Father's Day Challenge, Mission Accomplished!

It has been awhile since I've posted and the garden has made much progress in that time.  The main reason the posts have been scarce this year is between fixing the house up and chopping down ultra-fast growing weeds, my time has been a bit tight lately.  As you can see in the first picture, we will have fully red, 100% vine ripened tomatoes to eat on Father's Day this year.  That alone motivates one to take a few minutes and post an update.  Since we're on the subject of updates, in my usual rambling fashion, I'll try and catch everyone up on just how "farm like" the Farmville Reality Project is becoming!  First we'll cover the tomatoes.  The second picture shows how happy they are in their chosen spot.  In fact they are about as close to what can be called a tomato forest, if such a thing were to ever be invented.  Both of the plants that were planted under the plastic tunnel back in early March are about six feet tall and have so much foliage that I've been pruning them back.  They also have enough fruit set to yield us 40 to 50 pounds of tomatoes easily from the both of them.  One of them is an Early Girl, which is an indeterminate type, which means it will keep setting more fruit throughout the season as long as it is healthy.  The other one is a determinate type, which sets a heavy main crop and then slows down setting more fruit.  What's not in the picture are the two later planted ones next to them.  Those are setting quite a bit of fruit now and will start producing when these two slow down in a couple of months.  We also planted six paste types called San Marzano in a another spot by the old barn.  All in all, the tomatoes are growing amazingly well and thrive in abundant Arbuckle sunshine. 

The next picture up is the golden zucchini that much like winter squash, has the potential to feed the world's hungry masses.  Each plant yields a nice size squash each and every day, or two smaller ones if you prefer.  The name of the variety is Butter Stick and it has never let me down as a heavy producer.

The fourth picture is an eggplant plant.  I have to state it this way since I'm married to a teacher and she will hold me back a grade if I don't use proper grammar.  In the past, eggplant has been tough for me to raise.  The seedlings usually get beat up pretty bad by chewing insects that I've never quite figured out how to identify let alone annihilate.  I think planting a foot or so up off the ground in a pot has solved that problem and we will get plenty of eggplants this summer.

 The fifth picture is my version of a herb pot.  This one has rosemary, thyme, and dill in it.  Probably not the best choices as far as who likes to play nice together in the sandbox but the choices were driven by what sounded good with the many things I plan to cook the next few months.  The rosemary is the one that is out of place because it likes to be watered deep and then dry out before getting watered again.  The other two would not be on board with that plan but so far, the rosemary has cooperated and seems to be doing fine.

 The sixth picture is the classic summer herb, basil.  A couple of years ago, the main grunt worker (besides me of course) helped me process and freeze a whole bunch of pesto made with fresh basil and garlic from the garden at the other place.  Since she worked so hard in plucking and washing piles of basil leaves, I ended up giving her the lion's share of the finished product.  That left me severely under supplied that following winter.  What I did to address this issue was to marry my main grunt worker and now she will not only help process this season's basil into frozen pesto, but more importantly, she is now obligated to share the finished product with me!  That is the ultimate win-win.

The last picture is the parsley pot.  There is one curly leaf plant and one flat leaf plant.  Parsley is one of those herbs I would probably not buy at the market unless it was for some specific recipe but it's funny how when you have it on hand like this, you use it quite often.  Many dishes are "livened" up by just a small amount of chopped parsley sprinkled in right before serving.  It also is the base for an Argentinian sauce called Chimichurri that is very tasty on a big grilled steak.

This post is the first one I've made since Blogger.com updated their site and I for one am a happy camper.  The new format is much easier to use, especially when it comes to placing the pictures in the right place relative to the text.  Since it's so easy to use, maybe I'll even post more often and get some pictures of all the other things growing around Farmville! 

