Dayton

We went to Dayton today because Jettes aunt is in the hospital and it sounds like it will be the last chance to see her.  It is a 2.5 hour drive so it took most of the day. My grandma had surgery today.  She has a tumor which was causing pain.  That is all for today.

Hopefully I will get to better things and not be so tired soon.

A big day...

...but a short blog.

The only eventful thing is that we signed to sell the old house. Finally!  The Realtor put the lockbox up and he will put it on the MLS and put the sign up on Monday.  It is almost unreal but very exciting.

After that all we did is clean the old house and pack more things.  We have so many things!  It is kind of ridiculous.  We have donated so many things and there is still too much.  I must be a borderline hoarder but at least I throw away garbage.  We are moving everything out to the garage for now so the house can be thoroughly cleaned.

nil

I have absolutely nothing good to say about today.

Lunar Eclipse

The clouds stayed away just long enough to see the supermoon eclipse peak.  It was the perfect weather for it and a great way to end the day.

We went in to Toledo to meet my cousin Jim and his mom for breakfast.  After that we stopped in at the old house to take out another load.  I am running out of room for more so it is good that there is not much left.  We also stopped at Menard's to get a few things to keep projects going out here.  I am looking for a yard wagon that I can pull by myself.  It will be nice to move wood or pulled weeds or tools around the farm.  Menard's had one on sale but I deemed it to be too small.  Liz Bergman had one that we used haul in harvests.  It is hard to believe that I wrote all about mowing the yard and forgot to complain about cheap ventless gas cans.  The one I have has a faulty gasket so the fuel leaks out.  This new one we got today will hopefully be an improvement.

No real work was done on the house today except for unpacking.  Jette and I threw a slow cooker full of soup together so we have something to eat later this week.  We attempt to do some meal planning and cooking ahead for the week on Sunday.  Jim came over for dinner.  It was a lasagna inspired casserole that we assembled yesterday.  We usually use ravioli instead of lasagna noodles but sometimes both.  I do not know if we have ever made one exactly the same as another.  It often depends on what we have and what sounds good.  This time we added meatball for the first time.  It was on the runny side but still very good.  Jim joined us and brought some bread.  I cut it in half lengthwise while Jette mixed some garlic butter together with some parmesan cheese I grated.  You spread the garlic butter on (add some extra mozzarella if you have it) then wrap it up foil so it can be warmed up in the oven as the lasagna is finishing.  Great dinner then a great eclipse.  If I get a great night of sleep then SUPER!  Goodnight supermoon,

End of season clearance camper and another appointment with The Doctor

Over the past few months they have been repaving Road 3 from Airport Highway all the way the next county south called Henry.  The final step of painting the lines has finally been done and the construction signs have come down.  They left the small wire and plastic flag that was the marker for where the sign would go.  I went to go pull it out and saw two bolts, washers and nuts.  It most likely is what held the sign on the post.  They will go in box in the barn and may be needed some day.  I say that about WAY too many things.  Funny thing is that when I finally do get rid of something useful I end up needing it the next week!  That is life.

Many people are getting rid of their TV.  Not over here.  One of today's biggest accomplishments was programming the cable remote so that it can run the TV too.  This may not be much to some people and all it took was a few button presses but I am not a real techie person so it made me feel good to figure it out.  We found the remotes instruction ad code list.  There is even a code for the Xbox so now I can turn it off and on as well as navigate menus with the cable remote. Go me.

The biggest news around the house is that Jette used the washer and drier for the first time.  I do lots of the house cleaning chores but laundry is something she has hung onto.  I am not complaining.  The laundry room has been done for weeks now but neither the washer or the drier would work at first.  It ends up I had turned the water and gas lines off while they were not being used.  It was an easy fix.  Even though the laundry room is hopelessly small and crammed full with the furnace and hot water tank Jette is very pleased that it all worked.  It was laying heavy on her mind not knowing if or how laundry would work out here.  This goes a long way in easing her mind.

The other big thing was that we found our wind chime and hung it up.  The picture is on my Instagram.  We bought this years ago on a road trip to Arkansas.  Outside of Eureka Springs was the reigning largest wind chime.  Since then larger ones have been constructed but he claims that his chimes are all properly tuned to a musical scale.  The larger ones to him are just big pipes where his are an instrument.  Sadly, I learned that the Oak tree from which they were hung has succumbed to disease and died,  In spite of that our chimes now beautifully hang from the top of the porch.  It has a green glass wind catcher and is tuned to 5 notes of Brahms Lullaby.

