A holiday off, what should I do? Burn baby Burn.

There was a little rain on Saturday, and Sunday morning was very still. Time to get rid of the rest of the roof. There was just over 1/4 of the original roof left. Where ever there were good section of beam left, these were sliced off, then the cross boards knocked off. We’ll find something to do with them later. I found this same technique works good on the 2nd floor floor joists. For being 90 years old, the wood was in excellent shape.

The rain helped keep any surrounding grass from burning, but it also kept the roof from burning. It took over 20 minutes with the weed dragon torch to get 2 sections to a smolder. 2 hours later, we had a bonfire. The roof was gone, plus a lot of little boards that had flown off from everything. The haymow door was nearly split in half so it went. I few other sections went it too.

I managed to get a quick mow on important sections before having to switch out to the plow on the tractor. This helped condense the pile of waste.

With Farmer’s markets starting, and the Bell Tower Festival, and a good deal of rain the last week, I haven’t seen the farm since. With weather like this, I might have to hack my way back in with a jungle style machete. Few more pictures in the gallery.

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So, the biggest news is, the deck at the house is done.  Well, close enough.  There are 2 boards missing.  1 is a little piece of trim,

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May was kinda busy here, but some of it was non-eventful for the farm.  Some of it was awesome.
I tilled and cleaned out the garden beds and planted seeds.  With such a cool and wet Spring, not many of them came up.  I ended up re-seeding the spinach, lettace, and double up on some peas.  The onions seem to be doing fine.  We got a bundle of leftover strawberries that seem to have mostly taken root.  We also have potatoes and a double row of sunflowers coming up.    Besides that, I have a garage and basement full of tomatoes, peppers, lavender, various herbs, and probably a few other things getting ready to transplant.

I’ve been saying that this Spring would be exciting for the corn crib.  There were a lot of structural things, demolition, and odds and ends that needed to be done that didn’t provide much eye appeal.  Several projects have been waiting on hold for Spring, which would make a lot of visual changes.  But, there was a requirement…

The house in town had 2 sets of concrete precast stairs.  Both were getting quite askew and cracked, not to mention the lovely astroturf covering the front stairs.  These had to be replaced before doing serios work at the farm.  3 days with a jackhammer, and these were gone.  Reagan’s dad, Steve, came out and helped frame out a new pair of stairs, that were connected with a wrap-around deck effect.  The deck does not provide much for sitting chairs out on, but make a great bench for plants, sitting down on them with the neighbors, or melting on to after a good bike ride.

Three weekends later, it is nearly complete.  There will be a little raised bench near the front door, and there are a few more pieces of decking to get laid out.

Back to the farm….

I have done small bits of work on the stairs over the past month.  These are nearly completed.  There are a few riser panels to cut and install, and a few last treads to nail down.  We tend to buy local, getting supplies from Tri-County Lumber and Ace, but I love checking out the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Des Moines.  I had to take the truck into town, and thought I could finally find a missing door.  No luck there, nor in the last several trips.  I know the original door we found there was sold at Lowe’s, so I swung by to see what the damage would be.  $228 each.  But wait a tic, there is a sticker on the one I’m holding for $150 clearance.  I pay closer attention…the left handed, 36″, full glass doors are $91.20/ea?!?!  The right handed doors were still $228, but the lefts were $91.  I loaded up the last two they had and checked out.  One of these finished out the set of faux-french doors between the inner crib and greenhouse, and the other would seperate the greenhouse from the outdoors.

Finally, the South side is starting to look like something.  You might also notice the coupla window, which was the passageway for the pigeon family.  It is now plywood backed and bird free.  It took getting a 2nd floor laid down to reach this window from the inside.

What’s next?  4 windows facing west over the main door, a finished staircase, proper windows on the South side with additional siding.  We did have some visitors over recently who seemed to love the progress.

The barn lives on!  I’ve also managed to figure out how we’ll start tackling the rest of the barn remains.  Our good friend Kevin Wilbeck, who owns Camp Coyote, did visit the barn carcass with the proper tools.  He dug out 5 sections of curved beams, maybe 5-6′ long to make a roof over a kiosk at his campground.  I’m thinking of doing something similar to shelter our main door.

Full size pics of the deck and farm HERE

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Three steps baby….

Yes, the staircase is progressing.  Saturday morning, Mason had a 4H art camp south of the county.  I figured I could work at the farm or spend an extra half hour driving home.  Easy choice.  Not only did I get the 4th and final stringer cut and installed, I found enough plywood to cut out 7 of the needed raiser/toe-kick sections.  During the art camp, I got these cut and installed.

After I claimed a proficient basket-weaving and wire-sculpting Mason, I brought him back to the farm to handle the 1/2 tube of liquid nails I left behind.  Now this is trust….   I pointed a 10 year old Mason at a stack of 10′ 2×6’s, and told him I needed them marked at 57.5″.  After he marked a stack of them, I started cutting.  No double checking, I just started cutting.  Every one of them was spot on!  He even re-marked another 57.5″ on the remaining left over pieces, but I have not yet cut them.
These were to be the treads of our staircase.  It seemed the most logical to install risers from the top - down and treads from the bottom - up.  With the amount of glue we had on hand, I got 3 full stairs installed, in the middle of the staircase!  Every tread board fit perfectly.  I was never so proud of our little munchkin.  I don’t know how we will finish off these stairs (carpet, laminate, hardwood), but they lay out perfectly.  When we go back and finish cutting, the staircase will get longer.  Thanks Mason!

Fast forward a couple of days..  I decided at he last minute to remove a few random trees that was growing too close to our garage or our neighbor’s garage.  I dug these out carefully….do you know how much a small tree costs?!

I dug up these trees from our town lot ….roots are bad for foundations - really.  I took these transplants to the farm tonight, and Mason either dug the hole for or planted our 15 trees.  He was even giving instructions for the transplants!  I had to carry the water jugs around, or more importantly controlled the weed dragon, where I hoped a small clearing would give new transplants the chance.  Our transplants were between 8″ to 4′.
We had a great planting session, and I plan on re-soaking them several times this week.  Hopefully, they will turn into our permanent windscreen.  Long term operations look promising by having such a good helper.

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Just look at what the future has in store for Iowa, think of all the jobs this could bring:

“No, I’m from Iowa.  I just work in outer space” -Kirk

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