I went rock climbing.
He just loves climbing as much as I do. The rest of the week was filled with all kinds of fun things. At the end of the week, we wished for more time, but home was calling. So off we went, back to reality.........

Finaly, pictures of July 1'st.......

2009-07-06T22:29:00.003-03:00

It was a nice overcast, but dry day. Just the kind of weather you need for festivities like Canada Day. No sunscreen, no sunglasses and no sunburn at the end of the day. Although it would have been nice to be able to have the fireworks. They were cancelled due to the wind being the wrong way. Right over the village. Fire hazzard you know.
But we did have a parade in the morning. We watched Julie go by on a hay wagon. Forgot the camera and the picture on the phone was too dark to use.
At noon the booths opened. A lot of people were gathered in the community park in North Rustico. Julie had a booth there as well. Being Miss Teen PEI and all, you got to have a booth on Canada Day.
There was also face painting. Caleb and Damaris took full advantage of that. In no time they went from two very respectable kids to: A Pirate and a Zombie. border Go figure.
They had lots of fun.
We took Tineke and Cassie along too. Here the three of them pose in front of the Canadian Flag. Mounted on a zodiak from the Navy..........

Happy Canada Day!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-06-30T22:35:00.002-03:00

Wishing all of you Happy Canada Day tomorrow. Taking my camera to the festivities toomorrow. Hopefully we will get some nice ones. Parade tomorrow morning, hope to see Julie on the float, stuff for kidds to do at lunch time and then a pool party with BBQ at Marten and Karen's.
And top it all of with fireworks in the evening.

Tree planting............

2009-06-06T17:31:00.009-03:00

Some new faces on the blog. For those of you that think that I only do stuff with Pete, think again...........Here is Damaris holding up a little Eastern Pine, ready to plant. Below, Caleb said:" Does it really smell like a pine tree? Well, why don't we smell it and find out?"

This morning, we went with the Sea Cadets and the watershed group, and planted some trees. There were about a dozen cadets, and then a few people from the local watershed group. We had about 250 trees available to plant. They were donated by the government nursery. Planting happened on a property that we rent. It has a big man made pond with wetland all around it. An ideal spot to plant trees.All species native to the P.E.I.
A good time was had by all. Damaris asked:"Are those fishy things in the water tadpoles Daddy?" And after a closer look, yes they are. They had so much fun, it was hard to get them out of there. I don't know how much fun it was for the tadpoles.
Then it was back to the field where there was some heavy duty planting going on.
Planting is going well. Two more days should wind it up pretty well. The last two weeks we had really good weather. So a lot of planting was done.
Below are pictures of the Big Deere that we use to work the land. It pulls a Rez-Til.
A big rig that churns up the land and makes it fluffy for planting. Heavy duty pulling, it takes all 190 HP to keep it going at 7 MPH.And the last picture shows the other Deere with the potato planter. You can see how dry it is by the dust in the air.
I hope to get some pictures of the tuberunit planter yet. Maybe I will get them on next week. Enjoy these in the mean time.

Skill's Canada Competition..............

2009-05-24T15:46:00.012-03:00

Not very ofter I write about Pete twice in a row. But this was a special occasion. By winning the provincial skills competition earlier this spring, he advanced to the nationals. And this year, they were held on P.E.I. Competitors from all over Canada, in a very wide range of skills gathered in Charlottetown for a two day face off. The category that Pete entered was called : Automation and Controls.Day 1

These pictures were taken about halfway the first day. A lot of work done, even more to be done yet. There were seven provinces and territories competing in this category.
It was amazing how many things were going on at the same time. The amount of talent gathered in one place was totally incredible.
Day 2
As you can see, the parts that were on the table yesterday, are now in the box, or cabinet as they call it. Looks complicated Pete. Glad you know what you are doing. Next came the programming of the computer part, called the PLC. And at 4:35 pm, time was up. And an exhausted bunch of guys started cleaning up their stations and wait for the judges. But winners would not be announced until the next day. Saturday, the last day of the four day event, got everybody together once more for the closing ceremony. It was held at UPEI. This was the long anticipated medal presentation. Here Pete found out that he had won the bronze medal. The medals were presented by
Mike Holmes. He was also one of the main speakers.
He was one of the judges of the carpentry skills. It was a good experience for everyone involved. It sure opened my eyes to the amount of talent God has given to all these competitors. May we put our talent to good use................

Graduation 2009......

2009-05-14T23:15:00.013-03:00

Congratulations to Pete. He is officially graduated from Holland College as an Electromechanical Technician. He finished top of his class. And received the Proficiency and Initiative reward. Way to go Pete. Just figured I would share that with you.Right now he is working on the farm, but next week he is going to enter the National Skills Competition. They are held on PEI this year. That should be a good challenge for him. Opening ceremony on Wednesday, two days of competition, and then the closing ceremony, just like the Olympics. All the best Pete.
On another note, I meant to post some pictures yet of Dianna and Micaiah's visit with us a few weeks ago. My, how time flies. Well, here are a few of them. We had a great time. It was so much fun to have them around. A real privilege to see our grandson again. And my, how he has grown.
Relaxing by the fireplace.
Have to go for ride in the tractor before he goes back home to New Jersey.

Driving the tractor with Pake.
A few more years, and he will be a pro.
Three weeks was a nice long time, but all things come to an end, and so did the visit. Until we meet again, hopefully in the end of August when, the Lord willing, we will welcome the arrival of our next grand child. Sorry Dianna for taking so long to get these pictures on.

The Faith of our fathers............

2009-04-12T17:05:00.005-03:00

Today was a great day. We were able to witness Pete, Julie, two of Pete's friends and the whole family Best profess their faith in Jesus Christ publicly. The family Best was baptized as well. It was really good to see. They came to us from a different religious background. And all this, on the day that we remember that Jesus rose from the grave. We pray that they will not stray from the path that they have chosen to start on today.
Afterward we had a get together at our place for more coffee and cake. Followed by dinner and dessert. It was great to have the house full off people again. I'm sorry to say, I have no pictures of today's happenings, but the following link shows the video that the guys and Julie made together with pastor Chad. In the video are Julie, Klaas DeBoer, Feije DeBoer and Pete. Klaas and Feije are twins. Enjoy.........

Snowmobiling at it's best......

2009-03-23T06:55:00.006-03:00

That would have to be in New Brunswick. Pete and I went there last week together for three days. We had a lot of fun. The weather was really good. Thursday was a little cloudy and the trails were slushy, as it was above zero all day. But it froze hard overnight. So the next day the trails were froze solid. This presented a bit of a problem with lubrication for the track and cooling for the engine.
We decided not to leave until late morning. Which proved to be still problematic. But by mid afternoon , conditions were getting better. We had decided to go to Mount Carleton this day. When we arrived there, we were able to take the sleds right to the top.
The view was awesome. We could see for miles around. Above you can see Pete, on top of the world. To the left , a view from the mountain.
It was beautiful up there. How awesome is our God, that he created such beauty. You really got a sense of that up there.
This next picture shows how trucks and snowmobiles share some of the same roads. The trail up about four feet higher. And this would go for miles and miles.
And, all good things must come to an end. Here we are, packing up again for the trip home. We had a safe drive home and found all was well at home. But a lot of snow had disappeared on PEI. Only to see more snow again overnight. I guess our spring is not quite here yet. Contrary to what the calender tells us............

