Harvest Time

Harvest Time

One of the hallmarks of living in the upper(ish) Midwest is that one gets to see the seasons change in earnest. In farm country that change is punctuated by the onset of harvest time.

The agriculture has a significant effect on the appearance of the landscape. I've talked here about our enjoyment in having a living fence of corn around the property; throughout the spring and summer the crops grow and change, first emerging, getting taller, and finally changing color from the dark greens of their midlife to the golden hues of fall. Here, at least, the crops begin that change ahead of the trees. It's a dynamic, ever-changing scene.

With harvest it changes again. The harvest itself is a flurry of human activity on land that has been peacefully solitary for months. Trucks, tractors, and combines appear - some of the latter nowadays with components wider than the roads which they travel between fields. They are there for a brief time, then they - and the crops - are gone.

And so the landscape is different again, now open, revealing vistas that had been hidden for months.

The Yard War

Somehow, yesterday, the first day of Labor Day weekend, became a yard work day. And by yard work I mean that MLW worked in the garden while I marched about the yard attacking things with bladed weapons.

I don’t believe I would have ever really thought of an ax and machete as yard work tools, but it’s a reality out here. There are, of course the trees that are nothing but tall weeds, but there are also some varieties of herbaceous plants that, when not attended to early enough, grow tall and thick enough that a weed-whacker simply cannot take them down.

The primary offender there is Lambsquarters[1]. This extremely common plant likes to grow up against buildings and in unattended, disturbed ground. Left to its own devices the base of the plant can get as big as a baby’s wrist.

Hence the machete.

LB was also spending part of her holiday weekend fighting the good fight against invaders. She’s been tasked with clearing the uninvited trees away from alongside the old barn. Armed with a tree saw and a branch cutter she managed to tackle and remove a 12’ Chinese Mulberry, almost entirely on her own. Few things make a father’s heart swell with pride more than seeing his 13-year old daughter dragging a huge section of tree across the yard by herself.

Taken from a distance - As the teenage years have come on, it has become ever more difficult to capture the elusive LB in her native habitat.  One must use subterfuge and trickery if one is to be successful.

By the end of the day we all made several trips to the burn pile - the place where all the yard waste (that is not either compostable or good for firewood) goes to meet its fiery doom. Our pile this year is big - it stands over 5’ high and is a good 10’ in diameter. And this pile is just what we’ve done over the course of this summer - last year’s pile was burned this spring. It seems, no matter how many of our opponents we take out, they have more to send in.

This has all been gathered over the course of just this summer.  It will make for an impressive fire come late fall or early spring.

And so The Yard War goes on.

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1. The University of Illinois maintains a Weed Science website that is an excellent resource if one is interested in identifying what the the things growing, uninvited, actually are. It includes a description of the type of plants (e.g. broadleafs or grasses) to help narrow down the search; and most of the plants have pictures across the lifespan of the plant - seedlings, juveniles, mature adults, flowering, etc. - to allow one to correctly identify the plant in any part of its growing season. It’s how I came to learn, for example, that the blue flowers growing on stems in the ditches all over the region are chicory, the root of which can be used to make a coffee substitute. Fans of American western movies and books will recognize it as something that cowboys brew up at the campfire. Given how easily it grows, one can see why one might try to find a use for it.  ↩

Just Because You Can Do A Thing...

The canoe doesn't overwhelm the car at *all*. No sir, not at all. 

As discussed a few weeks ago, we are in the habit of using our cars in the place of the traditional pickup truck. This generally works quite nicely, but it seems only fair to mention the exceptions when they occur.

Before we moved out to the Homestead we lived in Rockford which, among other things, offers a number of park-related recreational activities. To capitalize on this, some fourteen years ago or so I bought a canoe. I enjoy canoeing, enjoy the different perspective one gets on the landscape from the water, and the fact that the wildlife will often tolerate the presence of a person in a canoe for far longer than they will a hiker or biker on land. I adventured with this canoe many times on the waterways in the Rockford region - at Pierce Lake at Rock Cut State Park, as well as trips on the Kishwaukee River, the Sugar River, and even made at least one passage down the Rock River.

Sadly, my canoe hasn't seen water for several years. I'd like to blame this on our move to the Homestead - after all, waterways wide enough to accommodate a 15'7"canoe are a rare commodity on the prairie. However, the last of those trips occurred well before we moved. If I'm being honest, the overwhelming majority of my canoe trips occurred during the times that we owned either a pickup truck or an SUV.

It's not that one cannot carry a canoe on a compact car - this is a task I've done multiple times in the past, carrying rented boats on the roof of my old Honda Civic Si. But this canoe, well...

It's possible that I did not us the wisest of judgement when I selected this particular canoe. And by "selected" I mean bought on a whim at Sam's Club.

One look at it will tell you that it is a pretty nice conveyance. It's got three seats, the middle of which contains a cooler. It's got three cup holders molded into the side of the center seat. It's got a dry well for storing your wallet and phone safely on the trip. It's made of resin, so it's extremely durable.

One look will tell you these things. One attempt to lift it will demonstrate the problem. It's far too heavy and awkward for one person - or at least one me - to lift overhead in a fashion that gets it safely on to a vehicle. They make canoes of this size that a single person can easily lift and carry. This is not one of those, and those are not priced to be impulse buys at a large warehouse store.

When I purchased this behemoth I owned an old Toyota pickup with a rack on the bed. It was a simple matter to lean one end of the canoe up on the back portion of the rack, and slide the whole deal across until it rested securely on the rack. It was simple because a: there was no sheet metal in the way to hit; and b: I didn't really care all that much if I scratched the truck. It was much more challenging putting it on the roof of a vehicle when one cares about the appearance of said vehicle.

Because of this, the only relationship the canoe has had with water since coming to the Homestead was to act as a partial roof blocking rain over the dog pen.

My Dad, perhaps recognizing this, suggested we bring the canoe up to their place on the lake in Wisconsin. On first blush this feels a little akin to sending your beloved dog out to stay on "a farm", but on second blush it makes perfect sense; it puts the canoe somewhere it can actually be used.

But we had to get it up there.

We have a roof rack for the Hondas. We have tow hooks to use as tie-down points. This is all relatively straightforward. The challenge, of course, was getting the beast on to the top of the car.

With the help of LB we tackled getting it up on the roof. LB is young, but strong, and the canoe is really more awkward than heavy. Or so I told myself.

It's possible I was wrong.

Ultimately, getting the canoe on the roof took three tries and the help of a stepladder for balance.

The first try was aborted.

The second try dropped the canoe down the side of the car. This resulted a sizeable scar down the driver's side D-pillar and, perhaps, a tiny bit of swearing.

Of course, in retrospect I should have started with the stepladder and perhaps skipped the swearing.

Things would be so much easier in life if one could perhaps do less learning from mistakes...

Weeds

I have cleared back these steps multiple times over the past six years... 

The American Midwest is well known for its agricultural fertility. Settlers came here from the east looking to find land they could use to feed their families and, with some luck, make their fortunes. My own ancestors - John Foulk, Joel Compton - came here from parts east themselves, from Pennsylvania and from New York State, respectively, to take advantage of the bounty of that fertility in one way or another.

Something that rarely gets mentioned, however, is the fact that soil that is good for growing crops is actually good for growing pretty much everything.

A weed, by definition, is just a plant that is growing in a place you don't want it to be. The soil on and around our property is rich, black earth, and it provides host opportunity for a vast array of plants. One of the realities we've come to face is the fact that two acres of space is an awful lot to keep track of when it comes to weed abatement.

Both Marnie and I have an interest in gardening that precedes our time at the homestead. Hers, as befits a marvelous cook, has been focused towards growing vegetables and other food-stuffs. Mine has always been oriented towards growing native plants. This latter interest has led me over the years to studying and understanding what the uninvited plants around us are, so I can understand if they can stay (e.g. If native) or if they should go (if not).

Having a property this size has provided, shall we say, an ample laboratory for study of those uninvited guests. While I am philosophically opposed to the wholesale eradication of weeds using chemicals (such as Roundup), I can understand, after several years of a losing battle, how one arrives at the perspective that a scorched earth approach is the way to go.

