Closet, Green Boy Quilt, and Jenga

As is typical every few months, the tractor died. This time it died down the road from our place about a half a mile while moving hay. It appears to have been due to junk in the fuel line, but I did remember to take a picture this time. It's a measure of how far we've come since moving to the country that I just brought Ryan the truck, he chained up the tractor, and I drove the truck while he steered the tractor back to the house with a minimum of fuss. Then he was able to clear the fuel lines without a lot of trouble and get her running again. All of that seems small, but there was a time when it would have been a big deal!

Adjusting to the new house is going well, it's kind of nice we are close to the cattle when they are in some pastures. One morning I woke up to this outside our window; all of the calves were just hanging out in the sunrise.

Obviously I took that picture through the screen on the window, sorry about that.

As for the house itself, we've continued to work on small tasks. Here is H's closet with some shelves hung on the wall. I still have one more bar to hang to the right of the shelves, but I think it will serve her well. 

We also got the last retaining wall done, next will be the deck. We have that scheduled for early-mid August, so we will see how that goes!

Ryan also had an interesting adventure one day last week. So marijuana is a weed in Iowa. Not the kind you can smoke or make hemp out of, but its more boring cousin. It grows 7 feet tall all across our property where the soil was disturbed (which is most of the property) and we didn't get it mowed while it was still 1-2 feet tall. It's relatively resistant to any kind of herbicide (and if we spray it, other things around it tend to also die), and the stalks are also fairly thick and hard to cut. So Ryan was contemplating buying a machete. Then he thought about the sword his mother gave him for an 18th birthday present. While I thought this sounded fairly crazy, he sent me evidence that the crazy idea of cutting down the weed with a sword actually worked:

On the quilting front, I finished the quilt for my new nephew (Ryan's sister's son) who was born in March. It was inspired by "Snowflake Baby Girl Quilt" by MelissaHevey on Etsy. 

Here's the back, pieced with scraps:

And a detail with the tag. 

The kids are doing well, here they are playing in the sandbox:

Ryan's dad reads to Z (Cowpoke Clyde and Dirty Dawg - that book is so fun. We love it and read it a lot).

Z plays (as always) with things with wheels. That is a car on top of a tractor that is pulling a manure spreader (he calls it a trailer) that is carrying another two or three trucks.

And last night we went to Sunset in the Vineyard at Penoach Winery. It was a beautiful night with great music, and we enjoyed playing Giant Jenga that they had set up. The band is behind me while I take this picture. 

And then, of course, the inevitable always happens at the end of Jenga....

Sheathing and Siding

Time flies when you're building a house (and it also crawls). Since last posted, framing and outside house sheathing are done. Here's the main floor being framed:

And the rafters going up:

 Rafters going up, but from a different angle:

And then sheathing and housewrap on:

And windows in:

Now they are working on siding, starting with the back of the house. They have the back of the house done (the East wall), were working on the south side today when we stopped by, then will do north and west.

This is primed, but not yet painted. We're putting up composite fiberboard, and it looks nice. Also, our siding guy is Nate from Executive Exteriors and I could not sing his praises loud enough. That guy is AWESOME. Creative, communicative, problem solving, everything I would want in a contractor. If I didn't already have a roofing guy I liked, I would hire him to do my roof too. Highly recommend.

In my last (very short) post, I posted a poem about wanting the tractor to work. So I snapped this picture for you from my car when I followed Ryan to the guy down the road who fixes tractors. It was very snowy and slick, and following a tractor at 10 miles an hour on slippery roads caused me to twice have to back up on a hill, wait for the tractor to clear that hill, and then take the hill at a run in order to get over it. My tires would just lose traction halfway up the hill with no momentum to carry me over, meanwhile two kids in the back are saying, "Mommy, why are we going backward? What happened? Where's Daddy?" and "Tractor! Tractor! Traaaactoooorrr!!!!" (guesses on which kid is which?). 

In sewing news I haven't done much, but I did get my sewing machine fixed. When I did, the repairman told me that I have 249 hours on my sewing machine. That's all well and good, but sewing machine motors die at about 250 hours. Sigh. So I'm likely to need a new sewing machine soon, but that will probably wait until we know what kind of house overages and whatnot we are dealing with.

I did also make H a pair of slippers, which she loves but the pattern did not actually work well. I think her feet are too big and they needed to have more structure in them.

I'll have to take a crack at another pair, I think, or modify this pattern to my satisfaction.