More Ice............

2009-03-04T22:15:00.006-04:00

This is like dejavue,it was last year around the end of January,that we had the same kind of weather. I had the same kind of pictures then. We did not loose our power this time however. Eventough the ice is still on the trees and powerlines. Also, the temperature tonight is going down to minus 15, windchill factor of minus 22.
This picture shows the strain on the post. It is bending under the weight of the ice. Hope she holds. It would be a cold night to lose our power.
This is the tree in front of the house, a big sugar maple. All covered in ice. You can see the house in the background. It does look very pretty with the sun shining on the ice. God sure knows how to decorate.
And this last picture I took early in the morning through the trees beside the road on the way to work. It is so beautiful everywhere. Not the best for snowmobiling though. We are getting some more snow and rain over the weekend. Saturday will be the first day that the temperature is supposed to go above zero. Maybe the ice will fall off the wires then..........
p.s.
See also next post, I did two posts in one week. Have a great week people, and thanks for your visit.

Pete's birthday today......

2009-03-01T17:21:00.011-04:00

Today we celebrate Pete's birthday, he is twenty years old now. Quite a milestone. All the guys are over today, for tomato soup and icecream cake from DQ.
They were going to be with Matt and Amanda this weekend, snowboarding at Crabbe. But God had other plans. Car trouble changed their plans and now they are still on PEI. Of course it is nice to have them all here for Pete's big day. I took a few pictures this morning, first one, the guys playing Battlefield together. That is Pete in the bottom right and Caleb right behind him. And the next on does not need an intro. We have all seen them before
.
Mmmmmmmm............that cake was some good.
The weather here has been wintery lately. Lots of snow around. I did get some sledding in. Mostly in the evenings though. Since we are very busy grading potatoes the last couple of weeks. And last week was a busy day of blowing snow as well. Good time for the guys to be in Florida. Bet they didn't shovel any snow there!
I took a few pictures of that as well. Our house, behind the snowbanks that are alongside of the road. .The next couple of pictures are of the snow blower. One posing and one of it working.
You can see the snow coming out of the top there. It comes right from the fan and gets thrown about two hundred feet into the air. The drum rotates and can throw the snow to either side or staight up out of the shoot.We also did some snowmobiling. Last Sunday was just a gorgeous day to be out. Today, not so good. It was raining yesterday and now it is minus ten again. The trails will be frozen and hard as rock. No lubrication for the sliding rails.
Freezing rain tomorrow, and rain for Tuesday may slow things down even more. On this picture shows us having a break and a stretch. That is Tim on the left and Rebecca on the right.
This is an action picture of the other two sleds closing in on me. The weather as I said before was just beautiful. We went about a hundred some odd kilometers. There was lots of traffic on the trail.
We also got stopped by the trailwarden in Winsloe. Him and two policeman were writing tickets out to people that didn't have the proper documentation, re: trailpermits, registration or insurance. We were waved through after checking our stickers. This last picture is the view I like best, a clear groomed trail ahead of me..........
Thanks for visiting, please leave a comment.

Winter, my favourite time of year....

2009-02-07T19:21:00.004-04:00

I have been waiting to take some more pictures of winter. Today would have been good or last week, but no, keep forgetting the camera.
Last weekend, Sunday afternoon till Monday night we spend at Chrystal Palace in Moncton. We took Caleb and Damaris. And Tineke went as well with Cassie and Aaron. we had an absolute blast and were sure tired when we got home.
Did some snowmobiling on the trail with Rebecca last Saturday afternoon. The trails were good. Then another snowstorm Wednesday with about a foot of snow, just too bad I got the flu and don't remember most of it. No energy at all. Today it is finaly coming around, not so tired anymore. Enough energy to go for another sledrun today. It was very busy on the trails. Lots of snowmobiles out. Some broke down, (Artic Cat)of course. Went with Pete, Rebecca & Tim, and Damaris on the back with me. Sorry, no pictures, but what a beautifull day for it. Should sleep good tonight.
Tomorrow's weather calls for above zero temperatures. Hope that the it doesn't get too warm.
On the other front, I did finaly bottle my first two batches of wine. Thirty bottles of white wine, Gewurtztraminer, and thirty of red wine, Cabernet Sauvignon. Very tasty if I may say so. Hope you will come over and try one of them some day. I do have some pictures on my camera of the winemaking procedure. So I can add a few of those. It is just not the same without pictures.This is what the wine looked like in the carboy(glass bottle), just before bottling.
And in the glass, it was goood too, :)
And after bottling, impressed yet? Wait till you taste it.First carboy of red wine.
Filtering the wine from one carboy into another one. To make it just right.And finaly bottling with the help of Damaris, my main bottle filler. Not so much up for taste testing however..........

Happy New Year.............

2009-01-01T10:19:00.005-04:00

We wish all of you the best for the coming year. May you be blessed in abundance,We woke up to a blizzard this morning. Up to 40 cm is possible, with winds gusting upwards of 100 km per hour. It should be a fun day. Nice and cozy by the fireplace.This is what our world looked like at 10 A.M.

This way the snow will all be in the woods again by tomorrow, just like last time. Hard to snowmobile in the woods. We may have to go to New Brunswick again this year.
Pete is stuck at the DeBoer's today. He will make it home eventually i'm sure.
...............I hope that all of you will be blessed this year............

Merry Christmas ..............

2008-12-23T21:54:00.003-04:00

This is always a busy time for every one. But I am glad you took the time to come for a visit here on our blog. It is appreciated.
I hope you are able to spend some time with your family. Christmas time is always special to me. Matt and Amanda come over from Fredericton. We think of Dianna & Jordan and Mary & Isaac as well at this time and wish that we could have been all together, but that was not to be this year. We hope, the Lord willing to Celebrate all together again next year.
We did have a nice get together with the rest of the Nieuwhof's at Marten and Karen's last Saturday. It was a lot of fun. There was lots of food , as usual, and good company. Amanda decided that it would be a good idea to exchange presents at home too right away. So, that's what we did. It was hard to get Caleb and Damaris to go to bed after that. They wanted to stay up longer and play with all the new toys. Well, that was understandable.
These are some pictures I took at home. Top: Matt, Caleb and Amanda. Beside:Pete, Damaris, Mom and Rebecca on the floor. And a good time was had by all.
By the time you read this blog, it will likely be Christmas for you as well. I hope you well get to enjoy to time with family as much as I am.

p.s.

I started a new hobby. Wine making. Finally a hobby that will save me some money. Below is what the first batch of white wine looks like right now. Not that white, is it? It looks more like grape juice at this point. But I'm told this is the normal colour.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you...............

And then it was winter..........