Part of the struggle is that the property, while cared for by family, was unoccupied for several years before we moved in; and the fact that my grandmother, who lived here alone for much of my life, was not able due to age and Alzheimer's, to keep up with it in the years before her passing. Which is not to say that she and others did not try. I can honestly verify from my own efforts that it's a huge hill to climb.

Our difficulties are with some of the more common elements that gardeners struggle with throughout the Midwest, in rural, suburban, and urban settings alike. Bindweed or Creeping Jenny and the various and sundry types of thistle are among our frustrations, and we have a crop of burdock that, were it really as useful as its Wikipedia page suggests, could make us wealthy.

Still, as frustrating as those plants are, they are not our greatest challenge.

It's the trees.

The %#&$ing trees...

Now to be clear, a well-placed tree is a beautiful thing, particularly out here in the country. A well-placed tree provides shelter from the wind, provides shade, perhaps provides fruit. A well-placed tree is a wonderful accent to the home.

A poorly placed tree is a thing of evil.

What we are struggling with is volunteers that have taken root either along the sides of buildings, or within other bushes, or in marginal locations that we weren't able to attend to before they'd gotten started in earnest. The offenders are primarily (though not exclusively) of three different species: Maple, White Mulberry, and Eunymous bushes.

While we have managed to keep up with them around the house and the garage, it's been a struggle to do so with respect to the bushes and the outbuildings. Our old barn is surrounded on two sides by the interlopers, and we have volunteers creeping around the corner of our Morton Shed. While it's not awful to have a tree growing near a building, the ones growing directly beside them threaten to crack and damage footings, and eventually grow to have branches rubbing against the shingles. In the case of the old barn these branches also likely provide a route of access into the loft for our mortal enemies, the Raccoons.

We have several stands of old bushes on the property as well. These are generally either Honeysuckle bushes or Lilacs, both of which have the distinction of growing up in multiple relatively small stems or trunks directly from the ground. This leaves all sorts of space for seeds to take purchase, and several of them now foster Mulberry saplings, as well as a couple of other volunteers I've now seen on multiple occasions, but which I cannot name. While the struggle around the buildings is simply managing the larger trees that have grown up there over time, getting interlopers out of the middle of a bush is a special torture that involves many, many scratches and scrapes, and many, many swear words.

I think that eventually we'll get ahead of them, though we may have to hire some help to get it done. But it's disheartening to clear out one bush, for example - an activity that can realistically take most of an afternoon - only to walk up to another and find it also full of invaders. And one knows that, if one cleans out that bush the next weekend, and another bush the following, one will find that the first bush has re-grown it's invaders.

Ugh.

The Living Fence

Along the driveway.  

Every spring a miraculous event happens - heavy machinery runs all along our yard and, within a few weeks, evidence of our new summer fence begins to display itself.

Most years we are surrounded entirely by field corn growing over six feet tall on three sides of us. This has the pleasant effect of enhancing our privacy out here on the homestead. We are surrounded by a wall of green on three sides, hiding us away in our refuge. It's also a familiar sight - as I've mentioned many times before, I grew up across the field from here, and we were there, as here, often surrounded by the corn.

Privacy, such as it is, is a key benefit to life out on the homestead. Having your own little space in the country affords something very different with respect to the opportunity to connect with nature, with the surroundings, and with one's self.

We lived in the Greater Rockford Area for over 15 years. Though often maligned, Rockford offers quite a lot for people who want to be in the out of doors. The Rockford Park Systemis an active, thriving, entity, with parks throughout Winnebago county in a wide variety of locations, offering a huge array of experiences. There are river walks, a pretty decent recreational bike trail system, dog parks, large wooded areas. In addition, Rock Cut State Park is at the north end of Rockford, with hiking and biking trails, picnic areas, Pierce Lake. There's something for virtually everyone who wants to get outside to do. I spent a lot of my own time in these places - especially Rock Cut.

Having your own space out here is different, and in a very specific way. There's no way, on our two little acres, to replicate the variety of experiences that a state park can offer. Thinking about it always makes me think of something someone - my brother-in-law, I believe - once said:

you aren't living in the country if you can't pee off your back porch without being seen.

All of those park facilities are wonderful and, for the most part, very popular. And that's the rub: A hike at Rock Cut is a wonderful thing, but it is always the case that, even if one is alone at the moment, there may well be another person to encounter over the next rise, or around the next turn of the trail. You are never truly alone.

Here you are, to the degree that you choose to be. When I lay in my hammock I am hearing the birds singing, the dogs moving about, not Bitter Betty next door yelling at her grandson, not the guy who recently put glass packs on his 84 Ford pickup line trying them out by running up and down the street.

All of this is true when the corn isn't there - when it comes down in a few weeks we will still have that privacy. But it's enhanced at the moment, a welcome shift that says now, more than any other time, this space is for you and you alone.

Rabbits

It's an awful picture, but this was about as close as I could get with the phone...  Which is probably a good thing, as far as rabbits go.  

A few weeks ago I saw,for the first time in the six years that we have been living here, a rabbit in our yard.

It is one of the more curious things (though perhaps not unrelated), for all the challenges we have had with raccoons, there are a handful of other, common critters, that we have virtually never seen in the yard. Rabbits are among them, along with squirrels of both the ground and tree-living varieties.

It's not that they don't live out here in the country. When I am riding around the countryside I see plenty of all three, and I don't have to ride far to see them. There are squirrels at the next house and stand of trees to our north, and rabbits routinely sighted just at the next corner. Ground squirrels routinely make their brave dashes out of the ditch and across the road all over the place - though why they so often choose to do that just as a car is coming has always been beyond me. Perhaps they are sitting in the tall grass with a buddy, drinking a beer, the buddy saying "bet ya won't do it..."

Of course, anyone who has lived with any or all of these critters can tell you each can cause their own problems. Rabbits burrow and eat things from the garden. Squirrels tease your dogs (poor little puppies) and steal from the bird feeders. If you grow sunflowers they will steal the heads off of those as well. Ground squirrels will leave your yard pockmarked with openings just waiting for you to twist an ankle.

Regardless, it's good to see the rabbits. It suggests a bit of balance returning to the yard. They have so far been staying behind, or at least within running distance of, the invisible fence line, so while the dogs are aware of them, they haven't caught one so far.

Of course, a little over a week ago I saw a fox trotting along the side of the field, disappearing behind the shed. The shed, behind which the rabbits appear to be living.

Mouse in My Car

I went to get into my car Thursday evening, and was greeted by this sight: a hole chewed into the side of the bag of pistachios that I had sitting on the front seat.

The array of bag shrapnel scattered around the container is the giveaway that this wasn’t just an accidental tear in the paper. I didn’t simply rip the bag moving other item in and out around it. It was a mouse[1].

Or at least some sort of rodent, since many of them share the same chewing-thru-stuff approach. Mice are a common evil out here - common and evil enough that I once spent several minutes watching, enjoying, and taking video of one of our cats essentially torturing a mouse. I wanted to be able to enjoy it again and again and…

Mice in the barn, mice in the shed, mice in the house, these are common, if frustrating, occurrences. Mouse in your car - particularly a car that is routinely used - not so much. It’s not unheard of, mind you, but when it happens, in my experience, it’s usually somewhere in the partially-covered semi-exterior regions of the vehicle: the engine compartment. Several years ago our Chevy HHR had mice nesting in the engine air filter. Still, inside the passenger compartment is not a typical thing.

This leaves one pondering as to the how and the why[2]. Have the mice living here suddenly encountered a huge evolutionary advance, making them believe themselves capable of operating motor vehicles? Does this particular mouse have someplace to be, and he’s gambling that, by some stroke of fate, I’ll happen to drive to that place? Is this some sort of vengeance play by the local mouse consortium to pay me back for taking and posting that Cat and Mouse video?

Thursday is garbage day, and I take the garbage in to be taken away either Wednesday evenings or Thursday mornings, and I had done so this week. One of our two 50-gallon garbage cans has a hole in the bottom of it. Occam’s Razor would suggest that this, and not some sudden advance in mouse sentience or a plot by rodent yakuza, is the more likely cause[3].

It's possible this soldier is too wounded to carry on.

And, of course, I take the garbage cans in my car.

It didn’t take me long to sort out the likely cause, but that was really only half the battle. The more important question was what to do about it. I spend a lot of time in the car and, while one might think it nice to have some company, I’d rather not argue with a rodent about what to listen to on the radio. Oh, and also: mice are destructive, unpleasant creatures to live with.

