My brother, Blake, dislocated his foot during a soccer game a couple of weeks ago.  I made this poster in honor of him.

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Wow, June seems like a busy, busy month around here.  We had a few postings, but didn’t add too many extra pictures.  Until now.

The Gallery is now full of our June pictures.  There are pics of us, the garden progressing along, grass growing, Reagan and Mason doing a triathlon, and the first signs of produce.  Actually, we have been eating all kinds of spinach, lettace, and peas so far this month.

Shortcut to June 2008 pictures

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Mason spent a little time riding his bike on the trainer last weekend to get ready for the cycling season. He joined Rich for the first 20 minutes of a Spinervals workout called “Have Mercy” if I remember right.

Reagan will ride for Velo Bella again this year. Rich has signed up to ride for Team 53×11 Coffee. We have a full race calendar planned for this year.

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February, in Iowa. Would you expect any different?

Well, the kitchen is almost done. All the cabinets are installed, we have all of our appliances are up and running. Even the electric and plumbing have been updated. All that’s left is paint and a proper counter top. We have left the plywood base showing, in the interest of getting everything else in line. Perhaps, after vacation, we will order the Formica and get that done. Besides, with all the painting to do, it probably safer to leave it off.

Valentines day…..what did we do. NOTHING. We actually gave up Valentines day years ago. To sound tacky, we love each other every other day of the year. So why do we need every merchant out there telling us that we need to buy cards, candy, or diamonds for each other. It’s another dumb ‘Hallmark Holiday’ as I call them and serves no one but the retailers. It reminds me of the French. I think it was in the 1990′s that they decided to give Halloween a try. Then two years ago, they gave up on it, because they saw no real point in it.

This is a blog right, so does that allow me to gripe?

Roger Clemens. Blah. Did you see that Congressional hearing? It was sad. Out of the 53 accused clients of Randomski, at least 12 came out and said that they did use performance enhancers. I have seen Roger throw some balls for my hometown Bo’Sox, but have no loyalty. His wife got PE’s from him, but he didn’t. C’MON!!!

Just once, I want my sports vengeance. If Roger did take drugs, will they strip him of his Cy Young awards? What about the others? Marion Jones was wiped from the Olympic records. Her teammates from relay races were asked to hand in their medals. If Major League Entertainment…er, Sports stepped up to the plate about drug use, would we see pendants and Super Bowl Rings returned?

Yes I’m jaded, and still upset about Operation Peurto scandal. Cycling has the smallest budget, and yet has the highest cooperation with drug testing. Operation Peurto named 200 athletes. Why were only the 32 cyclists publicly named. Apparently there were soccer and tennis athletes involved also. For the record….I only use caffeine, in the form of coffee. More on that later.

On a happy note. We just placed a huge garden order. Territorial seed company just got $350 from us for a large collection of seeds. We did order organic strains where possible. Two Barn Farm will have several varieties of tomatoes, beans, peas, black eyed peas, pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupe, lettuce, onions, peppers, squashes, corn, and a few other things. I also added sunflowers, a herb garden and just ordered a few hop rhizomes. Yep, organically grown Kent Golding Hops. Next year, 800 square feet of barley should be added. Nothing like being self sufficient! What we can’t use or put up, we would like to try to sell off, perhaps at a farmers market. Oh, the sunflowers serve multiple purposes. Seeds for snacking of course, then I might also try pressing some for some oil. I mainly want to take a picture of our barn with a row of bright sunflower blossoms in front of it. I’m sure you will see a post here when its time to drive by.

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I saw that our overnight low reached 9 degrees BELOW zero. Brrrrr.

Anyhow, here’s a milestone. I just made the 12th payment for the farm. One year later, and what have we done?

Well, most of that is here on the site. Have you been paying attention? We’ll here’s quick summary:

We cleaned up the farm and the barns. Created a large compost pile. Drew up plans for the corn crib conversion. Replaced a good deal of sill plates in the crib. Treated any rotted wood with epoxy. MOWED! Re-attached the front of the barn before it fell off. We tried to grow corn and failed. Pumpkins grew fine. Replaced some of the siding on the barn. Replaced the barn windows.

Oh yes, we also bought a house in nearby Jefferson and have been remodeling that. The bedrooms were re-textured and painted. We updated a few outlets and ran network/phone/cable runs everywhere. We just finished the hallway. The bathroom has all new sink, vanity and toilet. We put in a new medicine cabinet and textured the walls. We just finished the painting. We also got a wall of the living room done and some curtains hung up.

We will be pulling out the plastic tub walls and tiling them along with new shower fixtures. The living room should be finished soon, then we will finally gut the kitchen. Finally, all the new cabinets will leave the garage.

The basement is still semi-finished. We have not done much down there, except make it livable. The floors were sealed and painted, so we added some rugs. One day the paneling will be replaced. Right now, we have some nice new couches, the home theater, and an Xbox down there along with the home office. I’ve been finding holes to seal and missing insulation down there. I’ve brought up scrap foam board from the farm and used it around all the sills. It’s much warmer now.

Warm enough to wait out this sub freezing weather that is…. Bike fever is already here. The training has begun, new bikes are being built and my friends and I are talking all geeky about new parts.

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