Crossing the Picket Line

It's all Colton's fault. Last year for Mother's Day our oldest son gifted me with a hand crafted gate for my kitchen garden. he apparently was listening when he heard me say-about a millions times- that I wanted a white picket fence for that space, one day. So he got me started with the gate. I have greatly enjoyed going in and out of it this past year. The rest of that garden spot was enclosed with a hodge-podge of wire hog panels and chicken wire. it wasn't attractive but it get critters out of that space and it was what we could afford at the time.

Several weeks ago I turned 60. It was a grand day altogether. My sister and daughter organized a surprise party at Destihl Restaurant in Normal, Il and we had a great time. Then my friend Jay asked me to come out to the parking lot so he could give me my gift, which was taking up space in the back of his truck. Voila! It was the remainder of the fencing I coveted. Several eight foot sections of Gothic Style Picket fencing. Eighteen sections to be exact. He also promised to help us install it and thats what he did, alongside Keith, this past weekend. 

Prior to his coming though, I had serious work to do, get the fencing painted. Of course Jay's gift came with paint and brushes so in the hottest week we've had so far this summer, I got to work like Tom Sawyer. Well, harder than Tom because there was no Becky around for me to pawn off the work.

I set up in the barn out of the sun with an old box fan to simulate a breeze, and a radio to simulate company.  I painted and painted and painted. I also sweated profusely. What a pain it was to cover all those surface edges! But what a joy it was to see my dream coming true. 



Then, as planned, Jay showed up this past Friday ready to work AND with a hydraulic post hole digger. Happy day. Although Keith has dug hundreds of post holes over the years with his manual post hole digger, he wasn't looking forward to it with the projected high heats. And criminy, did it get hot on Saturday when the guys did the bulk of the work. 97 degrees with a heat index of 110. 

And what did I do while those two die hards were putting in the fence posts? Well I painted and painted and painted some more. Keith had built a second gate a couple weeks ago to match the one Colton had made and it needed painting too. Of course Keith built it out of scrap lumber pieces which shined up nicely with a couple coats of Behrs Wood and Fence Stain in Tintable White. That product was amazing!



I also kept the fellows well supplied in cold drinks. By 9 pm that evening we were all sound asleep, exhausted.  Even with the hydraulic post hole digger, the work was strenuous taking both the guys and many muscles to hold the machine in place and or repositioning it when it hit heavy clay or rock. Most definitely a two man job. 



By Sunday am most of the posts were in place with only five more to go. They had that done by 10 am and started with the fun part of attaching the fence sections. We ran into a bit of a snag around the old well tiles I had filled with zinnias. They needed to come forward about two inches. At first the guys thought they might be able to just push the tiles (filled with soil and flowers) forward , but they quickly discovered they were too heavy. That's Jay below, trying to pull with his  legs parallel to the ground, while Keith is laying behind them, trying to push. Didn't work. 

 They then wrapped some chains around the bottom of the tiles and used the tractor to scoot them forward. It worked well, even though I was concerned the tiles might break. A few petunias were sacrificed as were several other flower plants during the whole fence installation, but I had expected that. In fact I was impressed with how many border flowers were saved overall. 

By 1 pm Sunday 75 % of the fence was up. The last section on the south side still had to be painted and installed, and the gate nearest the grain bin had to be hung but we were all ready to call it quits. The heat had worn us down. Keith and I will finish the rest of the fence this week, it's supposed to be much cooler,  and then I can get busy weeding that garden spot of ours. Below is the view out our second story window. Makes me so happy to have a white picket fence after decades of wanting one!! I am so grateful to my dear hubbie and dear friend for making this a reality. Happy 60th to me. 

Barn Update with Loft Room

 Two years ago Keith and I bought a 1950ish metal machine shed about 9 miles from our farm. We paid someone to dismantle it and deliver it to us, then we brought it back to life here piece by piece, post by post, as our barn.

Two years ago. Where did that time go?  It's still not finished but not for lack of effort and hard work. With Keith working full time off the farm, his hours for barn work are limited, but he does manage to keep at it whenever he can, repurposing so many, many materials from the old 1868 house we are tearing down on our property.

He has even recycled the old insulation, some of it loose, some in the form of Styrofoam panels, some in strips. See below.

To date , we are able to store hay, hog grain, our tractor, our lawn mower, our freezers and all of Keith's shop materials, even though he does not yet have walls for his shop area, in our barn.  Details, details. We also have stalls for our three steers and my horse.

While I was in Texas visiting a niece last week (a blog about that is next in que) Keith took a week off from his job for a Farmcation. He was as excited about staying home and getting work done here as I was about getting OFF the farm for several days.

In my absence he made tremendous progress on the loft room which will house the homesteading supplies we need, but don't use everyday, like: canning supplies, soap making equipment, winter chore clothes, sewing equipment, plus we'll have room for a full size bed for guests. Or Keith and I will sleep there and the guests can have our fancy 10 x 10 grain bin bedroom. This new barn loft room will have four walls, a pitched roof, three big windows and a reading nook. (The raised platform just behind Keith in pic below.)

