MARCH 29 UPDATE: Waiting for the blizzard

We are not thrilled that another blizzard is coming. One would think we'd be in the clear by now, since it's nearly April. Not, apparently, in South Dakota. Winter lasts as long as it wants to here. The warning is for a blizzard to last from 7 a.m. Monday to 7 p.m. Tuesday; 12 to 16 inches of snow possible.

My aunt Lillian is not surprised. She was born in a three-day blizzard on a ranch on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on March 31, 1919. The doctor could now make it to the sod house where she was born; neither could the midwife. Her father delivered her. He said he wasn't too concerned, since he'd delivered many cows and figured it couldn't be that much different! He was 31, but Lillian's mother was only 19; I'm sure she was scared, but there was no helping it. They were alone, and baby Lillian came in the middle of the storm. She said we can all remember that she was born in a three-day blizzard, and another came on her 90th birthday, which will be Tuesday.

At least we've had a lot of progress on the house lately! The Prairie Builders crew has been here again, and they got quite a bit done in the upstairs -- just a bit of detail work to go, and all the sheetrock on the second story will be in place!

This closet off the west bedroom is all finished.


The hall is nearly done ...

... as is the east bedroom.

Sofia was pretty excited about the closet, which I think she was thinking of as a little playroom. Well, we'll see. We'll be living on the lower level for a while anyway -- maybe she can play in that closet for a while.

... The Prairie Builders crew was not here every day this week -- they were dealing with flooding in Frederick for a few days. The Maple River rose to the highest level I've ever seen it. A number of houses were flooded, including Gary Peterson's (who owns Prairie Builders). The water rose so quickly that on the last few trips to move furniture out of Gary's house they were walking through water. This picture was taken after the water went down a ways:

This pic is courtesy Krysti Mikkonen -- more pics of the flooding can be found here. The Johnsons home, in one of the photos, is so badly damaged it will likely be razed. The Petersons will likely be staying in their hunting lodge for many months as they work on repairs. ... Twelve to 16 inches of snow we do NOT need right now.


... Erik has graduated to the big boy tub now! He turned 8 months yesterday, and seemed to grow up a bunch overnight. He's eating crackers like it's nothing now (using his six teeth), and believe it or not, he was working on STANDING this afternoon! He put his hands on Dave's guitar case, and pushed himself half onto his feet. Then we tried to stand him up, and he stood, just holding one of Dave's hands. Wow -- they sure don't stay little for long.

MARCH 22 UPDATE: Snow geese

One of the photos I took yesterday of snow geese flying overhead turned out, so I thought I'd share it with you.

It's tougher than you'd think to get a decent shot! It takes a long time for the camera to focus, and if you zoom in to where you think the geese should be, you can't find them in the viewfinder until they're gone.

We had thousands of geese stopping by on the artesian pond last night. It was too dark to see them, but oh, could we hear them! They made quite a racket. They were gone by this morning -- Dave and Sofi went out early to look for them, but with no luck.

We had thoughts of going to Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge to see some of the geese stopping by there, but two things stopped us: First, the weather turned icky today -- cold and rainy. Second, we're not even sure we could get there -- the James River is flooding, and the road might be under water.

We no longer have a lakefront home, by the way, though we've still got some muck outside the front door. Dad and Dave's draining project, as well as a couple sunny, breezy days, got rid of the standing water.

MARCH 21 UPDATE: Spring is here!

It's rare to go outside the last few days and not hear a gaggle of snow geese flying overhead. The yard is a muddy mess in places; I had a whole load of muddy children's laundry to do. We are eating supper when it's light again and our regular family walks have resumed.

Spring must be here!

And I do have quite a bit to blog about.



Check out all the drywall! Prairie Builders were here earlier this week and got all the high ceilings drywalled, as well as a good part of the upstairs.

They work so quickly! It is fun to watch professionals at work. They just carried that sheetrock up the ladders, lined it up, nailed it into place. Done. Then came cutting the place for the light. That took about 30 more seconds.

Mudding will take a good deal longer, though. But they'll help with that, too, at least for the high stuff that requires scaffolding.


... Dave had another project to work on today -- one that involved straddling the roof.

The cone that he's putting the black caulk under is not sitting exactly where it should be; because of the sharp angle of the roof, it is up a little in the back, meaning there's a quarter-inch gap in the front. For the most part this is no problem, but when the wind really starts to blow, it blows snow (or rain) up into that gap, and into the little attic area. Now that there's drywall up, that's a problem. Hopefully this caulking does the trick -- we're supposed to get rain this week.


