Made me chuckle

This afternoon I made a Walmart run to pick up an order that I did on line. Can you guess what is was? If you guessed two more cushions for our patio furniture – You are the winner! Last year our dogs kept eating them, so when I brought them out this spring, I knew that I’d have to order at least one. But I ordered two, thinking that I’ll have a back up. But little did I know that the one from last year was so bad that I must have thrown it away! When I went to pick them up from the store today, the clerk asked if I needed help. Now I wasn’t sure what he was talking about – so I asked him ‘with what’? He said if I needed help carrying the cushions out to the car. I must have given him a funny look, because then he said that they really weren’t too heavy. I said that I’d be OK, and picked up the very light two boxes and headed outside. The more that I thought about him asking if I needed help, the more that it made me chuckle. Earlier this morning I went and carried the second dorm refrigerator from the back basement up the stairs, across the yard, and into the Roadhouse all by myself. I knew that I was going to make a chiropractor appointment next week, so I figured that I might as well get my moneys worth out of the deal. But the only problem that I did have was my stomach. I kind of hooked the refrigerator on my gut when I was carrying it, and now it’s starting to turn a little black and blue. I just figured that there is so much extra there, that a little weight on it shouldn’t hurt. Humm… next time I guess I will wait until I can get some help carrying it.

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What I think….

I was thinking today about graduation parties on the farm and what all it involves, and then I thought about having babies. OK, we’re NOT having a baby, but how they are kind of a like. Before you think I’m crazy, this is why I think they are very similar.

First of all, in both situations you make the decision that the idea sounds good, and you agree that it’s something that you’d like to do. You are really excited and think that it’s just the right timing and it’ll be fun. Then the next morning when you wake up, you wonder what you were thinking! You know how much work it’ll be, and you also know that you’ll never get all those extra jobs done before the time comes. Then all the weeks go on, you think.. OK, should we really be doing this? … but by now everyone knows about it, so you smile and think to yourself that it’ll be OK and everything will work out. Now as it’s getting closer to the day and you can hardly wait. Everyone is getting anxious, including you.  You don’t have everything done, but it’s OK. You figure out that you will never have everything done and you just enjoy getting all the preparations ready. On the big day everything is happening so fast. You hardly know what time it is, and before you know it the day is over. You realize at that point that it will never be the same as it was before. When you look at your child, you see them differently. You get a little sad because they seem so grown up, and you know that in your heart you would just love to keep them just how they are right now. But they will continue to grow and it’s fun to see how their lives change. In both situations, they seem to have their whole life ahead of them, and are not afraid of anything. So as the graduation party is in just a couple of days, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. Hopefully we’ll have good weather and a good crowd. And I know that this is just the beginning of William’s new adventure in life,  but I can’t help feeling like I did when he was just born – both happy and even just a little sad.

So see, I told you that having a graduation party is just like having a baby, didn’t I.

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A little bit of this and a little bit of that

I ended up painting the barn cleaner and it does look pretty good. I think after I got started that I was supposed to paint some of it yellow. Oh well. Really if I didn’t tell you, then you wouldn’t have known it. It looks like it should be all red, so all red it is.

Barn cleaner – before picture

Barn cleaner - after picture

We also have been having trouble with our washing machine. I’ve cleaned out the filter and called the ‘Help’ line, but nothing worked. I unplugged it for quite some time and that didn’t work either. So I ended up calling the appliance store. We haven’t been washing clothes now for a couple of days because the earliest that they could come was today. When the repair man came, he started the washing machine and wouldn’t you know it, it worked. I don’t know what’s going on with it, but with extra kids around, I was glad that it wasn’t any worse – but what a waste of a trip! The repair guy just looked at me like I didn’t know how to run a washing machine or something. And if I was him, I guess I would think the same thing. But for now, we’ve been doing a lot of laundry just trying to catch up and I guess that I really didn’t care what he was thinking. Way too many other things to be worried about I guess.

Daryl was able to finish putting in all the crops and he said that we really have a lot of rocks to pick. But they’ll have to wait until next week though. I’m glad that he did get all done with the field work, I’ve got a couple of things before Saturday that I need his help with.