I could have put down poison - we have bait boxes in the house for this very purpose. My fear, though, was that this little dude would eat the poison but then crawl up into some deep, dark recess under the dash and die, leaving me to dig him out of there or endure the wretched stench of dead mouse for weeks on end (if you haven’t ever experienced it, believe me when I say you would be amazed at how much, and how badly, such a tiny little thing can stink). So instead I decided to go with a mousetrap - the good, old fashioned spring and snap style Victory mousetrap. As soon as I got home that evening I baited one with a tantalizing bit of peanut butter and set it in the passenger seat foot well.

I got up the following morning with much hope and anticipation, particularly since I was going to be in the car for much of the day with appointments in disparate locations. I was, shall we say, disappointed.

The trap was completely denuded of peanut butter. And completely unsprung.

Needing to get places, I simply re-baited the trap and put it back in the foot well and headed out. I really didn’t expect the mouse to come out and take the bait while I was driving, but I was hopeful that he’d perhaps venture forth for a snack while I was in one appointment or the other.

What I did not anticipate was the extremely disconcerting experience of a tiny, dark shape darting across the passenger foot well while I was driving. Only happened a couple of times, thank goodness, but, well, ewww.

After each stop of the day I came out to look at the trap and see, only to find it untouched, unsprung. That is, until the last stop of the day, at which it was again completely denuded of peanut butter and completely unsprung.

Reasoning that this was, perhaps a trap that was not quite sensitive enough, I pulled out a couple more of them and placed them in the car, one in the passenger foot well, one in the back seat, and went in for the night.

I'd like to say that, as an elightened, and purportedly well educated human being, I take no pleasure in his demise.  I'd like to say that, but I can't.

My cries of victory could be heard far and wide the following morning! The triumphant hero, I left with an imaginary ticker-tape parade, held in my honor, playing in my head. And the mouse, that awful foe, well, he went home on his shield.

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1. Mouse - singular - appears here throughout. In my head it’s just one, lone, rogue mouse[4]. It must be. Any other consideration is, frankly, too worrisome to contemplate.  ↩

2. Ok, not really so much on the why.  ↩

3. That Occam guy is really just no fun.  ↩

Don't Leave Your Wife Alone With A Sawzall?!?

Felt like grunting when using this baby.  Just like Tim, The Tool Man Taylor, which is what got me in trouble.

I screwed up our shower by being overzealous with a Sawzall.  My intentions were well intended, but it doesn't change the fact our shower was out of commission for a week.  Lucky for me, my husband's Mendota office has a shower. 

The original problem a leaky facet causing extreme rust marks.  I've become a pro at cleaning this, but thought stop the leak less rust to clean. 

My shower gets massive rust stains because of our well water.  Yes, a new water softener would help, but money sets priorities.  So I'll scrub for now putting money to other things in this Old home.  So my plan, fix the leaky hot water tap.  I did my research by reading a section in Dare To Repair by Julie Sussman & Stephanie Glakas-Tent.

A great book for any self respecting woman to learn basic home repair. 

I also did extensive Internet research watching several repair videos on fixing leaky tub facets.  It all looked pretty straight forward.  What I failed to take into account is an old house can complicate things.  I decided I would replace both cold & hot water since I was getting a drip from the spout too.  The cold water came off easy as pie.  The hot water screw stripped in two seconds flat because it was rusted.  Replacement handles easy to come by so losing the white knobs no great loss. 

That is where my bright idea for the Sawzall came into play.  Just cut the handle off I thought no big.  I will admit that using a Sawzall scared the crap out of me.  I had a job to get done so I put on my big girl panties &  headed into the great unknown.   I should have stayed scared. 

The Sawzall came to life in my hands & I felt the POWER.  Oh how I loved the sound, the vibration & I was lost.  The Sawzall was so much easier to use than I thought & I was hypnotized by the power in my hands. 

I cut into the handle & far deeper than I should have.   Right into the bonnet, which I learned was a big no-no.

This is a bonnet which is not water tight with a big Sawzall cut in it. 

I went looking for a replacement bonnet at local & big box hardware stores with no luck.  At this point I had to swallow my pride & ask for help from my Father or Brother-in laws who are plumbers.  Gabe, my brother-in law came through, finding a replacement bonnet on Amazon.  

I so wanted to do this all on my own.  I didn't want to ask for help from my professional in-laws, knowing this will be a story that will be told at every family gathering.  I screwed up big time & deserve the ribbing.  In fact, it was my brother-in-law who said to my husband.  "Don't leave your wife alone with a Sawzall."  I deserve that, but I also deserve some credit.

I'm a stay at home mom, while my husband works his butt off.  He is often up & gone before the sun rises. He gets home around 6:30 pm & logs close to 60 plus work hours.  Fixing a leaky faucet on a weekend is understandably not high on his priority list.  Nor does he find it fun or rewarding like I do.   So I went about becoming more self-sufficient & taking some of the load off my husband.

I am genuinely fascinated by how things work & love to learn new things.  I learned that a Sawzall was not the right tool for this job.  I no longer fear the Sawzall.  I learned how a hot & cold water taps really work.  I learned all the proper names of of a working facet.  I made a mistake & learned from it.

All fixed & look no rust! 

I have had more success than failure in working in this old home.  At 44 I learned a thing or two about basic plumbing.  I beat myself up over this Sawzall saga.  My husband & daughter were more than understanding about it.  My Father really helped by saying to me "The only people who don't make mistakes are the people who do nothing."

Our Straw Bale Garden Journey

Laying the groundwork  

Fresh food inspires my cooking creativity.  Better ingredients creates a better results. I am however not the most consistent gardener, which leads to a garden over run with weeds.  I start with the best intentions, but become overwhelmed & discouraged. 

When my Dad sent me a link to Joel Karsten's straw bale garden website, I quickly realized this way of gardening may be a good fit for me.  I bought his book from his website & started planning.

http://strawbalegardens.com/

Think of it as a composting container garden. 

I will admit there is a fair amount of ground work before planting, but a lot less weeding .  There is a 12 to 17 day conditioning process.  This process starts the bales composting providing a nutritious, warm place for your vegetables to grow.  As there is a book & several websites dedicated to this I won't bore you with too many details.  I'll describe my experiences & share plenty of pics.

i enjoyed the conditioning process I found it to be relaxing & enjoyable. I also stood through the process which kept me off my knees.  So often times you could drive by to see me dancing to my music while watering my bales.  I got a kick out of some of the looks from passers trying to figure out why the crazy lady was watering bales.  One vehicle almost landed themselves in a ditch in his effort to figure out, what the hell?

I went organic this first time out, using Milorganite fertilizer.  Next year I will try a cheaper lawn fertilizer without weed killer.  Using organic fertilizers is a bit more expensive & takes longer to dissolve, making the conditioning process go from 12 days to 17.  It also meant a lot more water to dissolve the organic fertilizer & get it to soak into the bales.  Mr. Karsten's book says cheaper lawn fertilizer dissolves much more quickly.

The gardener ensures proper nutrients from step one & by using sterilized potting soil stops soil disease.

This is fish emulsion messy & smelly.  The smell will lure wildlife, however having 3 dogs on the property has made that a non-issue.

Calamity Jane, one of my guards on garden duty. 

A couple of other things to note about the above photo, the landscaping cloth & soaker hose.   Next year I will lay the cloth under and between bales, not just between.  This will keep grass & weeds from growing up along side the bales as seen below.

You can see grass & weeds creeping up along side the bale.  I regularly pull those weeds to keep the weed jungle at bay.  Truth is those weeds will not compete for nutrients of the items growing in the bales.  Things like crook neck squash grow over the side of the bale so keeping the plants & weeds from becoming one plant is important.

Yellow squash growing over the side of the bale.  A little hard to see the bale. 

My first set soaker hoses provided a constant challenge forcing me to replace them.  I bought a big box hardware store brand.  I found myself regularly having to fix geysers. I invested in a small fortune of hose menders. I had more hose menders than hose.

Here a forceful leak took out part of my carrots. 

I went into research mode trying to figure out how to solve this problem.  Apparently the water pressure can be too high causing soaker hoses to rupture.

A brass pressure regulator was where I started, which made the leaks less frequent. 

