Dirt Moving and Little Bat

Today is a red letter day. Why, you ask? Because today Ryan became a farmer. We've been farming six years or so, but today Ryan became a Farmer. Today, he fixed our tractor. It wouldn't start, and so he did some consulting with his uncle, went to the parts store, did some praying and cursing, and got it working! I'm so proud. It was a clogged fuel filter. 

Here's where it died; thankfully he got it off the road with its momentum as it died so that it could sit while he worked on it. This is particularly good because it sat there for a few days while Ryan did his troubleshooting.

And yes, you see dirt in its bucket! Hurray! Ryan has started construction on the driveway!

I'm excited to see progress. He's also been working on the orchard, and already has some trees planted.

I don't have any finished quilting or sewing items this post, but I did make good progress at a quilt retreat this last weekend. Hopefully I'll have something soon to show you.

With Halloween coming up, H got to be a bat at dance class last week. 

In other activities, we went to the science center two weeks ago and the kids had a good time.

Z had a blast chasing balls around at the ball wall,

And H built giant carbon nanotubes with Grandpa. 

The weekend before that we went to the Covered Bridge Festival in Winterset, since I figured it is our new equivalent to Pella's Tulip Time. They had the greatest "toy" for kids there - a 10 or 12 foot sandbox full of corn. The kids loved it and played with it for probably an hour. better than sand as far as I can say. Less messy, easier to manipulate, less of an issue if they try to eat some (although still not good), etc. 

I also recently finished up my MBA finance class. I'm sitting the current class out until next summer because I just have too much going on right now. At the end of her nap H came down and saw me working on homework, so she asked for a piece of paper and pencil too. I love her rendition of what my homework looks like. My little engineer!

I also captured a picture to try to show Z's eyes right now, which are a perfect shade of hazel. Ironic, I know. I'm not sure if they will stay there or darken to brown. If you're wondering about the two fingers, he has been sucking on those fingers from the day he could get coordination together to get them into his mouth. Always the first two fingers on his left hand, he's not a thumb sucker. 

And that's all I have for today. Goodnight Moon!

Turkey loading and modern placemats

They say the days are long but the years are short. I definitely experience that whenever I decide it's time for a blog post and discover it's been a month since my last one.

Ryan's been working on our new farm quite a bit, mostly chainsawing to clear out trees for our driveway. He's making progress, although slower than both of us would like. 

We're also finishing out our primary growing season, so Ryan has been to the poultry locker twice in the last week and a half and the lamb locker once. Animals are actually looking to be normal weights this year! First time in three years we have a normal batch of turkeys. Still higher loss rates than we would like, but a normal batch is much appreciated. 

We load turkeys in the dark (otherwise they are very difficult to catch!), so I snapped a shot of them on the trailer. 

And what would farming be without something jury rigged somewhere? In this case, it's trailer lights. Our trailer lights don't work because, frankly, they're probably older than I am. We have a trailer lighting kit, but it's for a car being towed and doesn't exactly mount to an ancient livestock trailer well. 

If you're thinking: "Duct Tape!" you would be right. Except we didn't have any handy. That means electrical tape!

Yeah, this lasted about 60 miles before Ryan had to bungee it. I tried. 

We have a fox around the farm again (big surprise). About a week before the first turkeys went in to the locker, the fox got one moments before Ryan saw it, so I can now say I have field dressed a turkey. It wasn't actually as bad as I expected and it was delicious. I know, horrible picture. I forgot to take one when I had more than one piece left because it was yummy and we ate it first. 

I've been doing a little quilting, I had a friend request some placemats. She's young and far cooler than me, and considers pink to be her signature color. So I whipped up some placemats for her. 

I have enough pictures taken for a tutorial for these, but I don't know if anyone wants one. So leave me a comment or send me an email if you want one. 

H and Z and I had a bit of a date at a local place called Goldie's in Prairie City. Best tenderloin in driving distance. H was all three-year-old, in full princess getup. 

Here she is in crown, tutu, "necklace", and "wand". Yes, that is a ball of rubber bands beside her. No, I'm not sure why.

Z has been taking halting steps, he takes a couple and then falls down. 4 days shy of 11 months old, and that kid is walking.

Still no movement on selling our current farm. Sigh. Hopefully soon, but I don't know how optimistic to be as we head into fall!

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!

August Catch Up Post

I don't have an excuse for not posting, other than I just don't have the bandwidth for it lately. Life is too crazy around here. New job, two young children, moving a farm, buying land, working on my MBA, contracting for a new 30' x 50' farm building, crazy. But those are excuses. Sorry! So I'll kind of do a catch-up post here.

It looks like we will close on our new land on Sept 3rd or so. We're trying to find a tractor for sale that we like before that happens because we can qualify for a loan program if it's before we buy the land, but so far we're not finding what we want. 
Here's a picture of part of our new land, in the middle of a small locust tree grove. It was quite lovely in June, although we're going to have to cut and bulldoze a driveway out of that bad boy. 

Here's a picture of the pasture ground, with a little of that grove showing in the background.

In preparation for selling our place, we've been doing various things including staining the deck and replacing the living room carpet. The stain was a bunch of mistints all mixed together, and at first I thought it was too RED. But it has grown on me and I like it.

Before (basically no stain left, since we hadn't stained since we moved in):

After:

And here's a wider shot with the red deck:

The red has faded a bit already since it's not so fresh, and it's softer now in a good way.

I've been doing a little bit of crafting, mostly small projects. H is in a kind of summer preschool program put on by a friend of mine, and I was supposed to embroider a napkin for her to use at mealtimes. H asked for "yellow elephants" on her napkin, so that's what I embroidered for her.

I also made a small charity quilt out of scraps I found when cleaning up my quilting supplies. I used the opportunity to practice quilting feathers, which I think I improved through the practice.

H loves to "help" do various tasks and chores, which really is good. She is, of course, not good at them yet, but her willingness lets us teach her.

Tearing up bread for a topping for a casserole (boy, was this a GREAT task for a toddler! Tear it up, it doesn't matter how, and the food processor blades can't run with the lid off):

Watering plants:

And washing windows:

Before starting my job, I took a very quick trip with Little Z up to my childhood camp in Northern Wisconsin. My feelings about going there were well summed up by this sign that they've added recently:

If I have one spot in the world that I consider to be "mine," it is this rock:

I don't know why, but that rock is just the perfect place at camp. It is a little secluded from the cabins, but you can still see what's going on with the sailboats and everything else. I can almost smell the pine trees just looking at this picture. 

On the way up there, Z and I stopped at one of the Grottos, this one in Wisconsin somewhere. Wow. World class ugly, that thing is. Can't believe someone spent his life cementing pieces of junk together as an homage to his faith and America ('Merica?).

We also did our annual outing to the Iowa State Fair about a week ago, where we spent eight hours there and succeeded in finding a company to build a building on our new land. We're really looking forward to building what we need and not cobbling together functionality from buildings that don't really suit us. 

At the end of a long day, H is a little tired:

And with that, the kiddos need me. Sigh. Keep on swimming!