Water line, Tractor, Peaches and Aprons

I think we could have predicted that nothing in life is smooth sailing. The Saturday after we closed on our new land we went out to visit it. Ryan's uncle and parents both came by since they had been visiting Ryan's grandfather. They mention, almost in passing, as we're on the way out there to mark our driveway, that there might be a water line 20 feet in from the fence row. Wait, what?!? What was the point of all that legalese we had in the offer about how any easements had to be disclosed, anyway? Seriously. So we went searching for signs of the mystical waterline running through the middle of our property. Yep, sure enough. Along one of the fence rows we found this little beauty:

So we called Iowa One Call. This is really what we should have done first, by the way. There is no handy little Standard Work document on how to build a house on blank land in the middle of nowhere. (Yes, I asked. The county came just shy of laughing at me. You just have to figure out what to do next.) Either way, I will tell you that step one: Call Iowa (or Illinois or Nebraska or Alaska or whatever) One Call. Even though there's an easement on file your grandfather-in-law was legally required to tell you about and didn't, Iowa One Call can still locate the blasted waterline before you go digging into it. Luckily, we didn't go digging into it. It could have been way worse. More looking revealed this thing:

Also bad. So our original plan for the driveway was to basically plow through the middle of the land, move a heck of a lot of dirt, and go right to the center of a hill where it was sheltered from the wind. Doing that would have resulted in waterline about waist high 30 feet into our driveway. Instead, we're going to angle our driveway up to go into the house yard.

By the way, Google Earth is So Freaking Cool (it's even to scale!!). Yes, I'm an engineer. No, I don't care that this is not what Google Earth is for. No, I don't care that you now realize the depth of my geekiness. I did draw out my wedding layout on CAD after all, including a diagram of myself in my dress from above so I could be sure the aisle was wide enough for my train. But we digress.
The second step to building a house in the middle of nowhere is to contact the County Engineer for permission to build an access as well as some guidance. We actually did this step first, but that is OK. Next step is the septic guy. We found that out when I went asking about how to get an address, and then we learned we have to apply for the building permit first. And the septic before that. Etc. Etc. 
Today we went to measure this whole thing, and it all ended up moving in and being a little tighter, but we will still probably tweak it again. This enables us to get up to the level of the hill before we hit the water line, letting us avoid hitting it entirely. Not to mention, this is where we wanted our house and building, so this driveway configuration might actually be easier to build.

We measured it with Ryan's 300 ft measuring tape and marked it with flags this evening.

Can you see my beautiful orange flags? I love them. They are the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. Here's Ryan with the measuring tape the first time we attempted this (operation: Straight Driveway Fail).

And here's the ensuing man pow-wow with Ryan, his uncle, and his dad. I love man pow-wows. They crack me up. And no one does man pow-wows quite like a couple of farmers who also happen to be related. 

Yes, Little Z is crawling around in my car in the bottom of the picture. Don't worry, Grandma is holding him. He just wishes he was old enough to be part of the man pow-wow. Don't worry son, soon you will be. Did I mention it has been crazy hot? That is why the dark spot on the back of Ryan's shirt is not a shadow.

We also had our new tractor delivered today. Tri-Green Interstate in Ohio sold it to us, and then they included delivery in the price of the tractor. By the way, they have been FANTASTIC to work with. Ryan searched far and wide for a tractor and settled on this 1988 New Holland 2120 with factory attached backhoe. 

Here he's learning how to use it while his uncle looks on. It's being stored at "the Home Place" while we continue putting together what we need to on our land. 

H insisted I take a picture of her stuffed sheep in this setting. Perhaps I should start a series with that sheep in the foreground and Things happening in the background.

H required a photo of herself as well. We are happy with the tractor, Ryan keeps saying "it's more substantial than I thought it would be." This is a Good Thing. He's not as worried about its ability to pick up a bale now, and thinks the backhoe will reach further than he originally thought it might. 

It's also peach season! Yay peaches! A friend of ours came over to help me can and also to learn about canning in the process. 

We put up about 16 quarts of regular peaches and about 12 pints of spiced peaches. I apologize right now for looking like such a mess in this picture. It was hot. I was working. Ugh.

I will really miss that peach tree when we move. Although we learned you cannot sell them off-farm, they bruise too easily. They are very delicate and our attempt to sell them on the Iowa Food Cooperative ended badly. 

We have some friends getting married in October, so we went to a bride and groom shower for them. I whipped up a couple of aprons using my Williams-Sonoma apron as a template. 

I know they're super wrinkly, I didn't have time to iron them before giving them away! I like how they turned out, and I already had the canvas in my stash. I'm currently working on a couple of other projects (yes, in between everything else), and as usual I'll post when I complete them. 