2008-11-23T14:05:00.006-04:00

Winter has arrived on P.E.I. A little early. We were not ready for this yet. Still have quite a bit of plowing left to do. I guess it will be snowplowing now. But it was a great time for the kids to play in the snow. It was great snowman snow. You know, the sticky kind. They had lots of fun with snowball fights. Caleb made a ninja snowman. And Damaris made the Pillsbury snowman.We had about 25 cm of the white stuff. Enough to have some good fun in. Klaas even had to go out and blow snow with the big tractor. Hope he had fun. Just a taste of things to come.
It is supposed to go well above zero this coming week, with 10 to 20 mm of rain coming our way the middle of the week.
I won't mind that so much, but it will make quite a mess everywhere. Oh well, we'll deal with that when the time comes.
Grading is going to start next week as well. The prices are looking good. Hopefully the cullage will not be too high. It is starting to look like a decent year. We pray all will go well this winter, and that we may be content with what we have.
May God bless you this coming week in all your endeavours........

Some pictures of post harvest activities........

2008-11-18T23:07:00.005-04:00

Just because digging is over does not mean that all the work is done. We still have about two weeks of outside work to do before we can sit back and relax a little bit. I took a few pictures of that for you.
The first picture showes a field that was covered with hay mulch. We cover the fields to help prevent soil erosion. Marten has been at this for the last couple of days. He was working to far away to get a picture of him doing it. But here is the result anyway. Looks like the field is nicely covered.
In this picture, Tineke is ripping up the headland. The heavy truck tracks left in the field from harvesting get loosened up again.And then we get to the plowing. Klaas and I are at it with two plows. A lot of times we are going behind one another. It gets a little complicated at the ends sometimes. But we have got that down to a science. I drive in the back, and never have to stop. Klaas seems to be able to get in the furrow again before I complete my loop on the headland.
Later in the day we had some sea gulls over for a snack. They took off an hour or so later and left lots of tips, mostly on the windows.........

Busy times on the farm...........

2008-11-13T22:09:00.003-04:00

Hi there all you faithfull readers. Glad you are still checking up on me. We finished digging on November the 6 th. And now it is time to clean up around everywhere before the snow falls. There is plowing to do, balebusting, manure spreading trying to figure out how to ventilate all the different piles of potatoes. All the buildings are full to the door. So today we started grading some today. And slowly we will get more room again.
We finished harvesting the greenhouse yesterday. Nice stuff for planting.
I will try to take some pictures of the yard out back. All the machinery that is normally in the shed, is parked outside. Machinery everywhere. You can hardly turn around. I hope you all have a great weekend............

Still digging potatoes...........

2008-10-31T23:13:00.003-03:00

Sorry, no pictures. We are still digging. This is like the fall that never ends. It will be another week for sure, before we are done. Big crop. All the storages will be full. The Lord willing , we should be done by the end of next week. This is starting to remind me of digging carrots. It is heavy going, and we had a few breakdowns this morning. Slipclutch malfunction, the bolts fell out, and half hour later I blew a tire on the digger. So by lunch time, I was still doing my first round. And then it rained. But all in all, we still dug 25 loads by 10 o'clock. Anyway, I hope you all have a great weekend..............

Digging potatoes at Blue Bay Farms........

2008-10-13T22:20:00.009-03:00

A little update on the digging process. It is going fairly slow. But overall, the crop looks good. Definitely something to be thankful for. Specially today, on Thanksgiving. I hope that everyone was able to spend some quality time with family and friends.
Matt and Amanda were home for the weekend. We really enjoyed their company. But the time goes by so quickly. Specially when we are digging during the day. At least we had a good dinner together on Saturday with everyone. And Salsa and nachos last night.
And as I had promised, here are a few digging pictures.
Here, Klaas is wind rowing 4 rows of potatoes together in between the two that I pick up with the digger.
This is a truckload of
Red Norland potatoes leaving the field. In front of the tractor, you can see the two rows that the digger picks up. By this time, 8 rows have been deposited in between, so the digger picks up ten rows at a time.Above you can see the unloading line at the farm. Here the dirt, rocks and other undesirables get picked out. It takes about 18 people to make all this equipment work efficiently.
This last picture shows the binpiler. As the name suggests, it piles the potatoes in the bin. Beats doing it by hand.........

Notice................

2008-10-10T00:45:00.002-03:00

We are busy digging the Red Norland potatoes. It is a big crop. Minimal losses due to rot. Thanks to God, it could have been a lot worse.
And by the way......... Caleb has posted a new blog. Just in case you want a new chapter story to read.
Greatings all, until next time, when i hope to have some pictures too.............

Open Farm Day results...........

2008-09-23T17:15:00.003-03:00

Hi all,
Open Farm Day went very well. We had over a hundred people visit. It is a good way to meet the neighbors from across the road. And their new neighbors as well. They moved in about two months ago. I never knew. We had a model tractor for a doorprize.
There were 73 ballots left over, after we took all the doubles out first. Klaas phoned the happy winner shortly after six, and he came down right away to claim his new John Deere 8330.
There were lots of comments about our digger collection of steel.
Most people figured that the round object seated on the yellow pedestal was indeed a cannonball.
We will wait for some official say in this matter from our family expert.
Digging came to a halt today. All was going well until we started the Red Norlands this afternoon. The first load was fine, but when we topped the hill, the potatoes were skinning too much yet. And with a little bit of rot and blight in the field, we decided to wait until next Monday before we start again. So there is your update in that department. I hope you guys have a great week...........

Open Farm Day tomorrow.............

2008-09-20T21:03:00.005-03:00

When you read this, it will likely be all over. We were asked this summer if we would consider hosting open farmday again. Since it was the year of the potato and they did not have a potato farm yet. So after some thinking, we decided to host this event for the second time. We did it two years ago as well. It is really enjoyable, but it takes a lot of work to get ready for it. I'll post some pictures on the next blog, maybe even tomorrow, so be warned, two blogs in a row.
We started digging a few headlands yesterday, the potatoes were still skinning a bit. The crew is coming in on Monday and hopefully we will be able to start digging the seedplots. I could put some archived pictures in for that, but I'll wait for the real ones. We had one interesting find however. Diggin right clos to the shop, we noticed a round iron object in between all the Gold nuggets. Yukon Gold that is. If you look at the pictures I would like you to tell me what you think it is.....

Roguing Seed Potatoes......

2008-07-23T22:45:00.007-03:00

These days on Blue Bay Farms are mostly spend in the fields. Roguing seed potatoes is a very important job. The job consists of finding virus infected potato plants, and then remove them from the field.
The top picture shows the roguing crew. From left to right: Rebecca, Tineke, Pete, Marten and Klaas. The empty seat is mine.
These pictures were taken in the field in front of our house. The variety is Prospect. A processing variety.
And this is a picture that shows a Mosaic plant. A potato plant infected with PVY (potato virus Y). You can see how much smaller the plant is. It is going to have a small yield. Therefore it is not desirable to have these in a potato field. That is why we rogue them out.
The last picture shows Prospect on the left and Yukon Gold on the right. In the background you can see all the mussel buoys in the bay.

