JUNE 27 UPDATE: A key to our castle

The door parts arrived yesterday, and Dave got them installed last night.

It looks quite nice, don't you think? (I said that to Dave, and he said it had better, considering how much it cost.) We also have keys for the front door on our keychains now, which is kind of exciting!

Sofia knocked on her front door with its new handle.

Other than that, Dave was working again on the floor. He finished putting plywood down on this section, and put 1-by-2s on the rest of the center section, all the way to the big windows on the south wall. He won't finish the floor on the eastern third right now -- he's focused on getting the floor finished enough in the center section so he can get started on the stairs.

He talked more with the man who owns the stove store in Mandan (who has been very helpful with all our planning, by the way) and they think they've worked out a plan. This stove guy checked with several other stove dealers in the area, and the way Dave had been planning on installing the stove is the way these other dealers install stoves -- but, he said, technically they should follow the specs given on for the stove. The plan involves installing the kind of cement board I mentioned earlier, and the stove guy said he had ordered some and should have it in at some point next week. Then Dave will go pick up the stove some evening after work -- the stove store owner said he'd be happy to meet Dave even when the store isn't open so he can pick up the stove (and the cement board, and all the chimney parts we need).

We are soon to be spending money again in a big way -- we need to pay the rest of the stove bill (so far we've just put down a deposit). And hopefully, the excavator will be here soon, and we'll have to pay them for putting in the septic tank and field.

The "locators" are all supposed to be here this morning, but so far, only one guy, the water guy, has shown up -- and he said he won't be helpful at all. He only knows where the water line is up to the meter pit, and we're planning on hooking into the water line at a point between the house and the sauna -- far past the meter pit.

The phone guys just arrived -- I don't think their marks are going to be relevant, either, since the phone lines are far from where we're going to need to dig.

I think that means just the electric company is still to arrive.

We still don't know the exact date when the excavator is supposed to show up, but their secretary said this would be just a half-day job for them, and they'll fit it in when they can. She did say they have to get here within two weeks of when the locators are here, or they have to send the locators out again.

Other than that, we've been enjoying some company the past few days -- Dave's grandparents are here from Iowa. They arrived here a little later than they'd planned -- they didn't want to come before they got their soybeans planted, and the planting was delayed by all the rain they received this spring. It was far too wet to plant until just a week or so ago. But others around them were far worse off, they said -- some had planted once and had to replant, and others lost buildings in the storms. At least they should still get a crop.

The corn here is looking good after the heat of the past couple weeks. It might yet get to "knee-high by the Fourth of July." (That's an old saying, of course, as most years the corn is well past that by July 4th, but this year they'll be happy with that -- the cold, wet spring delayed planting here as well.)

I, however, am not doing so well in the heat. The most impressive photo I could post lately is how swollen my feet are, but I'll spare you the image. At least I have a good excuse to put my feet up for a while!

A comment

Dave's mom Mary didn't get this comment to post the usual way, so I'm going to post it as a regular entry (Mary: And you thought the blogosphere wouldn't see it!)

Me again. Mom the Commentator. We've had skylights for years and sometimes we've had pretty big hail. It never occurred to me to worry about the skylights (what was I thinking? I worry about EVERYTHING), and they've never broken.

I think the skylight makers know that word would get around if the glass cracked every time a hailstone hit.

For what that's worth.

---

That's good to know.

JUNE 24 UPDATE: Snags and schedules

It was a day of dealing with details.

First, I think I've just about finished the to-do list for the sale of our house in Iowa! Oh, I will be thrilled when that is finalized. It will be so nice not to have to worry about a house at a distance. Our Realtor sent over the closing statement today, though I'm not sure if it was the final version or not. I was pleasantly surprised to find out we are going to get back a little more than we had counted on! The closing costs were not quite as high for some reason.

We actually sold the house for slightly more than we paid for it nearly five years ago, but with closing costs now and when we bought the house, we're not coming out ahead. But in this market, we're happy to have the house sold, and to not have the negative equity problems I've read about.