... This is the project Dad's been working on for the last few months: A new sauna stove! It's made from an old baler. The guys at the junk yard just laughed at Dad when he asked them to get the baler box for him (which, frankly, I thought was a little rude of them). And I did wonder myself if this was more trouble than it was worth. Then I looked into the cost of new sauna stoves: About $700, at least, and then they wouldn't have the connection to the large water tank like this one has. (This is all engineered by my late uncle Arnold, and perhaps Leo and Dad, many years ago.) This all cost about $200.

At the moment, it stinks, though. I'm not sure what it is -- it's a hot metal, chemically smell. Dad's been trying to burn it off today. I don't know that I want to go in the sauna till it smells less.


There's a story behind this picture. Sofia is always eager to go on our walks, but then she tuckers out and just looks miserable walking home. The picture of misery!

... But Dave did cheer her up. She was smiling by the time we got home.

MARCH 16 UPDATE: Draining a wetland

We didn't know we had lakefront property!

Spring brings many blessings, but I wouldn't count a large puddle in front of our front door as one of them. It's been warm enough for several days now that the large snow piles in the yard are melting, and unfortunately, quite a bit of water is pooling where we don't want it. Hopefully there's no breach in the foundation that we don't know about letting water in to soak the insulation that's under the floor, but Dave says he's not worried — yet. The plastic he put down over the foundation should be keeping any dampness that might be wicking up from getting to that insulation — but, he says, if there was a 3- or 4-inch rain now, we might have a problem.

Bringing in fill dirt is the long-term plan, but in the short term, Dave and Dad tried several other tricks to get it drier over there. On Saturday afternoon, first they dug a few narrow trenches from the puddle to the lower ground behind the house with a maddock and hoe. Water started flowing, but it moved pretty slowly. They tried using a hose-suction trick — Dad explained how it would work, with the water going downhill pulling more water behind it, once they got the suction going — but they didn't get it to work.

On Sunday afternoon, we looked at the problem again. Dave thought about their hose trick and saw that the problem was that they never got enough water in the hose to get the suction flowing, so he took the hose to the sauna, filled it with water and carefully carried it back into place. I lowered one end under water in the puddle, Dave sucked a little on the end of the hose (he didn't get any in his mouth, that I noticed!) and lowered it, and behold, water started to flow! We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Of course, our work looked pretty paltry compared to what Dad had in mind.


No matter how well it's flowing, not too much water flows through a garden hose. Dad got out his sump pump, which I forgot he had, and he and Dave pumped quite a bit of water later on Sunday afternoon. (You can see the water flowing through the hose above.) The lake was much smaller by the time they quit for the evening. It was a nice night, though, and the lake may have grown bigger again by now with new snow melt.


... In between all that wetland draining (which, ironically, Dave says is what he spends most of his day at work telling people they can't do), Dave got quite a bit of drywall work done! The ceiling in the addition is now drywalled, with the help of Dave's new drywal lift.

He won't get much work done today, though, since he's got the annual township tax equalization meeting to go to tonight. I also have a meeting to go to tonight — Frederick Forward's monthly meeting — so we're wondering what to do with the kids. Sofi would have more room to play at Dave's meeting in the church basement, but we'd all eat at my meeting, since we are having a St. Urho's Day celebratory meal before it.

What, you've never heard of St. Urho's Day?! Well, you can be forgiven: Read up on this tongue-in-cheek Minnesota-Finn festival here.

After the blizzard

We're not sure how much snow we got since it blew around so much, but judging by the height of the drifts, we got quite a bit.



The fence posts peeking up in the background are at least seven feet tall, maybe eight.

Dave made it to work just fine with the pickup, though. And after today's wind chill warnings pass, things are looking up! By next week, we'll likely have highs in the 40s! Woo-hoo, heat wave!

A little poem

Thank a really slow Internet for this one — I wrote it mostly while waiting for pages to load. I could have taken a picture to illustrate it, but I'll spare you the bone-chilling (literally) details.