Hi to you all..

2008-07-09T23:59:00.002-03:00

Or the few ones that are left. Summer has arrived on PEI. It is really warm, at least for us. It was around 30 degrees , and high humidity. You folks in Ontario and below that have our sympathies. Hope you stay cool.
The potatoes are growing fast. they could use a shower now. But the dry weather is keeping blight in check.
As most of you probably know, Sarah Terpstra is biking across the U.S. in the Sea To Sea Bike Tour. If you want to follow her progress, here is her blog address.
http://sarahterpstra.blogspot.com
They are at day ten.
All the best for now and have a great week........

Yippey......

2008-06-11T18:42:00.002-03:00

We are done planting. Sorry, no pictures. But it is a great feeling to be done. We finished late yesterday afternoon. And today is dedicated to paperwork, cleaning, grading and putting equipment away. More later, we have to eat now........

Change of siding............

2008-05-23T18:41:00.004-03:00

We finaly have our new back door in place. Got it late last fall,and then it sat in the barn for the winter. I wanted to finish it before planting. The top pictures shows you how nicely things are greening up here. The flowers are starting to grow as well. We certainly had enough rain lately.
Also put some new siding on the house, as you can see in these pictures. I kind of like the rustic wood look.
Planting has come to a standstill. Last Friday afternoon and Saturday we planted about thirty acres. And we have not turned a wheel since. It was nice yesterday, but is raining again right now.
Matt and Amanda are coming here tonight. We are all looking forward to that.
The stockcar races are starting again tomorrow. Weather permitting. It was cacelled on Monday because of the rain. The farm is sponsoring Walter again this year. I hope that he has fun, it is certainly entertaining for the crowd. Well folks, I hope everyone has a good weekend...........

The Crisis in Agriculture..........

2008-05-02T21:16:00.003-03:00

This past Thursday we went to an event in Charlottetown called: May Day, MayDay!
It was organized by the West Prince Chamber of Commerce. In support of farmers, rural businesses churches and schools. The situation with Island Farmers and farm related business here on PEI is serious. After the second year in a row of low commodity prices, a high Canadian dollar, too many potatoes on the market, the closing of the only hog processing plant on PEI and poor beef prices. The Island farming community came together in front of Province House to plead their case with the government. It was very cold, drizzly weather. But about 400 people came out for this very important gathering. Premier Ghiz came out to address the crowd. But not much was accomplished. The PEI GOvernment can't fix this with a big cheque, he said.
We knew this already, but what else can be done, that is the question.
Many speakers had passionate words to say about the quality of rural life that is quickly coming to an end. One young farmer come up and said that in his area, last year there were six small family farming operations. This year there will be only one left on his road. And sadly, that is becoming more frequent, as you talk to other farmes from different areas. The financial crisis in farming today is equal or worse then the thirties were. Something needs to happen. And it has to happen REAL SOON. Or it will be to late for many!
What will happen in the big cities where there is no awareness, if the farmers are not there to feed them anymore. Are they all going to be content with the fact that their food now comes from China and South America? What if the borders are closed for some reason? We need farmers in this country. And all we ask for is a decent living like everybody else. But it seems with the pricing of our products, we depend on others to set the price for us. But when we need parts, then too, the price is set. The problem is, that the margins betwqeen cost and return have overlapped the wrong way for too long. We are no longer able to support this cheap food policy that we have hear in North America. It is time for change. Or life on PEI as we know it today, will be a thing of the past. And that would be a shame. Anyway, let me introduce you to a few people in these pictures.

In this picture, in the white shirt on the left, is Dr. Gary Morgan. He is a vet. from the O'Leary area. With the guitar I believe is Gary Gallant, a dairy farmer from the West Prince area. He sang the song May Day, MayDay for us. It summed up in a few words the serious situation that we find ourselves in today.
The above picture shows you the amount of people that turned out for the event. It was good to see this many show up, eventhough the weather was very poor. It showed the government that we were serious.
This last picture is one for the books. Never before have I been at a meeting where the Federation of Agriculture and the National Farmers Union were standing side by side and coming with a joint resolution to bring to the premier. That actually didn't happen until a little while later, after the meeting was moved inside the House. When the premier was finaly cornered for the third time that day, he started to get the picture that this was serious. Not just a bunch of upset farmers. But mayors, church ministers, equipment dealers, feed company owners. A representative portion of rural PEI. Including farmers.

Our friends have arrived............

2008-04-18T07:15:00.004-03:00

Well, the big day has finaly come to P.E.I. It means that spring is here to stay. The weather was just beautiful yesterday. Nice and sunny, and warm too.
Elisabeth said that gardening is earlier this year.
The kids were having lots of fun out, looking for worms in the gardens. They made a wormfarm with them. Hmmm...maybe a new crop for me. Hope your week is going well. Ours is.
This Sunday we are going to visit with Matt and Amanda. That should be exciting. We are looking forwaed to it. Back home again Monday night after a stopover in Moncton.
Have a great weekend everyone.........

Spring is coming.......

2008-04-06T16:02:00.003-03:00

Dear readers

It looks and feels very much like spring today. I played catch with Caleb and Damaris today. The grass was a little spongie yet, but we had lots of fun.
The land in front of the house is steaming as I write this. Another sign of spring. Although we are a long ways away from planting potatoes. The ice on the bay is starting to thaw. There is a dark line from the bridge to behind UK's place. The ice in the straight is going away as well. Soon it will start to warm up again. The picture was taken in the National Park above North Rustico.
I'm getting some comment spam lately. So I have decided to change the way that I post your comments. For now I pick wich ones get published. The comments will go to my e-mail account first and then I post or delete them. We'll see if it works. So if your comment doesn't show up right away, that is why.
Have a great week.......

Belated Sleighride Fun.......

2008-03-29T12:52:00.004-03:00

It was a while ago already that we went on our sleighride. But I finaly got the pictures developed. And I decided to share them with you.Those Percheron horses looks pretty huge upclose. The team on the right weighs in at about four thousand pounds together. They have no problem pulling a big sleigh. The one horse open sleigh that we had out is for smaller groups, like us. We were only five of us. Jim said that he had a pretty busy winter.
Jim also made a big hill for sledding as well. We all had a go at it. Lots of fun was had by all. The whole week was a fundraiser for Sarah. She is going to try the bicicle trip across the U.S.A. The Sea To Sea Biketour. It is organized by the Christian Reformed Church. We wish her all the best.
They start in Seattle WA on June 30 and finish in Jersey City,NJ. on August 30. http://www.crcna.org/pages/sea_front.cfm
Here is the website in case you want to check it out.
And then I found this picture yet from when Jordan and me went snowmobiling on the Island. It looks like that is all over for another year. So the pictures will have to last until next winter.
It is still pretty busy on the farm, most of the tablestock is gone. And we will be starting to move more seed in the next few weeks.
We are not growing carrots this year, so one thing less to get ready for. I'm sure it will be lots busy anyway. Hope you guys have a great weekend..........

