Has anyone been paying attention to all the hints we have been leaving on our site?

We’re up to something, TBF has a new purpose, a new business in town, a strange new smell floating by.  Any of this ring a bell?

We had one well aimed guess of a brewery.  Yes there is a history of home brewing being mentioned on the site.  Nope.  In reality, you need so much equipment the startup costs are mind boggling.  So that was not it, yet.  I’ll keep it on the back burner.

COFFEE.

Greene Bean Coffee has been born.  http://www.greenebeancoffee.com/

Right now, we are a small coffee roaster.  The business plan does call for a local coffee house, but we still need to find a place first.  Until then, we are supplying you directly with fresh roasted coffee.  Most of the time, we are aiming to have Organic, Fair-trade, Rain Forest Alliance, certified coffees.  Sometimes a non-certified coffee comes in, when we strive for a specific taste.

Huh, who, what, why???

There is very little choice out here for coffee.  Our local grocery had about 3-4 brands, including Foldgers, Millstone, and Starbucks.  Even the big city stores had few choices.  There are a handful of other roasters in the state, but we fit on one hand when counted.  So, we set out to find good coffee.  After bringing in bag after bag, I somehow realized that I had a friend in the coffee world and asked about roasting your own.

So, if you know me, I like to do things right.  At least I get the equipment to do things right.  It may take a few attempts to be right.  Our first test batches were amazing, and roasting it was fun.  Then the “bigger and better” bug bit.  Why do 1 cup of beans, when I could roast 5lbs?  Really, 6 months ago I had no clue that I would be doing this.  It is ideal as there are many coffee houses, but few who roast their own.
At that point, we started asking around.  We knew many people that loved good coffee, but could not find any.  After some planning, more equipment showed up, and larger and larger orders of beans started coming.  Our UPS guy is going to hate us.  I started sampling so many variations, I even learned to phase through time.
People have been excited.  They love the flavor.  We have a full year of events lined up already and the webstore has just been created.  All that’s left now is for you to try some.

http://www.greenebeancoffee.com/

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Wow, we are on a spree.  Remember those cabinet doors?  No, you don’t?  Then go read the previous post first.  We’ll wait for you, really.

OK, caught up now?  Good.  All those doors now have handles on them.  Somehow I was able to search Home Depot, check in with Reagan on the phone, and bring home handles we both liked that filled our retro-inspired idea.  The drum set is gone and the bikes have a permanent winter home on trainers.  I fixed the couch.  The latch holding the 2 halves of the sectional together – didn’t.  I fixed that.

The kitchen is clean, dishes are done.  We weened out 2 boxes of yard sales goodies from around the house, another large bag of Goodwill clothes, and the Christmas shopping is done.

We didn’t go crazy on gifts this year, as we have in the past.  Before the economic downturn, we already planned this.  It’s not about the stuff, it’s the thought that matters.  We did make quite a few of our presents, and some are quite….original, unique, and usefull.  I’m not spilling the beans yet.

We’ve been slowly distancing ourselves away from the over-commercialization of holidays.  For some reason, Reagan and I have never really done the Valentines thing, especially after we got married.  But there is no point in being sweet just one day a year.  The whole family had a quiet Thanksgiving.  I did cook a turkey out of habit, and I hadn’t smoked anything in a while.  Somehow, I ran a quick errand to the farm, and realized there were carrots there.  I forgot about them.  It was wonderful to harvest our own food, something to be thankful for.  And those were the best carrots I ever ate.  We are planting more next year.

SNOW.  Over 5″ of it.  I brought up the John Deere tractor from the farm to my dad’s house for the winter.  He has a long driveway with a fence on one side, the house on the other.  No place to really pile up snow.  I couldn’t resist.  So, just before dark, I ran over to start it up.  It cleaned his driveway in no time flat.  I drove it around to our house, and had the double-wide driveway between our house and the neighbor’s done in moments.  This is going to be a fun winter.

Well, nothing left to do but get the business rolling……oh wait we never annouced that here on the site.  Hmmm, I guess the web folk will have to wait until it’s official.  Soon, very soon.  Then you’ll figure out what we are up to…..and what that new scent in town is. 

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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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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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