Hose menders still had to be kept on hand . 

I had hoped to make it through the summer, but my soaker hose was becoming more menders than hose.  So I found a replacement through Gardener's Supply Company.

The idea is place the soaker hose before planting.  So we had to be careful replacing the hose.  The butter crunch lettuce was well on it's way, but we managed. 

The new set up was very easy to get into place.  My 13 year old had the y connectors hooked up in no time.  My husband cut all the hose with a pair scissors.

Soaker hose lay on the bales, but regular hose between rows.  This puts the water where it is needed. 

This has cut down on puddles between rows. 

This new system has been in place for a month & so far I haven't had to make use of any hose menders.  The new system also seems better at distributing water evenly.  Spend the extra money on a quality watering system. 

We have made several large salads from our Butter Crunch lettuce.  When harvested properly leaf lettuce grows back. 

Sugar Snap peas & Pole beans. 

Putting in the t-posts & 14 gauge wire creates a strong trellis ready for your climbers. 

Just this week the first sugar snap peas greeted us.  Love eating them fresh from the vine as does the rest of the family.  Not sure how many lovelies will make it to the dinner table. 

My tomatoes have to play catch up due to some weird cold snaps.  That is basil growing from the side of the bales. 

You can put herbs in the side the bale, but it was tricky cutting into the sides & not all of my herbs transplanted well. 

I had to plant more herbs, for water, cocktails, bread, pesto, caprese salad & on & on. 

Beautiful yellow squash. 

Turnips to be used with the cabbage & beets for beet soup

Very excited to be growing onions for the first time. 

I love to visit my garden & pull out only a few weeds by just bending over & plucking .  I have a garden stool that made planting on the bales easier & put less stress on my knees.  It is suggested  to place the rows 4 feet apart.  This makes it easy to move between rows for planting, maintenance & harvesting.

I started with 20 bales & am already planning next year's straw bale garden.  I recently watched Netflix's Chef's Table with Dan Barber.  Chef Barber is working with vegetable breeders to breed for flavor not necessarily for size.  So my winter will be spent looking for heirloom varieties with flavor to plant in my 2017 straw bale garden. 

Orchards

There is a tradition throughout the Midwest of old properties like ours having an array of fruit trees on the property. Often this would consist of a small variety of certain types - cherry trees, plum trees - and often several different types of apple trees, with larger properties often having space set aside for small apple orchards. You can still see the remnants of those orchards if you travel around the countryside. In some cases the old orchards are still loved and tended to, but in others they are let to grow wild or are cut down - I’m sure that, if one isn’t planning on harvesting the fruit, an old orchard represents a landscaping and lawn care nightmare.

In those old orchards likely live dozens of apple varieties that you won’t see in your local grocery store. As Michael Pollan discusses in entertaining detail in the book The Botany of Desire, our forefathers planted apple trees for cider - what we now call hard cider, an early example of a retronym being coined when soft cider became the more common item - and a hard liquor product known as applejack. A good orchard represented the gift of booze on the prairie[1].

Our property had only one fruit tree[2] on it when we moved in, an old apple tree that yields little, hard, tart apples of the “natures toothbrush” variety. That is, when it yields them at all. Last year, for example, we had none, while the year before was a bumper crop.

Our apple tree in October of 2013...

...And the bounty from that year.  But in 2014?  Nothing.

This past weekend we started the process of rectifying that shortcoming. We have room at the back of the property for 12–13 fruit trees, and the three in the picture represent the very beginning of that process. These three aren’t apple trees - rather there is a cherry, pear, and cold-hardy peach to start - but much of the rest of the space we plan to fill with a variety of apples, ultimately intending to have a little orchard to fill that same purpose as our settler forefathers. I’ve had the opportunity to make hard cider before, and am looking forward to making batches of my own from apples we’ve grown ourselves.

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1. I can heartily recommend The Botany of Desire. Michael Pollan is an excellent writer, with a profound interest in our relationships with food and the plants that produce them. The book itself discusses our relationship with four different plants - tulips, potatoes, marijuana, and the aforementioned apples - and contains fascinating information about Johnny Appleseed, who turns out to be, shall we say, somewhat different than presented in the story we heard as children.  ↩

2. Strictly speaking this isn’t technically accurate. We do have several uninvited white mulberry trees, an invasive (and prolific) species which yields an edible fruit similar in structure to a large raspberry or blackberry. They are very hard to get rid of and the birds clearly love them, because new volunteers often show up growing in unwanted places, such as the middle of bushes.  ↩

Finding Beauty Where You Are

It’s the first day of Summer. As I start this is am sitting in bed, windows open, sunshine streaming in, birds singing.

When I was a younger man much of my focus on where I wanted to be had to do with geographical location. Trips to Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah across the course of my high school and undergraduate years left me enamored with the rugged beauty of the Rockies. I found them so beautiful and intriguing that, when it came time to apply for graduate school virtually the entirety of my focus was on the where - I wanted to study sitting on the side of a mountain[1].

I still love the mountains, and I’ve been back to see them a few times. But I have no regrets about not moving out west.

Illinois sometimes gets a bad rap - I’ve routinely heard our state being described as flat and empty, and as having nothing in it but corn. Those who are feeling gracious may sometimes say “well, there are some pretty spots” and go on to describe a trip to a place like Starved Rock State Park. I can understand this perspective, to some degree, particularly if one’s primary exposure to the state comes from a trip along the interstate[2].

I try to be an active person and, whenever possible, I prefer to be active outside. Not making that move out west when I was younger meant that I’ve had to meet that need here, where I am. In the process I’ve come to realize that every place has its beauty if you are prepared to see it.

This thought has occurred to me a number of times over the past several years. This time around it was spurred on a couple of nights ago, as I went outside in the twilight to find my first sighting of the Fireflies.

It seems a simple thing, perhaps. You catch a glimpse of the first one out of the corner of your vision - sometimes you aren’t even sure it was really there. Then there’s another, and another. To catch these first glimpses your sight line is, by necessity, low, looking at the grass a few yards in front of you. But once you are sure they are there, you look up, first across the grass, and then across the corn, now waist high, to see thousands of tiny lights across the darkening green backdrop, each flickering on for just a moment, and then away again, to be replaced by another to one side or the other.

It catches me delightfully by surprise every year - I logically know they will be there of course, but it’s never quite certain when they will first show.

Flat is a lazy, dismissive description. Northern Illinois is a former prairie, to be sure. But as I look out my window - in they top story of a tall house sitting on a hill - what I see is miles of rolling green, punctuated by islands of trees surrounding other homesteads or tracing the courses of streams. It is magnificent, vast, and peaceful.

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1. Turns out this is not, shall we say, the ideal approach for getting into graduate school. I was not the only person who was interested in the graduate program at, for example, the University of Colorado at Boulder. The year that I applied they had eight openings and, I believe, something in the neighborhood of 800 applications. It took me two years, a kind mentor, and a change in perspective to get into graduate school.  ↩

2. One does not have to be a scholar of the history of interstate highway construction to realize that the pathways through our great state were chosen based upon location and availability of marginal, largely unloved tracts of land. One only has to have eyes.  ↩

The Lessons I've Learned From This Old Lady: Part 2

In Part 1 of this blog I went over dealing with a drafty home in winter & our many trials & tribulations of animals both domestic as well as wild.  In this part I will talk about my ongoing education about cleaning in a rural home.  

We have well water & a septic system, two things this city gal knew nothing about.  I have an Aunt who married a farmer in rural Canada, so somewhere in the recesses of my memory I knew there were some "catches"  about these systems. 

I looked up some information on the Internet.  First thing I learned: no anti-bacterial hand soaps or dish detergents.  A septic system needs bacteria to do it's job & anti-bacterial anything kills that bacteria.  We have never been anti-bacterial soap users, so this was no loss to us.  However, in today's germaphobic mentality regular hand soap is hard to come by.  Luckly, Dove makes a liquid soap with no anti-bacterial agents.  Dawn dish detergent used to make non-anti-bacterial products, sadly they too have jumped on the anti-bacterial bandwagon.  They still make the classic Dawn, which means I just have to take a closer look while shopping.

