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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Whew.  What a busy month.

Corn Crib - each of the ends has about 12′ of siding done.  This has gotten rid off all the slats boards on the ends to seal it up.  We have the first 2′ on the greenhouse side also sealed up.  I plan on having 2 - 6′x12′ windows and a door on that wall, so there is a little bit of trim to do.  We’ve cleared out the bottom of the cross braces and started on the interior wall as well.

We replaced the end floor joist, and have replaced all of the cross braces from the bin walls with floor joists so that we can cover the 2nd floor.  There is currently a hole where the stairwell will be.

The rest of the siding will come later.  At least the existing siding is solid tongue and groove boards.  For the next 6-7′ past the new siding, I have pounded in the existing nails and added a few more in order to tighten everything up.  The plan is to use this original wood as the sheathing.  We won’t be pulling off the slats and replacing like we have done everywhere else.  I have a stack of windows to add to the 2nd floor.  Once those are in, the next wave of siding should go real quick.

I spent last Saturday afternoon crawling around the roof of the shed.  I dug out an unused square of original cedar shingles from the barn wreckage, and found about another squares worth in a back corner of the shed.  I used these to repair all the holes in the shed roof.  After I was done, I could only see 3 specks of light from inside.  This was better then the patches of sky, birds, and trees that were visible before.  I thought I’d have to go buy some metal roofing, but this stash of shingles should keep it dry for another year.
Pulled a bunch of food from the gardens.  We didn’t grow too much, and have seemed to eat most everything.  No major canning operations this year.   Greene Bean Coffee is flying off the shelves.  If you hadn’t had some, you should.
Go look in the gallery.  I’ve added pictures of progress in Aug and Sept, some sports shots, and pictures from the Iowa State Fair.

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After a summer pack full of events, an extra property to attend to, and some other personal happening, the farm was falling behind.

Granted, there was some produce continuing to grow, And lots of grass too.  I got down there last Saturday and did mowing, weeding, burning, you name it.  Then Sunday was full of hard construction on the crib again.  I got some 2nd floor joist prep done, and got the first 2 up in place.  Grampy came with me, and he removed the last bit of slat wall and got plywood up.  We finished the day by opening up and making plans to replace a badly rotten joist on the East end of the crib.  We also got the last piece of door trim hung up.

I went back on Monday night and added more joists, and started removing the cross braces these were replacing.  Tuesday was muggy and I had spent most of the daylight finishing up the Farmer’s market and eating dinner.  I might get back there tonight, if it stops raining.

Pics are shown HERE

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Well 75% of a weekend of work.

Saturday was a quick effort to finish reinforcing the back bit of roof at the downtown building.  There was a cracked joist, but that pushed back up rather easy, and we sandwiched it with new wood.  After that we were adding reinforcements and strengthening anything that we could.  Even a simple pair of 1×4’s across the top of the old, lower ceiling kept it from flexing.  That made for good catwalk access as well.

Sunday we finished nearly finished a small wall that we were adding in, but came up a few boards short.  No biggie, it’s built and we can add the missing ones later.  After that I took Mason down to the farm.
I mowed the edges, then got Mason to take his first lap on the tractor.  He did a real good job following the trail I left out.  As soon as I saw that he could handle it, I left his side and went to grab something out of the truck.  He finished his lap, then turned it off.  I don’t think he was too comfortable yet.  There were too small section of Corn Crib that need siding.  I knocked out the 4 slat boards, and headed up a ladder to remove any rouge nails.  That’s when I found out that I must have been shaking a wasp’s nest.  5-6 of them started swarming me, and I got hit on the left ear.  As I was swatting that one away, I saw another fly in front of me and glance off my swinging forearm.  And he hit me!  They must really do attack in the cartoon-ish curled up-butt first-dive bomb attack.  I never got off a ladder faster.
I’ve never really been certain if I was allergic to bee stings or not, but wanted to play it safe.  I quickly put everything away, and got in the truck.  To be safe, I stopped at the Offenburgers house.  There is nothing better than a good country neighbor.  I bummed a pair of Benedryll to counteract the stings, and Carla made a baking soda paste to put on it.  We talked for a few minutes and I headed out with several homemade jars of pickled beans and relish.  I owe a sample of our relish recipe in return.  Good friends and neighbors like this are awesome.

