Windows on Life

We had our second set of new windows installed this summer, this time in LB’s room. Some of the old frames were left against our garage, waiting for me to put them… well… somewhere.

The wind (which has become a character in and of itself out here) was particularly brutal on Wednesday night (11/11/15). Combined with the rain it reached a level that ultimately caused me to actually pull off to the side of the highway on my way home from Rockford. It was not surprising, then, when I came out in the morning to see that some of the window frames had blown over and were laying in the grass.

One of the more challenging realities of being a “Part-Time Homesteader”[1] is that I’ve had to learn to quickly assess things that need to address and mentally set them aside if I don’t have time to deal with them in the moment. This means leaving things be when I’d really rather just take care of them. But - in this example - I was leaving for work with little margin for error with respect to travel time, and (as is often the case) it was still dark. For a while the need to do this bothered me - and I’m still frustrated when I see the things that I’ve not yet been able to address.

So I was finally able to address it this afternoon. Work gloves let me make fairly short work of the broken glass, and I actually broke out the Shop Vac and vacuumed the grass in hopes of avoiding the dogs opening themselves up on an errant shard.

This was the first opportunity I’d had to look closely at the windows, and what I realized was: the windows were in worse shape than I’d thought.

The example in this picture shows quite clearly that, at some point, an ancestor used metal brackets to keep one of the windows together. The difficulties that we have with these windows, and their ancient nature, aren’t new - previous generations have also had to deal with them. The window appears to be missing anything resembling glazing putty from the bottom of the panes as well, though that might have been knocked loose when they were removed (though I suspect not).

We had considered using these old windows as part of cold frames for growing vegetables through the winter, but the realization that the paint coating them is almost certainly thick with lead suggested that was not the finest of plans. So: for now they sit in the basement, broken, with uncertain futures ahead of them.

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1. “Part-time Homesteader” - what I mean here is that, while it would be great to be in a position to make my entire life and livelihood on the property we have, raising critters and crops thru subsistence farming, the reality is that I have to work to make it all possible. I don’t really regret that - I love what I do - but it very much puts me in two different worlds.  ↩

Autumn is Brief... In the Wind Farm

Autumn is probably my favorite time of year. 

I firmly believe that each season has something to offer, whether it's the budding and blossoming of spring, the outdoors activities that summer invites, or the beauty of a fresh snowfall. But Autumn has its own special nature, with the delight of the harvest, the shift in weather to crisp air that invites you to pull out that old jacket or sweater, and, of course, the beautiful array of colors that comes with the changing of the leaves. 

Here that part lasts about 12 seconds. Or so it seems. 

The naked trees you see are maples - the one in front, with Calamity sitting under it, keeping an eye on me, is relatively small.  The one further back is quite huge.  Anything tree-sized (as opposed to bush-sized) you see in the picture that seems to have anything on it is a pine or fir tree.

As we've detailed here before, our Homestead is nestled in a wind farm, and for good reason. But what this means for autumn colors is that, as the leaves change and begin to lose their hold on the branches from which they sprang forth, the wind rapidly whisks them away to become a carpet of red, brown, and orange across the lawn. One must avail oneself of the opportunity to view the trees in their autumn splendor as soon as one notices them changing, for that opportunity will be brief. 

A carpet of leaves.  But I'm not raking them - no sir!

There is an upside to this phenomenon, however. While the wind - and the number of windy days increases considerably in the spring and fall - denudes our trees too soon for my taste, it does offer the simple courtesy of cleaning up its mess. The first fall that we lived out here we went to the trouble of raking up the leaves. But the yard is big, and we weren't able to get to them all. 

After one particularly windy day I looked out across the yard and realized: the leaves, the ones that we hadn't raked, were gone. 

Haven't raked up a leaf since.

When Your Invisible Fence Disappears...

When we arrived home Wednesday evening I pulled up to the garage door and hit the opener. As the door slowly rolled open I heard it: the telltale sound of the alarm on the invisible fence transmitter, indicating that there was a break somewhere in the fence. 