A nice sunny day...........

2008-03-06T22:42:00.008-04:00

The weather certainly cooperated today. Nice and sunny and not too cold. First we went North to Balmoral. We saw a lot of awesome nature views. Like the ones below. There is lots of snow every where. Some of the cottages along the trail had about four feet of snow on the roof.

Picture perfect. Lots of fun was had by all. This is what you call: Getting right into it. We had a few laughs over that. It is all part of the fun.
The trails were really good. Hard base with a few cm of powder on top. And then the groomer goes by to make it all smooth as glass.You can see that the guys are getting tired. Some of these groomers are running 24/7.Here is a nice action picture of Klaas. He seems to be having fun. The last bunch of pictures were taken in the Mount Carleton Park area. We drove right trough there. Some more spectacular scenery. A picture doesn't do it justice. You can see how much fun we all had.
Lots of thumbs up!
It was almost eight o'clock when we finaly got back to the hotel.

Friends forever. Klaas and Andre.
A quick shower and then a bite to eat yet. And a Corona of course. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the timely updates. We are going for a short run tomorrow morning yet. And then we are heading home for supper. See you all soon...

Gone sledding............

2008-03-05T16:59:00.009-04:00

In New Brunswick snowmobiling.

That is the place to go to get some serious sledding in.Here we are getting ready to leave. That was fun too. Just when we got to the bridge, they closed it to high sided vehicles. That included us. Oh yeah, they also told me that I had to report to the scales. Apparently, I have to go over all the scales because I have a tandem axle trailer now.As you can see in this next picture, you have to fill up with gas whenever and wherever you can. These pictures were taken at Island Lake. It is in the middle of nowhere. It is a camp that is running on a generator. Andre looks quite at home on the sled, eh? He's just lovin it. It is great fun to be out with the three of us. The next picture is of Governers,
They have about four feet of snow everywhere. You actually have to walk down into the place. They were glad to see us. We were their first customers for the day. So we had lunch there. It had been snowing lightly all morning , but that changed after lunch to freezing rain and ice pellets.
It makes for interesting visibility. We made it safely back to the Host, where we could relax and plan the next days activities. Hopefully the sun will be out tomorrow, then we can see some of the mountain scenery that we couldn't see today because of the weather.
And by the way, this was the only moose we saw today. Lots of tracks on the trail, but no real moose. Maybe tomorrow. Have a great day, and thanks for your visit today.

A few changes........

2008-02-06T21:50:00.000-04:00

It was time to finaly get that new family picture on the blog. Before it gets old again.
Life on the farm, what can I say? It is really busy. Potatoes going out the door left and right. Cullage is down. Quite a change from last year. The price is down a bit from last year. So that evens it out.
Outside, it is still snowing. We had more snow this year then the last few years. We also had more freezing rain. That brought us our longest power outage since a long time ago. Our old generator kept us warm for the duration. We tought back, and realized, that it is 22 years old. So I guess it did well.
I hope your week is going well.......

A few more pictures.......

2008-02-02T17:42:00.000-04:00

Here are a few more pictures of the storm. The kids were having a lot of fun with it. They figured that since schools were all closed, ours should be too. So it has been a nice slow week for them.All that ice sure made sledding fast and fun. They would almost go right down to the road. And on this side right up to the little house. I'm sure they will remember this storm for a long time. They can tell their kids, back when I was little......now THAT was a storm!
Below you can see by the icicle that Caleb is holding how thick the ice was everywhere. They thought it was quite something. It sure made some awesome decorations.
Above, just going for a walk through the clayroad. Hope there is no falling ice! Could be hard on the head.
A quick look at Klaas and Alice's. Lots of branches down there as well.It was a good thing that we did not get high winds with all the ice on the trees. That would have been a bad combination.
This last picture I took out back. You can see that there is a branch in the top that is ready to snap.
This concludes the pictures of the storm of 2008. I hope you enjoyed them.
We did get our power back yesterday afternoon. On day four. It makes you think of the saying:"You don't appreciate something until you it's gone!"
Have a great week.

Ice Storm on P.E.I..........

2008-01-30T12:37:00.000-04:00

Here are a few pictures of our world as we see it right now. We are running on the generator. Hopefully it will keep going. The wind is supposed to pick up as the day goes by. Up to 90 clicks tonight. The schools have been closed for two days now
There are lots of people without power. Between Kensington and Hunter River, there are about 70 poles down. The Western end of the Island has been hit the hardest.
I will add some more pictures when I can. Maritime Electric said this afternoon, that it could be Friday before power is restored.This is the weeping willow in front of the house.And this is what the clayroad looks like.This next one shows how much ice is actually on the trees. It is scary to walk in the woods now. The temperature is coming up a bit and the ice is starting to fall of somewhat.
This is the pine tree by the house. It does look pretty like that.
Anyway, more about the storm later.

How time flies..............

2008-01-15T21:21:00.000-04:00

Just a year ago today, we were traveling in the Dominican Republic. On that Monday we had a day of work and drove to Jarabacoa, to visit with Leona. We were stuck behind this truck loaded with bags and Haitian workers.
.You wonder that they don't fall off
The next picture was taken in Jarabacoa. The things you see on the road. That would never happen here on good old PEI. The culture is soo diferent from here.

It was amazing to see how Leona has been absorbed by the people that she works with. She feels so at home with them. It was amazing. The kids just love her. All in all, it was an amazing experience that I will never forget.......

Happy New Year.........

2008-01-07T22:09:00.000-04:00

Sorry to all of you faithfull readers that it took so long to get this blog posting done. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years. It certainly was a full house here. The first time that we were together with all thirteen of us. We took a few pictures too! What a happy bunch. Let me introduce you. From left to right starting with the back row: Dianna & Jordan, Aaron & Rebecca, Pete, Amanda & Matt, Isaac & Mary. Then in the front row: Beppe holding Micaiah, Damaris, and Pake holding Caleb.

A nice picture of the siblings. It was last summer at Upper Clements, that they were all together the last time.
And, "The Guys". As the girls get older, we seem to get more guys in the picture.
All in all, we had a great time together. There was even enough snow for a bit of snow mobiling. And a lot of games were played as well.
And now it is back to work for all of us. May God Bless all of you in the coming year.

A time for travel..........

2007-12-20T22:53:00.000-04:00

It is Thursday already, wow, does time ever fly. In just a few more days, the Lord willing, the whole family will be together for the first time ever with this many people. 13 All together, that should fill the house up nicely for the holidays.
We here at home are soo excited. Pete and Rebecca are going to get us a tree tomorrow. And we are getting the house nicely decorated for Christmas.
We wish all of you that have to travel a safe journey, where ever you may go or however far you need to travel. May God go with you.

Quick update........