... Dave started looking a little more closely into his plan for the stairs, which are to bend around the soapstone stove we're going to use for heat (with electric baseboard backups). He had a plan all worked out, based on the setback distances he looked up for the stove we ordered. Then he noticed that there were actually specs for two different models listed, and out of curiosity he looked at the other one -- and wouldn't you know it, the setback distances are significantly more on the other model. Dave called the store where our stove is waiting for us to pick it up, and of course, we have the model with the greater setback distances. That means that unless we can figure out a way around it, the stove area is going to extend quite a ways farther into the dining room than we were figuring, which doesn't leave a whole lot of room for a walkway or the dining table itself.

Dave talked the problem over with the owner of the stove store, and they are pretty sure they can work out a plan to minimize the loss of space -- they'll need to use materials with a higher R-value, a specific kind of cement board, I think, below the tile that we're planning. The problem will be finding that cement board -- apparently few building supply stores carry it. Dave also plans to narrow the stairs a bit to conserve space. I don't mind that -- we can get by with a narrower passageway on the stairs, and with the railing along the north part of the second floor, above the stairs, I think we'll still be able to get furniture up there when we need to.

... And the excavating contractor called back to say the "locators" -- her general term for the guys who are supposed to come out and mark water, gas and electric lines -- are coming on Friday morning, and the excavators will come at some point after that when they can fit it in.

Dave did more work on installing the first-floor floor today. This center section is a bit of a pain -- first off, because the concrete slab is lower in the center, Dave had to crawl under the floor joists to nail in 1-by-2s so the insulation wouldn't fall through to the slab below them. Then, since this is an area that will eventually be covered by tile, the joists have to be closer together to provide more support. Not a huge deal by itself, but it means that every piece of insulation needs to be cut to fit the narrower space between joists. So that part of the floor is going a little more slowly.


I saw these blue clouds coming this evening, and though I was happy some rain was on its way (I can feel that way now that all the roofing is done, and I need to be watering the garden) I did have a slight panicky thought: What if it hails on our beautiful new skylights?

You'd think I would have thought about this earlier. And I did, but only in the context that I know those windows are made of tempered glass, so if they do break, they won't create life-threatening shards for anyone below them. But they could still break, and I looked up the Velux warranty: "acts of God" are not covered. I did a little more searching online, and didn't find any specific info on how well skylights (and Velux skylights in particular) hold up to hail, but I did find a number of companies advertising that they fix skylights damaged by hail.

Sigh. I guess hail can damage any window (two at the church were cracked in the most recent hailstorm), so I shouldn't worry overly much about the skylights. Perhaps we can jerry-rig some kind of cover for them that we could throw up there when hail is predicted ... I'm sure Dave will be thrilled to climb on that steep roof when a thunderstorm is bearing down.

JUNE 22 UPDATE: Finn Fest finale

Well, you might say the last day of Finn Fest was unfortunately a bigger success than we expected.

The church was full for the church service in the morning, and even more people showed up at Savo Hall to eat the Finnish stew (mojakka) for lunch -- so much so that the last three people who came in the door got only Finn bread to eat. And Mom, the most Finnish of all the Finns in attendance, didn't get any stew, either.

We (meaning the Savo Hall Association, of which I am a member but not a board member, though I attended the board's planning meeting for Finn Fest because I knew what the Horizons group had been planning) had figured that we should have been able to serve 120 people, and we counted some over 100 people eating, so we suspect some people toward the front of the line might have gotten overly generous servings.

Oh, well. The last people in the door came quite late, anyway. And the people who did get stew thought it was very good (Mom and I had made two gallons of it).

About 40 or so people stayed for the program as well, which received applause at the end, too.

I didn't bring my camera to the church or hall today, so no pictures of that.

Dave did come to the hall for the food, and he stayed to watch Sofia and her cousins during the program, since my sister and I were helping Mom with that. But other than that, Dave was hard at work again for most of the day.


Well, there's progress in this photo, but it's hard to see -- there is flooring now from the front door all the way to the back wall, and for quite a few feet east along the back wall.

And Dave put in the rest of the floor joists in the center section. They are closer together than they are in the western third because the plan is that this area will be covered with tile, which needs extra support below. Part of it needs to be tile because we need some nonflammable substance below the stove, and the rest of it will be tile because we need to increase the amount of thermal mass in the house to make our passive solar design work.

Apparently, this is one of the reasons many people tried passive solar designs in the 1970s and '80s but then gave up on them -- they did not include enough thermal mass in the design and they overheated in the summer.