After all of the days excitement we stopped at a nearby camp ground to visit my brother who brought is camper there for the weekend.  I had no idea he even wanted such a thing so I hope he enjoys it and actually takes the time off work to do so.  He is a very hard worker and deserves to get away from the grind.  If this is what it takes then I fully support it.  However, there is an equal chance that he will park it at a jobsite and never leave!  I can't keep up with him but wish I had a fraction of his drive. One of his guests told me that he grew up in the Swanton area and that the farmhouse used to be a 2 room school.  I have no reason to believe him either way but have not heard this before,  The original structure was erected in the 1890s and two of those walls are still remain from when it was added on to and remodeled in the 1980.  Carl across the street may be able to shed some light on whether it was a school or not.  He moved here from Toledo in the 1970's and knows some local historians.

We did not want to stay there late because Saturday for the next few weeks means new Doctor Who!  It did not disappoint.  We pulled the cork on a bottle of Merlot which came from the Biltmore Estate by Asheville, NC.  We stopped there as part of a road trip through Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.  It is worth the stop; the house is impressive but the gardens/grounds were even better.

After Doctor Who, I did some more unpacking while Shaun of the Dead played on the TV.  When I was younger I would get so mad at the "bad guy" in a movie.  In this movie the "bad guy" is Shaun's ex-gfs new guy.  He is an upper class jerk who undermines and second guesses Shauns choices yet keeps following him because he had no clue what to do.  Characters like that used to get me going so bad that it would irritate people, a certain ex-gf of mine comes to mind.  As I have gotten older I have reigned it in considerably.  I do not know if this change can be accredited to  is just growing up or realizing that it is just a movie and the actor is doing a good job if you dislike him.  The answer most likely is some of both and now I save my outrage for things that actually matter to real people. Never stop growing and learning.

Don't step on the grass, Sam

Today was lawn mowing day.  The only good part about it is that I get to be outside. OK, I grudgingly admit that a fresh trimmed lawn does have a nice look to it.  The main problem for me with mowing is that I should be having livestock doing it for me.  This will come eventually but I need to get moving!  Almost all of my focus goes getting the house done and trying to not let it drive me crazy.  The real idea of this farm is working toward sustainable farming and self reliance.  Buying gallons of gas just so things look good may be the antithesis of permaculture.  There is one other good thing; mowing only requires enough attention to follow the lines and 0 turn around obstacles so it give me time to think.  I don't think I can even recall all the things that goes through my mind in a mowing session.  One thought was that I really need to procure a trailer with which to get the mower in for maintenance.  Sometimes my mind turns over political, economical, and social issues.  Always I am thinking of things that need doing and what would be the best way going about doing it. Today I was thinking about my mom.  She is amazing.  I sent her a picture message of the shelving in the kitchen and she left me a message about a shelving catalog she has if I was not happy with what I used.  Bless my mom, she really means well but but I can find any shelf I could ever think of online. Mine came from Shelving.com by Shelving, Inc.  She is old school and catalogs are not entirely outdated.  One of the problems with finding things online is that there are SO MANY OPTIONS.  A catalog has what I consider to be a curated collections of items and when you find one that fits a certain style that you like it can be a good thing.  A catalog has a finite beginning and end; go try finding the end of Pinterest!

When I was mowing, I used the Bowie knife I mentioned the other day as a small machete on some encroaching Goldenrod and an errant Blackberry briar.  Parts of the farm are just mowed to paths. Much of the field behind the house is basically a prairie.  I need to go through and identify what is out there.  The Goldenrod is pretty much done blooming and the Thistle has gone to seed.  Some of the Milkweed has seeded as well but I do not know if there is enough time for some that were cut down earlier in the season.  I did pause to watch the bees work some flowers but I forget what plant it is.  It has clusters of white and yellow daisy like flowers,  It may be a false Aster or a Fleabane.  This is one that I should know and most likely learned but I've got nothing.  I always like watching bees, butterflies, and other pollinators doing their thing.  Other plants I have seen this season are Foxtail grass, Pokeweed, Jimson weed, Queen Anne's Lace, Mullein  and Bergamot.  There are many more grasses that I need to identify.  I used to have more memorized but data is always going in and out of my head.  Some information stays up there but it get buried by new stuff.  Some day I will be able to say that I forgot more that you ever learned to some young know-it-all!

In the house, I cleaned up the spackling job on the kitchen window and put another build up coat.  The trim casing to both doors is cut and has the first coat of paint.  It takes 5 hours according to the directions but in real life it takes much longer.  I plan on getting a second coat tomorrow as well as painting the caulk/spackling mess around the window.  It will all come together some day.  There is no cat news worth reporting and. alas, no dog living here yet.

I have decide that I wish to build cold frames on top of the leach field.  I can talk about that more when I get around to building them.