The Fathers' Day Tomato Challenge

The challenge referred to in the title is to have vine ripened tomatoes by Fathers' Day, which is usually the third Sunday in June. That wouldn't be too hard to do if you were growing them in Florida, Mexico, or even the desert southwest, but we're not. Here in our neck of the woods, a killing frost can happen in early April, so any frost sensitive plants (like tomatoes!) can't be transplanted until you're almost ready to file your tax returns. In some years, the weather is warm enough during May and June to make it possible to have a ripe tomato or two by Fathers' Day with plants started in mid April, but it's not likely. Those of us that want to have vine ripe tomatoes as early as possible need to get the plants in the ground in early March and provide an environment for the young plants to protect against the frost and also allow them to grow at a healthy pace even when the daytime high temperatures seldom climb out of the 50s some days. There are a few ways to accomplish this and the one method that has worked well for me over the years is to plant them in a plastic tunnel.

Many years ago, we grew and sold a few acres worth of vine ripened tomatoes at the farmers' market. They are a great item to sell there because people will make a special shopping trip to buy them. With all of the technical advances made in trying to get a nice vine ripened tomato to the supermarket shelf, it just hasn't happened yet. There is nothing like a tomato that has been allowed to turn completely red-ripe while hanging on the vine. Once you pick it, you better use it in the next day or two, so as you can see, people need to and will go out of their way to buy vine ripened tomatoes. One observation we made when we first started selling tomatoes was that people at the farmers' market fell into the habit (or pattern might be a better term) of buying the same items from the same vendors each week. It didn't take long to come to the conclusion that being able to sell folks the first of the season, vine ripe tomatoes, would "lock-in" a customer base for the rest of the season. That prompted some research and what I found out back then was there was a system for early planting that could result in having tomatoes a few weeks earlier than having to wait until the frost danger had passed. It utilized black plastic to cover the bed the tomatoes were planted on, and then a clear plastic was put over the top to create a mini greenhouse to both protect against frost and provide warmth for early growth. The clear plastic was supported by heavy wire hoops, so the tunnel it formed was about a foot and a half over the plants. This gave them enough room to grow and not push up against the plastic until late April when the tunnels would be removed. By that time, the tomato plants would be almost two feet tall and be just about ready to start setting fruit. Compared to a field transplanted after the frost danger was over, these early tunneled ones were way far ahead.

Since all of the materials we used to use for this system were intended for commercial farms, it doesn't make sense to buy them. There would literally be enough plastic to last us more years than we will be able to tend a garden. In looking around at what would make good substitutes, we had all we needed already on hand. For the black plastic to cover the bed (and help keep the young root systems warm), we used a black plastic trash bag. Just use scissors and cut the side and bottom seams, and presto, you have a single sheet of black plastic to stretch out and cover the planting bed. As you can see in the picture of the bed, it's important to shape it so the sides are well defined. This lets you pull the plastic tight across the top to make sure the plastic contacts the soil underneath it for maximum root warming.

The next step is to plant the tomato plants and put something over them to support the clear plastic tunnel. If you look closely at the next picture, you see I have used fencing wire for the tunnel supports. Any type of heavy wire will work. It needs to be heavy enough so that a length around 80 inches can form a strong enough hoop to hold the clear plastic up over the plants. If the wire is too thin, the wind might push it around enough to collapse the tunnel. Once the wire is cut to about 80 inches, put it over the planted bed and stick each end of the wire in the ground at least 8 inches. This anchors it very firmly. The two plants you see in the picture are a Celebrity and an Early Girl. Both are very tasty when picked vine ripe! Also remember to cut the hole in the black plastic big enough so it won't touch the stem of the plants. I made the planting holes around 3 inches in diameter.

In the third picture, you can see the final assembled tunnel. The clear plastic we used here is just plain old 1 mil thick painters plastic. You can buy a small roll for a couple bucks at any big box hardware store. The clear plastic is stretched over the wire and its edges are buried with soil on one side. You can bury both sides if you want but I used bricks to hold down one side so I can lift the plastic up and put some other plants in the tunnel to make use of its warmth. There are some squash and basil seeds in Dixie cups in the tunnel right now. I figure by the time they have outgrown the Dixie cups, it will be warm enough to plant them somewhere else in the garden. The little rows of slits about a third of the way up the side of the tunnel are for ventilation. Believe it or not, when the sun shines on this set up, it gets hot in there to the point if could fry the young plants. With a few slits cut in with a razor, it allows enough heat to exit but still keep things nice and toasty under the tunnel.