And guess what the dogs found again tonight? They found another raccoon in our old corn crib. The poor thing was just hoovering in a corner and the dogs were going crazy. But I went to my nephews Preschool graduation, and by the time I got back home the coon was dead. Yup, the poor thing.

I had a candy order due today and it was for small bags of assorted candy. I think it turned out well, and the person who ordered it seemed happy with it. I like doing these type of orders, it gives some variety to it. I wanted to make sure whatever that I was putting in the bags wouldn’t melt too bad because it was a warm one outside.

Thank you bags ordered for today

 

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Work continues

I went to the local nursery to see what type of bushes that I should plant on the south side of the Roadhouse. I had no clue what I was looking for, and the owner was able to help me decide what will not only work with the full sun on the south side, but also for the height that I was looking for. We decided on 6 Bombshell Hydrangeas. They are supposed to bloom in late July and will get to be around 3 foot tall. Right now they are about 1 1/2 feet tall. I asked Daryl in the morning if I could have the truck for the day, so into the truck these 6 bushes went, and back home to get them planted. I really like how they look and once they get a little bigger, I think they’ll look even better. Now that the bushes were planted and I had the truck, off to town to the discount store I went to now get some mulch. I thought I only needed 15 bags, but ended up with 20. And wouldn’t you know it, I did use all 20! I’m trying to think how many bags of mulch that I’ve used this year so far, and I’m thinking it’s around at least 40 bags. Now I know that it would have been much cheaper to get it in bulk, but who would have known that I’d use that much? While I was working on this project, the boys were also busy. Kyle and Allie helped with weeding and doing some touch up painting, and William and Jude were working on sorting through William’s Senior stuff. It’s so nice having both boys home and when their girlfriends are here, it’s twice as nice! Daryl was busy in the field and is close to getting everything planted. He ran short of beans, so had to make a drive over to the dealer to get a couple more bags. I’m hoping that he’ll get done on Tuesday.

Bushes in and now for the grass to hurry up and grow!

William had some good help for the afternoon

I was checking out how good my cattle water looks and decided that I think it looked good. I am a person that has to stand and check things out after I get a project done. I know, kind of weird – but true. So while I was standing there looking at the cattle water, I looked up and saw the barn cleaner really should be painted. Now as I was standing there looking at it, William’s girlfriend saw me. I asked her what she thought and she said that really no one will notice it. But, I will! So for SURE this is the last project that I’m going to do this week.

Cattle water before picture

Cattle water done

To end the day, Kyle and his girlfriend made everyone supper. They grilled some chicken, and also made some baked potatoes, asparagus, and cut up some fruit. It was a nice treat for a long, hot day. After supper, Kyle started a fire on the patio, and it was pretty relaxing.  I don’t know what happened to me after that though. I took a shower and then sat down. I was so tired that I fell asleep at 8:00. I told the kids that I was only going to sit there for 20 minutes. Yea, right. Well, I tried to get up a couple of times, but just couldn’t. Finally I figured out that I probably wasn’t going to get any more work done, and was just going to bed. I didn’t get much sleep the night before because the crazy peacocks screamed all night, so I’m guessing that I’ll be sleeping really good tonight.

Kyle and Allie hanging out on the patio

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Big Day Today

It was a big day today because it was Commencement day for William at our High School. It went well, but I was worried there for awhile. When I would think about the day during the week, I would get really sad.  You know when you have to keep telling yourself that it’ll be OK? Well, that’s what I was doing today and I wasn’t convincing myself very well either! I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t get tears in my eyes, but the ceremony went so fast. I think I was concentrating on not having this crying episode, that the time just flew by. I think I  would like a ‘do over’. Come to think of it, not only the day as a do over, but maybe the past couple of years!  I can remember like it was just yesterday car pooling for William and his classmates for preschool classes, and now his friends are all talking about college and one of his friends will be joining the Marine Corp. It’s a shame that it has to go by like a blink of an eye isn’t it? But all the kids did such a great job and how proud we all should be of all of them. Now to the next chapter of our lives. I hope I’m ready.