We don't plan to heat or cool it so guest overnights will depend on weather but when your GK population keeps growing it's nice to have options.

The best part of this new space are the truly awesome floors! Keith recycled each board from the 1868 house. Some were floor boards, some were wall boards, but all were sturdy and well made as they were in the 1800's. My plans are to lightly sand the boards and then just cover with several coats of polyurethane. Most are already over 150 years old, they should hold up for a few more.

It's funny how Keith and I were all about downsizing when we sold the old Chatsworth farm in 2015,  which had about 3000 SF of living and storage space. We figured a grain bin house of 670 SF would be plenty of room for just the two of us and it is. It's just not enough room for all our homesteading crud! Eventually, if we keep going the way we are we'll have the same amount of space we used to have, only scattered about in three or four buildings. Oh well, all the walking between house, barn, lofts, studios etc...should keep us in shape.

The Prodical Blogger Returns

Thank you, those of you who have emailed or reached out in one way or another to check on me, it was deeply appreciated. I've reached back to most of you and will finish up emails to those not yet contacted, right after I finish this post.

Obviously I have not expired, Keith is well too, but life sure got sticky and I took an extended, not entirely intended, blog break. I even considered ceasing this blog entirely but I have decided against that.

I need the outlet.

In May my youngest sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and in that same month our 7th grandchild, a gorgeous wee girl, was born with a serious cleft lip and palate. My sister faces a long run of chemo followed by surgery and our granddaughter faces many future surgeries. The prognosis for both is good but I felt my time was best utilized in the area of support and time availability. I was so grateful that since I work from home I was able to help where needed. We are even more blessed that our children all live within fifteen minutes of us and my sisters and sole brother are all within an hour.

In the midst of those family changes, my mother-in-law required more trips to the doctor (she fell and broke her arm) and another elderly friend needed help back and forth to her doctor appointments. It rained, it poured, but the sky is now lightening up.

Keith and I, in the mean time, have kept busy with continued barn work and projects on the farm. I have lots more to share and will do so in future posts. In the meantime here are a few pics of my flower and herb garden just outside the grain bin. The wonderful colors there are constant reminders that to every thing there is a season, turn, turn turn.

No wonder I'm so dizzy!

Good Riddance Winter

Finally, winter is moving on and with it, I hope the crap storm of bad and sad. My immediate family, our children and their families, are well but the periphery about all of us (friends of relatives and relatives of friends) was filled with cancer related deaths and serious medical issues. March came in like a lion and acted rudely all thirty-one days.

Today though it's better. Temperatures are creeping up, the sun was brilliant, I was able to hang up laundry and there are no funerals or visitations on my calendar. Gardens are being cleared of last falls debris and tomorrow we'll sow radishes, lettuces and peas. Hope springs eternal as the cliche' lovers might spout. 

Keith further lifted my spirits by installing some garden gates. The first one closes off our large main garden sitting west of the grain bin house a couple hundred feet. He  made the gate from an old hog panel I've been hanging onto for years because I loved the vintage red and yellow paint on it. He used vintage black hinges that HE has been hanging onto for years. Now that it is installed I may paint it white to match the white picket gate on our kitchen garden below. We shall see.







The smaller kitchen garden gate was a birthday gift to me from our son Colton last May. He built it, painted it and gave us all the hardware to hang it. Keith put in the posts a couple days ago and VOILA' I have the quaint garden gate I have always wanted. This summer we will build the rest of the picket fence from salvaged wood harvested form the 1868 house which is still under deconstruction. I love our cute little kitchen garden where I grow my herbs and salad veggies, plus numerous spirit lifting annuals.


What is everyone else doing to welcome spring and/or lift spirits? 


PS. I have no idea why Blogger is messing with my blog by highlighting words and corrupting my font. You get what you pay for eh?

It's a Fact, We're Low Class

Ice Capades at the Grain Bin House. Winter 2019

Years ago at our "finest" (it's debatable) Keith and I had an income of over $135,000/yr. Our farm was certified organic and we sold to four grocery stores and ten restaurants in the Chicago area, plus one in Champaign. In addition we managed our own retail farm store on our property. Neither of us worked an off-farm job. We were considered upper middle class.

We also ran ourselves ragged and paid a huge hunk of income tax.

But now on our new farm, coming up on our four year anniversary, we've realized one of our key financial goals, to obtain lower class status. In Illinois, where the median income was $ 62, 992 in 2017, lower middle class was considered at $37,473 per year. Less than that, for a family of two, is considered lower class.

Keith and I, with his county custodian job and my small nursing pension, bring in about $26,000 a year. Now, if we made less than $16, 910 we'd be considered "impoverished" or just plain poor. But, we don't think much of the state's definitions anyway, they've done a horrible job of managing their own money, so it's all a moot point, except for the fact that we pay far less income tax than we ever have, and that makes us giddy happy. We completed our taxes last week and we will receive $17 back from the Federal government and a whopping $78 return from the State of Illinois.

