We are staying with some relatives of Joel and Cheryl Cleveland from our home church. They live on a farm up here in Ninilchik Ak. It is complete with Horses, Chickens, a greenhouse for fruits, and a garden for veggies. There is also a good 16 acres of hay that they farm for the horses.

Yesterday we got to help collect eggs from the chickens, as well feed the horses. Today, I rode a horse for the first time ever, and it was bareback. I will be honest I was really scared, but it was an old horse, and if the 9 year old girl showing me how to ride could do it, then so could I. After the horse, I asked if I could mow their lawn for them. They have a riding mower from the 70s and so I was pretty excited to take that thing for a spin. I mowed three lawns and it took me about an hour. It is very relaxing to mow lawns on a riding mower, not so much on a push mower though.

And remember those 16 acres of hay, well today just happened to be the day that they decided to start bailing them up, and putting it all in the barn. So of course we got to help with that too. That is not easy work, it is basically lifting this big bails of hay onto a moving truck and trailer, and then stacking them a good 10 – 12 feet high in the barn. We did that for about 4 hours. It was fun to show the tough Alaskans that the city boys could pull their weight. I think we will be bailing more tomorrow, so we will see how well we will do on day 2, when the soreness starts to set in.

After all the bailing of hey was done, we headed inside for a huge delicious dinner, there were beef ribs, salmon, fresh salad, fresh potatoes, a spinach gravy, brocolli, and bread pudding. We ate well after all that work. Funny thing is that some people do that kind of work all day back to back, makes me feel like a pansy. I always knew it was hard, but now I have a whole new respect for farmers. I think we will sleep well tonight.

This is the cabin we have been staying, there is no bathroom, just an outhouse out back.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Pre Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.