In a home with a septic system you can only use 1 cup of bleach a month.  Interesting fact - bleach reacts with high iron water (often a problem with well water) to cause yellowing in your laundry.  In this Old Lady bleach is reandered USELESS.   I use a spray bleach for tough stains on my countertops (Hubby is  frequent spiller of red wine); I use paper towels to wipe that up & throw them away so no bleach gets into the septic system.

As far as whites go, we just avoided buying them altogether.  Then my daughter & husband joined Tae Kwon Do which, of course, has WHITE uniforms.  I am not one to balk at a challenge, so I forced myself to figure it out.

After much research & many product trials this is my secret.  Whink makes No More Yellow with Laundry Detergent that took the yellow right out of the Tae Kwon Do uniforms.  I had a white flannel night gown that had been yellow for years & Whink made it white again.  I use the Whink product on whites about every 3rd or 4th washing.  Every load of laundry gets a half a cup of Borax.  Borax evens out the PH balance in well water which helps cut down how quickly yellow builds up.  Arm & Hammer makes a washing soda that does the same thing & is cheaper, but Borax doesn't clump up like the washing soda. 

Getting a water Softener is on our eventually list, but I can't expect a water Softener to work miracles in an old house using well water.   My bathroom is a constant source of rust build up.  I use the Iron Out in the toilet, to soak while I clean the rest of the bathroom.  I scrub the toilet clean then use the Whink Rust Guard tablet in the tank to slow down rust build up.  CLR Bathroom & Kitchen cleaner is foamy & works quickly to scrub off those lovely rust stain on my shower walls & tub.

For someone who doesn't like to clean, this Old Lady has turned me into a cleaning expert. 

I am a 5'1" woman living in a house with 9 foot ceilings & some beautiful woodwork.  Dust builds up on door & window surrounds.  Cobwebs are in out of reach corners.  I needed a quick way to clean these areas without a step stool or dragging the vacuum cleaner out.  Here is my answer..... 

Flexi-Edge Floor & Wall Duster from ecloth.com.  This little helper has an extender for little ole me.  You can wash the head & it only costs $24.99.

I can be disorganized & a procrastinator!  So once I finish the 90 day de-clutter challenge my house will be in better shape.  I will then come up with daily cleaning tasks for this Grand Old Gal so I can keep the house clean while working on improvements.  In our 900 square foot house it was easy to stay on top of things.   The improvements I have made in this house have been challenging, but rewarding & fun.   

My first big project to the house was my husband's office.  In our old house, Erin had a home office in an unfinished basement.  So before I let him move into his new office I made him set up temporarly in the dining room, while I set about doing something I had never done before, but learned as I went....

Painting a floor! I didn't go simple I decided to do a checkerboard pattern on a diagonal.  It isn't perfect, but brings the character of the old pine floors out.  The middle picture is our daughter, Moya's, handprint, which is at the entrance.  I am extremly proud that my husband uses that as a background for his business cards, Mendota office sign & on his business web site for Forest City Behavior.  He works long hours serving the Developmentally Disabled population in Illinois & Wisconsin.  So it was my pleasure to upgrade his home office.

Why painted floor?  Simple, it was already painted.  In Old Ladies such as these, stained wood was found only in areas where visitors were.  Most of the floors & wood work in this house has never been stained.  Some of the doors & wood work even have faux painted grain.  Floor painting is considered an art form.  Let's not forget a home of this age you'll find lead paint.  So stripping a painted floor in this old gal is not a task to be entered into lightly.  With that on let's move onto our Master bedroom.

With the help of my nephew, Ethan, niece, Savannah and my daughter, Moya (in the closet).  I used a safety stripper which we all scrapped off, to get to the wood underneath.  This is where I learned to use & fall in love with an orbital sander.

What this project taught me was leave fancy wood work alone or repaint it.  It has big bevel in it making it difficult to sand all the paint off.   Erin had to do most of that work - my hands weren't strong enough to hold the orbital sander sideways & not destroy the bevel.  The door you see in the above picture is not stained, it is one of the doors painted to look stained.  We left that along with door & window surrounds because faux grain painting is a dying art.  Today there are all kinds of special tools, paint & videos to help you create that look.  This was done with just paint brushes & has worn in spots, but adds character to the house.

Floor in various stages of staining & polyurethane.  To finish the look of the knot on the floor I took a wine cork, cut the top off, stained it & used a rubber mallet to hammer it in.  Then the middle pic is the final look.

This project also taught me to not set limitations on myself just because I haven't done it before. Research it & go for it!  Learn as you go - I learned to strip paint, sand, stain & polyurethane. I even fixed a chemical spill that damaged our finished floor.

I have learned from my mistakes as well.  For instance, do not use amber tinted polyurethane on a white floor.  I knew that, but I failed to double check the can.  I also did the entire floor instead of just doing the closet, which is what my husband told me to do.  No - I went full throttle & had a yellow floor to show for it.  So I etched the polyurethane with an orbital sander & started over.  It turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  We had originally stenciled the entire floor, which was too much.  The last picture below shows a little goes a long way.  

In the end I used a clear water based polyurethane in the closet only.  It didn't match the closet baseboards, it was a touch yellow.  So I skipped the rest of the floor.  I will be doing a white floor with a pattern on the library floor.  I learned to go with more of cream base in the white instead of the white base that's in the Swan White in Moya's room.

Moya has moved into her new upstairs room, that hasn't been occupied for what we believe to be over 70 years.  Most people remember most of the upstairs rooms to be stuffed with antiques, cast aside furniture & other junk.  We'll save Moya's room unveiling for another post.

This Grand Old Lady has also taught me to give second chances to furniture as well.

This is Grandma Marie's old kitchen cart that once resided in her laundry room & was used on holidays. It got banged up over the years, moved to the porch then to the garage.  When I did spring cleaning in the kitchen i found my stove overhead fixture, cabinet & drawer handles were copper not brown.  I used the copper to inspire the color scheme for the cart redo.  Grandma Marie's stool/chair is underway.

note:  to restore the handles I soaked them in an equal parts vinegar & water mix overnight then washed them cleaned with brass brush while wearing heavy duty latex dish gloves. 

 I will admit my Dad had me strip paint from cabinet doors with a heat gun when I was a teen.  He also handed me a hammer & taught me how to lay a sub floor in a kitchen of a rental house.  That same rental became our first home.  I learned first hand what happens when you fail to get nails flush on the subfloor - they pop through the linoleum after a time.  I'm 44 now, but believe my Dad, a retired electrician, has more to teach.  Learning to do simple electric work is on my list of things to do.

My Mum was a big believer of teaching her girls that we could do anything we set our minds to. Also she wouldn't  allow our gender to tell us what we can & can't do.  

My Mother-in-law Julia, who grew up in this Old Lady, has been very supportive of changes I have made & encourages more.  It means a lot to have the backing of someone who lived here - sometimes people live in this Old Lady's past & fail to envision her future.  My Father-in-law Jim gave me a Dremmel tool one Christmas.  That little baby is currently busy sanding hard to reach places on Grandma Marie's old stool/chair.  For Jim to have enough faith in my abilities to give me a Dremmel tool says it all.

So between my Mum, Dad, in-laws & a supportive husband this Old Lady & I make a great team.

Where's Your Truck?

Pickup trucks and SUV's. They are everywhere out here.

I grew up around trucks. Some of my fondest memories are of driving an early 1980’s era red Ford F-150 through pastures from one pile of wood to the next so we could load up the firewood my dad had cut. We called that truck Big Red (we were incredibly original) and I had to stand at the wheel in order to also be able to operate the pedals. I was probably 11 years old.

In the years since I've operated a series of pickups and full-size work vans both when working for my Dad and later full-size, multiple passenger vans to help our folks with developmental disabilities get from place to place. We've owned a couple of SUV's and pickups over the years. MLW drove a Jeep Cherokee in metallic gold that, it seemed, may have been assembled on a Friday after the drinking had already started on the assembly line. That abomination was replaced by a Nissan Pathfinder that worked much better and stayed with us for a while. I personally owned two separate 1980’s era 4x4 Toyota Pickups - a truck that is functionally (and delightfully) a Jeep Wrangler with a pickup bed. The first was a 1987 model with body parts in various colors and a tailgate with all but the middle "YO" of "Toyota" painted over (I inherited most of these modifications). The second was a truly lovely 1984 model in red that I purchased as a weekend truck for carrying my dog, my bike, my canoe - to facilitate having fun. I later sold it because it sat in the garage every weekend, repeatedly reminding me that I wasnt going out and having any fun (it's possible, in retrospect, that this was not the ideal solution).

