More Water

Well the really big news this weekend was the amount of rainfall that was received last week.  It seems that Rockdale got 3.5" and temporary flooded the city (this was based on an article in the paper).  The ponds were 'very' full.  The large pond was overflowing into the gully.

Here is what the back pond (big one) looked like

 BEFORE

and then AFTER

Here is the front pond

BEFORE

and then AFTER

Because of the storm we had a lot of 'camp' cleanup to do.  And because this is becoming an obsession, we are know creating a tent city.  We have one tent to sleep in and another for storage.

What would a blog be without my dogs

Tyke needed to wear a sweater because it was very cold and very windy.  Because of the wind we didn't get a lot done on the barn but John is ever diligent.

We did get the onions planted this weekend.   We have three different varieties.  You maybe asking yourself, why are they planting so many onions.  The answer would be, I have no idea.  The onions were purchased in this bundle and so we plant......

As I had mentioned earlier it was very cold there this weekend.  Saturday night it was 37.  I will say that sleeping in a tent when it is 37 degrees, is no easy feat, even with a small propane heater.  We did have another emergency this weekend.  At 7:00 pm on Saturday, John and I were deciding whether we had enough gas in the propane tank to power the heater for the night.  We both decided, sure we did.  I believe this decision was made more out of laziness.  We were very tired and didn't want to go into town.  Well, at 9:30 that night, the tank ran out, the tent began to become very cold very quickly.  You have never seen two people get dress and two dogs get into a warm truck any faster than we did.

We did get gas and slept fairly warm in the tent, but again we have learned another lesson, always have a backup propane tank if staying warm depends on it.

How to Put on a Tiller

When you buy a tractor, I would wager that many people have no idea what they are in for. 

Don't get me wrong the tractor is wonderful, it is the purchasing and putting on all the farm implements (post hole digger, grader, tiller) that is a pain the butt.  The tiller was our last purchase.  This was by far the most expensive implement to date.  I will not say how much here so as not to scare those who are thinking of purchasing one, but the ROI on this piece of equipment will take many years of planting a garden.  Actually I will be fully gray before any return on the investment is felt.  We will have to plant A LOT of tomatoes!!!

This weekend was about two things, getting the tiller on the tractor, tilling our first garden and cutting off the post on the barn.  We did accomplish everything but it was very interesting.

First the weatherman has NO IDEA what he is talking about.  Saturday was suppose to be high 60's during the day and the low 50's at night.  When we got there Friday night the weather was great.  By 3:00 AM the wind started blowing about 20 mph and the temperature was in the 40's ..... what the #$^%$.  We had no idea.  We did persevere, but not without a lot of shivers. 

John has really become a mechanical engineer.  Putting on farm equipment is not for the weak of heart or mind.  The first thing you should know is that most farm equipment comes with none or very little instructions.  And when you get the instructions and it says 'putting on the drive shaft will be the most difficult part'.  This is very disconcerting when you have already spend 3 hours connecting everything else.  (By the way, that statement was on the post hole digger). 

Now we come to the tiller.  It had an installation manual (yeah), but when it says you may have to 'cut' the PTO shaft because the distance between your tractor and the tiller may be shorter than average'.  Well when we have paid a fortune for something that says 'you may have to cut', I am usually not feeling well.

Of course, our tractor had a shorter distance and John indeed had to cut.  But he prevailed and was successful. He has plowed our first garden.

Here is John trying to get the PTO shaft to fit on our tractor.

This was a very proud moment.

Our next task was to cut the extra height off the barn posts.  We had to cut the extra 3' off of all 16 poles.  Another lesson learned is John is not very good with heights and but is great tractor driver, I am much better with heights, but my skills at driving a tractor not so good. 

We started with me driving the tractor around and John cutting.  We finally got smart and switched and it all went well.

Another first was that Tyke went with us this weekend.  He normally stays with Sr.  I will say he did wonderful. 

This is Tyke trying to get into John's bag.  Tyke has this thing about sitting on your bags so he doesn't get left, but unfortunately, he does that when he is already there!

Ok - do I not have the cutest dogs or what!!!!!!

Girders

This weekend was very productive.  We got all the girders up on the barn.  Although, there was still a lot of work on the ladder (up and down, up and down, yes my legs are killing me), we finally got them all up.  It was extremely cold over the weekend.  Friday and Saturday night were both below freezing.  We woke up to frost everywhere, but by noon, you could finally take off your coat off.  And then around 5:00 you had to put it back on. It was so cold that I brought some soup to eat Saturday night and when I got it out of the ice chest it was frozen solid, so off to town we went.