And of course, current kidlet pictures.

H at her first dance class. WOW did that child love dance class. And I was super impressed at how well she did exactly what the teacher asked her to do (I swear it, even though it doesn't look like it in this picture). 

And Z getting a bath.

A little fuzzy, I know. Sorry, that child Never. Stops. Moving. He is always my Bouncing Baby Boy.

Key, Peaches, and Lunchbox

As of today we are the proud owners of our 20 acres in Madison County. The adventure begins! Ryan went and got the key to the gate today, and I am loving this key.

It is so delightfully retro. Here is the gate this goes to, although you can't see the padlock in this picture. 

So now we get to hit reset on the whole farm thing and start over with a blank slate. I'm terrified, excited, anxious, and a host of other things about it. So far the thing we're leaving that I'm going to miss most is our orchard, which will take at least another five years to get anything established again. On that note:

Peaches!! We have them! Huzzah! Finally we had a winter mild enough and more importantly without major temperature swings to yield peaches. Small, beautiful, white fleshed peaches. I was never a huge fan of peaches growing up, canned peaches have always just been slimy and overly squishy to me. Then we moved here to this tree. We will be planting as many of these pits as we possibly can. 

In this picture I grilled some after we had some brats the other night. A mildly successful experiment, but really not the best way to eat them. I didn't get the nice caramelization that would make this worthwhile. I'll be canning this weekend, and I will try to put up as many as I can while I can!

The turkeys are day ranging now, which is where we just put them in a net area for a few days and then move the net later. They look pretty good, and as usual we had more losses than we would like. However, it was nothing like last year so I think we will be OK for turkey sales this year. 

Miss H started preschool this week! I'm not sure which family member is most excited about this, but I know it is great to have her intellectually occupied. She really was bored at home, and Ryan just couldn't keep up with her the way preschool can. I'm already seeing more imagination from her when she is home as well as better language skills in only a week. Her preschool is also fairly diverse culturally, with families from Turkey and the Middle East. I love that, and I love that she will grow up with multiple cultures around her as "normal" from day one. That is often difficult and unusual in Central Iowa. 

I also dug into my fabric stash to make her a lunchbox, and I purchased some Insul-brite to line it with so it's insulated.

I had always intended this fabric for a jar quilt (a quilt with lots of jars full of various things, usually depicted on shelves), but I've recently decided to stop protecting my fabric stash so fiercely. I don't even have much of a stash by most standards, but it's full of fat quarters that will be happier being used than sitting in my plastic organizer boxes. 

My biggest problem now is finding a tiny bit of time and space to run a sewing machine without kidlets literally underfoot! Little Z's fave thing to do right now is put his weight on my sewing machine foot pedal as I'm trying to work, so I have to guard that pedal carefully and often turn the machine off while I pin seams. 

Just keep swimming!

Chores & Grafting

Ryan went out of town last weekend on a much-needed break, so that meant I covered farm chores for him. Contrary to popular belief, I don't usually do much with farm chores. Just when necessary. Ryan is Mr. Farm Chores. 

I realized we don't usually blog about the day-to-day, so here is "How to do farm chores," Janice style:

1. Get oats from the shop. A staple bucket is about the right size and handy. Keep an eye out for the skunk, he lives there and is currently too smart to be caught. But he stays on the other side of the building...

2. Get a sled of hay. If you're lucky and you're just covering one night, the hay fairy already got you a sled. If you're unlucky, pull apart a big round bale or a small square bale until you have a sled of hay. 

3. Offer the oats to the sheep. This is a distraction. They will try to knock you over to get to the oats. Be strong! Stand firm! This is the sheep version of the "feeder rage" we see in broiler chickens.

4. Pour the oats into an old chicken feeder. Deploy distraction!

5. Go get sled full of hay and dump it into the feeder. The feeder is a farrowing crate turned upside down, and it works really well. Lamb babies are already getting big!

6. Watch lambs eat. This year was much better than last year for lambs, we have around 20 and our mortality rate was closer to 10% instead of last year's 50%+. I'm not sure what happened last year, but either way this year was better. 

7. Roll eyes at the building chicken. All other chickens were moved to the new building, but this one stayed behind. She cleans up oats the sheep leave behind and generally has decided she doesn't want to leave. She doesn't like change. 

8. Get water for the sheep. Carry it back, cursing its weight, and try not to spill it on yourself. 

9. Fail.

10. Go up to the brooder and get the laying hen chicks some feed. Unfortunately, none came out so that you could coo at their cuteness. Laying hens stay cute MUCH longer than broilers. This year we have Black Australorps. We've shown this brooder hood design before, but I have to say it is AWESOME! We are not checking the brooder temperature every couple hours with this thing, they can regulate themselves. 