Somewhat ironically, and perhaps somewhat typically American of us, we owned all of these vehicles when we lived in Rockford, long before we moved out to the prairie.

Trucks (and SUV's, to a lesser degree) are incredibly versatile vehicles when it comes to carrying stuff. When it comes to carrying people over distances in an efficient, comfortable, and safe manner, however, they are severely lacking. When we moved out to the homestead it was with the understanding that, thanks to a combination of LB's competitive gymnastics and my own work schedule, we'd be on the road quite a bit. When we first moved out MLW was driving a Chevy HHR (which is not a truck no matter how Chevrolet may have tried to market it) and I was piloting a Mini Cooper S.

One of the early victories we gained moving into the country - the ability to put both of our vehicles inside.  

The HHR - a versatile vehicle with what are possibly the most uncomfortable front seats ever designed[^1] met an unfortunate early demise about a year after we moved out to the Homestead. It was after that event that the first Honda Fit entered our stables.

Now, I'm kind of a Honda guy. I was an avid reader of Car and Driver Magazine from high school on until the internet reached the point that magazines became largely obsolete, and C&D loved Hondas. I learned why in 1995 when I got a new Civic Si - the car was relatively fast, extremely efficient, handled very well, and could haul a metric ton of your crap because of its hatchback design. It was also very inexpensive to operate, and it ran forever - I finally sold it to a neighbor in 2007, with over 282,000 miles on the clock, and then only because I'd purchased another car. My personal car history also includes a Camaro, a Firebird, a Triumph Spitfire, and a Mini Cooper. The only one on that list I occasionally give serious consideration to buying another example of is the Civic Si.

Given this, when it was time to get something new, the Honda Fit was high on my list. There wasn't (and still isn't, in the U.S. at least) a Civic Si Hatchback any more, but the Fit Sport is, in many ways, the spiritual successor to my old Civic Si. It's almost exactly as fast, very efficient, and much more versatile when it comes to carrying stuff. MLW liked it on the test drive and, to my delight, independently opted for the manual transmission after years of driving automatics. We liked it so much that, when it became clear it was time for the Mini to go, I did an Internet search and got a second Fit.

Anyone who has owned a hatchback knows they can, as a class, carry a lot of stuff relative to their size. This owes to the versatility of the layout - the whole back end of the car opening up, and the ability to fold seats down makes for a lot of room. The Fit goes a step further - the bottom of the rear seat folds up to allow for carrying tall things in the back, in addition to the seat backs folding down. This allows for the transport of all manner of things you'll never get into another car of this size.

That's a pair of 50 gallon garbage cans standing upright in the back of the car...

...and this is probably my favorite part - I can carry my bike upright, inside the car, protected from the elements and activities of unscrupulous folk. More often than not I simply leave it in the car - never know when an opportunity to ride will present itself.  

So these are our trucks. MLW actually managed to bring trees home in her Fit last week. I'll grant that there are occasions in which we end up having to borrow a truck - bringing some of the things home from IKEA, for example, or hauling sheets of plywood. But these events are rare, and it would be hard to justify the cost of owning a truck for them alone. And for some of them we've got a roof rack and a trailer system (the latter of which is waiting for me to assemble it) that should address the need.

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[^1]: The seats in this thing would cause sharp, shooting pains up the leg within a half-hour of driving the thing, and this got worse the longer one operated the vehicle. I drove this vehicle from Illinois to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and back once for a family trip. I was in excruciating pain for most of that trip. It's like General Motors decided to simply throw out all they, and the rest of the automotive industry, had ever learned about seat design in order to try something exciting and new. To this day I wonder if perhaps they dug up a seat design that Josef Mengele had consulted on.

How Dry I Am...

As I start this entry I'm standing in El Zarape, an excellent Mexican restaurant, waiting for my carry-out order.

I should be making trout on the grill.

Earlier this afternoon LB went to tackle the dishes, but quickly came back down to the living room to announce "the water isn't working". Turning on the faucet produced a pathetic little dribble of the wet stuff, with no pressure, no lust for life.

I did my manly duty and investigated the situation in the basement. We'd recently had the well company out to look at the same problem. They'd replaced our old fuse and switch box, which was repeatedly blowing fuses, with a breaker box. And all seemed well with the world (no pun intended).

The breaker had been tripped. Resetting it resulted in:

A - It repeatedly re-tripping; and

B - A fair amount of swearing.

If a man utters the F-Word, but there's no one in the basement to hear it, was it really said? ...But I digress...

The well company guys had also drained the tank because it had been waterlogged. That hadn't been happening this time (it makes a tell-tale sound), but MLW suggested draining it just in case, and that seemed reasonable to try before calling the well company on a holiday weekend. Reasonable, but unsuccessful.

Not that it's terribly surprising that this would occur on a holiday weekend, but there was no answer at the well company, and no voicemail. I've tried texting and emailing them through their website, but thus far there have been no results.

One forgets how frequently one casually accesses the water in the home - washing one's hands, filling up a glass of ice water at the fridge, flushing the toilet... It's that last one that is probably the most difficult habit to break. And, ultimately, the area in which the lack of water is most keenly felt.

Well there, and in the inability to clean, and clean up after, the lovely fish in my fridge.

But the Mexican food was excellent.

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Update - after a full day of working on it, and some 265+ feet of additional wiring, we have water again.

The lovely fish has been thrown out. I gave brief consideration to eating it, but risking food poisoning seemed unwise, despite how tempting it was.

After seeing what it took to get the well pump up and out of the deep, deep hole it was in, I find myself additionally thankful for the help we've received. And, I'm looking forward to the shower I can now take.

Learning the Hard Way

There is a door to enter the building, but how shall we approach that door?  If only there were a path to follow, I said... 

As might expected, working on an old place like our house often involves learning new things. Sometimes this is just a matter of doing research, investigating how to do something correctly before undertaking the task. Other times it involves learning things the hard way.

The garage we have on our site is a later addition to the property. It is, in fact, a transplanted building. It was moved from the property that I grew up at, across the field. When my Dad decided to build a barn at that site, my uncle chose to move the existing building over to this property in order to provide a garage for my grandmother. Since it was a later addition it doesn't really fit into the existing landscaping and, in particular, there was no formal walkway from the house to the garage. In the dry height of summer this is no big deal, of course, but for the rest of the year - when it rains, when it snows - this meant we were tramping through, or shoveling over, bare grass. This probably wasn't that big a deal when my grandmother lived here alone - she didn't leave the property frequently enough to make a track between the back door and the garage, and likely chose not to leave at all if it was snowing enough to make travel challenging. We are considerably more mobile.

We needed a sidewalk.

There are lots of ways to go about this, of course. Lay down cement, hire someone to lay down cement, get paving stones for your local landscaping company or big box store. But I had heard about an acquaintance in the area that had a large number of flat rocks stacked up in their backyard - rocks that had previously been part of a stone home foundation - that they wanted to get rid of. This seemed perfect to me: the ultimate in recycling and the price (free) was right. I just knew that Henry David Thoreau would be proud of me.

I laid out a small patio to come off the existing sidewalk and go around our old bell - there had been something resembling a patio there before, as stones were already in the ground - and then a curving pathway between two smaller trees out to the garage. LB and I cut out the pathway in the sod by hand with a spade and shovels. I did research on the depth that it should be, and what the bed for the pathway should be made of. I laid down sand and then gravel for a foundation before laying out the stone.

Laying out the stone - which we also did by hand - was really kind of fun. It was challenging, working with found materials, to put things together in a fashion that worked as a pathway. It was a little like assembling a real-world jigsaw puzzle with no picture to follow. The project took several weeks to complete, but when it was finished I was really pretty happy with the results:

One happily pictures years of walking along that path, sitting on that patio enjoying drinks, listening to the birds, taking in the view and the smells of country life.  

I am not exactly sure what the differences are between the paving stones one buys from a landscaper or big box store and the ones that were used a hundred years ago or so to make a basement, but whatever that difference is, it's apparently kind of important. The patio and sidewalk were completed in August of 2010 - less than five years ago. This is what it looks like today:

This picture was taken this Spring, the ravages of winter apparent in a number of areas. I'd like to say it was just a hard winter that took out the sidewalk, but it's been working towards this condition for longer than just the past season. 

