Prairie Days

Oh, what a wonderful day it was for our family yesterday!!! It was the 7th annual Prairie Days at the Dagley farm and many of our friends were gathered there. We enjoyed partaking in the simple delights of the "Good old days". It was a loooooooong day for us but, seeing as today is summer solstice, the sun stayed up most of the time see we could sandwich a full day between 2 chores and 2 100 mile trips.

Our first stop was the Oasis in Bismarck where we met Molly Geiger who had brought her 2 brothers, Moses and Josiah, to ride along with us. They wanted to be at Prairie Days by 10:00 too so as to see Jonathan Bartlett's presentation of frontier survival skills. Cora moved up front with her cake, and the boys all scrunched in the back seat of Tonner (our big crew cab pickup) along with Andrew's banjo and the puppet skit supplies. This is not the best picture, as the sun was so bright, but I believe that you can still see the smiles of the young friends.

Jonathan sharing about how to do the

clove hitch knot, and other good things to

know, in the event the need arises for us to

need such information.

I listened to Jonathan's presentation as I've never heard him share on this before and Cora had everything under control for her sauerkraut-making demonstration. This year she used my mom's kraut cutter, which I just inherited. As Jonathan finished before Cora did (she started later), I was able to tell a little of the history of sauerkraut to the group of ladies I found gathered around Cora. This was where I met Alice whom I spent quite a bit of time with throughout the day. She's in the pink on the left hand corner. I learned over lunch that she sang in the Sweet Adeline's for 11 years in Bismarck. I had had this privilage during my collage years in Brookings. I talked her into practicing with the choir (I'm getting ahead of myself) but she didn't sing with us for some unknown reason.

Here are some of us ladies, older and younger, gathered

to learn together. That's one of the biggest joys of home

schooling. Everyone learns together at their own pace!

"Old" friends walking arm in arm. The taller girl is

Amanda Dagley by the way. When did she grow into a

young woman?

From tea parties to gun safety tips, there is something

of interest for EVERYONE at Prairie Days. Here is

Jonathan perfecting what he learned at the Appleseed

Shoot, I have no doubt. By the way, he told us that their

family will host their own shoot at their farm with the

tentative dates being August 22-23. We'll try again to

send the boys, Lord willing.

Well, I have much more to say about Prairie Days but I

need to go and exercise. My back still is a pain and the

exercises seem to ease the pain better than anything else.

I will say that the puppet skit was pure joy as Amanda Dagley

and James Balyeat helped us backstage. It's absolutely

impossible not to have light hearts around those two!!!

I'll write more later about the choir and our puppet skit

and, of course, add pictures.