How proud we are of William

Before we went to Commencement, we went to early church and then lit our big burn pile. There was little or no wind today, and since we didn’t really want to burn our neighbors field, it looked like a good day to get rid of this pile. We’ve been stocking it since last year and today she was going to go. Daryl lit it, and once it was starting to burn it got so hot, I was so surprised. Most of the wood came from the buildings or the Farrowing house, so it was good old hand sawed wood. It didn’t take too long to burn, but since I’m so scared of fires, I watched it with my 5 gallon pails of water by my side, to make sure that it didn’t get out of hand.

Our big fire today

Daryl and William also worked on moving the rest of the black dirt and scraping the yard. We had some leftover gravel from the cement work that we were able to use it in our yard.  And now just some bushes and some mulch and that project can be done!

Moving the dirt for the south side of the Roadhouse

Scraping the yard

I also got the rockers painted for our front porch. They were looking kind of tough, so check this off the list!

Before pictures

After pictures

Now this week I’m going to focus on the food for the party and decorating the Roadhouse. Since the party is next weekend, I think we’re sitting in pretty good shape. Well, that’s what I’m thinking tonight. Ask me in a couple of days and my opinion just might change!

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Sleeping in this morning

Last night I did some errands after supper,  and I couldn’t figure out why I was so tired and my legs hurt so much. It didn’t dawn on me until I was sitting in the bath tub at around 11:00 pm, that I remembered that I did hand scrape and then I swept the cow yard during the day. Now I’m sure you’re thinking that this is crazy talk, and normally I would agree. But let me explain why I did this. I scraped and swept part of  the cow yard because it’s right beside where people are going to walk into the Roadhouse. And if it wouldn’t rain, then it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But if it did rain, and since it is a cow yard that the cows actually use – there is a very likely chance that it could smell… well like a cow yard. Now that doesn’t bother me, but it might bother others. So yes, I did hand scrape and sweep part of it yesterday. I was hoping that no one would actually see me doing this, but of course the neighbors drove by, and then the road grader man also drove by and he waved as he was trying to see just exactly what I was doing. But, I didn’t care. Everyone who was driving by was also invited to William’s party, and if it’s a wet day I bet they’ll be saying.. you know that Bonnie did sweep the yard. OK, they probably won’t be saying that. I walked by the cow yard this morning and was checking out my good work and noticed that it’s already been used by the cows. If  the yard is  dry closer to the end of the week, you can bet I’ll be out there again with my broom! So when I went to bed, it felt so good to hit the covers that I didn’t wake up until 7:30!  When I was laying in bed I was  thinking how nice it was to still be in bed and I stayed in until 8:00.  I haven’t had a chance to do that for sometime now, and I’m thinking that I need to add this to one of my lists :)

William and I spent part of the day today working on cleaning out the house gutters. They were so packed with pine needles, that it was a job that needed to get done. I caught myself telling William not to fall onto the cement because it was Commencement on Sunday. Now that you think of that, isn’t that a bad thing to say? Like if it wasn’t Commencement, it wasn’t as bad if he fell? Either way, I was glad that no one fell and we were able to get most of the gutters cleaned. We then started to work on moving the black dirt to the south side of the Roadhouse. Once we started this project, there was no turning back. We had some road blocks, the tires were flat on the wagon – then we couldn’t get the air compressor to work, then the portable tank wasn’t full, and now his 4 wheeler was almost empty of gas. But we did get some dirt moved and I’m hoping that this project will be done on Monday and I’ll plant the trees or bushes (?) on Tuesday. No time to worry about which one, I just need something planted.

Cleaning out the gutters today

Daryl was able to get into the field today and it worked pretty good. He was using his new planter and he got done with everything that he was hoping for tonight. He has one tile line that’s running slow, and will have to go to the hardware store tomorrow morning and rent a snake to see if it’s clogged. He wants to get it open so the field can dry a little bit more before he will be able to plant it.

Daryl planting corn today

Speaking of the hardware store, I went in to get some spray paint for my rockers and came out with a 5 foot wall hanging. I love it, but I think I might rearrange my living room (again) to try to move the couch to the other side of the room. The wall hanging just doesn’t go as well with the couch, and until we can find a couch that we like, we’re keeping this one. They wrote down my name and then  sent me home with this wall hanging and said to come back in the next couple of days to let them know if I’m keeping it. That’s a small town hardware store for you.