Kids are doing well, it was cold and snowy earlier this week but then warmed up. While we did our taxes yesterday, a lovely friend of mine watched them and they got to draw on her driveway with sidewalk chalk.

 I think it's kind of funny that kids don't really get the connotations that come with chalk outlines, instead to them they are just chalk outlines. This is also something they never really got to do at our old farm as there wasn't much of a driveway, and sidewalk chalk doesn't work on gravel. I'm not sure what kind of driveway we will end up with at the new place. 

So until next time, stay warm! Spring is still coming!

Poem: A Farmer's Dream

This morning a poem came to me while I was doing dishes, and I thought I would share it with you. Don't judge my poetry too harshly!

A Farmer's Dream

I dream of a tractor that works,
of snow that falls gently.
Of bright sunny days so grass can grow.

I dream of dirt that is soft
with life that teems through it,
and yields to the scoop of my hand.

I dream of breeze-filled Summers
and crisp Winter days,
with long Springs and Falls in-between.

But mostly, I dream,
Of a tractor that works.

Poop

Sometimes being a farm wife is about poop. I spent about 4 hours today helping Ryan chase cows onto our trailer, and he took two loads out to the new farm. The third load is on the trailer now to be taken out tomorrow, and we have one more load to go after that. Today I learned that cow poop is a very slippery substance, but I managed to not plant myself in any of it. Ryan did manage to get too close to a cow in the close confines of the trailer and was less lucky. I also came in from one of these herding sessions to a very dirty diaper on my son, hence my revelation. At least the majority of the cattle are moved, but that last load could be a real bear.

The other poop-related thing that happened is that we got our septic on-grade lines installed. These are like laterals, but not buried because the new farm's soil is heavy clay without much drainage. We were supposed to have a basement dug on Friday or Saturday, but that didn't actually happen. So here's the picture of the on-grade lines before they get covered with dirt:

In other farm news, on one of the trips today the cows did this to the trailer lighting wires:

If you remember, our trailer lighting was already pretty jury-rigged. So Ryan brought home a new connector and we now have a more sophisticated jury-rigged trailer light set! This time around we had enough slack to run the wires along the top of the trailer, with ny-ties holding it in place and the extra slack wrapped around. It's classy looking.

My caution toward doing my own work on my car is fading a little, at least with some tasks. I know, I know, I'm a mechanical engineer. But still, I don't touch my own car. But when a headlight burned out and was already cracked and yellowed, I decided I was going to replace it myself. It was going to cost me $180 in labor only to have a shop do it, so I turned to YouTube. Love YouTube, so very helpful in telling me where all the fiddly little clips and screws were. 

The result is a headlight that now matches the other one (it was always much clearer because Ryan hit a deer and it had been replaced last year) and works! Ha!

No sewing news this time because my machine is in the shop for 3 weeks. :-(

Halloween was this week, and I apologize for the terrible pictures of my kids. H was Belle, and Z was a cowboy. 

H did fine with the whole trick-or-treat thing, and Ryan even made up a joke for her:

Knock Knock

Who's there?

A Kid.

A Kid who?

A kid who wants candy!

It went over pretty well and we did have about a half dozen people ask for it. 

With Z we mostly focused on "Thank you" and "Bye", he doesn't have the Trick-or-treat down at all. He also pronounces "Bye" with a "D", so was waving and cheerfully yelling "Die!!" at people all night. 

All in all, a pretty good time was had by all, but Z wanted to ride in another kid's red wagon so badly that it was apparently tantrum-worthy.

Driveway and Steampunk

So recently we decided we weren't going to be able to make much progress on the driveway at the pace we were going. Here are some pictures Ryan took in early November after he did some more dirt moving.

He was making some progress, but the little tractor's backhoe was badly underpowered for the amount of dirt that needed to be moved.

A lot of the work was in taking down the trees, which Ryan did do. So we hired a local guy to dig the driveway. One Monday Ryan went out to the site to do more tree clearing and found this waiting for him:

So with the right tools, the guy did it in about a day. I feel fully vindicated by the whole process because everyone kept telling me how crazy this driveway was going to be, and it was going to be steep, and yadda yadda yadda. But I did the math (those of you who know me are not surprised by this) and suspected it would actually work quite well. You can see the road off to the left in the picture above, so you can also see that the driveway isn't parallel to it. Yet I think it's perfect and it avoids the dreaded waterline the county decided they didn't want in the ditch.

Here is the equipment the guy used to dig the driveway; he's not messing around:

I was mad at Ryan for not taking a picture of his little tractor next to this monstrosity of a backhoe just to show how big it is.

