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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Somehow, I nearly forgot that we had a garden at Two Barn Farm.  It was a nice, warm, fall-feeling night, and I was itching to work.  We had 90 minutes of light left after work, and I intended to do something.

I took Grampy down there, and we got some trim and insulation hung up.  Grampy also pre-cut a few pieces of siding.  It was getting dim, but I got the first 3 pieces of siding on the East end of the crib.  After we picked up the tools, I thought about checking the gardens.  There might be some lunker of a zucchini hiding over there.

Tomatoes.  I nearly filled a 5 gallon bucket with bright red tomatoes.  Reagan has already canned sauce, diced tomatoes, garden relish, salsa, and a few other things out of the garden.  We have storerooms and freezers full of peas and onions too.  Now there is another batch of tomatoes to deal with.  Maybe we should check into Carla’s soup recipie…..

The whole canning process has gotten me into a fury as well.  I had to put up some barley and hops of course.  My hop vines only grew about 8 inches this year.  I used my business trip to St Paul as an excuse to visit the homebrew store that I usually order from.  Somehow, I came home with enough grain for 2 more batches of brew, even though I had that much at home already.

I started with the oldest first, which was something called “Big Honking Stout”  I realized that my power drill can replace the handle on this thing labeled the “Barley Crusher”.  It took care of 12lbs of grain in a minute!  Much better than cranking by hand.  I have quite the setup, and have started doing all-grain batches last year.  So there was a huge production of interconnected coolers and tubing and hot water sprinklers, and pots all over the kitchen.  Crazy to the untrained eye, but it was much more manageable than normal.
That batch is sitting in one of my large conical fermenters.  Next on deck for tomorrow is a Belgium Dubbel.  Next week might entail an Irish Red Ale followed by a Strong Dark Belgium Trappist Ale.  Notice that nothing seems to be labeled as American style?  Yes, there is a reason for that.
Hopefully this warm streak will continue for a few more nights and into the weekend.  I might get some more corn crib work done.

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While in the garden picking onions a few days ago, the 8 year old asks, “Can I sweat these onions??” Later, while making marinated tomatoes, he instructs you on proper knife techniques and how to defrost your duck. We are starting to think he watches too much of Alton Brown’s Good Eats shows. We’ve started calling him “Mason Brown”

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Rich got the driveway at the farm opened up. There were 4 full trees and many limbs down. We haven’t even started on getting parts of the barn out of Bill Sutton’s corn field!

My achilles tendon has been bugging me, so I stayed in the least physical part of the farm. Weeding massive weeds from my organic garden. It took me an hour to weed one row of tomatoes. We have 4! Got all those done and started to unearth the cauliflower, jalapenos and banana peppers. Despite the lack of attention we gave the garden this spring, it’s doing pretty well.

I made marinated tomato and onion salad with our early crop of a few romas and massive red burgermaster onions. I used a variation of Rich’s Mom’s Gazpacho recipe. Yum!

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Post title sung to Aerosmith’s Back in the saddle again.

Last weekend was a good weekend.  I love getting work done.  Maybe you don’t consider getting 12 feet of sill plate installed and/or replaced exciting, but I do.

The cool part is, that the new section of sill plate was across the back of the new slab of concrete.  Not only is it something new, but I had to cut old rotten sill plate at the major corners, jack up the barn again (see last year) and shove the new wood underneath.  We even got the main electrical panel and meter socket installed.  We’ll have electricity in no time.
I have another great thing to report.  Although we got into this situation in the first place, we reclaimed the garden.  The front PTO on the mower seemed to burn out, so I need to fix that.  The flood producing rains and warm weather caused everything to grow.  Grass, weeds, and vegetables all grow with water and heat.  I used both a weed-eater, and the push mower from the house to trim out the gardens.  Then used the trail-mower to  clean up everything else.

We did claim some zucchini, squash, cucumbers, a large onion, and more lettuce out of the garden so far.  We are eating good.  The taste is unbelievable.  Yum!  One of the cukes, is sitting in some leftover pickle juice.  We’ll make some proper ones later, and hopefully avoid any kerosene cucumber references.
Next, Order some 10′ 2×6’s and frame in the East end of the corn crib.  I found a huge 38×42″ double casement window for that wall at the Habit for Humanity Restore in Des Moines.  That, and some siding…..oh boy!

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