As a matter of fact, this picture shows just how nice and toasty it gets in there. This thermometer is in Celsius, so I will give you the Fahrenheit value. It's about 100 degrees in the tunnel this afternoon. If you want to do the conversion yourself, it goes like this: 38 x 9=
342. Divide that by 5 and you have 68.4. Now add 32 to it and the Fahrenheit value is 100.4! That's a pretty good solar gain since the outside temperature was in the high 60s. And remember, this set up can be done with materials most people already have on hand. It's a great way to get a jump on the season and have good old fashioned tomatoes in time for a Fathers' Day BBQ!

2012 Good Luck, Farmville Style

With the New Year, a great deal of attention is paid to having good luck in the upcoming year. I believe just about everyone wishes good luck to others in a very sincere manner, especially at the ringing in of a brand new year. To do this, we not only wish our friends and family a hearty "Happy New Year" in many different forms (mine was done via texting for the most part this year) but we also observe various cultural rituals as well. To welcome in 2012 in the Farmville Reality Project, we cooked black-eyed peas the night before. Some believe having blackeyed peas to ring in the New Year will bring good luck. Coupled with some pretty fancy cornbread, complete with cream corn in the batter, it was a very robust meal. As a matter of fact, meals like this just make you feel like you need to do some serious manual labor. So, on New Years Day-2012, manual labor was very much on the agenda. It also helped to do some pretty physical work on this day to chase away the blues that comes from having to say good bye to my wife for the next three weeks. We're both hoping these three weeks go by quickly... OK, back to the blog post...

With the great sunny weather on this New Year's day, it only made sense to get some badly needed yard work done. Not that sunny weather is rare here in Northern California in January, but it does seem to only happen on the days I'm stuck in the office. Once the weekend hits, it always changes, or so it it seems. The yard work needing to be done today was to clear and burn the brush from giving our cypress tree a long overdue haircut. As you can see from the first picture, it was beyond overgrown. I know the picture is from Google street view, and not very flattering. The truth is, I searched for a picture with this tree in it and could not find one. It was so ugly that we always made sure it was not in any part of the pictures we took last year before starting on the renovation work. That's pretty bad because we did take some very unattractive pictures to have as a point of comparison for when we finished some of our projects. This tree was beyond unattractive though, so I had to resort to stealing a shot of it from Google street view so you can see what a big difference there is from trimming away the many years of undergrowth. With all of those lower branches removed, you can actually see the whole front of the house from the street now. It's such a nice, stately looking house, it was a shame to have over half of it hidden behind ugly vegetation. The second picture shows how nice the yard looks from the street now.

The downside to doing this much pruning is the leftover branches and other debris. The Farmville work crew (including Roxy, the border collie, who has a story of her own about this tree and its underbrush) spent most of the day on New Year's Eve cutting down and dragging superhuman sized branches over to the orchard, into piles. When I went out there this morning and looked over what we had accomplished the day before, it became pretty apparent I better start burning these branches while the weather was nice. So that is what I did today on New Year's Day, 2012. I didn't want to attract the attention of the local fire chief, so I built a small burn pile and fed it a few branches at a time so the flames never got too crazy. And yes, I did make sure to have a water hose close by just in case things got out of hand. We always employ good safety practices here, well, for the most part we do. It was during this phase of the work day that I had ample time to think and come up with my goofy logic about stuff. That's what inspired this post. All that thinking had to result in something!