Unfortunately, we still have a problem. Even with all this tile on the floor, we still won't have enough thermal mass, according to the calculations I've read. Eventually that won't be a problem, as we're planning on having a sun porch or greenhouse along the south side, and we can add more thermal mass with that, but in the meantime, our passive solar design might not be as effective as it could be. We'll just have to see what happens, as I don't think we can add much more thermal mass to our plans at this point.

... I took some new pictures of items for Mom's online store this evening. Sofia was helping me take pictures, too.

JUNE 21 UPDATE: Another day away

Finn Fest continued today, and as promised, I have some wife carrying contest photos, and a few others as well:



They seemed to have a good time with it. And there seemed to be some strategy to it: The over-the-shoulder hold seemed to be faster, although the women did seem to have more trouble with that (more shrieking and grabbing on to belts for dear life).

They didn't follow the official rules for the wife-carrying contest; it's supposed to have an obstacle course, and I think the real contest even has a water portion. But organizers have already said that next year they're planning some kind of an obstacle course for this.

Next was the boot toss.

This didn't follow the official rules, either -- they are supposed to use a rubber boot, and keep the boot leg straight in the air, but they used old work boots, which were nigh impossible to keep from spinning. The contest this year was a show of brute force, for the most part. But hey, that's fun, too.

I really like this photo, even though the boot is long gone, for the crowd reaction in the background.

So I was standing there, taking quite a few pictures, when I figured I had gotten what I needed, and Sofia and I went to eat lunch. Then Mom tells me after we got home that since there were no other women willing to throw, she stepped up and threw the boot! Hmph. I would have wanted pictures of that! She apparently didn't throw it very far, or even as far as she thought she could. Ah, well, we can all practice for next year.

Then, after lunch, Sofia discovered the inflatables. It took her quite a bit of encouraging to get started on them -- I couldn't go on either one of them with her to show her how it was done -- but my goodness, then we went for a solid hour running from one to the other.




In addition to it being really fun for her, I think it was good for her to do something that required her to venture out where there are other kids she doesn't know, without Mommy next to her. There are benefits to her not having to go to day care, but there are drawbacks, as well -- she doesn't get as much of a chance to try out her social skills. It was really good that she figured out she could handle this. Bigger adventures to come, I say!

... I was right in my prediction that we wouldn't be able to lure Dave away from working today. He got a good deal more of the first floor finished ... and promptly covered it with lumber and tools. Not very good photo potential, I have to say, even if moving all that stuff was necessary so he could work on the rest of the floor. Maybe I'll get a photo of it tomorrow anyway.

One more day of Finn Fest on Sunday, and this day's events are held just a mile and half from the farm, at Savo church and hall. It's a much more sedate day than the first two, more geared at an older crowd. We'll see how it goes.

JUNE 20 UPDATE: A break for fun

Tonight was the first night of Frederick's first annual Finn Fest, so all work (on the housebuilding and otherwise) stopped this evening for a bit of fun in the park.

A local group called Frederick Forward, with funding from a grant program called Horizons, has been doing a good amount of community development planning, and one of the things they came up with was an annual festival that honors Frederick's Finnish heritage. I've been involved in the planning to some extent, basically because I am on the marketing committee for Frederick Forward and had agreed to make posters and press releases for the event, but also because I was one of the only people who knew anything about Finnish culture at the one planning meeting that I attended.

In any case, tonight was the first night of the three-day event, so I was eager to see how it had come together. On the agenda was a picnic in the park, a Teener baseball doubleheader, duck races, a movie, fireworks, and a juhannuskokko, or midsummer bonfire on the Maple River. (The bonfire was my suggestion at that meeting in May -- no one else knew that it was a Finnish midsummer tradition.)

Things got off to a slow start, as not many people were there at 6 when the picnic started, and there seemed to be a lot of time between when the food was served and when the action of the evening started at 9 (unless you'd gone over to watch the baseball game).

But in the end, that was OK, too. The park was full of families with their children by 7:30 or 8, and if it didn't seem that very many out-of-towners had shown up, enough Frederick families were there to make the park seem lively. I saw a lot of moms and dads playing with their kids, and kids playing outside with each other, which was nice.