Now, as I've detailed before, I'm not necessarily the handiest guy in the world. To be clear, though, this isn't my first stoney-things-in-the-ground rodeo. I've actually laid down several brick platforms in multiple locations - solid places for grills, garbage cans, and a guy changing his oil (that guy was me) to stand on. I've never had this type of problem before, so I am left assuming that it's the materials I used. 

Stupid Henry David Thoreau. 

IKEA!

Believe it or not, there's an entire bed there.  

IKEA may seem like an odd fit for an old Victorian-era home, with its emphasis on modern design, but in many ways, IKEA has a lot to offer. 

First, not everything they sell is ultra-modern in design. While everyone is familiar with the classic Poang chairs (which I personally love), IKEA actually carries a number of different design styles, some of which fit into the design of our house quite nicely.

Part of the bedroom set we got from IKEA.  

The other major benefit, however, is packaging. Most everything comes flat-packed in boxes (with Allen wrenches), which is sometimes the target of IKEA-based ridicule. But the reality is that old homes were not designed around the idea that anyone would actually be moving large items into and out of them. The hallways and doorways are narrow, with tight turns to be navigated. In a house like this, furniture in a flat, slender box is a godsend.

All of the materials needed can easily be moved into the room where it is to be assembled. Then it only becomes a large item when it's already at its final destination. This stands in stark contrast to moving an innerspring king size mattress up the stairs for our own bed - an activity that required three people, a lot of pushing, pulling, and bending.

Thank God it didn't require a box spring.

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It took most of the day on Sunday to put together the furniture for LB's room - the loft bed, a loveseat that converts to a bed, and a side table. But once it was all done it looked very nice.

LB's first night in the room represents the first time that room has been inhabited by a human being in over seventy years.

The two front upstairs bedrooms were, for the entirety of my life and, it turns out, my mother's life as well, full of generations of prior family member's... Well... Stuff[^1].

The rooms were technically off limits - we were actively discouraged by Grandma Marie from exploring any part of the upstairs. She and my grandfather had primarily lived downstairs. When they had children my grandfather went to the trouble of running heat to two (and only two) of the six upstairs bedrooms for my mother and my uncle. The others functioned essentially as unpaid rental units for previous generation's cast offs. But to the pre-teen me these rooms were an exploratory extravaganza - a veritable cornucopia of interesting stuff.

Being actively discouraged meant, of course, that I had to find ways to get up there. During family gatherings, when the adults got into long conversations was often a good opportunity to quietly sneak my way up the steps and have a look around. In addition, both my brother and I stayed with Grandma Marie often when our folks were away, and that afforded exploration potential as well.

Until now, though, I don't know that is ever really even thought of those rooms as a place where people would live (except in the abstract). And now here we are, decades later.

Pictures of the completed room should be coming in the next week or two.

[^1]: I wanted to go for the word crap here, but some of it was really cool. Among the items in the mix of stuff was an old Victrola and an Edison Wax Cylinder phonograph, the latter of which was the item I chose to keep when the estate sale was held for my grandmother's care.

Asparaguys!

They say that it's the little things in life that really matter. Living out in the country offers a lot of those little things, and one of them shows up for a brief period of time each Spring.

I remember my Grandma Marie walking through the ditches picking her asparagus. It was never shared with me, I suspect because it grew in small batches, too valuable to waste on a child who might not care for it (it's one of the few vegetables that LB doesn't care for). But as an adult I truly understand the attraction.

With so many fruits and vegetables nowadays, we've largely lost the understanding of eating things that are "in season". If you go down to the local outlet for any major supermarket chain and search through the produce section you will, now, almost always find asparagus. This is of course because, like so much produce in the grocery store, it is grown in warmer climates and then shipped to the U.S.

As with so many of those other fruits and vegetables, it is different when it is grown at home. One of the most notable differences is size - when you pick up a bunch at the supermarket the spears are typically about a pencil size in both diameter and length. The home grown variety is typically as thick - or thicker - than my thumb, and they can get to nearly a foot in length (or longer, if you don't pick them quickly enough).

At this point we've had two batches out of that patch, with a third to come in the next day or two (they grow so quickly you have to check on them daily to see when they are ready to go). The first batch we roasted in olive oil, as a side to hamburgers. The second batch we did in garlic marinara over pasta. They were delicious both ways.

There is, of course, a somewhat unusual side effect to consuming asparagus. The NPR program How to Do Everything did an episode on this phenomenon. It turns out that it doesn't happen to everyone, and that not everyone can smell it. Kind of fascinating and well worth the listen.

Cat and Mouse

I was going through my iPhoto library the other day and came across this video of one of our cats - Basil - playing with a deer mouse in the yard:

The video is a fond memory for a number of reasons. None of the cats in the video (there are at least three) are with us any longer. The reality is that the life of a farm cat is considerably shorter than that of an indoor pet. And to be clear, while we enjoyed the company of these cats, they were most certainly not pets. They were working animals.

What Basil is doing in this video was their primary job. Well, batting the mouse around for several minutes isn't really part of the job description - that's just a cat taking extra pleasure in his work - but reducing the mouse population is their main purpose on the farm.

While there are certainly mice everywhere, they are rampant out here. We are surrounded by fields. They are usually planted with corn, sometimes with soybeans, but in either case they provide a haven for rodents of all kinds - mice, shrews, gophers, groundhogs - we see them all. But when the corn comes down in the fall the mice evacuate the fields in droves, looking for winter shelter.

A big old house with lots of routes of entry (from a mouse's perspective, anyway) must look like heaven to them. Which is why it's important to ensure that the road to heaven is paved with feline fangs and claws.

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I would imagine there are people out there who will think what they see in the video is cruel - cats killing mice, torturing them for extended periods of time. I submit that anyone with that perspective hasn't really had to manage living with mice. They are filthy and destructive animals when allowed to live, unchecked, as a pest in human homes and buildings. You only have to have a mouse leap out of a kitchen drawer you have just opened one time to truly appreciate the presence of the cats.

Wind Turbines, Storms & This Old Lady

Winter walk selfie on a wind turbine service road. 

Thursday a devastating tornado hit Rochelle & surrounding towns.  Friends & family were concerned that we took a Wizard Of Oz ride.  Thank you, but actually Rochelle is about half way between here & Rockford.  Somehow it got reported that the Compton area was near a sighted tornado.  I believe the misunderstanding occurred because the person recording the video along I-39 was from Compton, IL.

Erin's Aunt Jill, who grew up in this house, pointed out how she hated storms out here especially at night.  A completely understandable point of view.  Our friend Carl posted a video to my husband's timeline of what a wind turbine does under extreme & rare combination of conditions.  So what a wonderful & interesting topic for our blog.  Part 2 & now part 3 of Lessons Learned From This Old Lady will continue next week.(Apparently this Old Gal has taught me way more then I originally thought)

This Grand Old Lady on hill sits in the middle of one of two large wind farms in the Paw Paw/Mendota area.  The wind farm closer to Paw Paw is called Mendota Hills Wind Farm, comprised of 63 wind turbines.  The one near Compton & the one we are in the middle of is called Shady Oaks Wind Farm, with 71 wind turbines.  When we first moved here I took a look at these big fellows & wondered what would happen in a tornado or gale force winds?  I searched the web & found several videos like the one below.

I've seen videos of wind turbines extremly close to or in a tornado & left untouched.  The fact is, these wind turbines are engineering marvels.

When you live in the middle of a wind farm you notice that during very high winds they shut down.   If you are real observant, one can see the blades turn to not catch any wind.  You also notice the fleet of trucks that are at one or more of the wind turbines on any given day, doing regular maintenance.  In fact one of these turbine workers stopped to help my husband get out of our driveway that became covered with drifting snow.

Turbine worker giving a helping a hand before continuing to his regularly scheduled duties.  Thank you! 

I have stood sipping coffee, watching one of the wind turbine trucks pull up to one on more than one Sunday morning.  The workers are like ants, busy at a turbine or moving between turbines.  Sometimes working as a team on one or working separately on a couple. 

Taken from the base of a ginormous giant.