How shall we spent this huge mother lode? Should we invest in stocks? Take an Alaskan cruise? Purchase some diamond earrings for my trips to Aldi's? Put a down payment on a car less than twenty years old? No. I believe we'll buy some OSB plywood panels for Keith's shop in the barn.

That's us. Always living on the wild side.

Windows 4.0

 The weather has eased a tad, and in between snow and ice storms, fog and floods, Keith has managed to work on the barn build. Winter 2019 has been a serious challenge for outside work here.

Today he and our son Jason put in the four large, double pane windows (36" x 48") that Jason sourced for us for just $40 each. His boss was remodeling and no longer needed them. 

It took Keith many mornings to get the framing done, all with recycled wood form the 1868 house,  but tonight the two of them made this homesteader very happy. 

After the electrical is complete, the upper windows installed, the walls are finished, the doors put in place and the ceiling installed we'll have a room big enough for our large farm table, about 16 x 24 feet.  The room, not the table. 

The Upper Loft Area 

For Non-feed Storage

This means in good weather we can host larger groups of folks for meals, holiday get togethers and the like. It also means that we'll have a green house area since the windows face south.
A few tall metal racks, which I'll be looking for at future garage sales, will hold our garden seedlings and/or extend our growing season.

Up above this room will be our storage loft for non-feed items like soap making supplies, extra furniture, my canning supplies, seasonal clothing, our bee keeping items and all the stuff we need but not on a daily basis. We have discovered over the last four years that although small house living is nice in theory, it sucks for storing the items homesteaders need to function. 

I'm so excited to see these two rooms coming closer to completion!
The animals are too since the window installation will now slow the wind and snow from blowing into their areas just to the right of Keith in the picture below. 

 I see red geranium filled window boxes below those windows, don't you?

The Outrageously High Cost of Cheap Milk

Our single can milking system for our single cow.

I am embarrassed to admit that I was in Walmart the other night, a store I abhor, (I was buying fabric for a sewing lesson my daughter graciously bought me as a Christmas present) when I noted that milk was on sale for $1 per gallon.

It chills my blood to see that. Sure, it might seem a great deal to the consumer, but it is the producer, the dairy farmer, that suffers. Walmart loves doing it because offering this milk as a "loss leader" brings in additional customers who will no doubt pick up ten other items they don't need on their way out of the store. It's no coincidence that this bargain is located at the back of the store, so many other useless items to see on your journey back there.

But when milk is offered at this cut rate price everyone suffers. The dairy farmer cannot exist on the payment they receive for their product as it is.  Currently in the US, they collect $15.30 per hundred weight of milk if they are selling conventional (non-organic) milk to a large conglomerate like Prairie Farms. That's right, they receive jut $15.30 for every hundred pounds of milk . Since there is 8.6 pounds of milk in one gallon they are therefore getting approximately $1.32 for every gallon they produce. At least this month they are. Milk prices for conventional famers fluctuate widely in the US.

In addition it is unlikely they are able to produce that gallon of milk for $1.32/gallon which is why so many farmers work off farm jobs to pay expenses or, they will increase their herd size in order to spread out expenses. But more cows means more feed, bigger barns, more equipment, more land, more insurance and increased debt. This move towards bigger farms began decades ago when Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz spewed his mantra "Get Big or Get Out".

Thus the reason so many smaller dairy farmers, those who own 200 cows or less, have run screaming from the dairy business, and why more mega dairies like Fair Oaks, have erupted with their Factory Farms. There they keep over 35,000 cows which produce nearly 300,000 gallons of milk a day. Don't let the red wood veneered barn on their web site fool you, this outfit is a full blown profit centered corporation that offers restaurant dining, gift shop cruising, and bus tours. Because you know, one can really get an accurate sense of true farming from the inside of a cushy-seated, climate-controlled bus!  

If you do take a Fair Oaks tour (only $10 for a three year old) don't expect to have the opportunity to actually pet one of these bovines.  Heaven forbid. Fair Oaks is "bio-secure" so as to protect their herd from any nasty germs visitors might bring in and furthermore, we can't have wee Sally leaving the farm with manure on her shoes can we?

All of this is to say that small family farms are rapidly disappearing from our landscape.  Over the last eighty years in the US the number of farms has decreased from more than six million in 1935 to less than two million in 2019. Meanwhile, the farm SIZE has more than doubled. Gone are the days where a drive in the country revealed sheep, pigs, cows, chickens and goats on pasture. Instead they are kept "bio-secure" in sterile metal buildings often with concrete under their feet and fluorescent lights over their heads. Their lifespans are short and they have virtually no immune systems. They are fed cheap corn, prophylactic antibiotics, and confined to inhumanely small areas. 

And every time you as consumer purchase that cheap milk you are compounding the problem.

What to do? Take a bit of time to think about your purchases. Explore the small farmers in your area who sell milk (or meat or vegetables) directly to the consumer and consider buying from them more often. If every consumer just purchased 10% of their food directly from the farm, through farm co-ops or at farmers markets, a difference could be made.

Either that or the only farm livestock you or your grandchildren will see fifty years from now will be from a helicopter tour.