OK kids, follow closely because this might seem like a bit of a stretch. After you hear the logic behind it though, you will understand and hopefully get busy "creating" your own good luck in future years. Pay close attention because like most things I try to explain, it can sometimes be a little complicated. Eating a robust meal of blackeyed peas on New Years Eve provided the necessary energy to get out in the yard and work hard. During this hard work of clearing branches from around the cypress tree, I discovered the ground was covered in a few inches of decomposed cypress needles from all the years of these branches drying out and shedding as the newer branches grew over them. In earlier discussions on what to plant around the yard, the topic of blueberries had come up. As a matter of fact, we had pretty much decided on trying out a hedge-row of blueberries across the front of the yard since it faces north. The north side of the front yard gets the morning sun but is shaded from the intense afternoon sun during the summer months. As I looked at the piles of cypress needles, a light bulb clicked on. Cypress needles, much like the needles from any member of the pine family, are very acidic when composted into mulch. It just so happens that blueberries are acid loving plants and they recommend adding pine needle mulches to blueberry plantings to help get the soil to the pH that blueberries prefer. Even a slow learner like me saw the opportunity in this situation. The plan is to start composting these cypress needles shortly so that later this spring, we can work them into the beds the blueberries will be planted on. Some of the blueberries will be planted in the area the cypress had hogged with all of its underbrush, so that soil is probably already perfect for them. I know everyone is is still wondering what all this has to do with good luck and I started to explain but had to take a little detour to explain blueberry cultural practices. Believe me when I say that it was necessary for context. The good luck part goes like this. The blackeyed peas provided the much needed energy to clean up the cypress prunings. During that endeavor, the jackpot of mulch was discovered and dedicated to the future blueberry plantings. Everyone knows blueberries are one of the super-foods and eating them daily will help you live to be at least a hundred years old. If I get to be a hundred years old, that will certainly be the ultimate in good luck because I will have been able to spend those years with Lynda, and I could fill another blog with why that is the ultimate in good luck. So if you have been paying attention and following my ramblings closely, you can see how eating blackeyed peas can lead to the very best in luck. Get out there in 2012 and plant some super-foods and you too can have the good luck of living to the century mark, or beyond. Happy New Year!!!!

Quest for Fire....

I know the title of this post is a rip-off of the early 1980s movie with the same name. The biggest difference is my post won't win any awards (the movie won an academy award for Best Make-Up) but since I am choosing to tell my story in a language most people understand, I think it is, at the very least, more interesting. For those not familiar with the movie, it had no spoken lines, just grunts and hand gestures. Much like the movie, our quest for fire is driven by the need to find a new source of fire to replace the fire that is no longer present in our primitive social structure. Back when we moved into the house in August, fire was the furthest thing in our minds. Fast forward to December and the idea of a roaring fire takes on a whole new dimension, especially since there are still some openings in the exterior walls and it was 28 degrees the other morning.
This first picture is what was here when we got the place. Like I said earlier, fire was the last thing on our minds back then, so I barely even paid attention to this lovely unit here. It is actually a pretty good pellet stove for its era, which my guess is the late 1980s. The bin under the lid you see on the back half of the unit was even full of pellets. That should have been the first clue this thing might have some operational issues. Most folks would time the last fill of pellets with the end of the heating season so when the next cold season rolled around, a fresh bag of pellets could be dumped in. Long story short, the first time it got really cold here, I decided to try and fire this puppy up to put some much needed heat into the house and that's when things started going downhill. I won't bore everyone with the details of what didn't work and what diagnostics were used to try and determine which component was not working, but suffice to say, my OCD and ADHD brain burned an enormous amount of calories trying to solve the problem. At some point, sanity was experienced for at least a couple of seconds and I realized trying to fix a 20 plus year old pellet stove was not the best idea. Especially since there is an acre of almond trees just outside waiting, wait, make that begging to be transformed into split firewood.

That fact led to a great deal of research and the grand decision was made that a fireplace insert would be the best solution. The biggest reason for choosing an insert rather than a free standing unit similar to the pellet stove already here was to reclaim some floor space. The existing pellet stove sat on a hearth pad that sticks out four feet from the face of the fireplace. This means you have a pretty significant obstacle to walk around when hanging out on that side of the family room. With the insert, about 21 inches should be able to be cut back and reclaimed. That might not sound like a great deal of space but think about this, that is just about half the width of a normal hallway. Being able to add that much of a corridor in a family room that will have the usual array of bizarre furniture arrangements is pretty close to priceless. The biggest buzz-kill to the utilization of a family room is having it so space constricted that everyone has to follow a traffic flow diagram to get around.