Today I learned that when one dies on Mount Everest the odds are in favor of the corpse staying there.  It is far too risky to recover them so there they stay.  Some get hidden or pushed down a crack; this is intended as a gesture of respect.  On the other hand, some remains are used as landmarks.  A mountain of that magnitude has its own rules.  I have no idea why anyone would want to take that kind of risk but I'll be the last one who tries to ban it.

What the caulk?

I don't know if caulking can go bad or not but this one sure seemed like this one did today.  I know that not all product are made from the same ingredients and different caulking is made for different applications.  This particular dud was DAP ALEX PLUS (It is capitalized on the manufacturers website, I am not yelling) Acrylic Latex Caulk Plus Silicone.  I have always had excellent results with this product and didn't not anticipate any problem as I was using it to seal in the trim on the other kitchen window which is by the refrigerator.  The problem is that the product would not stop coming out of the tube 10.1 oz tube. Many caulk guns come with a release switch that takes the plungers pressure off.  Those that do not have that feature usually have an easy was to release it.  This was not my issue,  I took the entire tube out of the gun and it was still coming out.  Never have I seen anything like it before.  It is common for a little to come out but this left a pile of it.  If there is a way to cleanly start a bead of caulk when said caulk is already hanging out of the tube then that is a trick I do not know.  It also started setting up too soon and got gummy very rapidly.  There was only one tube here and I was not wanting to make a hardware store run so the product  I ended up using was Red Devil Onetime Lightweight Spackling.  This product is something I usually use for nail holes or cracks in wall but I also use it to fill my brad holes on the trim. This particular window needed 2"of  jamb extension but like most milled lumber and engineered wood products 2" measure to an actual 1 5/8" or something absurd like that.  The 3" board was too wide and I did not want to make that cut with a circular saw; I am not good with them and frankly they scare me.  The gap caused from using the 2" jamb was jammed full with trimmed down pieces of fanfold extruded polystyrene insulation that was left over from the roof, of all things.  The ALEX PLUS was going to cover over it and seal the jamb extensions to the window.  If you read this far then you know how that went.  The spackling claims not to shrink or crack but it does sometime; this whole window may look a disaster in a year.  After all that I was just not up for painting it.  I am sure it will need some clean up before painting.

I cut the case trim for the door leading from the kitchen into the garage.  Doors are usually easy because the sides are typically flat on the bottom and only angled at the top.  The problem with this particular door is that the right side abuts to the kitchen cabinets with a distance less than the width of the casing,  This side is also the hinged side so they get in the way to complicate matters further.  There is some decorative crown trim on the cabinets so a clean corner can not be made. Also, the distance from door frame to cabinets is not consistent.  Pictures will make this easier to understand so I will take them and post them to Instagram tomorrow. (https://instagram.com/gregbonnough/)  Instead of trying to work all of that into an nice 90 degree corner I cut the ends flat then measure the rectangular area at the top corner that had no trim,  Cardboard was used to make a pattern for the wood which will fill that space.  The cardboard was meticulously trimmed down to fit snugly against the crown molding.  After the pattern was transferred to the wood a jigsaw was used to precisely make the cut.  It seemed to all fit together so we will see how it hangs after painting.

The shelves to fill  the old refrigerator and wall oven holes arrived today. They assembled easily and look good in place,  I am very pleased at the way that project came together.  Decorative tilework or at least painting behind the old fridge shelf is still in the long term plans.  Cookbooks will be stored on the top but it is a wire shelf that is not well suited for the job.  It seems that a wooden shelf will ameliorate that issue.  They do sell plastic inserts but I have a pile of salvaged wood in that barn and surely one of those old cabinet doors will work.

In other news, I was able to recover my ebay password finally. If I can manage to part with anything then perhaps I can make a little money.  That never hurts.

Persephone the cat was a little more daring today.  She napped on the back of the couch and did not run away when Emrys got up on the seat of the couch.  It will be a beautiful day when my little lady can live without the fear of being harassed by these guys; it will be an even better day when humans can do the same.  Be well.