2007-12-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

It has been a very busy week. Alternating between being in the warehouse and paper work. And then some work in the house in between. Mom has been decorating in the house, and it starting to look really nice.
It has been snowing here some more the last few days. We actually have snowbanks on the side of the road this year. And it is still fall, at least technicaly. Since winter doesn't start until the 21'st. We have not had a winter like this for many years. This coming weekend, we are getting a Nor'easter. And then milder on Monday. The system is still forming, so no idea as to what we are getting exactly.
I guess we will know on Monday. How has your winter been so far?
Stay warm, and we'll chat later........

Snow.......

2007-12-01T20:55:00.000-04:00

It is finaly here. Just finished plowing yesterday. Timing, or what. And then today it was white outside when we got up. It snowed of and on all day. We propable got about 10 cm. And then the wind came and blew it all in the woods. Oh well, it saved some shoveling. It made for nasty driving though.
Pete and me were busy in the house today, fix and repair, for the coming guests. It will be a nice surprise for them.
I hope you all have a great weekend. God's Blessings to you....

A quick road trip.........

2007-11-24T20:50:00.000-04:00

Today we went to Nova Scotia to pick up Pete's new wheels. He bought a '91 VW Jetta GTX. His first car ever.

And here it is. We had to go all the way to the Annapolis Valley. Almost in Upper Clements. Klaas & Feije and Brian & Stanley came too.
The one thing it really needs yet though is an engine. It has a Flinstone drive in it right now. Down the road it will probably be upgraded to a 16 valve, lots of hp engine. Right Pete?I think Pete is the happiest guy in Rustico right now.
It is a good feeling to be able to make someone happy......And for the rest? Home sweet home. Oost,West, thuis best!

Carrots are done........

2007-11-10T19:22:00.000-04:00

Well, after a long battle with the weather, we are done with the carrots. The last ones staid in the ground because they had too much wireworm.
So now it is cleaning equipment, and greasing and oiling. And then on Monday we can park everything in the shed and hook unto the plows. The outside work is mostly done, so let it snow. Just a short one for now. I'm going to bring the kids in bed.
Talk to you later.......

Just for old time sake, here are a few more pictures.....

On the left we are digging carrots at the 55 acres, such nice scenery. It was a Kodak moment.. And on the right is a picture of the yard. Marten had trouble keeping up and wanted a little stockpile in the yard. Looks like he got lots.....

Great weather......

2007-10-30T23:26:00.000-03:00

We are getting lots of carrots out of the ground. The weather has been just great this fall. Today we shattered the record of most trailers loaded in one day. The previous record was twenty one tractor trailers. Today when we got to work, there were nine trailers waiting in the yard. And by the time that I quit digging at 8:30 this evening, Marten had loaded twenty six trailers. Wow, what a busy day. We dug fifty four tandem loads from Harvey's fields today. No major breakdowns. Thanks be to God for all his blessings.

Digging again.............

2007-10-28T13:28:00.000-03:00

The next three blogs contain info about carrot digging. I tried to upload video into my blog, but that didn't work. So, I uploaded into U-Tube first and then downloaded into my blog. But it uploads in a new blog every time. That is why I have three new posts. Well, four including this one. Hope you can figure it out.
Have a great weekend.....

carrot harvest

2007-10-28T00:52:00.001-03:00

windrowing carrots

carrot harvest

2007-10-28T00:49:00.001-03:00

Digging carrots at Blue Bay Farms Ltd...............

2007-10-27T21:22:00.000-03:00

I thought that I would try to upload a video of digging from my camera. So, here goes.............Sorry, tried,and didn't work. So the next bit of text goes with the above video's.
This is the carrot harvester, it can also be used to harvest potatoes. We can harvest about twenty acres of carrots in a good day. The yield is about one tractor trailer of carrots from one acre. That means a lot of carrots from 150 acres. This other machine is the windrower. As the name suggests, it digs carrots unto windrows. The harvester comes by after and picks them up. We dug a few more truckloads today. And also loaded five tractor trailer with carrots. The plan is to start full speed on Monday. Hopefully the weather will stay nice. We had beautifull digging weather today. Next week is supposed to be quite a bit colder. But then again, it is almost November. So we can expect some cooler weather. All the equipment is running good. We are getting into our respected grooves again. It took a few loads, but it is just like riding a bike. The crop looks great. We are all healthy hear and doing well. Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees now. The lawn is still very green though. Elisabeth mowed the lawn yet today. We are supposed to get some night frost on Monday and Tuesday night. That should take care of the mowing. The barn is kind of empty now. I was in it this afternoon. We were just thinking back on all the laying hens, meatchickens, piggies, lambs that were raisewd in there. And the sheep, cows for milk and meat we kept, and of course our horses. A little trip down memory lane. And now it is all empty but for the mice and raccoons. But they are no fun to play with.
I tried the videos, they work on my site but I don't know if they will work for you.
So here are some pictures.
Here Tineke uses the rubber flail topper to clean the tops of the carrots.

This is the windrower, it is operated by Klaas. It digs three rows and dumps them on top of three rows beside.
Then the digger comes by and picks up those rows and puts them in the truck.Here all three of us in one picture, hard at work.
The truck takes the carrots home, where Marten and the crew transfer them unto tractor trailers.

Anyway, that is the general idea. Hope the video works for you. I know that the pictures will work. Wishing you all a great weekend. God Bless you all.

Slow internet ahead............

2007-10-26T23:06:00.000-03:00

Hey all,
Just a few lines, pictures will come later, when our internet works better. It is kind of slow right now for some reason. Pete is scratching his head over it.
We started digging carrots today. It looks like a good crop. We had the usual little problems with starting something new. Pieces of equipment falling appart. Tractor computers on the frits. But all in all, we loaded 9 ten wheelers. And tomorrow we are getting 4 tralers to fill. That should take care of the morning. And then on Monday, when we are allowed to start hauling, we can go full tilt. Hopefully the weather will be as nice as it was today. It was nice and warm,sunny and hardly any wind. It has been a beautiful fall for harvesting. We are very blessed, both with the weather and the crop.
Have a great day today! And I hope to get you some digging pictures soon.
Randall

Sad day............

2007-10-11T00:06:00.000-03:00

Today started with the sad realisation that Sapho had not eaten her grain. So I went to look for her and found her down in the field. She had worked herself into a hole and could not get up. This was the third time that she did this. This time however she did not recover. So no more Sapho to feed in the morning or look at while driving by. She will be missed by all of us.
Randall.

Still digging....

2007-10-06T21:15:00.000-03:00

After two weeks of digging, we only had one rainy day. If the weather holds we might finish next week. This week saw very good production, 180 loads went in the warehouse in the last 6 days. After six days of constant digging, we were all glad to see Sunday coming tomorrow. Yesterday was an expensive day. Theside elevator belt on the harvester broke completely off. So the potatoes were falling on the ground. Upon further inspection, we noticed that the belt was done and had to be replaced. So,after a quick phonecall, a trip was made to Donnie Allan for a new belt. We were mobile again within an hour. Too bad I didn't bring my camera yesterday.
Another load of PEI potatoes. Yukon Gold. Above, on the right,
Klaas, windrowing
Here are three more pictures taken from the cab of the digger. The field is Exton's. You can see Rustico Harbour as well in the background on the right. The last picture gives you view trough the front window of the digger. My view.
Thanks for your visit, and hope that you will visit again, don't forget to comment.

