Barn Update

We have made some progress on our barn project. The concrete is almost all poured. Some of it has to wait until other steps are completed. It is going way too slow, however, as my husband has done the majority of the work by himself. The help he had hoped to have is by necessity busy with their own farm work and I am at my factory job nine to ten hours a day. He doesn’t have the heart to bring me out there to help after being on my feet that long, but sometimes I don’t give him the choice and he doesn’t have a choice. He has to have help. We also have our own farm work that has to be done, like baling hay and putting up silage, building fence so the cows can go to other pastures, etc. As a result, he has lost about twenty or thirty pounds. At his old job he had become pretty sedentary and needed to lose that weight, but not all at once like that. He works in rain and in extreme heat. I’m not home to make him sit down in the cooler areas and rest and drink something so he is getting over heated. Is that a man thing?

We got the plastic sheeting on yesterday. The blew it all around me. Did I ever mention I'm claustrophobic. This was a problem!

(I did notice this morning that since he isn’t working that stressful job he retired from his hair that had gone almost all white is actually turning black again. He isn’t using any hair products either. How fair is that? I’m going grey and he’s going back to normal! Ugh!)

The weather has also been a factor. At first, we couldn’t buy rain, and the crops really needed it, even if it did interfere with building. At this point there isn’t anything he can do alone inside the barn (the parlor) by himself when it rains, so we need it to stop so he can do the outside stuff. We also really need to dry-in the milk house. We are going to put one of those chemical resistant garage floor finishing kits on the floor of both the milk house and the parlor pit (walls too in there) but the temperature has to be above a certain point and the humidity below a certain point. Now that the concrete that will be coated has reached the curing time needed, the rest is not cooperating. Some days it’s hot and others it’s too cool, but it keeps raining and the humidity is too high.

I helped put the underlayment on the outer walls and the plastic sheeting (to stop wind from getting through) on the walls and put the windows in yesterday. My brother-in-law came today so the tin is going up, albeit with difficulty because that wind is really cooking out there. Next will be the vinyl siding and the doors. Then, we can get down to the inside of the milk house and finishing that parlor. Yeah. Still, we at least a month behind schedule. That’s one more month for me at that factory I loathe. All I can say is it is a job. 

I’m taking a break to get some laundry done, so don’t worry; I’ll be back out in a few minutes!

In spite of severe vertigo in high places, I am going up and down a very tall ladder to hand tools and whatever is needed. I’m the gopher! 

 

Putting on the roof.

I also take cold beverages to the guys, because they won’t take a break when they need to, so I have to enforce some sort of safety. Speaking of safety…Yes, there is a reason I told my husband to keep track of all the nails that got pulled out during destruction of the old building and ones they drop or that get bent. I don’t want anyone to step on them, much less the dog who has no sense of danger until she lands on something that goes through her paw and that would just about kill me if she got hurt. Yesterday my husband comes in the house and declares he needs my help in the bathroom. I raised an eyebrow. Something was up. Yep, he stepped on one of those 16 penny common nails. It went right through the boot and into the bottom of his foot. Boot and all went right into the bathtub. He is on blood thinners due to three stress related heart attacks so I am panicking, even though I am trying to remain calm on the outside. Ever see arterial spray on one of those crime shows on T.V.? That nail hit a vein and it squirted something awful. His boot had about a cup of blood in it. We applied pressure using a clean but old (a/k/a didn’t mind throwing out) wash cloth and then I put a cotton ball treated with antibiotic ointment on it and taped it six ways from Sunday. A simple bandage wouldn’t do the trick, and it was right up where two toes meet the foot. After making sure it wasn’t soaking through the cotton ball, he actually put on a different boot and went back to work. *Writer shakes head* He is a tough old goat! He wouldn’t go to the ER of course, but we got it to stop bleeding. I would have really appreciated him getting a tetanus shot though. I’m going to keep a close eye on him, although I think once they show signs of the illness; it’s pretty much too late. This is why I’m so fussy (we’ll be nice and call it that) about safety. I even wear ear plugs when he’s running the power equipment or hammering on things- it makes my ears ring. We wear steel-toe shoes in case we drop something. They are awful evil things to wear, but necessary. Are you being safe while working on household projects?

 There used to be a grain bin here, but it rusted out and was in the way, so it had to go.

                           The old feed bin and a peek at the pile from the tear down. Gonna be a heck of fire one of these days.

Yes, I did brave the ladder and go as far as the trusses to get these shots. Hard to believe my kids used to sit on top of that old feed bin just look out at the countryside. They aren't afraid of much.

Darn Weeds

Weeds are persistent little buggers. I mulched my garden to within an inch of its life with several inches of old corn silage. We hadn’t used it in years and there were no weeds growing in it at all; not even corn. It should be free of weeds now; I should be sitting pretty with my huge garden and nary a weed – right? Wrong!

My gardens have always had a particular penchant for growing weeds in spite of many back-breaking hours pulling them up and spraying deterrents between the rows being careful not to hit the veggies I wanted. Of course you can’t get anywhere near tomatoes with weed killer, such as Round Up™ because it is related to a family of weeds it kills and they will be dead just being near it. I spent days working the soil, amending fertilizing nutrients into the soil, planting the garden (three times in some places that still didn’t come up- writer growls) and mulching the plants after they came up. I tilled fervently between the rows until the plants were big enough to mulch and hoed weeds between plants. I plotted where everything had been planted so I could identify the plants from the weeds. We got too much rain at first, hence the replanting, and not enough warmth, and then the rain pretty well dried up, but there is enough moisture to hold out for a few weeks before I have to irrigate. We had a couple of hot days where the plants really took off. And then it happened.

We began a building project that took most of the weekend every weekend when I had off work to do any real time consuming work. I couldn’t even get the lawn mowed until a couple of our nephews came to help on the project so that I had a few hours to at least mow the hay field, I mean the lawn. It rained every day, which made the grass and the weeds take off they were part of a race and within two weeks there were so many weeds I couldn’t find the garden. They came up primarily in the rows with the vegetables. They still did an excellent job of invading the mulch, but mostly they turned my vegetables into a jungle. I told my husband the lamb’s quarter (most prevalent) was edible; I should just harvest it and call it a day. He said he wasn’t a cow and would not eat it. Well, darn.

I spent hours pulling weeds and not making much progress. I filled bucket after bucket on the tractor and dumped them on what will be a burn pile from the tear out of the old building materials from the barn. I looked at the carnage that had once been my garden. They take as many good plants as they do other weeds because they have intertwined their roots with the good plants and their branches with the other plants’ branches. 

The weeds are still there, waving their leaves hello. If they could talk, they would be taunting me, “I thought you were getting rid of me! Hey, where’s the vegetables?”