Hibernate!  Not really, but you sure hole up a little bit.  I don’t know how it started, but when the temp starts dropping I usually start baking bread.  Something about a warm over just makes the day better.  We also had experimented with several pies.  Many were good, but there were a few failures.  We gave one of our favorites to a friend of ours, who wrote such a rave review online that we could have walked away with several orders.  However, once this coffee shop idea comes through, pie might be a good side dish now and then.  Hmmmm.

I’ve also made a few more things from scratch lately.  I created a week-long bake off on the best homemade mac and cheese recipe.  Once in a while, I like fish tacos.  These need a little cabbage.  The down fall is that you usually end up buying a whole head and using 6 leaves from it and let it begin to compost in the fridge.  This time, I helped it.  I shreaded the whole thing and used the leftovers to create a homemade batch of sauerkraut.  A trip to the deli caused a rash of Rubens to appear around here.

The most interesting thing in the kitchen was a chicken.  I bought one of those pre-roasted birds from the deli and it served as dinner.  After stripping it of all leftover meat, the next day the bones found themselves simmering in a stock pot all day.  At dinner time, it quickly turned into the most amazing chicken soup I’ve ever had.  Finally, the leftover chicken meat turned into a batch of chicken enchiladas for our 3rd great meal from a single chicken.
Winter is getting a little old around here.  The snow is far deeper then I’ve seen in Iowa and the old-timers keep mentioning they haven’t seen storms or a winter like this for years.  Having the JD tractor in the garage with the snowblower on it makes for easy snow cleanup.  We are lucky we have this, as the building downtown we own has sidewalks that drift like you wouldn’t believe.  I’ve seen storms that leave as little as 2″ in our yard here.  A few blocks away, the sidewalk is waist deep.  I’ve given up any dignity and have driven the tractor downtown several times now this year.  At least I don’t drive it to the gas station to fill up like many do in the summer, and I’ve seen 3 others out there this winter too.

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A few things around here got a little slack during the first half of the winter.  Finally, all these little projects are getting out of the way.  In celebration of the photo gallery getting fixed, I noticed that we never posted our last few pictures of progress from the fall.  Click HERE to see them.

For no real reason, I attacked the side of the corn crib with a circular saw, and hung up a pair of storm windows I had found in the barn.  I guess they are a little more solid then the slat wall, but having a view is real nice.  I used another window to cover the hole on the east side that had a piece of metal covering it.  The top windows were plugged with plywood to keep snow out this winter.  I’ve visited a few times, and things are staying nice and dry.

We did frame out the 3 door openings we wanted in the greenhouse.  While I was at it, I also planned and cut the framing for the big bank of windows on the west end of the 2nd floor.  Come spring, all these will be installed and we can look out at the bike path.  My last project was to figure out the stairs.  I got the first stringer cut, and 3 others traced.  The first one got hung so that we would know the height that the landing would be at.  Most people would have this planned out on paper first, but we changed the pitch of the stairs slightly after seeing the actual hole, and the center concrete floor did come out higher then we originally plan on paper.  We did end up saving a few steps.  The nice part is the fact that our staircase will be 4 feet wide.

Winter happenings….besides blizzards and ice storms?

-Mason and I did good at the Pinewood derby.  The cars were fast, but not quite fast enough.  Mason did take home the ‘Best Themed Car’ award.

-Bought a restaurant grade stainless steel set of pots and pans.  Oh, they are nice to cook with.  More of our home kitchen keeps upgrading.  I’m never buying consumer grade stuff again.
-My resume just got a little nicer looking.  I started working for StorageTek about 6.5 years ago.  They got bought by Sun Microsystems. This week it became official, that I now work for Oracle due to the last purchase.  I did get paid my Microsoft for a small project once. If I can add Apple and Google I think I would score some sort of Bingo or Yahtzee for listing all the biggest and best tech names out there.

-Greene Bean Coffee is still growing great.  Next is an upgrade to the license for ‘food plant’.  That will allow us to wholesale and let people re-sell the coffee for us.  I think I’ll start construction on that tomorrow.

-Reagan is taking Master Gardener classes.  Mason has marked everything he wants in the seed catalog for us to grow next year.

-RAGBRAI towns were just announced.  Short and flat.  442 miles, 14,500+ feet of climb.

-Finally saw Avatar 3D today.  Most amazing!

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Wow what?

First, the counter…..9966.  I bet by the time people tune in for this update, it might roll over.  Thanks for reading!
Picture gallery has been fixed.
Iowa Winter:  Snow, Blizzard, Blizzard, COLD, Blizzard, ICE, Warm, Blizzard.  Spring, please come.

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Mason and I found a new activity.  Drifting.  No, not the dumb, car-sliding around corners kind.  Snow drifts, we got some big ones.

In a recent house project, I realized I had just the part we needed.  However, it was at the farm.  It was a calm Sunday afternoon, with a couple hours of sun left.  Let’s go trek to the farm.  Mason, who had been out sledding for days was told to come along, and to bring his sled.

The ground out here was either nearly bare, or 5-8′ under snow.  I didn’t even need snowshoes to reach the crib from the road.  All hopes of getting into the shed were squashed by a huge drift.  The crib door was a little icy, but a full tour inside showed that it was holding up rather well.  There was a surprising amount of snow in the corner of the greenhouse.  It must have blown in during the blizzards.

Mason was outside and sledding down every snow drift he could find.  From little 1′ ones, to the big 5′ one in front of the shed.  He got some good distance on ones behind the shed and another one next to it.  I finally joined him outside for a walk around the property.  There was a large 5′ deep drift behind our small hill, and a monster 8-10′ deep and very long drift between the barn and trees.  It was over out burn pit and the remaining barn roof.  Mason played out here for a while.  To my amazement,  I was able to walk on top of almost everything, except the deep section behind the hill.  

We found some really neat waves and textures in the snow out there, including a drift that formed around the barn without touching it.  It made a good 4′ tall wall.

The good news, is that I found the part I needed and it worked perfectly.  I also gathered a few tools and supplies that were left behind that would be useful for another project.

Thankfully, we have gotten a break from the constant cold and snow.  It broke 20 degrees today, with a week ahead with the forecast hovering around 30.  What a heat wave.

If you haven’t been around Greene Bean Coffee in a while, I’ve been busy getting a few new coffees on the menu.

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If you have seen the news, the entire Mid-West is in another large cold front.  Apparently, this one is big enough to make frozen iguanas fall out of trees in Florida.  Around here, we don’t have the risk of falling lizards, but we’ve been seeing temperatures between -10 and -20, plus large winds.  Today the high was 1.

No new farm news of course.  With all this new snow, I doubt I could even find it at this point.  The wind here has been crazy.  Just in town, the drifts overnight fill any shoveling gains.

Greene Bean Coffee is starting the year strong, we added several new Coffees from Africa and South America.  Yumm.

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