The last day on the road..........

2007-09-22T09:22:00.000-03:00

Wow, it is almost over. Almost home again. We are staying in a hotel in Fredericton right now. Reflecting back on the trip. Here is a picture of Mike and Klarina's place.. They were nice enough to put up with us for a night. The next day we said goodbye to MaryThen she went to Washington to be with Isaac and we went to see Dianna, Jordan and Micaiah. The weather was real bad. Heavy rain and bumper to bumper traffic going trough New York. But we made it. The weather cleared up after that and staid nice for the rest of our trip.

It was wonderful to finaly hold our first grandchild. We spend a great week with them. Even went for a swim in the ocean yet
Then it was time to head farther South and West. And was it ever busy on the roads. The closer we got the more lanes there were on the highway. Sometimes as many as six lanes each way.
Here is a picture of the twin bridges were we crossed into Delaware. It was great to see Mary and Isaac again too.
Mary preparing supper for us. We were also able to visit the D.C. Zoo with her.
What a great time we had there. The elaphants were the favourite of some of us as well as amazonia. It was also the first time for the kids to be on the subway. What an exciting day. But like all good things, that too came to an end.
Then it was of to Matt and Amanda in Fredericton.This was our last stopover. After a bit more shopping this morning we left for home. We are all glad to be home again. As much fun as it was to be away. There is no place like home. This was the last picture I took.
It was taken from the top of the Confederation Bridge. It links PEI to the mainland.
So after a trip of a little over 4300 Km, that took us to our whole family, we are home again. Thanks be to God for all His Blessings.

A "quick" trip to see the kids & grandkid.........

2007-09-21T00:12:00.000-03:00

It was great to see Jordan and Dianna again. And also to meet our newest family member, Micaiah. What a feeling it was, to hold him in my hand. He sure is a gift from God. And to see how Jordan steps up and helps out however he can, is just what being a family is all about. Great job guys.

And then it was of to Isaac and Mary.
They are finaly together again as well. Isaac started medical school. He says it is a lot heavier workload then what he had at Calvin. But that is understandable. Hats of to you Isaac, I know you can do it.
Mary was quite happy to show us around. We spend one day going on the Metro to the Zoo in downtown Washington D.C. That was a lot of fun. The kids specially loved it.
The tigers were one of the favourites and so was Amazonia, with all the fish and plants native in the amazone. Some of the fish were huge.

The next day we went to IKEA. Mary had some window shopping to do. They need a few articals of furniture yet for their appartment.

I'm trying to upload some pictures yet, but the internet is kind of slow here in the hotel in Portland, Maine. I'll keep trying. Well, it took a while but the pictures are on.

Well folks, thanks for your visit and I hope that we will see you again soon.
Randall.

Some pictures.......

2007-09-13T11:45:00.000-03:00

Hi all,
A few words and pictures from New Jersey. We are having a great time here.
The baby is very beautifull. Dianna and Jordan are doing great. They are getting right into the parenting thing. You know, the short sleepless nights and the 24-7 care facility. But they are loving it. Don't you think that this is just the most precious baby you can possibly find anywhere?

We are staying on the Coastguardbase, in temporary housing. It feels very safe, with all the security.
The weather is hot/warm and sunny. Much better then the downpour we had on the drive over. And the bumper to bumper traffic going trough New York on September 11. I wonder why it was so busy. It took two hours longer the it did in January with Pete.
Here are a couple of pictures from New York. The bridge is called : The George Washington Bridge, in N.Y. Hanging on the arch was the hugest American flag ever.
In the other picture you can see Mary and Rebecca driving behind us.
But, we made it safely to Jordan and Dianna's.

It's a boy...........

2007-09-07T20:45:00.000-03:00

Well folks, it is official, Dianna and Jordan have a new baby boy. Born at 1:29 in the afternoon. Name: Micaiah Ray Spangler. He, it's a healthy, 9 lb, 6oz. baby boy. Mother and son are doing well. Father is...very, very happy and proud of his new family. We hope to see them in New Jersey next week, the Lord willing. I'll post pictures when they become available.

p.s.
Saturday September 8
Dianna had a seisure this morning. She was transferred to another hospital for diagnosis and observation. We would appreciate all your prayers for them at this point. We'll update as we find out more.
Thanks, Randall.

Our new table, chairs and hutch.........

2007-09-05T00:53:00.000-03:00

Hello all.

Glad to see that you made it to our page once again. And we have some NEWS for you.
Check out the new dinningroom set. It just came today. We really neede some chairs.
The old ones were all falling apart.

It has been a while since I last blogged. It isn't as much fun when there are only a few people reading it, and commenting.

But I hope that we are back on track now.

As you can see, I have updated my links to the other kids. Matt and Amanda have moved to Fredericton. They started a new blog. The link is on the top right.
It is called:A Small Window Into Our Lives
Everyone started blogging again. Keep up the good works guys. Love to see them.
More next time.

The Wedding.................

2007-08-05T23:09:00.001-03:00

The rehearsal went smoothly

After much anticipation, the day finaly arrived. And what a day it was. Lots of friends and family getting.
Mary and Isaac posing for pictures. The beautiful bride and the handsome groom.

The parents with the bride.

We were blessed with beautifull weather during the day. The pictures were taken behind the house in the garden.
They were taken before the ceremony. This way we would have nice clean pictures.
You should see Caleb's tox at the end of the evening.
Just like the last two Weddings, we had to have a John Deere with refreshments.

Another wedding coming up..............soon!!!!!

2007-07-25T22:52:00.000-03:00

Hi folks, it has been a while since the last update.
Here is the next one for all you guys that still check. I thought that I would update you on the upcoming wedding, between Mary and Isaac.
For those of you that don't know Isaac, I will tell you a bit about him.
Isaac lives in the United States. He went to college with Mary. One thing lead to the next. And now he is driving to PEI to get married.

They had several classes together at Calvin College. They both graduated this spring.Together they illustrated this book for Piet Buma.

Here Mary is working on the invitations. As you can see, it took lots of coffee.

As you can see, the warehouse is being majorly overhauled again. Mary and Elisabeth are doing all the painting.
A lot of talent right there!
A Tuscan scene they said.
And that is what it is going to be.

The lights are up, the stage is set. The hall is fit for a Royal couple.
Let the ceremony begin!

Soccer time..............

2007-06-30T20:58:00.000-03:00

It is that time of the year again. Soccer has started all over the place. Caleb and Damaris were excited about that for weeks already. And now that it has finaly come, boy are they having fun. Here are a few pictures to show you.

So, twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays, of we go to the soccerfields in Hunter River. Here you can see Caleb posing for a picture. Who knows, it may be worth a lot of money someday.

And here are Damaris and her friend Anna. Taking a break at halftime. After all that hard work, you need a rest for a minute.

