friday's finale...

I've had visions of peppernuts dancing through my head this week...

...and it is not even the night before Christmas.

  

We hosted an Old Fashioned Christmas Cookie baking class at Lepp Farm Market on Wednesday...

and my portion of the evening was the peppernut demonstration.

It was a fun evening...

and a sold-out class...

with all proceeds going to Matthew's House.

Earlier this week...

we had a cookie-packaging party at Bev's.

The old-fashioned cookie baskets were gifts.

That's all I'm saying. :)

Those who come to the cooking classes at Lepp's...

always get to sample the fare.

Usually it is a main course item.

We decided some appies and hot apple cider might pair up nicely with Christmas sweets.

And they did!

If you are interested in making up a cheese tree platter for the holiday season...

you can find instructions on the MGCC blog today.

Also this week...

we were invited to our friends for dinner one night.

Before we sat down to eat...

they took us for a tour of their barn.

Who knew a barn could look this special?

 Esther fixed up the hayloft and hosted a special anniversary dinner up there last weekend.

How fun!

You can read all about over here.

I was privately glad that she served us our meal in the warmth of her home...

since I've had a little trouble keeping warm this week.

We are now in the deep freeze along with most of the continent.

Winter has arrived!

Have a wonderful weekend...

more of kansas...

Yes...Kansas is flat.

But...surprise, surprise...

we enjoyed the state and found it most interesting.

We followed the old Santa Fe Trail across the state...

and  passed by many grain elevators and other outbuildings that had out-lived their usefulness.

 Did I mention that it was windy in Kansas?

They are harnessing the wind!

One of our favorite stops was Dodge City...

...where they are making history again at the Boot Hill Museum.

Dodge City is one of the most notorious places on the Wild West frontier...

once the capital of the buffalo-hunting and cattle-driving Wild West.  

In the first decade after the railroad arrived (1872)...

100 million buffalo hides and seven million head of cattle were shipped out from here.

It had a reputation back then...

hence the nickname "Hell on the Plains".

Who knew that Wyatt Earp was once a resident of Dodge City...

even a deputy city marshall there.

It was here that he cemented a friendship with Doc Holliday.

 

It looked like armed cowboys still saunter the streets of Dodge City.

It turned out they were the tour guides...

good will ambassadors.

I think John Deere put up their red brick building about the time the cattle drives ended.

Though the cattle drives are a thing of the past...

life in Dodge City still revolves around cattle.

Meat packing is the primary industry...

livestock raising is the major activity.

The cost of living in Dodge City, Kansas is relatively low...

with the average home price being $83,300.

(One cannot even buy a building lot for that price over here.)

We left cattle country...

...driving southwest along the yellow brick road to Liberal.

Guess who lived lives here?

Dorothy...

from the Wizard of Oz...

apparently.

 She was just arriving for work at the museum...

and stopped to pose for us.

The red shoes were a dead give-away!

We passed the Oklahoma state line shortly after visiting Liberal...

and said with Dorothy,

"I think we're not in Kansas anymore."

Next stop...

Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Now that was an interesting city to spend some time in!

kansas...

I like Kansas--

that is, natural Kansas--

better than I had expected to...

~Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey (1859)

We liked Kansas more than we expected to as well!
We also spent more time there than we had planned on..
since we had some RV issues that needed looking after while we were there.

Canada's geese were migrating south...

and we crossed paths in Kansas.

We passed by man-made mountains of wheat throughout the state...

signs that they had a bountiful harvest there this year.

Some were covered in plastic...

other piles of  Turkey Red Wheat were open to the elements.

I had no idea that wheat was red!

We learned a lot at the Mennonite Heritage Museum in Goessel, Kansas...

15 miles southwest of Hillsboro.

Surrounded by flat, black earth this part of the state is among the world's greatest producers of wheat.

The area was first settled by Mennonite families in 1874...

brought out by the Santa Fe Railroad.

These settlers brought Turkey Red wheat with them from the Ukraine...

and it proved well-suited to the harsh Kansas winters. 

Kansas is one of the world\'s top wheat-producing regions today largely due to the legacy of  Turkey Red winter wheat.

In the agricultural museum...

called the Turkey Red Wheat Palace...

we learned all about the progression of wheat farming.

The Wheat Straw Liberty Bell has its permanent home here.

The bell was commissioned by the Smithsonian Institute for display in Washington, DC in 1976...

for the US Bicentennial.

It s an exact replica of the Liberty Bell made from turkey red wheat straw by local Mennonites.

Quite an amazing work of art!

 

Hubby quite enjoyed checking out all the old vehicles and equipment.

My dad would have been in his glory there.

We'd still be in that building listening to stories, I'm sure!

We toured an old farmhouse on site...

...the Friesen house.

 

I noticed that the Friesens had Zwiebach (double-decker buns) on their table...

a trademark at my grandmother's house in days gone by.

Mrs. Friesen seemed to like hats as well...

also reminiscent of my grandmother!

And they had a great porch.

We visited the local bank, the old church...

...and the one-room rural school.

