Friday - We started the weekend early. We found a deal on a tractor on eBay that was available in Lyons, NE. We won the tractor at an amazingly low price considering it came with a mower deck, snow plow, snowblower, and a tiller. All at least 3.5′ to 4′ wide. Also had wheel weights and chains, and a vinyl winter cab enclosure. We rented a U-haul trailer in Omaha, picked it up and delivered it directly to Two Barn Farm.

Saturday -A few errands to start the day. We returned the trailer, signed Reagan up for the Peoples Trust and Savings Bank Triathlon in Grand Junction, Then found the town of Perry. What a neat town. The old downtown had a metropolitan feel, and we found a great coffee shop, the Highland Elk. The John Deere dealer is in Perry, and we needed a new mower belt for the tractor. Finally we were able to get to work. I mowed the driveway, the area in front of the shed, everything around the corn crib, and a path to the barn. Man, that grass was tall. After blowing the grass outwards for 4-5 rows, the clippings were bogging down the mower. I’d skip a row, then make 2-3 counter-rotating laps to create a large row of clippings. Reagan and Mason did a lot of cleanup by picking up more sticks. I helped by using the truck to haul a dead tree, and two large branches over to the brush pile.

Sunday -OK, I have to admit the next part of the story sounds odd. One of those new city boy things to do. Any old farmer out there would have said “That is not what we mean by plowing a field.” I put the snowplow blade on the tractor, and used it to push the rows of clippings into a large pile. I was pushing piles of clippings as tall as the mower hood, and it was rolling over the sides of the plow like snow would. Laugh all you want, I’d do it again it worked so well. At least I wasn’t raking and hauling it all. I made a large pile near the East side of the property, then also cleaned the clippings from the path to the barn and the small area we cleared over there. I also had a large pile of hay from when we cleaned out the hay loft a few months back. I did have to loosen parts of that pile with a pitchfork, as it was already starting to compost. Before long, I was working that plow forwards and backwards with that blade and had it scraped clean and made a huge compost pile.

I had already picked a location for the pile. There was a small drop off that ran from the front of the barn to a few trees several yards away. So the pile went under the drop, and over by the trees. Two Barn Farm will have compost next year, lots of it.

While I was doing this, Reagan took some hand tools into the corn crib, and began removing some of the crib walls. The rest of the ladder chute is gone, and she removed one of the bin walls. I think the space of two combined bins looks quite large, and gives me good feelings about the size of our living room and kitchen areas. The highlight of the day, Reagan went to pry off a board, and the corner of the board over the crowbar splintered and a large piece went flying directly into Reagan’s forehead. Reagan said it was “like a 3-D movie effect.” She felt it for bleeding, which it never did, but she says she could feel the knot grow. The picture of this is a laugh.

Monday -Somehow, we managed to sleep in a bit. Chuck Offenburger was excited about the fact that we were the first people to stay the night at that farmstead in years. And our first night on the property was also a historic moment. Did I not tell you of our sleeping arrangements? We car-camped, and I mean it. The nice thing about having a huge truck - space. Mason slept on the front seat, Reagan took the back seat, and I used a few camping mats and slept in the back of the truck, under the topper. We never replaced our tent after it was destroyed on RAGBRAI last year.

So anyway, after lounging in the truck and planning on what we wanted to do this morning, or more truthfully, how little we wanted to do. The morning mist parted, and out came the Offenburger SUV. Our hero Chuck came jumping out with two cups of coffee and invited us into their lunch plans, which we accepted. This also meant we had to stick around and do a bit more work to pass the time.

We do subscribe to the idea that healthy soil can be built by not tilling. In Colorado, the ground always got too hard to not till, and we did not have any present way to control the weeds on a swatch of farm that had previously farmed. We hooked up the tiller to the tractor and Reagan got to work chopping the weeds into the dirt. I spent some time testing the generator by using the Sawzall to trim down those large branches a bit. I also cleaned up the shed some, then finished up the tilling.

Our old tiller, which is the style most people have. Two wheels, a few tines, and a small motor on top. It would shake the life out of you after 30 minutes. The tractor mounted one, you had to look back for flying dirt to make sure it was working. It made for slow forward movement, but took no effort. I feel so spoiled now.
We had a great cookout at the Offenburgers along with a few other friends, then we headed back to Omaha. We have not done much of anything today. Mason and Tieta did get a lot of hair removed. Mason’s last day of school is tomorrow.

Don’t forget the Gallery, with more pictures of the weekend.

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It was about time to head out to the farm again. We had a truckload of goodies to bring out, a new generator to test, and I knew the grass there was growing. Mason and I got up early Saturday and headed out to find knee high grass covering everything, including most of the driveway. I got out the power mower, but after the first lap of the driveway, it wasn’t doing good under load. After fresh fuel, and a carb cleaning, it wasn’t doing much better. I realized the only thing I didn’t try was a fresh spark plug. I got out the weed eater instead. That took care of the grass no problem. However, in just a minute, it was out of string and I didn’t have any more on hand.
Just then, I noticed a pack of cyclists at the trailhead. “Wow” I thought, ” Nice to see so many people out riding. They must be regrouping.” That’s when they started riding down our road, and I wondered where they were off to. Then I could tell they were turning into my driveway. Chuck or Carla must be behind this.
Chuck was guiding a college class, “Bike Writing”, where they roam Iowa by bike and write about it. I’m two classes from being done school myself, but I want to take this class now. Chuck and I gave a quick overview of how we found the farm, and what some of our plans were. It really was fun to share our experience, especially as a live tour of the farm. After they left, we headed into town to get a new spark plug and some trimmer line from the Ace hardware in Jefferson. For fast food, the only things around are a Dairy Queen, and a Subway on the north edge of Jefferson. We also got some cheap subs for a snack.

Finally, I got the driveway cleared out, and I trimmed a perimeter around each of the buidlings. Wow, they look good when cleaned up. Then I tried to get Mason to fly a kite to keep him busy for a while. We had about as much luck as Charlie Brown. We just could not keep the cheap little kite we had stable. Next we tried the metal detector. There is a patch, where we thought the original house used to stand, that is a perfect square of darker grass. We could hardly swing the metal detector around. Somehow I got to do all the digging, and quickly produced a handfull of nails and junk.
We finished out the day picking up as many branches as we could and making a single pile. Checking out the well seemed to be to daunting of a task, I’ll call someone else instead. And I never even got the generator out. Mainly due to the fact I didn’t have the allen wrench to change blades on a sawzall. Luckily, I had an amazing handsaw that I used to break up a few of the larger branches with.
Oh, we saw the rat that was making a home in the machine shed. Mason also said he saw a mouse with babies clinging to it, running around in the barn. Mason began a rat hunt, using a makeshift spear and a small hoe, to kill any rats in the machine shed. He says he threw his spear really close to the tail of a rat once, but I didn’t see it happen.

We both took quite a few pictures, and I posted them into a new album on the gallery page.

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Well, it started like this. The big tax return check came, I saw the eye Dr., scheduled LASIK, then the next day the offer was on the Colorado house. So, I just took a week to go back to Colorado to get it done, along with my follow-up appointments. So far, things are excellent. No cloudy vision, no nighttime driving effects, and I went from 20/1200+ to about 20/15. Woo-hooo. Took a few days to settle in, that I didn’t need to find glasses or do the contact thing every morning. This is so cool

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