Sofia was pretty good on her first try on the rings.


But then she rediscovered her love of swinging, and it was hard to get her off of it to do anything else.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that the logo that I had designed for the posters and press releases had also been used on a T-shirt! You could purchase one for $10. You can see the main logo here, on the schedule of events. Mom also bought a T-shirt:

The tagline reads, "Celebrate midsummer in a little Finnish town on the prairie!"

The kokko, or bonfire, was really well constructed, in my opinion -- on a floating raft tied to the shore on both sides. We did wonder, however, how they planned to light it. When Dale Groop, a neighbor who had built the raft and stacked the firewood, told us what they were planning, I thought he was kidding:

But they really did have flaming arrows aimed at the raft from shore. That's Mark Sumption of Frederick shooting the arrows.

Unfortunately, it proved much trickier than it looked. If he shot too hard, the flame went out before it hit the target. If he shot too weakly, the arrow landed in the water. He also had to be careful not to pull back the arrow too far, and bring the flame too close to the bow, which he did not want to light on fire.

In the end, none of the five arrows he shot lit the fire. Though people had a lot of fun watching him try, I have to say.

So the Frederick folks went to plan B: They untied the raft from the far side of the lake, tied a fishing line to the end of that rope (it wasn't long enough to reach the near shore otherwise) and pulled it in to light it. Then they gave it push from this shore and reeled it in from the other shore to get it back into the center of the river.

I have to say, the crowd seemed quite impressed with the final result.


Especially when the river stilled, and the fire looked like it was burning down into the water as well as up into the sky.

There's more to come, tomorrow and Sunday. Though I think it will be hard to lure Dave away from the housebuilding for much of the weekend -- I'm pretty sure he'll think the weather is going to be far too nice for him not to be working. But Sofia and I will go see some of the events, I think. I'll try to get some photos of the wife-carrying contest.

JUNE 19 UPDATE: Working late

When Dave was working on the outside of the house, sunset -- or at least full-on dark -- ended the work day. Not so when he's working inside, he says! With these new-fangled electric lights, he could work all night if he wanted to.

Not that he did tonight. But he did get to play with Sofia a bit while she was up in the evening, then get a fair amount of work done after she had gone to sleep.

He was working on installing the first floor. Paavo, Walt and Dave had gotten quite a few of the joists for the first floor down when they were waiting for the weather to be favorable for roof work, so after some clean-up work in the building, Dave was able to progress fairly quickly. First he put down some heavy duty plastic sheeting (to serve as a vapor barrier between the uninsulated concrete slab and the insulation), then batts of insulation, then the plywood subfloor, which may or may not serve as the final floor for a while, depending on the time, money and energy we have left at that point.

I was nervous about having enough insulation below the floor. One of the features of the house that I had to give up in the planning process was radiant floor heating -- oh, the idea of having warm toes all winter long was so appealing. But the more we looked into that option, the more we realized how much it would complicate all sorts of other aspects of housebuilding. We were able to think around a few of the challenges, but even I, with my heart set on warm toes, lost my enthusiasm for the plan after more and more problems came up.

Ah, well, it was not to be. But I did want to make sure the floor was as warm as it could possibly be -- but Dave assures me it should be fine. The recommended R-value for floors is 19, and the insulation we're putting in is R-30. He also hopes to add some insulation on the outside, around the foundation, which should help quite a bit as well.

Dave was able to get four sheets of plywood down before calling it a night.

As I mentioned, we're not sure yet what we're putting on top of that subfloor, if anything. Hardwood is my favorite kind of flooring material, but that will take a good deal of time and money to install. Recycled or salvaged flooring is the most appealing to me, as it would fit with the character of the whole building, but that would, again, take a whole lot of money, or time, or both. So in the meantime, we're toying with the idea of just leaving the subfloor as it is and painting it, or putting a cheap covering over it.

I saw in one of the "Not So Big House" books by Sarah Susanka (very fun books to look through, if you have the chance) that someone had put wallpaper down on the floor when they were in a similar situation. The floor looked cool, and no one was in danger of getting slivers from the subfloor, and there was nothing to take up when they were ready to put in nicer flooring.