This is a more familiar sound than one might expect. 

The invisible fence is, overall, a wonderful thing. It was far easier to put in, as well as being less expensive, than a traditional fence. Its also much more reliable  as a means for keeping the dogs in the yard than traditional fencing, not having gates to be left open or spaces for the determined canine to work her way through. And, when there is a fault in the fence, it lets you know. 

But when it goes down, when that alarm sounds, it means it's time for a search. 

Our property is relatively small as rural spots go - a little over two acres. But the invisible fence circles the entire perimeter, which gives a lot of territory to cover. Fortunately, this particular break offered an opportunity to narrow down the area of focus. My cousin, who owns the farm land on three of the four sides of us, had plowed that afternoon. This meant it was likely that he'd accidentally clipped the fence wire with his plow. This had happened before, this past spring, and it seemed too coincidental for these two events to be unrelated. 

When this had happened before I'd gotten lucky. I walked along the edge of the field and came across the wires, sticking up out of the ground, clearly cut. Of course, that time I'd discovered it in the daylight. This time I was getting home at 8 in the evening, and the sun had long since set. Still, I grabbed a flashlight, put the dogs in their pen, and started walking the edge of the field. 

My cousin saw me doing this and drove up alongside with the tractor. He asked if I was looking for something, and I explained the situation. "Well shit" he said "I'm sorry about that". He helped me look for a while, but it was clear that we weren't going to find it in the dark. It's hard enough to tell, from looking and memory, where exactly the fencing wire runs. And each time my cousin plows or plants the landscape changes slightly, changing the landmarks in subtle ways. 

One might wonder: why is he plowing close enough to the edge of the property to hit the invisible fence?  And the answer is that the fence installer (yours truly) did not have the foresight to consider farm activity when he put the wiring in, instead opting for going out as far out to the edge of the yard as seemed possible. I didn't allow for a safety margin in that respect, and so the fencing is vulnerable to any mishaps with respect to plow placement. At some point I will likely need to re-run sections of the wiring to correct for that error - something that occurred to me multiple times as I was searching for the break - but for now I simply wanted to get it all back up and working. 

Even in the daylight it's hard to fiind things along here...

I gave up for the evening and took the morning off of work the following day to undertake my search in light of day. After multiple passes, even in daylight, turned up nothing, it occurred to me that I was not actually 100% sure where the line ran, and so could not be sure that I was actually looking in the right places for a break. It was time for some problem-solving - I am a man of science, after all. 

I started by digging a series of small trenches perpendicular to the fence in order to uncover the wiring (in the process of which, I managed to cut the wire myself on one occasion). I spaced these out in positions across the edge of the yard so I could extrapolate the position of the wire between them. Then I put down stakes and garden fence posts, and ran string between them to determine the line that the wiring was following. 

I felt pretty darn clever about doing all of this and, indeed, it made it clear that I wasn't always looking in the right place. In some cases, the wiring was several inches, and sometimes up to a foot or more away from where I'd been searching. And, of course, now that I knew where the wiring should be I could focus my search in the correct area which, of course, yielded... 

...Nothing. I still could not find the break. 

During all of this activity a colleague had texted me with an article about using an RF Choke and a handheld AM Radio to locate the break. The gist of this is that additional device causes the fence to emit a signal even though it's broken, and the radio reads the signal. In places where the fence is broken, the signal changes or stops. Amazon turned out to have a pre-made version of this available, so I ordered it up and planned to address it over the weekend. Given that we've had to address this issue more than once over the past couple of years, it made sense to have something on hand to more quickly detect the breaks. 

Wire Break Locator kit as it comes in the box

The kit that came contained, ostensibly, everything needed to find a break in the line. Unfortunately, the little transistor radio that it included - which looked to have cost approximately $0.23 to make - worked for about 30 seconds after I opened it. This send me on a different search. 

