Since leaving Texas at age 13 and California at age 15, I have had to endure Colorado Halloweens. Usually it involves an ice storm, frigid wind, snow, or even a BLIZZARD. We always had to plan our costumes around what snow jacket we could wear under it.

The weather here on “Beggar’s Night” (more on the name in a bit. . .), however, is BEAUTIFUL. Leaves falling, a slight breeze, and more than warm enough for the cute little princesses in their formal attire.

We used to be the house that always gave out the full size candy bars. However, when we stopped eating candy ourselves, we stopped giving it out. While I do have my share of candy now, we still don’t give it out. But I always swore I wouldn’t stoop to giving out pencils or toothbrushes. So, we try to find a fun toy every year. We have given out fang whistles, dancing skeleton straws, etc. We are giving out Halloween paddle balls this year.

So, what’s with the “Beggar’s Night” name?? I have never heard of it before. I seems to be a Midwest name for “trick or treating.”

Why is it on Tuesday, October 30th?? Since so many people attend church activities on Wednesday night AND the high school happens to have an away football playoff game, the city council in Jefferson elected to change it. This is definitely a new one for me. We have had a pretty good turn out of “beggars,” so I guess the word got around.

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See anything missing in that picture? Do you see that old ugly camper we had? Nope! It’s gone. You can no longer see it from the road!
Using the power of Craigslist, it has found a better home. In fact, in just one weekend the new owner seems to have fixed up a bunch of things already. I bet we would have too, but we treated it as a tent. Once we had the house in town, it became a storage locker.
There was not much interest, so I even considered trades such as roofing or concrete work, a chipper/shredder, huge ladders, maybe even a motorcycle or a drum set.

Can you guess what our only offer was? Yep, the drum set. Reagan was fine with this one, as long as the value was there. This was a great 5 piece early to mid 1970’s Gretsch maple set. Wow, they don’t make them like they used to. This stuff is heavy! I have some leftover hardware out in Omaha, but just tapping on these, they sound great. I even heard Reagan tell her mom that they look ’sweet’

The plans…. I have not played seriously since middle school. In high school, my mom didn’t want any instruments without volume knobs in the house. That led to 10 years of guitar. For now they are here in the basement until I find my random bits and pieces. Then I’ll claim another corner of the ‘man-cave’ and get these setup. The future….I can’t wait for a drum set and a guitar amp to find their way into the hay loft of the barn. Can you imagine the acoustics up there? That won’t happen until there is a solid roof and electricity, I better get back to work.

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We have 9 pumpkins to harvest this week. One will be for cooking, another for Halloween, and a few will be at the Coopermarket this Saturday in Cooper.

I just took a few pictures and added them to the October Gallery. There are some wonderful shots of the TBF landscape, the neighboring barn, and a combine that was harvesting all the corn nearby.
I also sorted the the photo albums, adding the ‘All 2007 Pictures’ top level album, just to keep the sprawl down.

It sure was getting chilly this week. Good time for a TBF long sleeve shirt, or a hoodie. Don’t forget the logo store

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Oh man, an update to cover the whole last month?! It has been a month since the last real update on the barns.

If you have followed along with us so far, you probably remember that we bought a house in town, so that we could be near the farm, and start using it. We did back away from the whole weekend marathon projects. Well, maybe not. It’s just 2 half-marathons, with lunch now. We have been busy. School came into full swing. Mason has joined Cub Scouts and Reagan is the den leader. I even signed on as an assistant den leader and am also serving on the pack committee. All these little things just eat up time and energy.
But, there is hope. For a while, I was visiting the farm nearly every night after work. I was able to do many little things before the Sun went down. We have also spent our weekends down there again. What are the big steps so far:

The crib, well, we have not done much work over there lately. We really need some concrete work done. However, we can not get anyone one in the business to return our calls. We really have wasted a month even trying to get something setup. We are ready to pour some of the little things ourselves, such as plugging the end of the trenches on each side of the crib. We really need someone to dig, form, and pour what will become the end walls.

Instead, we wanted to weatherize the barn. I have a garage full of all the original window frames in the barn. Problem is, most of them are missing glass. This should be simple to fix, and then the bottom floor should be rather dry this winter. What a great find. Another thing I started doing was adding a screw in between each set of siding nails. Yep, every 4″ around the barn. Over the years, the short nails had pulled out slightly, sometimes up to a 1/2″. The South wall really pulled itself back onto the framework. It seems much better, and one buckled board is right in line again. The sides tightened up, just a little. The North wall was a can of worms.

Where to start. I started trying to add the screws, I started noticing large sections where the screws would not grab onto anything. This wall also had several large holes, and a few missing boards. The old wiring caused a large area of rot, and where the wires went through the wall had more large holes. Then it dawned on me. Let’s reside the north wall, and use whatever we scavenge to repair any other areas. After some research, and a lack of local options, I settled on simple 4×8′ sheets of siding. It did have grooves every 8″, which was just a little wider than the existing boards. Close match and large sheets also meant fewer seems. It was a barn after all, and not our house, so the need for something fancy or high-tech didn’t come into play.

Removing the old siding started a new saying. For each board you pull, another project is discovered. Behind an old milk cooler, maybe pasteurizer, we don’t know what this machine is, was some missing wood, and the sill plate was rotted out. The middle wall supports were also rotted away. You’ll see a progression in the gallery. Above the main door, well that was about missing. The other big surprise was the main front joist was missing a large section due to rot.

Replacing the main joist was first on the list. I got a new 12 foot-2×10, and placed it behind the existing one. You might notice, I didn’t use the word simply. The end of the original joist and notched its way over the main beam. There was not 10″ of room to work with. I got the jacks out from the sill project on the crib. A little nudge, and hardly any creaking, I got the original joist back up the 1/2″ it had settled. With a large number of hits from a sledgehammer, the new 2×10 joist was butted up behind the original one. Once secured, we used a circular saw to remove the bad sections of the original board and replaced it with new wood. Another new joist was added to reinforce the other half of the wall.

The area behind the milk machine was bad, but we had experience in sill replacement. A half dozen 2×6’s added some support, and the jacks went to work again. This was an easy piece to replace. I also tore out the rest of the wall and bracing. This large hole let us drag what was left of that milk machine that looks like a chest freezer. Check the gallery for pictures of all of this. The wall was rebuilt using 2×6 studs. I also sandwiched the original post and beam, so that it should never slip. Half of the siding is up, then some primer and white paint will make the ground floor look like new. Then we need to move up.

Next, I want to frame out the wall on the 2nd floor. I’ll add a 3rd joist on the front wall to give me a solid and centered spot to lag the 2nd floor wall to the joists, through the floor. Right now, there are a few pieces of the post and beam construction that had pulled apart. I really don’t know how we still had a barn wall. It was almost in thirds lengthwise, and somehow the main support posts were floating just off the floor. I have added several temporary braces, a few corner brackets, and a bunch of screws to hold it together. The wall seems rather solid now, and does not rattle in the wind anymore. I envision the next phase to loose the floor level door, and the upper window above it. Instead, I will add a row of windows that we salvaged from the house.

We also planted 8 trees recently, oak and maples, cleaned out the hayloft, and been cleaning up the farm. I also had fun digging into the mystery mound of dirt near the rock/brick rubble pile. It is full of crumpled bricks, charcoal, and nails. The real remnants of the original farm house. We’ll have to sift through that sometime. I promise to make more updates along with our work, instead of these large ones. Check the gallery for September pictures!

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