Crime

There have been a lot of thefts in my area lately. A neighbor just down the street from me had his boat stolen. Three miles or so north of here it was a Cub Cadet rider loaded up and gone. It was looking like they may have had a lead on the perpetrator when they were caught in the act putting a zero turn on a trailer. They fled the scene but I read that they had a plate number and a positive identification. Then today a truck pulled up to place on the other side of Swanton and helped themselves to a bike and power washer. All of these crimes happened in broad daylight when many people work. There have been several garages hit hard at night too. Sometimes a barking dog has been enough to scare them off but then again not every theft appears on the county community watch Facebook page. When we were robbed the Deputy pretty much shrugged and said catching them does little as they will be back out in a few months. I know that theft is nothing new but these reports are coming in so frequently and so close that they are taking a mental toll on me. We live on a busy corner and every out of place noise has me very jumpy. Some may call me an extremist or a whack job or whatever pejorative they prefer but I have taken the habit of belting on my 8" Bowie knife and slinging my 12g Remington over my shoulder. It is not that I bring them with me slathering in anticipation of using them but taking advice from Theodore Roosevelt who is know for the diplomacy of "Speak softy and carry a big stick". It is a show of force. I have been told by pop culture all the way back to Adam West's portrayal of Batman that criminals are cowardly sorts, The thinking goes that the cowards look for a softer target; meaning they will go where the shotgun wielding viking-like weirdo is NOT.  Before you anti-gun types get your undies in a bundle about this, do know that I am completely within my rights to open carry. Will it make a difference? I have no idea. What are the odds that anyone "casing the joint" will even notice my activity? Slim to none. Does it make me feel like I am doing something to protect what we both have worked so hard for? You bet it does. Should I get a dog? Roger that!

On the non-crime side of things, I hung the casing on the other window in the kitchen. It has no interior sill so it was relatively simpler. It did however manage to show me again that I am not a carpenter but at least it is up. I refrained from caulking it in because I wanted her to see it first to get a judgement call if I should tear it down and start over, I do like things done right but she deemed it within an acceptable margin of error. It is not that noticeable but it sure would not pass muster at a Japanese manufacturing facility. It sound like my carpentry skills may or may not be  the equivalent of a late 70's GM sedan.  I am OK with and know that it will get better with practice. There was a time in my not so distant past where something akin to this would have thrown me to the depths of despair and depressions.  So, there is some personal growth going on.

I also spent a significant portion of the day policing the cats and making sure that the kitten will not be bullied away from the food nor the catbox. I am sure they will learn to get along but until then I take solace in the fact that Persephone is still small enough to bolt under the couch where the hulking brute Emrys can not fit. I also was able to go out to dinner to share a meal with a friend. We talked about the woes of the world and how crazy people are. I learned a few things about semi trucks and how modern engine brakes in Volvo diesels are quieter than traditional jake brakes. I will try to make things I learn as part of the blog.

Will the cowardly criminal keep away from the mower or will the lunatic farmer shoot his foot?  Tune in next blog, Same blog-time, same blog-channel.

End of first day

The window casing trim was installed and caulked in. Pictures took and posted. I forgot to pin them though. This was somewhat of a daunting project because this was my first window casing with an interior sill or also know as window stool. I read that a sill it the exterior part but I am no carpenter.

The cats have not damaged each other yet but there has been hissing and chasing.

We had tacos for dinner and it is Tuesday...Taco Tuesday. It is very nice to have a functional kitchen and will be even nicer to have all the details done too. Curtains next week? Stay tuned,

I have never done a true blog before. I have done Facebook, started and abandoned a Twitter, there was a MySpace along the way, and recently I've been posting pictures to Instagram then pinning them to, you guessed it, Pinterest. My sister dropped off of Facebook making Pinterest the only social media she uses. The things we do for family. :) Anyway, all of those have been mainly personal. There is a Facebook page for the farm where all my friends can see whats is going on. They are all welcome here, naturally, but this is more for keeping track of what I got done and how I feel about it; posts here are may be more in depth than Facebook posts. Anyone who knows me also knows that I am redoing a house on a small farm. I should have started this then.

Today is not over but it was a slow morning because it was Jette's day off. We stopped for an early lunch at Ultimate Coney Island. The waitress said she was glad to see us again and I was kind of surprised that she recognized us. We went to Menard's to get brads for my air nailer and a few needed things then to 21st Century for stain that will be used for the office trim.  After that we stopped at the old house and crated up the cats, Emrys and Oliver, to bring them to the farm. This is a huge step. They both howled and meowled the whole drive over, Jette said that she was glad it is not a cross country move! Hopefully they will adjust well and accept their little sister, Persephone. Emrys was found, adopted, and loved out here at that farm a year ago when he was a very tiny kitten; this is a homecoming of sorts for him. Persephone showed up a few months ago and kept me company while I was living here all alone.

We unloaded the cats and a few boxes then ordered some shelving for the kitchen. The house had a wall oven built into the cabinetry and a cook top set into the island. I modified the space where the cook top was so a range could fit. This leaves a gaping hole where the oven was as well as another right next to it where the refrigerator went. We wanted a refrigerator larger than the space would accommodate. With two large holes to fill and a surplus of kitchen supplies we decided that wire chrome shelving would be the best remedy.

I am going to wrap this post up then install the jamb extensions and casing around the kitchen windows. I cut and have been building up coats of paint for the past few days. The paint is slow drying which has held up progress. Time to put those new brads to use!