After I got home, and recounted the harrowing story to a laughing Reagan, the Benedryll really started to hit me.  Really, if you take two of those, you are out.  After starting to doze in a chair, Reagan shoo’ed me to bed around 3…3:30..4?  I don’t even remember.  I remember waking up a bit and wanting to roll over, but couldn’t even muster the will to do that!  Finally around 7:30, and by thinking about having to go to the bathroom for at least the last 30 minutes, I finally got that far.  I also managed to eat something too.  Then start going unconscious in the chair again.  Finally I was able to get up and productive in about another 30 minutes.

I did get back to the farm on Monday morning, just to make sure nothing was left out.  I kept wondering where was that hammer I was carrying at the time.  It only seemed to rain in town, so I did get to finish mowing most of the farm before having to head back to work.

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Whew.  We had a mad rush of happenings there for a bit.

RAGBRAI took up the focus of most of last week.  This year started in Council Bluffs, so we stayed at the in-laws house across the river in Omaha.  Nothing like a comfy bed.  Steve, Blake, and a pair of Blake’s co-workers were dropped off a mile from the start of the route, and Reagan and I found our first camping spot in Red Oak.  It was next to the school, so there were showers and toilets.  The Expo was right next to us, and the food vendors were at the end of the block.  Another block away was a Hy-vee grocery, a hardware store, McDonalds.  Everything you need.  We ate well.
The Element was parked near the edge of a parking lot, and we had a line of nice shade trees down the edge.  There was more than enough room for camping between them, and the shade was excellent.  Reagan and I used the Element for our tent, as the seats fold down flat.  The next day Steve drove and I joined the crew on a 74 mile ride to Greenfield.  Pastafari was so much tastier than I remember.
They again found a great camping spot in the shade between the high school and middle school.  It started drizzling a bit in the afternoon, so it was nap time, followed by a great lasagna dinner at the high school.

Small towns do RAGBRAI better than large ones.  Indianola was a nice town, but they seemed to de-centralize everything.  Campground parking was here, and the camping was over there in sporting fields.  No car access, and fences kept people from parking along the streets.  We tried the bigger campgrounds, and found full lots, no shade, and nothing at these sites.  The info center and expo were 6 blocks from downtown where the food was.  The square was also half beverage garden, and had many bars around it.  This was also a college town.  Now I understood why each block had 6 porti-potties on it.  This was going to be the party town.  Dismayed at our camping spot fail and the drizzle, we made other plans…..

The LaQuinta hotel in Des Moines!  We planned to hop up to Des Moines in the morning anyhow, so why not go early.  Hot showers, a real toilet, beds, and waffles for breakfast.  Jan also came out a day early from Omaha and spent the night with us.

The cool part is that Blake and I shot north up the road from the LaQuinta at University and I-80, found a trail connector from a parking lot, cut through a neighborhood and got on the Clive Greenbelt trail.  A mile or so later, we were on the Raccoon River Valley Trail and headed home while the women went shopping and Steve drove the Element to Panora.

The RRVT trail is wonderful to ride, and better in shape than a lot of roads we had just done.  We met Steve at Linden and headed to Panora to have lunch trailside at PJ’s.  Man, they have good burgers and onion rings.  From there, Steve and Blake continued up the trail to Jefferson, and I shuttled the car up, waiting awhile at the farm in Cooper.  At least I found some Romaine and peas to bring home.

After that we’ve been keeping up the farm and house.  Working on the roof fix downtown, and getting ready to finish off siding the crib.  I also built a gate for our fence yesterday.  Coffee production is in full swing again for this week’s Farmer’s Market.

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