This picture of the opening in the fireplace after the pellet stove was removed really serves no purpose other than to show the progression to what will eventually provide heat for our home. The new insert will sit partially into the cavity of the fireplace so the exhaust will have a very straight pathway up through the existing masonry chimney. Almost a foot of the new stove will stick out into the room and sit on the existing hearth. That part will radiate heat into the house AND provide us with a cook top surface to keep a kettle of water hot for coffee and tea. That's what really sold me on this whole concept. Who can resist not being able to have a constant source of hot water all winter long for beverages that warm you from the inside out?

This last picture is the actual stove insert that we ordered. The photo is a stock one but we'll try to get an actual one of our installation up in the near future. The new wood stove insert is the same brand as the pellet stove being replaced. One reason for this is that I admired the heavy duty construction of the frame of the old pellet stove. I did expend more than a few cuss words while I was troubleshooting the electrical components in the failed attempt to keep the old pellet stove operating, but looking back, whatever part failed on this machine probably gave a very long service life and I was just the unlucky person that came along and needed fire just after this part had given its best.
All in all, I would say we are happy with the decision to buy a wood burning stove insert for many reasons. First and foremost is what was mentioned before; when you have an acre of firewood sitting out the side door, it's a no-brainer. Equally as important is the fact that Lynda and I very much like being able to manage our heating needs outside of a blood contract with a utility company or fuel dealer. I'm not saying I don't think they have our best interest in mind every time they pursue a strategic marketing initiative, I'm just saying that as long as we can cut and stack firewood, we don't really care. Our quest for fire is over.

Using Up Leftovers

So, I know this is a bit of a departure from what I usually post here, but I thought I would talk about how to use up some leftover spaghetti in a way that doesn't feel like you have to muddle through it. This came from the fact that the new Farmville Reality Project is about a fifty minute commute now and when I get home during the week, having something that can be easily warmed in the microwave is very welcomed. It also is very much the philosophy of the project to be creative in how things are utilized. Since the project started with its focus on growing all kinds of food, to its current phase of restoring an old farm house, creative utilization of what was on hand has become a necessity. The first two pictures show the starting point for this dish. About once a month, I make a big pot of spaghetti sauce on a Sunday afternoon. It works well with the house restoration activities since the "kitchen" is out in the shop. The shop is where the noisy, loud machines are that cut and shape the wood for the various jobs going on. Keep in mind that a hundred years ago, there was no Home Depot or Lowes to pick up materials at. The majority of material available today is not of the exact dimensions as what was used back then, so just about every piece needs to be custom cut to size match with the existing parts of the house. Throwing together some sausage, ground beef, garlic, onion, herbs, homemade wine, and tomato sauce in a big pot and simmering it with a quick stir every now and then fits perfect with the work going on. As you can see in the second picture, we like to use traditional spaghetti noodles around here. We've tried the fancy little twists and shells, even the whole wheat stuff, but there is nothing like twisting your fork into a pile of spaghetti smothered in homemade sauce and trying to get as much in your mouth as you can and realizing the best you can do is getting slightly more than half of it in and the rest is hanging down your chin. A warning to any subscribers to Miss Manners, you'll probably not enjoy our Sunday night spaghetti dinners because one way or another, the sauce drenched noodles that struggled to make it in the mouth directly from the fork do in time get to where they need to be and it's not a pretty sight...
The great thing about having all this massive quantity of spaghetti as mentioned before is it makes for easy-to-heat leftovers during the week when I sometimes don't get home from work until late. The downside is around Thursday, one finds oneself a wee bit tired of leftover spaghetti. One thing growing food instills in you, because of the large amount of physical effort it takes, is to never waste things. After working in the fields as a teenager (meaning I did plenty of grunt work and didn't spend my time on a fancy tractor) I became keenly aware of the amount of resources it took to get a piece of produce to a store shelf. By resources I mean everything from the land and water to get the crop growing, to the fuel to power the tractors that keep the field from reverting back to a jungle. Then there was the manual labor aspect. One of my first jobs was to pass out the boxes the produce would be packed in and then staple the tops shut. After the hundreds of boxes were packed and stapled shut, we would load them onto a truck moving slowly through the field. Sometimes situations would come up so that it wasn't possible to get a truck into the field and we would carry the packed boxes to the truck on our shoulders. This type of work accomplished two very important things for me as a teenager, it saved me gym membership dues which would have been hard to handle making minimum wage, but more importantly, it taught me that every product represents the hard work of someone. And for that reason, wasting leftovers simply because you're tired of them is not a good thing. OK, a bit preachy and long winded but I firmly believe it to be an important thing to practice regardless of how prosperous you become.