We also now have gravel on this driveway, but we haven't been back out to look at it. I'll post pictures next time. Everyone seems to keep asking me whether we will pave it, and the answer is definitely no. This is one of those country/city things, I think. Not only would it be expensive (the driveway is something like 200 feet long), but you actually don't want a paved driveway if you are going to drive a tractor or other equipment on it. It's hard on both the driveway and the equipment tires (and those suckers are PRICEY!). 

Now back to the old place, we discovered that cattle will eat fallen leaves if they are raked into a bit of a pile. That and loaf in it. Here a mama and relatively new calf had a very autumn moment together. We don't manage our herd access to bulls very closely, so we basically have calves at any given time. We had one born just a couple of weeks ago. So far our cows have done very well with this, which is nice. Cattle have a long lead time to beef, but they are some of the easiest animals we deal with.

Sheep also spent some time in the front yard right before moving to their winter pasture. I love that sheep mean you really don't have to mow the yard. It's extremely easy to see where the manicured yard idea came from, because after the sheep our front yard really does look like someone mowed it. I think we had the mower out about 3 times all summer. The yard is a little brown in this picture just because the sheep had been there too long. You can also see cattle in the background on their winter pasture; we have quite a herd going. 

Another thing that happened this month was that I turned 30. Not much of a milestone, but a little one just the same. A lovely friend of ours hosted a joint costume birthday party for me and her husband (who turned 30 about a week before) and we decided to go steampunk. (Don, before you ask me what steampunk is, click the link and Wikipedia will tell you....) We were more "steam" than "punk" generally.

I had great fun making a costume. Ryan found this duster on Craig's List and made his fake gun out of a variety of parts. I made him a vest and kerchief. Z we just put in a vest we happen to own, he wasn't very steampunk. But at the age of one, he wouldn't keep any of that stuff on anyway. I'm wearing a corset I got years ago from Forever 21 and has been hanging in my closet, along with a basic button up shirt. Then I made a hat and used some safety pins to pin up the skirt I wear with my renaissance garb over a petticoat I'll be wearing under a bridesmaid dress for my brother's wedding next month. 

I also made a necklace out of odds and ends from Michael's craft store, among other places. 

Here is the skirt pinned up. This worked pretty well, but the petticoat was definitely needed as well (and is under the skirt in this picture). 

And here's a closer view of the hat.

Here's H, who is actually wearing an Alice in Wonderland dress my parents had custom made for me at about her age. It's a little big for her, but it was OK and I steampunked it up a little bit. The hat had some cards (a queen of hearts, a 10 and a 6 in nod to the mad hatter) and feathers on it, along with a white rabbit. She's playing with a key and glass vial I had at her waistline, and there were a few gears scattered throughout. She LOVED wearing her hat and would not take it off. 

In other crafting, I tried my hand at ombré dyeing. I have a quilt idea in mind, but couldn't find an ombré long enough, so I decided to make my own. I rigged up what can only be termed a "contraption" in our kitchen sink to do this, while Ryan looked askance at me and tried very hard not to ask. I used supplies from Dharma Trading Company, and I have to say I highly recommend them. Good prices, fast delivery, good tutorials. I actually decided to mix up super concentrated dye, then lower the fabric a little at a time while also adding water. I think it worked better than trying to mix in dye and raising the fabric up out of the water if that makes any sense. I took enough pictures for a tutorial if anyone wants one (leave a comment and I'll post one). 

And here is the result! I'm very happy with it, it will suit my needs perfectly. I didn't need perfectly straight lines because I'll be cutting it up for a quilt. I just needed a smooth progression. Hopefully you'll see the quilt someday too!

Ryan also insists I post a picture of my Thanksgiving schedule.

Is this unusual? Don't other people do this? I save it every year, and then pull it out the next year and rewrite it. I still inevitably forget to put something on the schedule anyway, this year it was the stuffing. It doesn't take long, though, and I so far have always managed to remember it. We had a small Thanksgiving this year, with only seven adults and only my two kids. It was kind of nice to not have 16-20 people in my house, though. 

As usual, the kids are growing well. Here H is showing me a "friend bug" she caught. She has named box elder bugs friend bugs because they are slow moving (translation: easy to catch), do not bite, are common, and are surprisingly long lived in captivity. She doesn't much like spiders, but she could catch friend bugs all day.

Z celebrated his one year birthday, and Ryan's parents brought us a cupcake for the occasion. He basically posed for this picture. 

It's like these two pictures of the kids are the same pose! They are each a variation of "Look what I have, Mommy!!"