There was a great merry-go-round from by-gone years...

and light fixtures that I could find a place for quite nicely!

Did I mention that we were the only guests at the museum on the day we visited?

The store and office is housed in 'The Immigrant House'...

an exact replica of those built by the Santa Fe Railroad to provide temporary shelter and housing for the immigrants.

The store features a variety of  local history books, Kansas gift items...

and several cookbooks.

What a surprise it was to see Mennonite Girls Can Cook cookbooks on their shelves...

both the first cookbook and the Celebrations one.

The nice lady at the counter had me sign all the cookbooks that they had in stock.

Who knew I would be doing a book signing in Kansas?

She also was very helpful in finding us an RV dealer who could repair our motor home while in the area.

And that is why we spent several nights in the wheat belt of Kansas!

By the way...

I checked out the weather in Kansas...

thinking they would be in the grips of winter by now...

only to find that it was 18°C (66°F) there yesterday.

We could still be pedaling our bikes down the main highway near Hutchinson, Kansas...
like we did one month ago while our motor home was in the shop* (see postscript).
(Should I mention that the highway was closed due to construction...
so we had the road to ourselves? )

Over here...

we are in a deep freeze today!

We followed the Santa Fe Trail west through the state...

making a pit-stop in Kinsley.

Kinsley calls itself Midway, USA.

From this spot...

we were 1561 miles from New York...

and 1561 miles from San Francisco.

We discovered that many roads in the old towns of Kansas are made of brick.

(Not all yellow, though!)

This post is long enough...and there is still plenty to see in Kansas...

so let me take you back there on another day.

I'll just mention that we munched on peppernuts...

purchased at the museum store in Goessel as we made the 500 mile trek across the state of Kansas.

I'm demo'ing peppernuts at the Christmas Cookie Baking at Lepp's tonight.

We're still munching.

PS We had just entered Kansas when a trucker pulled up beside us and motioned to the roof of the motor home.  We discovered that the seal had let go on the rubber membrane and the Kansas wind was raising our roof!  One day later it was re-glued, set and we were back on the road. 

 
Stay warm!

bc dairy industry conference 2013...

We were at the Vancouver Convention Centre for several days...
taking part in the annual dairy conference along with 450 producers, processors, policy makers...

and others who have a stake in the industry.

 It's not too often that I see the sunrise over Canada Place...

...or view the quiet harbour early in the morning.

We met on the third floor of the convention center..

and decided we would do the stairs rather than 'be carried'!

Breakfast was much better than that which we are accustomed to back home.
But there was a 'taste of home' on the table.
 The conference handbooks had a familiar face on the front cover...
a photo taken in the barn that we thought we had left behind for a few days!

The theme this year was 'finding your voice'...

and one workshop stressed what an important part social media plays in the industry.

So I'm 'milking every moment'! :)

 And I'm inviting you to 'like' the 

100% Canadian Milk page on facebook ...

a celebration of Canadian dairy products including recipes.

For those who watch CBC News...

you will know news anchor Ian Hanomansing.

(official file photo)

He was one of the keynote speakers...

and so easy to listen to!

The Milkmobile was parked outside the convention center...

reminiscent of the milk truck of yesteryear.

'Not everything we did when we were kids made sense...

but drinking milk did!'

Milk Every Moment.

I'm in favour.

It was a good conference...

and a good place to meet up with neighbours we rarely see.

Next post...

I'll take you back on the road.

Kansas highlights and Sante Fe, New Mexico coming up!

'tis the season...

It's time to 'deck the halls'.

We started outside...

and had the perfect day to hang lights earlier this week.

(Actually...we have had more than our fair share of 'perfect days' this November!)

It felt almost balmy.

He does the peaks.

I do the eaves.

Why does it seem we just barely take the lights down...

and it is time to hang them up again?

The years just fly by!

Once the lights were up...

Ranen and Micah came to bake peppernuts

...and packed up their 'take-home' bags.

I haven't found a grand yet that doesn't love those spicy little morsels!

 'Tis also the season for spinning of tires on lawns...
so it seems.
That is a little decorating that we never ordered!

It seems someone finds pleasure in making tracks over front lawns.
And when they were done playing on our front lawn...

they took to the field and did a little more damage.
There is a little consolation in knowing we were not the only ones targeted.

I looked at hubby and said...

'Do you still have your spike rods?'

And we had a good laugh.

A very long time ago...

we had the same thing happen on our front lawn.

Two weekends in a row.

Hubby decided to put an end to it...

and laid down three spike rods that he painted green.

The unsuspecting driver would not get away next time!

It was also November.
We were actually looking forward to have the offending vehicle make another visit!
It/he/she never returned...

though we were ready.

By spring we had long forgotten about the green spike rods...

and our daughter decided she would like to

do the first lawn-mowing job of the year.

She was unaware of the spike rods...

and we had long forgotten about them ourselves.

The John Deere lawn mower never made one round before it found those spikes.

We discovered that the spike rods worked well!

We got caught in our own web.

So now we just smile...

and turn the other cheek.

'Tis the season!