11. Close the door for the adult laying hens. 

12. Check on the adult laying hens. This is our new building in service, and it's been quite nice. Check that they have water and food, since we now collect eggs in the morning. 

13. Hello gals! We mostly have buff orpingtons right now, with some red stars and other miscellany mixed in. 

And then chores are done! Ryan worked very hard to make it easy for me; the cows have a hay bale in a bale ring and access to a waterer that is hooked to the well and manages itself. They'll be grazing soon, but spring has been late this year so they are still eating hay. 

Ryan also took a grafting class recently, which has been a new experiment. 

We have a couple of grafted apple trees hanging out in the bathroom where they can get light, but not direct light. That pretty, healthy growth you see on the one in the foreground? That's the root stock growing. Sigh. The graft does appear to be taking as well, though. Have you noticed I can't seem to take a picture of the interior of our house without a kid toy showing up somewhere? I have. 

I have been productive quilting-wise, but it is currently all for gifts that have yet to be given and so I can't share yet! I will share after I give the gifts.

As for the kidlets, little Z is growing well and as he should. In this picture, he has recently discovered the joy that is feet. I just LOVE the moment when babies find their feet; H did this too. It is the world's greatest toy! And it's right there, at the end of my leg! Whoa!!
Z can now reliably roll over front to back and back to front, his next step is crawling and he is determined to be mobile as soon as he can manage it.

H is still doing really well as a big sister, although she's trying to find ways to play with her little brother. Here, she is adorning him with post-it notes while he ignores her. She is almost three, and is full of all the drama and discovery that comes with being a three-year-old girl. 

And so, life goes on!

King of the Farm & Pruning Peach Trees

Our ram, Hades, is kind of an ornery old cuss. He's pretty convinced he's cattle, not sheep. This weekend Ryan moved him from being in with his ladies to being with the cows and bull.

Here, the cows are running in fear. It's a stampede!

Note that this ram is smaller even than the calves. But like I said, he is ornery. He and the bull are sparring occasionally, but Hades is winning.

Hades will do anything it takes to be the undisputed King of the Farm. 


We also worked on pruning the peach tree on Friday night. It hasn't been well pruned in years, we were trying to allow it to recover from some ice damage two years ago. Here is the peach tree before pruning:

I did lots of research about pruning peach trees, and apparently they do better with fairly severe pruning. So Ryan and I worked on it for some time and yet still didn't really get it all done.

Some branches had gotten a bit large and overgrown.

It's hard to see the lopers in that last picture, but you can certainly see Ryan trying to cut the branch off! Here are pictures of the peach tree after the pruning:

I feel like my camera is inadequate to capture how much we did cut off, but we really did cut quite a bit. When I was a girl, my mom used to cut branches off our apple tree about this time of year and put them in a vase. The buds still bloom, and are a bright cheerful greeting for spring. Since I had so many branches trimmed anyway, I made a big arrangement.

I will post a picture of it when it blooms fully!


And now for our Hazel pictures of the day. Ryan has some oats right now for our lactating ewes, and he's been filling containers of it for Hazel to throw to the chickens.

She loves this newest activity!

Morning Glories and Peach Jam

I don't have a green thumb. It's just something I have to get over and admit to myself and the world around me. I know as a Farm Wife (yes the caps are on purpose) I should have a fabulous garden, both flowers and veggies. But those of you who read this blog or know me (or both) know that I just don't. So instead, I love my volunteer flowers. The ones that reseed themselves, don't have to be watered, and are pretty. 
Go Morning Glories!!

While the blue ones may be nicer, these purple ones just keep coming up and taking over my porch. I'd be annoyed if they weren't so pretty! So instead, I encourage them. And by encourage, I mean in the fall I spend time on my porch with my daughter picking the seeds off the vine and tossing them back into the garden.

So as I posted a few months ago that our peach tree actually bloomed! It's taken a beating in the snow storms of the past few years, so it didn't make very many peaches. But I did google a white peach jam recipe, and found this one on a blog:
Peach Jam
So I made it today!

Yum. I've tried some, and it's delish.


Lastly, last weekend we went to Kansas City for my high school best friend's wedding. It was totally awesome, and then on Sunday we went to the Kansas City sculpture garden. So I'll close with some pics from the trip!

The giant shuttlecocks are one of the more famous sculptures in KC, although I don't think my daughter saw the artistic significance...

The sculpture in the background is called "sheep piece" because the sculptor's sheep liked to climb all over it. Love it!