There was lots of action in this game.

And here is Aaron, Tineke's young fellow. He plays in the same group as Caleb. One of these days they will be playing against each other.

Andrew is playing too, but I don't have any pictures of him. He plays on a different night. He's in U 12, Damaris in U 10, Aaron and Caleb play in U 8.
And that is how we play soccer on P.E.I.

Oh, and Happy Canada Day to all you Cannucks out there!

Beavers................

2007-06-17T00:04:00.000-03:00

Hi all.
We have a problem. Beavers have closed off the culvert at the Le Clair farm. Damaris and I opened it up on Thursday night. But the water was too high to get the branches that were stuck in the culvert out. So the next morning we went back again, hoping to find the water receded. But to our surprise, the beavers had fixed the hole right up again.
This is what the culvert looks like. This is a picture from last year. In the top picture you can see how the water was running right over the driveway. Friday morning I went back to open it up again. The water would not flow good anymore because the culvert was plugged up bad. So I put two lenghts of sewerpipe in the dam. You can see the pipes in the water. they are about a foot under, weighed down by rocks. The ends of the pipe are drilled full of holes, so that they can't be plugged up too easy.
The upright pipe shows were the end of the culvert is located.
Damaris is looking on, taking some pictures today, as we had a look this afternoon. The culvert is completely gone now. All mudded over. It is amazing how crafty they are.
So for now, we are at a stand off. I hope that the pipes can keep up with the flow of the brook. Otherwise we are going to loose the driveway in a heavy rain.
Thanks for joining us here, and we will keep you up to date.

My oh my, how time flies................

2007-06-03T20:06:00.000-03:00

I know it is a little on the late side. And I can't use the excuse that I had to wait for my pictures to be developed first. It is just, well we've been very busy. We had a wonderfull time in Grand Rapids with Mary and Isaac. The picture from the airplane is of Chicago for the final flight to G.R.(Grand Rapids).

Here are Mary and Isaac with the book that they Illustrated for Pieter Buma, whom we had the pleasure of meeting too yet after the graduation ceremony. And Mary by herself. That was a rare occasion. One is never far from the other.
We also had the pleasure of meeting Isaac's family. It was really fun to get to know them and spend that time with them before the upcoming wedding in August. The graduation ceremony was held at the Van Andel Arena.

Located in downtown Grand Rapids. Lots of room inside for all 900 graduates and their families. It was one of the biggest gatherings of people that I have ever seen. It was really exciting to be there.It was wonderfull to see how much things have changed from the time we brought our girl to Grand Rapids four years ago, and left her all alone. To see how God took care of her and provided her with all her needs. And so we have come to the closing of one chapter in their lives and soon the opening of another one.

The proud parents are looking over the shoulder of their children. It is great to see how God worked, building this relationship between these two fine people.

Grading potatoes at Blue Bay Farms Ltd.........

2007-05-06T20:56:00.000-03:00

Here are some pictures of the grading line. The yellow belts in the front transport the cull potatoes to the cull bin. The red machine behind them sizes the potatoes in two sizes. Then the potatoes get washed again on the yellow(last) washer.
You can see the people grading in the back. After that the spuds go up this red elevator belt.

Here you can see the culls coming together. The hollow potatoes come out of the green pipe. Then they join the rest of the culls for their last ride into the cullbin.
Here you can see the guys, Reggie and Omke Marten, boxing up selects. In the background you will find Tante Tineke and Darlene grading at the Hagan sizer. Behind Darlene and in the next picture you get a closer look at the X-Ray unit.
This silver box is what it is all about. Not very big, but very expensive. It is amazing how fast it works. And it is very acurate as well. And here, the finished product rolls into the box. We are currently doing two different sizes of selects with the Hagan sizer, plus the hollows get kicked out at the first station. Station two and three are for select and station four kicks the bigger number one potatoes back into the regular tablestock line. Hope I didn't confuse you too much. Any questions, leave me a comment, and we will get back to you soon.
Thanks.

Spring is finaly here.....

2007-04-22T21:36:00.000-03:00

It took a long time, but it is finaly here! Spring, warm weather, grass growing, flowers starting to push their way up. It was a great day.
Caleb, Damaris and I brushed Sapho today. She knows it is spring. Her hair is falling out in great heaps. She is our pet horse, and she is turning 33 years old at the end of the month. That is almost a hundred human years. The hair on her head is turning really grey. You can tell that she is getting old. She's not as fast as she used to be.
After taking Sapho's wintercoat off, or at least a part of it, we had a BBQ.
Complete with baked potatoes, steak and hot dogs. It sure was a feast. Then it was of to church again. We had a minister today from Ontario. He was here for the weekend, and preached two sermons today. If the congregation approves, then we might call him. Our regular minister is retiring at the end of July. So we need a new one. We wil see who God has in mind for us. May His will be done.

BLIZZARD...........

2007-04-08T10:33:00.000-03:00

That is right, it turned out to be a snowstorm after all. Here are a few pictures to bring you up to date.

It seems kind of unreal, we didn't have a big storm like this all winter. And then to get one at the tailend. God sure has a good sense of humor.

The kids were having a blast outside. Altough Caleb didn't last too long. When the wind hits you, filled with ice pellets, well it hurts. I don't think he liked that very much.
I think it could be a while before we can go anywhere today. And then to think that the last couple of weeks all the snow was gone. We thought spring was here. Now it looks more like January.

We are definately going to remember this day. As the Easter Sunday Storm.
Well, we will have another cup of coffee, sit back, and enjoy the storm.
God's blessings to all.

A Blizzard? In April?

2007-04-07T23:49:00.000-03:00

What is up with that? Can you believe it?
Of course it may end up not to bad, and blow over. But it is snowing right now. I guess we will see tomorrow morning how bad it really was.
We're supposed to get between 20 and 30 cm of snow. And then high winds tomorrow morning. It doesn't look too bad out yet.
Well, we will update you on that later.
So long for now, and may God Bless you.

These pictures taken at one o'clock in the morning. we still don't think it is going to amount to much. We will see tomorrow.

Spring is here............

2007-04-06T13:59:00.000-03:00

Hi to all of you again. A few pictures from PEI. They were taken April 3 'rd, this year. We put the taps in the week before. And it has been cold ever since.
So the trees are not running too fast yet. We had a few good days last week. Amanda took the daycare kids out to the woods. They helped me to put the taps in the trees. Hang the buckets, and so on. We only did a few trees. Of course the weather turned cold again right after. So nothing was running until a few days later. Then the whole group went back to collect the sap and boil it down on the stove in the kitchen. And what better way to finnish the day then pancakes, with fresh maple syrup.

The snow is almost gone now. But everythings is still brown and dead looking outside. There is not a whole lot of frost left in the ground. So,when the temperature does go up, everything should green up quick.
I hope you all are enjoying some time off, and wish you the best for the rest of the weekend.
This is a picture of the old well house that used to sit overtop of the old hand dug well by the house. It is slowly falling apart.
You can also see that the trees are still bare, and the grass is brown.