We'll see what we can figure out when we get to that point. For now, Dave's goal is to get the floor in enough that he can go get the woodstove from Mandan, where it's waiting for us to pick it up, and install it where it needs to go instead of having to move it twice (it's not very big but fairly heavy -- 475 pounds). The area under the woodstove will be tile, so we won't have to decide about the rest of the floor until later.


This is a great moonrise, isn't it? I strolled down to the end of the lane and took this picture with my camera on the night setting, which created a long exposure and made this look a lot more like a sunrise.

It was really nice being outside this evening. After being too hot for much of the day (I even had the air conditioning on at one point -- being pregnant sure makes me a wimp when it comes to heat), the evening air was pleasantly cool. It was quiet, except for Dave pounding nails in the distance and the cottonwood trees rustling at the occasional passing breeze. A few thunderstorms flashed to the south and east, but they were too far away for me to even hear the thunder. I just got to enjoy the light show and the lovely moon rising between them.

It's always nice to be reminded every now and then of why I thought it was a good idea to move back to the farm in the first place.

JUNE 17 UPDATE: Farewell, Walt

Well, a month and a half after he came to help us, Walt drove off south toward Iowa today to wade through the floods (well, not literally, and I don't think any highways are closed between here and there, but it's still pretty soggy down there, I've heard) to visit his parents before venturing back to his home, wife and cats in New York. He leaves us with a building that's much more like a house than a granary, with such fine features as a second-floor floor, a shingled roof, windows, a door and skylights. Walt and Karen, you are welcome anytime for a country getaway!

After having a work crew for so long, Dave will have to adjust to working alone again for a while. The style of putting house wrap on, for example, had to change -- long horizontal strips just aren't manageable for one guy on a ladder. So the rest of the house wrapping won't be a thing of beauty, but it will get done, which is the key thing at this point.


Dave (at the top of the ladder) and Dad (holding the ladder steady) were working on putting on housewrap until dark tonight. Notice the three finished skylights on the front (if you can -- the picture's a little dark).


Sofia wanted to pose in front of "her house." She had found a rock she liked; that's what's in her hand. Not sure what was so great about it, but she set it aside so she could play with it tomorrow, too.

... I found out today that the windows we ordered should arrive in three weeks or so.

... I didn't mention in yesterday's post that on Sunday, while standing in line for our free lunch at the event at the Granary Rural Cultural Center, we struck up a conversation with a woman my mom knows. Mom mentioned our project, and the woman asked if we were having to hunt for salvage wood to complete the project. I said we're not being quite so purist about it -- we'll reuse and salvage as much as we have and can, but we've bought a lot of new lumber and materials, too. It would be nice if we could go hunting in old barns and houses for other wood, but that would take time we don't have at this point. Dave is still working full-time, and we'd like to move in before it snows again.

We have been able to reuse most of the beams and boards that made up the bin walls; the second-floor floor is apparently quite nice. Here's a look at the floor in the midst of its construction:

It will look somewhat different once we sand it down. The underside of the boards was sanded as the crew laid them, but they figured they'd wait to sand the top until the whole floor was in place.

The posts on the first floor are made from wood from the bin walls, though they were made for structural integrity, not beauty, and we're planning on covering them with a prettier veneer at some point.

We'll start looking for some other salvaged materials once we get to the interior -- shelving, doors, etc. We won't be feeling such time pressure then.

Well, except for the baby.

Ah, well, we wouldn't want a life without demands and responsibilities. How dull would that be?

JUNE 16 UPDATE: Let there be even more light

The skylights are nearly finished. Walt finished the north skylight today, and the last south skylight is in place but there's still detail work to do, Dave tells me.

Walt hopes to have that finished in the morning, and if he can do that, he'll start driving for Iowa around noon. He arrived here on the 3rd of May, I believe, so he's been working on our little house for a month and a half. We are really indebted to him -- or, to be more accurate, we are really indebted to Karen, who let us borrow Walt for so long!

The north skylight. This area between the railing and the north wall, which is fairly narrow, is intended to a mostly a passageway to the west bedroom, but also a place where the children can play within earshot of adults below but out from underfoot.


