We have two large ferns hanging on the front porch. Compared to the flowers we’ve experimented with out there over the years, the ferns did a great job. And, if we take care of them this winter, they can go right back out next spring. We just needed a spot to put them.

The best option is the south facing kitchen window, but we’d still need something to set them on. So, I rounded up a left over 1 x 12 board and a couple scrap pieces of 1 inch lumber from other projects and built a simple bench. I cut and assembled it one night, primed it the next, and put a couple coats of paint on over the weekend.

Now we’ll see if the ferns can manage to survive the winter. If not, I’m sure we’ll find another use for the bench.

For those of you much more handy with needles and yarn than I am, the great folks at The Preemie Project are working on their special hats and booties for Halloween again this year and are looking for creative donations. It’s a great way to add a bright spot for the infants (and the parents) that won’t be enjoying tricks and treats at home this year. For more information on Boo In The NICU and some creative examples, visit The Preemie Project.

Peanut with her Preemie Project Hawkeye Hat

Have I ever mentioned how patient the DW is with me when it comes to certain projects? Let’s just say that this one has gone on for so long that I’ve lost the “before” photos. The dresser was given to us shortly after moving by the DW’s grandmother, who had used it when she was young. It was a dark brown, had four drawers on the left and a large door that covered the right half. We originally used it to store all of Peanut’s medical supplies, but had plans to freshen it up for the girls’ bedroom.

Sometime in the fall of 2014 I carried the dresser to the basement and started to work on it. It was supposed to be a quick project: remove the door, make some repairs, add a couple of shelves, and a coat of paint. The door came off and the first few coats of paint went on in no time. Then the project stalled… for days…. then months… while we got busy on other, bigger, projects. It was to the point I had gotten used to working around it in the basement.

Almost a year in, and I still hadn’t finished putting the shelves in as planned. (The DW had finished painting everything but the shelves at this point.) Determined not to let the dresser celebrate an anniversary in the basement, I took an hour last week and finished the shelves. The DW wasted no time in painting them and a day later the dresser was in the girls’ room.

Finally, finished…

Those of you that follow us know that we like our potatoes. Heck… it wouldn’t make much sense to call the boy Potato Boy if he preferred leafy greens. Ironically, with that said, we haven’t bought a potato in over 2 years – thanks to a big garden. It’d be great if we had perfect potato storage and every potato we grew sat there waiting to be used. Instead, during a winter day miserable enough to keep everyone inside we’ll make twice baked potatoes to put in the freezer.

There’s nothing fancy about it. We’ll make the potato just as we normally would, but instead of throwing the them back in the oven the second time simply let them cool, wrap them in aluminum foil, and throw them in a bag in the freezer. When we’re ready to eat them, we’ll just throw the frozen potato, still wrapped in foil, in the oven. Not to say that it’s so simple anyone could do it, but here are some photos of the help I recruited when we froze some last winter…

My personal favorite: butter, sour cream, cheddar and chives.

I mentioned last week that we dug up the yard, again. This time, it involved our electrical service. When we bought the house, we knew the electrical need updating. Starting at the power company’s transformer all the way through to almost every outlet in the house, the electrical was outdated. After we had a nearby lightning strike late in 2013 that blackened several old-style spin in fuses, the DW and I agreed it was time to make upgrading the electrical a priority and added a new breaker box to our 2014 goals.

The New Breaker Box

The new box went in last year, though not as planned. But, that was only part of what needed to be upgraded. There was still this…

The Main Disconnect

That’s the main disconnect between the power company’s meter and the house. If it looks scary, that’s because it is. It’s also old, and undersized. It’s a 60 amp disconnect… it was installed long before A/C, microwaves, clothes dryers, pumps for deep wells, TVs, etc, etc. To give you an idea of just how undersized, the new disconnect for the house installed by the power company is 200 amps, with two separate disconnects for the outbuildings. (We had become accustomed to not running the dryer while the A/C was running.) The 200 amp disconnect now matches the 200 amp breaker box we installed last year.

The New Pole, Transformer, and Disconnect

The entire upgrade had to carefully orchestrated. First, the power company needed to install the new pole, transformer, and disconnect. Once it was in place, I rounded up my typical crew and we trenched in new wire from the disconnect to the house and shed – hence the mess. Then, the power company, inspector, and electrician needed to show up at the same time to switch the connection from the old to the new.

