Our Weekend With Amy

We had a lot of fun this weekend. Our daughter Amy & her dog Hero came up for a visit on Saturday. We worked on some inside projects. It was great to have Amy there helping us! Steve built three more walls to put up around the stairs. Doing this in sections made it much easier to handle.

Hero was helping us too!

Amy was in charge of putting all the screws in the drywall & did a great job.

The next step was to put up the walls. With a little heavy lifting, it was done. The hole in the wall is head room for the stairs to the basement. The area in front of it will be made into a workbench of sorts in the shop area.

Here is the view from the top of the basement steps.
And here is the wall from the "up the stairs" view.

When our work was finished at the farm, we went to a nearby town to see a ski-jumping competition. It was sponsored by the Snowflake Ski Club in Westby. This competition has been going on since the 1920's.
Here is Steve & Amy in front of the main ski jump.
The people you see on the slope are grooming the area for the next competition. This is an Olympic size jump used for US & international competitions. After the jumps we went to the rod and gun club to see a band and have a couple beers. (Except me. I'm the designated driver :-)
Sunday, Amy & I went to town to shop at the food co-op & an antique-junk store. She found an autographed book from the 40's about flower arranging & we saw a toboggan to tell Steve about. Went we got back to the farm, we all took a walk in the woods. Hero had a great time running around.

We showed Amy the tree that fell last year in a storm. It is a huge oak that
split down the middle & is stuck into another tree. Would love
to get it down to use in the house for the floor or cabinets.

Before going back in the barn, we stopped in the garden & found the brussel sprouts that were buried in the snow. Still green & a beautiful sight in the middle of winter.

Can't wait to get started in the garden....

Living the Dream

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the before & after of the room we are using now in the barn. I thought I would look back at what has been done on the other side of the barn. This is a before look since we haven't made it to the "final" after yet. Slowly but surely it is changing.

Earlier I posted pics of how it looked when the Amish lived here. The following pics are from the time we closed on the farm until now.

This is the room that all the machines were in when the Amish owned it. There is another room (on the west side) that was also used as a sewing/bedroom. The wall you see divides them.

This is the view facing east of the same room.
The doorway you see is what is now our living area. It really is a huge space. The barn measures about 38 x 66. With three floors, that's a lot of square footage. Since we have the custom cabinet business, that will take up a big chunk of space. Our living area will only be around 900 to 1000 square feet on the main level with guest bedroom/craft area upstairs. Until we get the upstairs done, the room we live in right now will be for guests. Here is our son Shane, tearing down the dividing wall. Having no electric in the barn made it easier since we didn't have to worry about wires. The power tools we used were run by a generatorThe wall is down. It really opened up the room. We were also working on the windows.
They needed painting & some were warped.

That day, Shane built some walls for our "bathroom". Steve made a sawdust toilet that worked fine for an indoor toilet. It was an adjustment getting used to that but it wasn't all that bad. It had a regular toilet seat & was at the same height as a "normal" toilet. Better than going outside to an outhouse when it is cold outside. Now we have indoor plumbing which was celebrated by calling our kids & flushing the toilet so they could join us for the momentous occasion! The oval object on the wall is a solar light.
A small panel is mounted outside the window.Blue jean insulation was added to the wall adjacent to our "living room".
We only have heat from the wood stove in that area so we made it as warm as we could.The only way to get to the basement was by the stairs that were under a heavy door on the floor. They were pretty shakey & I always worried about the door falling on my head. Here we had already taken down the basement stairs & were using a ladder.After many hours of planning the layout of the living area that we wanted,
Steve started working on the new basement stairs.It was spring & was warming up, so we turned our efforts to outside projects & the garden. Then the accident kept us from traveling to the farm for a while & we had a lot of mowing, weed pulling & tending to the garden when we did get back to the farm. In August, Steve put up the bathroom walls. By October, we had plumbing.
After a year and a half of using a sawdust toilet & a solar shower,
having a real bathroom is HUGE!
And that brings us to the new picture window & French door.And finally the stairs.
This is where we are now in the process. Last weekend we set a couple new support posts & this weekend we hope to put up some 2x4 walls in the new living area. As I go through all these pictures, it brings back all the dreams we had that got us to this point.
We have to step back every once in a while & remember, we are living that dream.
And as excited as we are to finish the house,
we know that what we are doing now will be looked back on and cherished.

Ending the Weekend

Another weekend is gone. At least it was a long one this time. We are alway a little sad when we leave the farm. Every weekend there seems to be a good one. Yes, we work hard. Yes, we haven't had plumbing until very recently. Yes, there is no TV. Yes, we live in a barn. But when the day is done & we are sitting in front of the fire, we just smile at each other & know this is so right. It is a little strange to only feel like you are at home when you are away from your weekday home. Oh, we miss some things. Like the kids. A lot. Wish they could live up there with us. But they all have their own lives. And they are happy with those lives, which is all a parent can hope for. We know they understand our need for the homesteading life. When we make the final move, it will be hard. Torn between two lives...
This morning as we left, there was quite a bit of ice on the ground & the van. It gets a little scary traveling down the driveway when it is icy. We made it & are home in Illinois now. Mia (the cat) is very happy to see us.
We almost have the stairs done. There was more insulating done in the basement in the form of heat tape. Next year we hope to have a back-up source of heat in the barn besides the woodburner. We will be getting a propane tank this summer that we will need for the stove but we aren't sure if we will be adding a few more solar panels to the system for radiant floor heat or use a small propane furnace. We love the wood heat for when we are there. Too bad there are pipes that freeze when you are gone!
The stairs were one of those BIG steps (ha ha) that makes us proud of how far we have come from 2 years ago in March. The barn was Amish built & owned for 4 years before we bought it. The simple life to the extreme. A family of nine living in a barn among the machinery for a furniture & sewing business. No plumbing, no electric, nothing fancy or even close. The lower level (basement) of the bank barn was a dirt floor with creasote posts & home to horses, chickens & a little mean guard dog. We talking lots of manure, dead rats, etc. It smelled a lot to say the least. This is the barn basement the day we closed. The Amish apparently don't clean everything out before they move as the English do (and as per contract).

This is after a few changes we made

New posts & a concrete floor made it all the difference. It no longer smells like a barn & we could have a great roller skating rink!

We'll be in Illinois until Friday afternoon & then back to Wisconsin for more of what we love.