Walt modeled next to the north skylight to show how high the skylight is. It's intended to serve as a window, to a large extent, so it's lower than it would be if it were only intended to serve as a source of light. The level in the photo is four feet long. Sofia and baby boy won't be able to see out that window for a few years, but I don't think they'll be moving upstairs for a while yet anyway -- our plan is to finish the first floor and make that inhabitable while we work on the second.

Notice the knee wall below the skylight -- it creates an odd-shaped space, but we'll be able to use all that for storage.


Here's the view out the north skylight -- we can see the fence that keeps the cows out of the back yard, and the artesian pond beyond it. Dave commented that the window doesn't open quite wide enough for duck hunting out of it. (Thank goodness, I say.)


Here's the south side, a little earlier in the afternoon -- the last skylight was put in place later.


Here's a view of the north side.

I received a final quote on windows today (about what I had expected), as well as a quote on the cost of the hardware for the front door: $265. Ouch. Well, it's still far cheaper than that door would be otherwise -- it's about an $800 door, I'd say. So we're still coming out ahead, I think.

So the windows and door hardware are ordered, but I didn't ask how long it would take to get them here. No matter, Dave says, there's plenty of work to do before they get here. And after.

We've adjusted our plan for the addition to make it a bit smaller, which should make it a size where Dave can do the work on it himself. We had been disagreeing about what to do about the addition, since the addition as I wanted it wasn't going to be finished before winter, and some sort of addition has to be in place so we can have plumbing (and I do like running water). Dave had suggested a smaller addition with a shed roof, while I think a shed roof coming off the gable end of the building just wouldn't look right. In the end, we decided to do a smaller addition but keep the gable roof that I want, which will make the addition look like it fits the rest of the building better. I think that's a good compromise.

I haven't made the change yet on our computer floor plan, though. I'll have to do some finagling to figure out how to fit the washer, dryer, utility sink, chest freezer, and mudroom space into the smaller space. But I think, with some creative thinking, it can be done.

JUNE 15 UPDATE: Another converted granary

On Sunday afternoon, a group of us went from one farm where a granary was converted into a house to another farm where a granary had been converted into an art museum.

The Granary Rural Cultural Center was started in 1993, after a local farmer, John Sieh, donated the land and the granary from his family farm for the project. The building was built in 1928. The original granary serves as gallery space, and it has been added on to to provide more display space and a gift shop. A local town hall was also moved to the property, which serves as a place for art classes and other gatherings. The grounds have been designed by local landscape architecture students and feature sculptures made by local artists. A new sculpture was dedicated on Sunday, which is why we went there then. (That, and the free hamburger lunch.)

I had been to the Granary before, but I thought it might be fun to go there again with the new eyes I have now after we've started our own granary project. I noticed some similarities, but also some differences -- basically, they left a good deal more of the character of the granary intact, which suits an art gallery but wouldn't necessarily work for a place you want to live in.

I also noticed that the original building is smaller than ours -- perhaps a reflection of the increase in grain yields between 1928 and 1950, when the two buildings were built.

Here's a view down the central alleyway of what was the old granary. Notice that part of the floor was left in the original concrete, and it looks to me like a number of the original bin walls were left intact.


Here's a view looking toward the old part of the granary, taken from the added-on gallery space. (Those stairs, by the way, are definitely not made for children. I might have amended the design.)

Some of the original bin boards can be seen above the gallery walls.


This granary did have an elevator. Grain was dumped into this grate into the floor, then hauled up higher to be dumped into the appropriate bins. (I'm not all that up on this technology, so if someone wants to comment and correct me, feel free.) The grate is covered with plexiglass so museum visitors can walk safely across.
Part of the elevator system was left in the art gallery. (We took out our grain chute -- that much authenticity isn't necessary for our house, and anyway, it was in the way of the chimney for our new wood stove.)

We had this same sign up in our granary. We'll put it back up in some fashion when we get to decorating. I'm not sure I can explain what the ever-normal granary is, but if you're curious, I found this link, which gives the basics.


While we were at the Granary event, Walt was putting another hole in the roof! There are now two skylights in place. Two more to go!

If you have a sharp eye, you might be thinking we didn't put the skylights in the right place, as they are not quite equidistant from the edges. Well, putting in a skylight is much easier if you can put it between rafters (and it seems to me the roof will stay more structurally sound that way), and the way the rafters fell meant that it had to go to one side or another of where exactly we wanted it to be. Ah, well, we already knew we'd have a home with character. And the house won't look quite balanced anyway, since we are putting an addition onto the east side.