It really isn't terribly surprising, in this day and age, but it is fiendishly difficult to find a store that carries handheld AM/FM radios any longer. Indeed, part of the reason that I had ordered the complete kit through Amazon was that the original article my colleague had sent suggested that the reader "run down to Radio Shack" to pick up the parts needed - and Radio Shack has been gone for a little while now...

No place in town seemed to have radios, so I took a shot at Wal-Mart in Peru. I generally regard entering a Wal-Mart as an event equally as pleasurable as having a root canal performed, but I was desperate to get this project up and running. And, it turned out, the hated big-box store did actually have two different options for portable radios. The one I picked looked slightly more robust than the one that had come in the kit - perhaps costing up to $0.27 to build - so I also picked up some batteries and tried it out in the parking lot to make sure it worked before I headed for home. 

Neither of the radio options at Wal-Mart had an external speaker, so I had to go with headphones.  Does anyone else besides me remember that Memorex used to be an audio casette tape company? 

This is the setup you walk the fence using.  The handle telescopes, and the radio is attached to the end of it with zip ties.  Not very fancy, but it is effective.  Unfortunately, the headphones weren't quite long enough for me to fully extend the handle and still use them, and while I'm certain I have a headphone extension cord somewhere, I absolutely could not find it (of course), so I spent a lot of time hunched over while I was searching.

From there it worked like a charm. The kit put out a signal that the radio picked up, and I was able to find and repair the breaks - there were two of them fairly close to one another on the north side of the property. The repairs themselves, once you find them, are really pretty easy to perform, and there are few things as satisfying as plugging in the transmitter and NOT hearing the alarm going off any longer. 

Plus the dogs were happy because they could now run free.

Once you actually find the break it's a pretty simple repair.

Ever Changing Scenery

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the bales are big, nearly waist high.  

Every fall, when they take the living fence down they aren't yet finished with the corn. The ears are gone, sucked up through the teeth of a giant combine and spit back out into the back of a slightly less giant truck, but the remnants of the stalks and husks remain.

In most cases they are simply left there to be plowed into the soil in preparation for the next season. Here, however, something different happens, and use is made of those leftovers. It offers yet another (albeit brief) change in the scenery, a part of the joy of living out here. And, though I am just a spectator, it makes me feel good to see additional use made of the corn plant, makes it seem somehow more productive and useful.

Don't Be Afraid of Making Bread

We love our rural homestead.  Our country home provides sanctuary from our busy, high-tech & stressful lives.  In the six years we have lived here we have learned to become more self-sufficient.  We can't just run to a corner store to get what we need.  

While living in Rockford we became accustom to tasty, crusty bread by La Brea bakery found in several of Rockford's grocery stores.  There are also several local bakeries that turn out soft on the inside & crusty outside breads, Mary's Market being one.

Moving to the country limited our access to our favorite breads, which is no small thing to our family.  A crusty bread completes a meal, like homemade spaghetti sauce or freshly made soup.  I have never considered myself a baker & have avoided baking breads or pie crusts. A month or so ago I made a curried zucchini soup that needed a great crusty bread to complete it. So I was left with two choices:  1)  Settle on a soft lesser bread.  2) Try my hand at baking bread.   

I choose to brave the bread baking world to make sure my soup had an complimentary partner.  I found a Rosemary bread recipe on-line. 

I also had to give myself a swift kick in the butt.  My Mum worked hard to teach me the kitchen basics & over the years I've built upon those skills.  At a very young age I watched my Scottish Grandma make a family shortbread recipe as well as meat pie crust.  My Ukrainian grandmother was always busy in the kitchen making a variety of pierogi, cabbage rolls & other Ukrainian favs.  Some of these family foods I have made, some are on my things to learn list.

Bread making was not on my learn list, but why?  I've learned to do so much, why sell myself short & deprive myself & my family of homemade bread?  There was no good reason other than I was afraid to fail. 

Rosemary Boule made with fresh rosemary from our garden.  In the background is my Emile Henry ceramic Dutch oven, which makes a great crusty bread.  I never knew a dutch oven could be used for bread making. 