 

 

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Good day for painting

With the weather being almost perfect today, I sure was glad that I was ready to do some painting outside. I needed to get a couple of fences painted, and with some luck I was able to get them done. I also needed to repaint the cement on our front  porch. It really wasn’t too bad, but I’ve never really liked the color and wanted to repaint it. It was a color that when I  looked at it I would think to myself that I could do better. This new paint was a little bit more brown, but to be honest it’s still not the color that I wanted. But since I had a gallon of paint of the new color in my one hand,  and a paintbrush in the other – - – it was going to be the color that it was going to be painted this summer at least. I still have a couple of porch rockers that I need to paint and then some touch up on the Roadhouse, and then I should be done for this year. Well that’s my plan anyway.

One of the two fences that was painted today

Kyle made it home late yesterday afternoon, but left again today to head to Chicago with some friends. His girlfriend from Canada traveled back to Iowa with him, and will be staying with us for a couple of weeks. We tease her that it’s just in time for picking rock, but I’m thinking that picking rock isn’t quite what Kyle had in mind. She’s never been this far in the Midwest, so hopefully we’ll be able to do a couple of fun things before she heads back up north. We should all go to see the Worlds Largest Ball of Twine – but I’m thinking that no one else is seeing this as a fun trip for us to do. They are so missing out on the fun on this one!

With the weather being so warm, William has been on watering grass duty. The new grass is coming up pretty good, but now it needs to be watered. He doesn’t really like it that there are some spots that the grass isn’t coming up, so he planted some grass in flat containers and was hoping to make some type of  sod. I didn’t think the areas looked so bad, but he said he wanted to give it a try. More power to him if he can make it work.  William and I also started to work on moving some black dirt over to the south side of the Roadhouse. I would like to still get some landscaping done over there before next weekend . It didn’t take us too long to figure out that we needed to go about this a different way. You know when you’re working on something and you’re thinking to yourself that there has to be a better way to do this? Well that was what William and I were thinking this afternoon. We’re going to look at it again tomorrow and come up with a different plan on how to make this job easier.

William watering the new grass

I had a couple of orders for Mother’s Day candy platters, and I’m soon going to have to make the decision about ordering my own supply of pecans. Usually I’ve ordered them from a local town, but I can get them much cheaper if I just order them. The only problem is that I will have to buy quite a few at a time.  I think I’ll look at that in a couple of weeks. After I got done with the candy, I decided that I needed to do something with my extra flowers that I had. I don’t know if you do this or not, but I just buy some flowers that look pretty and then figure out where I should put them. I tried to get some of my own started this year in the greenhouse, but I didn’t have very good luck. So now that I’ve been planting flowers in all the usually spots, I had some leftover. Then I remembered that I had that old milk house tub that I used for Christmas lights on our porch. When I found it, I knew where I should put it. I have the worst luck with the spot by our garage. The ground is kind of lower that the rest of the area, and for some reason the weeds call it their home. So I looked at what flowers that I had, and then of course I thought that I should have one big flower in the middle – so I went and bought more. Isn’t that the way it usually goes? You try to just get the job done fast and then you make more work out of it than you probably should. But I do like how it looks (I might lower the one planter that’s hanging)  and I’ll be anxious to see how it looks once the flowers grow more and I’ll have to wait and see if I put the mulch thick enough to keep those darn weeds down.

Home for my extra flowers

 