Dave was working on detail work on the windows -- removing the extra length on the shims and filling the gaps with insulating foam.

Paavo took the Sunday off, attending the Granary event with us on what would be his last day here in South Dakota. We are so very appreciative of him traveling across an ocean to spend a month working with us! Paljon kiitoksia!

The light in the barn

It's funny the things that will trigger a memory here on my old homeplace. This evening I was standing at the kitchen sink, where I've taken in the view many times in the six months since we moved back here, and noticed that I'd left the barn light on. And suddenly I had a memory that I hadn't had in all those other times at the same window.

Sofia and I had been out in the barn earlier in the evening, looking again at the batch of kittens we had found another batch of kittens this afternoon. Sofia is pretty excited about the find, but cute as those fluffy little mewing kitties are, I have to say I have mixed feelings about the discovery. We had already found one batch of kittens, earlier this spring, but the mama cat moved them at just the wrong time for us to tame them. She did move them back closer to the barn later, but life had gotten a good deal more hectic for us then, and when we missed just a few days of petting the kittens, they got too fast and wily for us to catch. So this new batch of kittens, which is still small enough that we should be able to tame them before they go wild, will be nice for Sofi. On the other hand, eight kittens on the farm -- and possibly more, since I am pretty sure there's another pregnant cat wandering around (I saw her swinging her belly about, moving more slowly than a cat normally would, and I empathized with her) -- is really getting to be too many. Nature does eventually take care of such a population boom, but its methods are not really all that pleasant to witness.

In any case, our job now is to tame the kittens we can catch (so they can get their shots and neutering later, as well as just be more pleasant cats in general) and Sofia is happy to pet the new kittens as long as I hold them. It was already getting dim in the barn by the time we made our second trip there, and I forgot to flip the light off when we left. Sofia and I went in for her evening snack, and that's when I noticed the light from the kitchen window.

That barn light had not been on, that I'd noticed, since we moved here in January, and it likely hadn't been on much in years. Dad and Arnold had retired from farming in 1998, but they had sold all the hogs already in 1992. Now the barn cats, and the barn swallows, are the only creatures that live in the barn.

Until 1992, though, those lights were on many nights in the late winter and early spring as pigs farrowed in the barn, and Dad went to check on them or to stay with a sow as she farrowed. Some of the lights stayed on all of farrowing season, heating the little piglets that slept and grunted under them.

I remember seeing those lights from the window on many nights. It was a comforting sight, really. I knew when I saw it that even though I was getting ready for bed, or even just in the kitchen for a drink of water in the middle of the night, the life of the farm was going on in the barn.

JUNE 14 UPDATE: A glimpse of sky!

Walt put a hole in our brand new roof today.

Well, we told him to do it. We won't fire him just yet.

The first of four skylights is now in! This one will go in what will eventually be the east bedroom upstairs.

Here's Walt working on the finishing touches to that skylight this afternoon.


Sofia and I went to look at the finished product later in the evening. There will be two more skylights on the south roof and one on the north. Otherwise, the upstairs would have remained quite dark, I think. The center skylight will allow light into the center dining area below, right behind those big windows.


She was pretty eager to get into "my house," as she calls it. Well, we call it Sofia's house, too. ... She does look awfully short next to that tall door, though she is standing one step down from the threshold.


Here's the view from the skylight. Hopefully we placed it well; it should give most people who use that room a nice view. (Walt took this and some of the other photos in this post -- no one is going to let me up on a ladder in this condition, so I can't get up to the second floor yet.)


Dave and Paavo worked on putting insulating foam on the north and west sides. They finished that job before supper.

Cutting the foam.

Reaching to get that top nail in.


The north side looked pretty nice by evening! We've got one more window hole to cut on this side, too. It's a small one that will be in the bathroom, in the northeast corner. The window we purchased to go here won't work, unfortunately -- but it's one we bought at the auction that cost us $20, so we're not out much. We'll get another locally.

Walt and Dave worked on putting Tyvek house wrap around the east and north sides until it got dark.

There were more lovely clouds and sky colors today. You can't argue that it's not beautiful here in the summer!