A lovely vegetable soup, curried zucchini soup.

http://southernfood.about.com/od/soupandstew/r/bl60804c.htm

While looking for the original bread recipe, I tripped across a wonderful bread making book. 

My first Kindle cookbook.  In my effort to de clutter my house I have dramatically diminished my cookbook collection.  There is a learning curve to Kindle cookbook use, but worth it.  Yes, there is a hardcover version too.

This book makes bread making easy & accessible to everyone.  It doesn't matter if you are a novice cook or have a crazy schedule.  The authors have created recipes that require no kneading  & can sit in the fridge for 2 weeks.  That means you have dough ready to pull out, shape, rest &  bake.  Mix the ingredients in a dough bucket, sit on kitchen counter to rise for 2 hours & put in the fridge.  

When you want to bake a loaf, pull out & cut a grapefruit size, quickly shape & let rest according to the directions.  Then follow directions for baking to get your fresh artisanal bread.  During rising, resting & baking go about your every day routine.  

A fridge of bread doughs, a bucket of master recipe & a bowl of honey wheat dough.  I'm willing to give up some fridge space for fresh bread. 

The smell of fresh baked bread makes a home cozy, friendly & balanced.  The smell just makes one feel right.  With my husband's crazy schedule, that homemade bread brings him peace.  Tuna salad on fresh rye bread or honey wheat for his work lunch makes his day just a bit better.

Aunt Jean & her daughter Jesse, shared their love of Penzeys spices.  I have used their caraway seeds & lovely cinnamon to enhance my breads.  Finding higher quality ingredients makes a better end product.

Thanks to Jim & Julia, my in-laws, I have access to Amish made butter.  Just takes the bread to a new level. 

Butter crock to keep butter fresh & soft.  Also a linen bread bag to keep bread crusty on the outside. 

Baked rye while I canned some dilly beans from my garden. 

We are known for our tech savvy in this home, known for our iPhones & iPads.  Known for our love of movies & tv shows like Marvel, Sci-Fi, historical dramas & fantasy.  What would amaze most people at how often they could come to our house & find us chatting in the kitchen with no electronic devices.  We are gathered there because that's where I'm finishing bread or some canning.  Getting back to the basics has helped us slow down & connect as a family.  We use the dining room often to chat, play games or music while enjoying some new freshly made cocktail.

If I can do it so can you;) 

Puttering around my kitchen helps calms my mind & reinvigorates my soul.  Love to be next to my husband as we work on dinner together.  Love to pass down to my daughter what I've learned from the generations before.   When I stand back & look at my table full of newly canned vegetables & fresh bread, I take great comfort & joy knowing that I am simply continuing the traditions this house has seen so many times before.  That I am just another lady of the house bringing her own touch to this 154 year old legacy.

Reflections

With the passing of my 45th year I find myself reflecting on life on the Homestead.

When MLW asked me if I wanted to go out somewhere for a birthday dinner I gave it a bit of thought and said "no - I'm thinking pizza, in". While I enjoy a nice meal out, frankly few things seemed more attractive than spending a relaxing evening at home.

This was the thought when we first made the decision to buy the homestead - that it would be our vacation proxy, our place to relax and get away from the world. Still, the opportunity presented itself at an inconvenient time - LB was deep into competitive gymnastics, and we hadn't really had an the time to set aside the type of nest egg we would have preferred before taking on this type of project. In fact, in the year or so before the opportunity presented itself, we - or perhaps I - had actually reconciled to the idea that we'd be staying for the long-term in the little 1950's era pre-fab home we had in the suburbs of Rockford.

Moving was a romantic notion and, frankly, didn't make a lot of logistical sense. We were still heavily connected to Rockford with my work and LB's gymnastics. And for a while, early on, with the economic downturn making things hard on everyone, all around, including us, it wasn't clear that it would work out.

But it did.

Looking back, reflecting on those times, we almost didn't take the chance, take the risk. MLW fought for it, serving as she so often does to help me look past the practical to the magic of what can be. As I delight in taking refuge in our little Homestead I'm glad she did.

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.

---

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.