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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Strange, but it seems like we don’t update the blog enough.  I think Facebook has stolen our minor status updates, as we keep touch with a lot of friends and family on that site.

Not much has been happening anyhow.  Maintenance is the name of the game.  There have been some injuries, health issues, swim team, and a sloew of little things called life that have kept us from getting a lot of work done.

Still, I have been able to keep the farm mowed, keep the weeds out of the garden, and have had a few bonfires at the farm.  We’ve cleaned up the house in town, and worked on the yard there.  Lately, we added a new fence and and a new back door.  We’ve also managed to clean out the upstairs of the building we bought.  It seems much better now, and we found the source of our leaking roof issue.

We have a big to-do list at all properties.  This week won’t see much work, but we’ll report in from RAGBRAI next week.  We have 3 days of RAGBRAI, and we will use the Raccoon River Valley Trail as the means to get a couple of us home on day 4.

Pictures are also missing.  I should get out the camera and take pictures of all our work this year.

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I just created 2 new albums in the gallery

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Two Barn Farm is starting to turn, after a long winter hibernation.  We have a basement full of vegetable seeds, on heat mats under timed lights.  If the neighbors were watching, they’d call the cops thinking we were growing something else.  We’ve been talking of tilling, and of bio-char this year.  FYI: Bio-char, adding charcoal remains to garden beds.  Yes, we have plenty to burn off.  However, the ground is defrosted only an inch or so.
Today feels like spring.  Warm, clear, sunny, yum.  I had the urge all afternoon to go get some brats and start grilling.  We sent the morning working on house projects.  The kitchen has molding, some more in the bathroom, and I finished off some flooring transitions.  Score a few more items from the to-do list.  Reagan loves crossing items off.  We often add new tasks to the list, just to cross them off right away.  My gratification comes from creating new, clean to-do lists, slightly shorter than the last one.  We did both today.
We also burned our brush pile at the in-town house.  This was a small one.  Yes, we can burn in town.  No, we were not the only ones today.  Yes, there is a bonfire like no other waiting at the farm.  Yes, it used to be called a barn.  Bonus, I moved coffee roasting operations to the garage today.  No coffee smell in the house.  And I cleaned out the garage a little as well.  I might do this more often.
Today was also a good day to catch up with friends.  In small towns, you run into them when you least expect it.  Winter seems to hole us up too much.

I did add in a few bike maintenance projects today too.  Over the winter, I ended build a new tubular wheel.  I mounted a tire on it, and took it for a spin today on the TT bike.  I wanted to make a LSD ride out of it.  (Long Slow Distance.  ie, low heart rates)  I got 22 miles off OUTDOOR trail and road riding done.  I must say, that my first all-tubular ride left me amazed.  These tires really do have a better ride quality.  However my heart rate kept creeping up.  It was far too much fun and excitement to be on the road, hitting 35mph and seeing how long you could keep it.   Every time I sat up and rested, a car came.  I ended up diving back down on the bars and making it look good.
Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy.  Until next week, true believer.

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So what are we up to.  Bits of everything.  There is some more siding on the corn crib.  The section from between the corners and the doors on the West end has been filled in.  I’d like to fill in the last bit above the doors and get a few more courses up on the East end as well.  We also burned quite a bit of barn roof in our trusty fire pit.  It is littered with nails.  I’d like to get one of those magnetic sweepers and see just how much is in there.  We still have a little bit of roof, and the back wall of the barn to clean up.  Whatever wood I saved is started to get tucked under what remains of the barn.

We have been going pretty gung-ho on the house in town.  Just after we finished the kitchen, the dishwasher sprung a leak.  And you guessed it, removing a floor and a layer of plywood before replacing it with hardwood flooring did bring the floor height up about 1/4″.  Exactly how much room it takes to remove the dishwasher.  We ended up removing a untrimmed piece of laminate from the front edge of the couters and cut out the offending overhang of the counter to get the old one out.  Reagan happened to be in Des Moines and found a Kitchenaid dishwasher at the Habitat for Humanity store for $200.  Our dishes have never been this clean.  I love the thing.  It does hold a little less, but it’s solid stainless inside.

The bathroom and kitchen got all the walls textured and painted.  I even hung up curtains while Reagan was out for the weekend.  The back entry still needs to be done, and a little bit around the front door.  Then moulding, everywhere.  We are running out of to-do items here.

I have used the super nice weekend weather to get out for some bike rides.  You might say late season rides, I’m calling it early season rides.  In November and December, we start packing in miles on the trainer so we hit the Spring-fresh roads with speed.  I’m just getting a head start on my base mileage right now. There is always an upper body workout to be done, with all these leaves on the ground.  Oh, I rode to the farm the other night, and found carrots.  I had forgot about them.  I pulled one up about 6″ long, with a little left in the ground, and it must have been 2″ wide.  Free snack!  Super sweet and wonderful.

We finally figured out what Two Barn Farm is for.  Iowa has a new LLC registered, and we have been getting ready.  In fact our first prototype was created last night, and made this morning.  There is a fine line between a hobby and obsession.  Some hobbies turn obsessive, some obsessions turn into hobbies.  Which ever way it is, that’s usually a good sign of drive and passion.  More to come!

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