The third picture shows the ingredients you need to transform your leftover spaghetti into a whole new dish. Maybe the Food Network will hear about this transformation and give me my own show. Similar to the ones they do on HGTV about whole house makeovers for less than X amount of dollars, mine could be about whole leftover makeovers for less than ten bucks. I'm just joking. I've yet to see anything really useful come from watching a half an hour show that fast forwards through the hardest part of the process and then at the end, everyone is smiling and talking like they truly did snap their fingers and the end result magically appeared. The ingredients for this casserole of leftover spaghetti are pretty simple and most of them I always have on hand. As a matter of fact, that's the reason cottage cheese is used instead of ricotta. Since I have cottage cheese almost daily for breakfast and I just don't see eating ricotta for breakfast as enjoyable, cottage cheese wins this round. If for some reason you have ricotta, it will work too. I chop up a few cloves of garlic and some onion. In the picture you see red onion but any onion will do. Make sure the dice on these is fairly fine so their flavors come out easily during the baking part. If the chunks are too large, the garlic and onion flavor will stay in the chunks and not get melded into the dish. Some might like it that way but I like casseroles that display the flavors of all the ingredients in every bite, not just the bites you happen to have got a big chunk of onion in. The amounts of onion and garlic are not critical and highly dependent on personal preference, so use your best judgement of your tastes or those that will be eating with you. In the mixing bowl with the garlic and onion, add about half of a 24 ounce container's worth of cottage cheese and two eggs. Then take a 9 ounce package of spinach leaves and chop them up so most of the pieces are no bigger than a fifty-cent piece. If you're like me and haven't really seen a fifty-cent piece in many years, as you would expect, it's about twice as big as a quarter. Now you will need to pre-cook the spinach and get rid of the water in it. If you use it without pre-cooking, the casserole gets soggy. I use a nonstick saute pan so I don't have to add any oil. Remember, the other stuff in the casserole already has plenty of fat to keep the dish from being bland. The spinach will wilt down quickly and it helps drive the water out if you push everything to the perimeter of the pan and slightly up the sides. This lets gravity drain the water cooking out of the spinach to the center of the pan where the pan is hottest. You should see the water steam off quickly. Let this cool a little bit and then add to the cottage cheese, egg, etc mixture. The throw in about 12 ounces of mozzarella cheese and mix with a wooden spoon. You can use plastic if you want but the dish won't be quite the same. Not really but it sounds cool when you specify the material people should have their kitchen utensils made of. It takes your expert quotient way up there.


Now for the assembly part. You might think I'm kidding again but this part is important even though it sounds like you could do it another way. When I oil the casserole pan to assemble everything in, I pour a little olive oil in and use a smashed garlic clove to spread the oil all around the pan. It's a little thing and some scientist will do a study to prove there is no perceptible garlic flavor on the bottom of each finished piece of plated casserole, but I still do it anyway. My belief is the little things you pay attention to during prep work add up to bigger things when the dish is finally served. After the bottom and sides are oiled, put just enough red sauce to "paint" the bottom. You want to keep the noodles from getting dry and sticking but the real benefit of the red sauce is to trickle down through the casserole while its baking, so make sure you don't use too much here and not have enough for later. Then put a layer of noodles and smear some of the cheese mixture over that. It's a bit messy and a rubber spatula helps. Then ladle some red sauce and another layer of noodles, repeat the cheese mixture and more red sauce.