New Wire Trenched In

Now that the electrical service has been completely upgraded from the transformer to the breaker box, all we need to do is run new wire to the box as we remodel the house room by room. The other great thing is that by trenching in all of the new wire outside, there are no more overhead wires over the driveway and the yard – a nice safety upgrade. This definitely isn’t a glamorous upgrade, but it was needed. Even though we had become accustomed to limiting our energy use so not to pop fuses, it was past time for the upgrade. Why am I so sure – well, when the power company was taking down their old pole and transformer, the old pole was so rotten it splintered and snapped under it’s own weight during the process. Just imagine it trying to hold up a wire coated with ice this winter.

Sissy had her first experience helping video/photograph sale calves this fall at my parents. We use a calf off-screen for the actual calf we’re videoing to follow around. For us, it makes recording the calf a lot easier. Sissy got to lead around the “off-screen” calf all afternoon while we recorded the sale calves one at a time.

Below is a clip from one of the videos. Sissy job was thankless, as you’ll notice you don’t see her or the heifer she was leading anywhere in the clip. Though, I can assure you the heifer in the clip was following them across the lot.

If the video doesn’t display for you above, click here to open it in a new page.

I think Sissy had fun. And even after spending all afternoon together, the two weren’t sick of each other.

I think she’s got her show heifer picked out for next year.

I ran across a “trick” for cleaning strawberries a while back. I didn’t think much of it because I prefer a knife… that is until Lulu wanted to help clean strawberries one day this summer and I figured we might as well try it out.

It’s rather simple… and great if you have little hands that want to help out. Simply insert a straw at the bottom tip of the strawberry and push up, popping the stem out of the strawberry.

Doesn’t get much simpler than that…

When you buy a place as a “fixer-upper” there are certain things you must be willing to accept: living with some things as they are longer than you’d like or living in a constant construction zone during the slow progress of night and weekend projects typically come to mind. But, the one that’s the most noticeable – at least to anyone driving by – is the lawn.

We’ve lived here for about 4 1/2 years now and I only remember a two month period where the lawn wasn’t in some progress of repair from one project or another.

In the beginning, it was some minor landscaping changes we made. But that was quickly followed by the tracks from the lift used to put on the new roof.

Then we tore out the old cement patio and sealed up a couple of the old window wells. And since that was already a big mess, we changed the grade along the side of the house to keep rain water out of the basement.

Can’t forget the mess from the trees we took out of the front yard.

And then there was the big one…

The new well involved trucks, trenches, and piles of mud and drillings.

After all of that, we finally had the lawn green everywhere for two months this summer. That is, until last weekend and this…

For those of you that can’t recognize it, that is the middle of the driveway and the lawn northeast of the house. I’ll tell you all about it next week, but I think it’s safe to say the two month stretch of having everything green is over and it will likely be a long time before everything is green again.

Have I mentioned we’re in the egg business now? Well, not in the formal eggs-by-the-truck-full-from-a-barn-full-of-caged-chickens egg business, but rather the we-have-the-room-let’s-get-a-few-more-hens-and-sell-some-fresh-eggs egg business. What started out as five chickens as a project for the kiddos grew quickly with the addition of a new group of chicks this spring. The timing couldn’t have been better, the chicks arrived and were safely tucked away in the coop the week before the first bird flu case broke and eventually raged through the state of Iowa. (The kiddos learned about Biosecurity without even knowing it.)

Everybody Wants to Help at this Stage

While our set-up isn’t organic (that technically takes a full certification process) and our birds aren’t free range (it would be impossible to protect them from the predators in our area), we take a common sense approach to raising the hens. Simply put, we don’t feed them anything we wouldn’t want in our eggs. They also have plenty of room and a chance to get outside in a protected run where they feast on leftovers from the garden. As the California Dairy Ads used to say “Great milk comes from happy cows,” the same could be said about great eggs coming from happy hens.

Potato Boy Checking a Pullet

Though it’s grown from the five original hens, I’ll still say this has been a great experience for the kiddos as they’ve helped out as the chicks have matured and started laying. Sissy, Potato Boy and Lulu all started out uneasy around day-old chicks and now any of them can easily catch a hen when needed. (Peanut had no fear… until the first time she was pecked.) Plus, you know your egg is fresh when you have to wait for the hen to lay it before you can make breakfast.

Two dozen fresh eggs

In case you’re interested, we still have extra eggs available for $2.00 a dozen. Just get a hold of me or the DW for more information.

Last winter we took the kiddos to the National Mississippi River Museum on a beautiful January day. There’s a spot on the grounds that has a statue of Mark Twain reading a book on a park bench. Of course the kiddos were quick to climb right in along side. I snapped a few quick photos before they scurried off to find the otters.

It wasn’t until we were going through the photos a couple days later that I noticed this one.

Some day I’ll tag a caption on this photo. It may even be funny. Though, if it is, I’m sure it won’t be nearly half as funny as what was actually said on the bench that day.