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What a day…

This morning started like every other morning. I took Daryl to work (we are still sharing cars) then when I got back home, I changed clothes and headed out to let the dogs out. Once the dogs were out and petted, I went to feed the cattle. It’s always funny how the cattle act when I feed them. I open the door and tell them ‘Good Morning’, and they all come running. The usually run through the yard full speed and stop right in front of me – - but not this morning. They were acting weird and no one came to get petted. Then I saw it. I saw that Rion was bloated. I couldn’t believe it. So I called Daryl to ask him if I should call the vet and we decided that it was  a good thing to do. When I called the vet he said that he’d be right there. He had one appointment, then he’d come over.  It sure seemed that it was taking him a long time to get there and I kept looking at my watch. The first time I looked at my watch I thought it had to have been at least an hour.. maybe even over an hour since I called him. But the truth was that it was only about 20 minutes. So I did the rest of the chores, planted some more flowers, dug up another flower spot, did some laundry, ate about 6 caramel turtles and then just couldn’t stand it anymore. So I called again (by now it was about 50 minutes) and asked if it was going to work for him to come over. Yup, he was on his way. Now the real challenge was just going to begin. Rion is pretty used to me, but he’s not used to anyone else. So when he saw the vet, the cow went wild ! He didn’t want anything to do with the vet, and it was a challenge just to get him in the barn. But we finally did get him in, and before we could get the top of the double doors shut – Rion jumped and cleared the door. I forgot to tell the vet that Rion can jump pretty good. So now we’re trying to get him cornered again and we almost had him. But this time he saw a metal gate and decided to show the vet his skills of jumping one more time, and over the gate he went. We chased him for awhile around in the pasture, but eventually we gave up. The vet said that the cow didn’t look too bad, but if he did get worse we’ll have to try to catch him again. He said to check him about every two hours. Every two hours? I’m thinking that he could die pretty fast, so I was going to check him way more often than that. Now the first couple of times he was looking the same, and then it happened. He started to get worse. So I called the vet to come over and then tried to get a hold of Daryl. I was having trouble getting in touch with anyone at his work, so I was leaving voice messages on his cell and his work phone. By now, Rion is starting to look pretty bad, and then he laid down. When a cow lays down it’s usually not a good sign. I tried to catch Daryl again, and finally I was able to have him paged at his work  and he was coming home to help pen Rion up. So I’m sitting in the pasture beside Rion, with his head in my lap trying to keep him calm and just petting him. By this time I would have sworn that he was just about dead. He couldn’t get any air because the bloating was pushing too hard on his lungs. He was also starting to throw up. I didn’t care how long it was since I talked to the vet, I called him again and said that Rion is dying and I needed help! I also talked to my brother just in case I needed to relieve the pressure and make a cut in his stomach to release the air. This is a last resort, but if your cow is dying, you have to give it a chance. But good thing we didn’t have to do this because the vet was on his way. When the vet came, Rion was really blowing up on both sides and we were able to get all the cows on the cattle floor by the barn. Someone gave Daryl a ride home (no vehicle at work) and we got Rion in the barn again. This time both top and bottom door went shut right away. We all knew by this time that he could jump pretty good.  After about a gallon and a half of mineral oil that was tubed into his stomach, he finally started to release the air. I kept checking on him as the afternoon went by, and it took until around 4:00 for him to finally look a lot better. We were trying to figure out why he would have bloated, and the only thing that we could come up with is that some spilled corn that needed to be picked up was thrown in the cow yard. And since Rion thinks all the food is his food, he must have eaten most of it himself. But at the end of the day, everyone is still alive and that’s a good thing. But when I was sitting in the pasture holding Rion’s head and petting him, I was wondering how I was going to do when I see him drive away in a cattle trailer to the market. I’m thinking it’s not going to go over so well. Even as I’m writing this is making me a little teary eyed. Hummm, not good. Maybe I can convince Daryl to keep him as a farm pet?

Feeling much better tonight

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Still not able to get into the field yet

We really enjoyed the nice weather that we had today. The problem with all the rain that we’ve been having, is that we still don’t have our corn in. If we could get a couple of nice days like today, we should be able to get the field work done in no time. Daryl was hoping to get the rock picked up on the ground before he planted corn, but I’m not sure that we will have a chance. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not too upset that we can’t pick rock, but I would rather do it in the spring than the hot summer. I guess we’ll just have to see how the next couple of days go. On the 10 o’clock news tonight it looks like we could get rain tomorrow, but the rain will be scattered. I sure hope it scatters some place other than by our farm.

