Hibernate!  Not really, but you sure hole up a little bit.  I don’t know how it started, but when the temp starts dropping I usually start baking bread.  Something about a warm over just makes the day better.  We also had experimented with several pies.  Many were good, but there were a few failures.  We gave one of our favorites to a friend of ours, who wrote such a rave review online that we could have walked away with several orders.  However, once this coffee shop idea comes through, pie might be a good side dish now and then.  Hmmmm.

I’ve also made a few more things from scratch lately.  I created a week-long bake off on the best homemade mac and cheese recipe.  Once in a while, I like fish tacos.  These need a little cabbage.  The down fall is that you usually end up buying a whole head and using 6 leaves from it and let it begin to compost in the fridge.  This time, I helped it.  I shreaded the whole thing and used the leftovers to create a homemade batch of sauerkraut.  A trip to the deli caused a rash of Rubens to appear around here.

The most interesting thing in the kitchen was a chicken.  I bought one of those pre-roasted birds from the deli and it served as dinner.  After stripping it of all leftover meat, the next day the bones found themselves simmering in a stock pot all day.  At dinner time, it quickly turned into the most amazing chicken soup I’ve ever had.  Finally, the leftover chicken meat turned into a batch of chicken enchiladas for our 3rd great meal from a single chicken.
Winter is getting a little old around here.  The snow is far deeper then I’ve seen in Iowa and the old-timers keep mentioning they haven’t seen storms or a winter like this for years.  Having the JD tractor in the garage with the snowblower on it makes for easy snow cleanup.  We are lucky we have this, as the building downtown we own has sidewalks that drift like you wouldn’t believe.  I’ve seen storms that leave as little as 2″ in our yard here.  A few blocks away, the sidewalk is waist deep.  I’ve given up any dignity and have driven the tractor downtown several times now this year.  At least I don’t drive it to the gas station to fill up like many do in the summer, and I’ve seen 3 others out there this winter too.

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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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After I sat down for dinner, I realized that almost everything was fresh and local.  Farmer’s Markets rock

So, we spent the day drinking and loving Greene Bean Coffee’s newest edition, Organic El Salvador.  It’s Rainforest Alliance certified and very tasty.  At the Farmer’s Market, we bought heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil, a fresh loaf of French bread, and some bi-colored sweet corn.
I took half of the loaf of French bread and sliced it horizontally.  On each piece, I added a layer of olive oil, kosher salt, and fresh ground black pepper follow by a few slices of tomato.  I topped it off with a heavy sprinkle of finely shreaded mozzarella cheese and stuck it under the broiler until the first hints of brown came out.

That, and some steamed corn.  Massive amounts of Yummy.

Almost local-vore, The olive oil and seasonings are a stretch, but a staple around here.  I guess I cheated on the cheese as there is no local dairy in the county.  There is a great local dairy in Woodward, the Picklet Fence Creamery.  I know they have cheese.  If I was in Perry or Boone, I might have found a local cheese to use.  Still, dinner left me wondering how much of this food was either in plant or ingrediant form, just 24 hours ago.

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Sunday was more of the same at the farm.  We nearly finished the recycled material stairs leading to the crib.  I’d like to add a few small chunks, and someday cement all this together to get rid of the cracks.

I got a lot more re-grading done around the crib and moved the old compost piles.  I thought the old compost site would be a good place to create a new fire pit, as it was next to the giant pile of scrap wood (ie, the barn).  It turned into more of a giant courtyard, as the dirt scooped out easily, then lined it with most of the leftover rubble.  After we burn here, I’ll clean it out and make it grass or garden and leave the new retaining walls.

Monday found us using old corn crib siding as 4′ tall fence pickets at the house.  Our back fence is 2/3 of the way done.  We ended the day going back to the farm to pickup the last of the picket pile we didn’t bring up beforehand.

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Wanna know how to get things done fast?  Rent a skid-loader.

We had one dropped off at the farm this morning, and put it to use over the next 9 hours.  Doing what?

Building an entryway, a retaining wall, re-grading around the crib, getting rid of the rubble and field rock piles, and I poked the barn with it once.

This was the biggest recycling project yet at the farm.  Everything served a new purpose.  For example, there is a bank on one side of the driveway.  By digging it back, I had dirt to pile around the corn crib.  Then this new hole made a home for the field rock piled with the rubble.

We also used a lot of the rubble for some of the deeper fill around the crib, and the good parts became our ‘urbancrete’ patio and stairs.

First, there is an awesome, blue, cube-shaped rock that you would step on first.  Then a step of large concrete slabs.  The next step is built from a few large sections of brickwork.  Finally, we had a stash of nice limestone steps that brings you to the French entry doors of the crib.
Our day consisted of moving things around and around the farm.  I was quite good at the skid loader.  I could scoop, drop, flip, and place large concrete blocks right where they needed to go.  There were many pieces we could not have moved by hand, and the smaller ones would have worn us out by the end of the day.  This was the right tool for the job.  I did use it to push the last standing door off it’s track from the back of the barn.  In the process, I took out the post that I previously attacked with a chainsaw.  Now there is a section of second floor balancing on a single beam.  In another day or two of Iowa wind, things should work out.

I took a bunch of pictures, and will be uploading soon to the gallery.

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