This is Sandy's idea of working hard.  Sitting in the back seat of the truck.  She loves sitting in there. (Wow, John's truck is a mess.)

John putting up some of the final boards.

Again, Sandy after a hard day of laying in the back of the truck.

I am told that we will be doing the top brace and then start the roof.  Doesn't sound like fun to me at all. 

Oops, almost forgot, injury report:  John got two small injuries to his hand but I am out with zero injuries, so I call that a good weekend.

Base Plates

There is a couple of things I know about myself; first, I am not good at math and am OK with that, and second that I hold a grudge, that to, I am Ok with.

The first thing I noticed this weekend is that many times when I am helping John I try to anticipate what we are doing, so I can get stuff ready or be prepared to help.  But when you are putting on base plates and must hit multiple posts and your boards are either 8', 10' or 16', it becomes an exercise in math, which I do not want to do.  So with that said, poor John had to keep saying, Ok 8' board, or third post (which means 16'ers (yep, I am talking the lingo now)).   So, the bottom 2' x 6' were OK to put on, but when you have 9' high base plates, this separates the girls from the boys.  I would like to say they are REALLY heavy.  But we did it.  I unfortunately didn't get pictures of the completed project, but we got both top and bottom base plates on.  This would include 128 screws.  There is an invention that I have just discovered; a wrench powered by the compressor.  Oh my god, that is a great invention.  When you have to put 128 screws in that are 3" long, that is magic.  Who knew!

This is John contemplating the mathematical aspects of the barn. 

Have you ever noticed he wears his shirts backwards.  Everyone I know puts the short sleeve shirt underneath the long sleeve shirt.  This way if you get hot, all you have to do is take off the long sleeve shirt.  I am not sure what he does when he gets hot, have to redress!  Yes, I have mentioned this to him, but he didn't care about my opinion, so I am reaching out to those I know to do an intervention each time you speak to him.  Maybe we can get him to change his ways!

We are starting on the rafters next weekend.  This sounds pretty hard to me, but I am told we just finished the hard part.  Hard to believe!

It is also important to mention that it takes a special person to attempt to build a barn with a woman helper.  Although I feel I am very competent in the gopher job description, and I can use the HELL out of the automatic wrench, I still lack a lot of skills and my upper body strength cannot be avoided or lack of.  I really can't lift anything; the 80 lb of concrete kicked by butt, the 2x6x16 was impossible and the nail gun was impossible 10' in the air, holding a 2x6x16 (yeah that was impossible).

Ok, back to me holding a grudge.  I was trimming some of the trees and decided that I could pull down a limb (which I thought was dead), and it came back and bit me. But it did come down.  I will say that I was pretty mad at that damn limb, so in keeping with my personality, I started a fire and burned the crap out of it.  So I won!

This was the only injury of the weekend.

Crackers

Have you noticed that many of my posts surround food.  That explains why I am a rolley polley.  I really should get another hobby.  It would be better for my waistline.

But I am not, soooo I found a recipe for Italian crackers.  There was a lot more, but John and I have already eaten quite a few.  I stood one up and it looks funny, but I thought you should see how great the front is.  The more I look at the picture, I realize just how much John and I ate.  WOW!

New Experiment

Here is my next experiment.  I have made canned brine lemons.  I have never heard of it before and I had extra lemons so I thought why not!  They say they are great to cook with.  It has to sit in the brine for 4 weeks before I can taste them.  The recipe also said you can take the brine liquid, add some alcohol and it makes a great drink.  I will say I am NOT trying that nor am I that desperate.

As another first, I had some pickled green tomatoes and they were delicious.  Again, never heard of it before.  I have found a couple of recipes, but I have yet to find green tomatoes - wrong time of year.  So, I guess this is something that will have to wait.

Carmel Apples

Today was a very lazy day.  We didn't do much.  But John mentioned that he wanted Carmel apples, so I thought I would try.  I found the recipe on the Internet.  I am not sure what I ever did without the Internet.  I look on it for EVERYTHING. 

It is January 1/3/12 and I just found out that John didn't want Carmel apples, he wanted CARMEL to dunk apples in.   Well, that little fact would have been very nice to know before I made carmel apples.  Making just carmel is MUCH easier than making carmel apples!  The lesson here is that someone better start explaining themselves better - but I am not naming names.

They really turned out pretty good. 

We are keeping the grandpuppies and as usual, the boys and Sandy had to take a swim.  The water has to be 50 degrees.  Not sure how they stood it.  But as usual all are getting along famously.

Hooch does not want his picture taken, I tried several and he kept turning his head.