Could one of these spinning giants come crashing down & hit our house?  Sure, but I'm more likely to be killed in a car accident then by an out of control wind turbine.  In fact, in the first couple of months of living in this Old Gal, I heard a window break during a storm.  A random branch broke off  & hit one of the upstairs front bedroom windows.  The wind was so strong it took all my strength to open the bedroom door to investigate. It has never happened again in the almost 6 years we have lived here.

The wind has been so strong I have been knocked flat on my ass by it.  A trip from the house to the garage can turn my pixie haircut into Eienstein hair.  We've had our deluxe Weber gas grill knocked over by angry wind.  The blustery wind provides many challenges out here, but to know that Mother Nature's energy is being harnessed by one of these white, mesmerizing towers makes it all worth it.

Took Calamity Jane for a walk & Bandit decided to join us, we apparently needed his supervision.

To our family they provide extra beauty to the landscape, no matter the season.

These giants make interesting focal points in pictures.  Erin, my husband, took this grouping. 

Can you hear them? Yes, but the sound is no more bothersome than the gusty wind out here.  When the windows are open in the summer you can hear the hum of the blades if the wind is calm.  Love falling asleep to that sound.  I have many times been lulled to sleep by watching the spinning blades.  Love it when the sun casts shadows of the turning blades on the walls of this Old Lady.

This Old Lady, wind & storms can provide scary fodder to overactive imaginations.  Moya & Erin like to joke that I have bat hearing, which is not far off.  I often hear sounds others can't & go investigate the source.  

When we first moved in, this Lady on the hill sent me in search of many "unexplained" noises.  When the wind comes from the south, Julia's old bedroom door rattles like someone is locked in & trying to get out.  If the wind is coming from the west & you haven't properly bolted the front doors they will burst open.  

My niece, Savannah, spent a night while dog sitting.  She went home after the wind shifted directions & Moya's closed bedroom door opened by itself.  In fact we have several doors that will open by themselves when the wind comes from certain directions.  

In Moya's old room & new room, the doors will open by themselves if she steps on certain floor boards just right.  She loves to freak her friends out with this trick when they spend the night.  Her friends are easy prey because they are sure this Old Lady is haunted.  Thanks to my Mother, who loved to scare the crap out of my sister & I as children, we have passed that on to our children.  Only Moya has the perfect back drop for such shenanigans.

Certain windows rattle in their frames, while other whistle when the wind hits them just right.  Any simple changes to the inside or outside will bring on new sounds.  There used to be tall bushes at the front of the house.  Erin & his Dad, Jim, cut them down last fall.  They were no longer there to block the wind so the windows began to rattle.  Luckily, I had told my daughter that our own Master bedroom windows did this, so she quickly processed the noises.  She prefers the rattle over the branches of the bush scrapping the window.

Top picture with bushes & old living room windows.  Bottom picture without bushes, but new living room windows & no storm windows.  We are waiting for Moya's new windows, which will be on second story right side. 

In the above picture you will also notice the new windows on the bottom left side, which is the living room.  Custom made by Marvin Window & installed by local Tod Schlesinger.  We just recently removed the old storm windows causing new noises to get accustomed with.  

The living room window on the side of the house has a tree outside it that is constantly in motion.  At night that moving tree will cause a reflection in the glass that could make one believe a ghostly form is moving in the main hall.

Rattles & bumps come from inside the walls as this Old Gal fights her on going war agaist the unpredictable wind.  Just follow the noise & she'll show you the logical reason for the "unexplained".  Trust her she's been here for 150 plus years & will be here when we are long gone.

The Lessons I've Learned From This Old Lady: Part 1

Moving from a 900 square foot city home to a huge country home has taught me a few important things along the way.  This Old Gal has forced me to be creative, productive & increased my knowledge.

As my husband pointed out in the last blog there are a lot of old and drafty windows here.  This makes for cold winters.

One year the birthday theme was to keep Marnie warm.  My Dad got me a Ciny Lou Who outfit from Pajamagram.  My sister got me an iderdown robe from her job at Lands' End.  I bought flannel nightgowns, shawls & a granny cap.   

Other ways to stay warm were to utilize The Hudson Bay Blanket, given to us as a wedding gift from my Grandparents.  Granted it keeps you warm, but is heavy making one feel like they are in a tightly rolled burrito.  We also have several oil filled electric heaters in use throughout the house.  My husband & I snuggle under an electric blanket while watching T.V..

Never underestimate the power of tea!  The family favorite is a blend of Samurai Chai Mate & Maharaja Chai Oolong from Teavana. 

I also have had to get used to the revolving door of cats & dogs on the property.  We made a decision to have no inside animals once Dax & Sisko passed when we first moved to the farm. 

Our first visitor, Bane whom we call Bandit because he would carry off packages &  other items from our yard or garage.  He also brought items such as a stuffed ape & a kitten.   He belongs to a farm down the rode & is HUGE!

A variety of other furry friends have come & gone from Serenity Homestead.   The roads, winters & coyotes have not been kind to our barn cat friends, all apart of country life as I have learned. We have an invisible dog fence which keeps our girls close & safe.

Top to bottom:  This orange Tabby was named Dexter because of the sheer volume of birds, mice & moles he killed.  Also the best tree climber ever, my husband once found Dexter watching him as he worked in his office.  My husband's home office is on the second floor of our home.  Basil a kitten from the first batch of farm cats & a younger Moya.  Jake was given to us by friends, but felt wondering the country side was more for him.  Dax came with us from the city to the farm, here he waits for Moya's school bus with Erin.  Bane/ Bandit again.  Our Cattle Dog, Calamity Jane snuggling with Pip, a barn cat.  One of Pip's kittens on the way to the vet, Unfortunalty passed shortly after.  Freyja, a Rottie/Boxer mix who just showed up on our doorstep. We've added a crazy Australian Shepard/Border Collie, Rosie to the mix. 

We have also had a number encounters of the wild variety here on Serenity Homestead.  One night my daughter & I returned from Gymnastics. I saw what I thought was a cat eating out of a food bowl by our door.  Lucky for me, my eyes adjusted to night vision before I had petted what was actually a possum.  The little guy slowly moved along as I recovered.  

I was feeding a new batch of farm cats in the Morton shed one night when a skunk decided to join the group.  The cats didn't seem to have a problem with it, but I stood still while it came & went. I was both amazed & freaked!

Lost Toshi, a pet rat, who got out of the rat play pen while outside.  Toshi went under the back step so we set a trap.  We SO didn't catch Toshi.  Skunks not only like cat food but seem to think Cinnamon Toast Crunch is yummy too.

On a side note, you know how Pepe Le Pew bounces along in the cartoons?  I actually looked up from doing dishes one day to see a skunk doing that very thing in our back yard.  We didn't have dogs at the time which was lucky for the skunk, dogs & us.

If any of you have been following us on Facebook, you know we have had a dog & raccoon war taking place here on the farm.  I used to think raccoons were cute.  My time here on Serenity Homestead has taught me otherwise.

Tearing through the porch screen door to get at cat food, not cute.  Notice the very still barn cat squeaky, in last pic.  When I turned on the porch light, it didn't bother them a bit.

Calamity Jane had the farm to herself until Freyja came along.  Calamity would bark at wild life if they dared set foot on her property.  This would bring Bandit from the farm down the road & together they would chase the trespasser away.  Then Freyja came along & violation for trespassing is death not annoying barking.

Freyja with one of the violators, then one of five coons she executed.  Yes, that is me taking a selfie with a dead raccoon with a crazy antler, Christmas hat.  Time out in the country has taught me to be less squeamish & apparently less fashion conscious ;)

I have learned the difference between random barking & raccoon barking.  One morning I found myself running to the barn to find the above scene. Freyja was there, but she is pushing against me to keep me out of "harm's" way.  That is the highest I have ever seen a Cattle Dog jump.  I removed my pack of girls once Rosie the Border Collie used the sturdy Calamity as a vault to get at the Raccoon. One more try she would of had it & chaos would have ensued.

Unfortunantly, Freyja's fight response instead of flight has taken a toll on her & our vet bills. 

Freyja now spends her nights in an outside pen while the other 2 dogs patrol the property & alarm bark at a safe & cheaper distance. 

Join me for Part 2 as I talk about battling rust while cleaning, doing laundry with well water & lessons learned while refurbishing our Old Gal.