When finished, it should look like the fourth picture. I leave the top layer with red sauce so the oven doesn't dry things out. Put this in the pre-heated to 350 degree oven (I know all recipes tell you to pre-heat the oven but I don't, I figure you'll turn the thing on when it makes sense for you) on the middle rack with some foil loosely tented over it. This provides further insurance against the dreaded drying out I seem to be so paranoid about. After about 40 minutes or so, the whole thing should be bubbling and looking like it's getting hot and gooey throughout. This is the time to take the small part of the mozzarella cheese left in the bag, I'm assuming you bought the super convenient 16 ounce size bag, but if not, do the math and you come up with about 4 ounces of cheese to use. Take the foil off and sprinkle the cheese uniformly over the top. If you have some Parmesan, this would also be a good time to sprinkle some on. Keep it in the oven about ten or fifteen minutes more to let the topping cheese melt and slightly brown. Each oven is a bit different so keep an eye on it. You don't want to scorch the cheese or in the case of a cooler oven, let it go so long that the cheese doesn't brown but the casserole starts drying out. I know, the drying out thing again. I guess I've had that happen one too many times and there is nothing enjoyable about a casserole that cuts and eats like rice crispy treats.

The last picture shows the finished product. It also makes for convenient leftovers and is super easy to take in your lunch if you have access to a microwave at work. When I make this, we literally get an entire work week's worth of meals from one afternoon and one evening's cooking effort. The economist side of me could fill up another lengthy post about how efficient this is and could help this country find its way back to a 1950s type of prosperity, but I won't. I'll just let you take my word for it. Enjoy!

Are We Making Things Better?

OK, I guess the title of this post could be a little bit self serving. It would be very unlikely I would pose that question in the title unless the answer was solid "yes". I guess the real reason for showing these two pictures is to reinforce that we are making progress. Sometimes things seem to bog down and it can cause a person to wonder if they really are making progress. Between Lynda and I, the front yard has had a fulltime irrigator working on it since the middle of August. Last weekend, after I ran the lawnmower over things, I paused and noticed the front yard really was looking pretty nice. To shamelessly demonstrate just how much we have greened up the front yard, I dug up the picture from about a year ago when the place was for sale. At that time, it appeared nothing had been watered for a long time and it showed. We still don't have the place even close to where our vision is, but I think this shows we are making things better and we both have bruises, skinned knees and elbows, and sore bodies to prove it. As has been said before, we wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Making Progress... Sort of

The title of this post might give you the idea that I'm losing steam and maybe even burning out on this whole restoring a hundred year old farm house thing. Not to worry, quite the opposite as a matter of fact. I titled this post because I do find it ironic that you can work hard all day and then when you describe what you've accomplished, it doesn't sound like as much as your body feels it's done that day. Maybe it's age catching up, I don't know. I do know these projects wear me out and I sleep like a baby at night. Except when the cats get hungry early in the morning, then sleep comes to a halt until they have food in their bowls. Their antics could fill up another blog and then some though, so we'll stick to the subject matter at hand.

As you can see, the bathroom is coming along nicely. I know it wasn't that long ago I mused about having it functional by July 1st, but that was before I got help with that delusional part of my personality. Now that has been straightened out, I'm proud to say the hall bathroom is fully functional and we achieved that status by August 15th. It's not anywhere near finished though and I'm not even going to stick my neck out and throw a target out there. I do know the upper three feet of wall above the subway tile and board-and-batten wainscoting will not be painted until November. I gave my word on this and those who know me well know that is about as rock solid as it gets.

The picture of water coming out of the shower head demonstrates just how functional this bathroom is now. It also shows the tank for the toilet mounted six feet up on the wall. The high tank toilet doesn't necessarily make the bathroom more functional but it takes the cool factor way up there. The shower also is pretty cool to use. It's quite a bit different than what most of us grew up with but every time I use it, I can't help but think about how it must have been over a hundred years ago. I'm sure a tub/shower set up like this was not found in every household back then, but those of us using it in this old farmhouse sure do appreciate it.

The last picture is of the French doors leading into what will someday be the kitchen. Before we had these installed, there was an out swinging door leading right into a wall. Because of that, the kitchen was boxed in and dark. After some wall removal and the addition of these doors, the area for the future kitchen is open, naturally well lit and easily accessible from the back part of the property. That's pretty important for us because we plan to grow lots of vegetables in the garden and we don't want to have to navigate complex walkways and entryways to get these veggies to our kitchen.

All in all, we're making good progress on restoring this old place. It just feels like there should be a whole lot more completed for how sore and tired my body feels every weekend. Truth be told though, I wouldn't trade this for anything else.