Last night and this morning was set aside to getting some things done for William’s upcoming trip to Europe. You know how you set things aside because you have so much time (or you think that you do anyway?) Well that was the case with a couple of things that we needed to get done. So after we had ordered his tux pants, and they fit, I was feeling pretty good about staying on schedule. The next thing was get some other shirts ordered that are needed – got it done. The last thing on the list for this week was to order Broadway tickets while he will be in London. Shouldn’t be a problem right? Well, it was. I started to work on getting them ordered last night, and after a couple of hours I finally gave up. I even found a number in London to call to see if they could help to try to figure out why it wasn’t working. Even though I’m a little nervous about getting our next phone bill, it was nice to hear someone say to you, ‘It’s all right dear, we’ll get these tickets ordered right away’. With the heaviest British accent. Well, it still didn’t work and we were back to square one. What was happening is that our bank cards wouldn’t allow us to use them overseas. And every time that I would try to use them, security would call and tell me that someone was using them. Yea… me! I guess this is a good thing that they do check up on these situations, but when it’s you trying to use the card, it’s pretty frustrating.  So this morning I went to the bank and got a gift Visa card. Now this should work. So back to the website to try it and just knowing that it was going to work, I hardly was watching the screen. Then it happened, it said that the card wasn’t good. OK, so I thought that maybe I typed in the wrong number or something. So I retyped it and making sure that I pressed really hard when I was typing. I don’t know why I think that this would make it work, but it made me feel better. But no luck. Now I know that this is getting to be a long story, so I’ll jump to the end. After about 3 1/2 hours more this morning on working on these tickets with the help of the bank , I found out that Visa gift cards changed their policy. They don’t work overseas anymore. huh. So I had security lifted on William’s bank card for just today, and it worked right away. I guess it’s a good thing that we found out about this now. They just changed their policy in April and even the bank didn’t know about it until today. Wouldn’t that be a really bad trip if all your money was on a Visa card and you couldn’t use it? Like I said, good thing that we found out now. But all the time (over 6 hours of it) paid off, and now he’ll have fun going to the show ‘Les Miserables’ with his friends while in Europe.

So other than that, what did I do with my time the rest of the day? I broke down and went to my cell phone carrier. My phone was so bad, that you only could kind of see one half of the screen. I  had to guess who I was calling, and only a couple of times I ended up calling someone wrong. But I sent my phone in to see if I did something to it or if they’ll repair it. For now, I’m OK with sending it in because I have a phone that works. I guess I should have done it awhile ago when it went bad.

William and I went to school quick to take some cap and gown pictures. We didn’t realize that the wind was picking up, and his cap and gown were blowing in the pictures pretty good. Even though the pictures turned out OK, but we might go back and try to retake some later this week.

Taking one of the last long walks into school

I also started to do some more painting outside. The painting jobs aren’t big jobs, but kind of time consuming. It was hard to stay inside with the nice weather today. We also tried out our fire pit tonight. It was pretty relaxing just to sit and listen to the farm noises. Even the dogs eventually settled down. If we have good weather tomorrow, I want to get a bunch of painting done and my new tree planted. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll get a lot of  things checked off my list.

Taking some time out tonight to check out the fire pit

I think this is the true meaning of 'Dog Tired'

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Are you READY?

I bet you’re trying to guess what is the big announcement? Well – it has to deal with a  project that started in June 2011. This is when William started to take apart the hog crates in the Farrowing House,  and today we are calling the building complete! When we started this,  I don’t think that any of us would have ever imagined how much time, and hard work that we were going to put into this building, or how nice it was going to look when we were done. But today we put in the carpet tape and finished the carpeting. So really everything is pretty much done inside, and with a few paint touch ups, along with decorations…. We are done!  I don’t know if you can tell in the pictures the huge transformation, and I know that I’m a little biased, but I’m thinking that it really looks good! Even though I can’t put all the pictures of the changes in this post, you’ll have to check out the pictures that I did add.  I also made a photo book on the whole process, and then I asked Daryl if he would write how him and his dad built the building back in 1976. I’m going to order this photo book tomorrow so I can have it to show Daryl’s family when they come for William’s graduation. I’ll have to add the outside landscaping pictures in it later, but that shouldn’t be a big deal. The reason that they won’t be included now? It’s because I don’t quite have that project done just yet.

How it started a year ago

Taking out the barn cleaner

Getting it ready to be painted

Check it out!

View from the east side

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