Poem for a March blizzard

The pick-up truck outside the window,
The one that generally gets my husband to work when the plow has yet to go through,
Is a little hazy,
It’s form showing clearer, or not, depending on the whim of the wind.
(The truck went nowhere today. My husband stayed in his pajamas.)
The rings on my daughter’s swingset are hazier still,
Their ghostly handles doing a frantic dance, not stopping to let Sofia grab on
Until this arctic wind finds someplace to rest —
Maybe in Minnesota, where there are trees,
Or perhaps Missouri, where someone was smart enough
To put up mountains.
The fence across the road is nearly gone, disappearing often in the swirling snow.
The trees beyond them, the neighboring farms, the town where we’d go for a gallon of milk —
They are gone completely, lost in a wall of white.
They have become mere memories, as far removed from our reality
As the tulips under the six-foot drifts, under the coating of ice, under the frozen ground.
The white of the window is too bright to gaze upon for long.
So we turn inward, to the comfort of the internet and the television,
Reveling in those 2-D images of the warm-weather world —
A fine activity for a Tuesday afternoon, we say,
And try not to remember that we have no choice.
The rest of the world is gone,
And won’t be back until tomorrow noon, at the earliest.

We've got insulation!

Right now I'm sitting in the dining room, listening to the house creak, and thinking how cold my feet are. This old farmhouse gets awfully drafty when the wind is blowing, and it is surely blowing tonight — gusts up to 35 mph, the weather service says, with a winter storm warning starting in the early hours of the morning. Mom just came downstairs and got a stocking cap to wear to bed — her room is on the north side of the house, and when there's a north wind, it's nearly like sleeping outside.

Dave says it's warmer out in the new house than it is in here, and he might well be right. After he got home today he went out and started a fire in the woodstove — our beautiful, high-efficiency woodstove — and he went out and checked on it this evening before he went to bed and commented on how cozy it is tonight, now that there is insulation on all the walls. "Especially upstairs," he said. (Here's hoping our ceiling fan will do some good pushing that heat back down.)

Dave wanted the house heated at least overnight, so the spray foam insulation has a little more of a chance to cure at the right temperature. The guy installing it said it wouldn't need to be heated more than the time that it took him to clean up, but Dave figured it didn't hurt to get a fire going — and it would be a test for the new insulation as well. Apparently it's doing its job!

... We're still not sure how the one guy got the big heater out by himself, but apparently he did it — and made quick work of the rest of the job, too. He was driving out of the yard before 3 p.m.

... It's too bad it's such lousy weather — there's no way to air the house out, and that spray foam stinks for a while. Here's hoping for some nice weather later this week so we can open the windows!

... Dave did notice that some of the siding is flaring up a bit in the wind. He's going to call the construction company that installed it and ask them to take a look at it again, maybe add some nails. It's not good that it's flapping so much — in this wind, it's going to work itself loose.

MARCH 9 UPDATE: Getting ready for more insulation (and snow)

Dave spent the weekend getting the house ready for the spray foam insulation installers — or "installer," I should say, since there was only one guy who showed up with all the equipment this morning. Dave had to help him carry in his big NIPCO heater — apparently the building does need to be warm for the foam to set right. Dave wasn't sure about that, so he didn't start a fire in the woodstove for them. That heater will more than suffice, though. (Though we're wondering how he's going to get it back out of the building by himself — maybe he's waiting for backup?)

We'll see how much the installer gets done today — I'll post pictures tonight in any case.

The bathroom exhaust fan — or at least the bit of ductwork that will go through the wall — was one thing that needed to be in place before the insulation is sprayed in. It doesn't look too bad from the outside. And it's on the north side of the house, so no one except the cows is likely to see it anyway.


Dave said it was a little tricky figuring out where in the wall the vent would come out. Even where it is now will require bending the ductwork in the wall somewhere. A straight shot out from the vent would have led right into the soffit.


... It's a little soggy around the front steps lately. Dave's put a board out so we don't have to wade through the puddle to get into the house. It's like a drawbridge over a moat! I'll have to tell Sofia that. Of course, we probably won't have any time to play on it, since ...

... We've got a blizzard watch for tomorrow. Eight to 10 inches of snow possible. That's great -- now that we've got a solid layer of ice down in places with the thaw we can get a good padding of snow down on top of it. Sigh. Just when you think spring is around the corner, winter smacks you up side the head again.

Dave did hear the first goose of spring flying overhead last night, though. Apparently spring is coming ... eventually ...

MARCH 6 UPDATE: Acceleration

Sofia and I stopped in to see how the work was coming in the new house on Thursday.

... And we took a little time to ham it up for the camera.



I love this one! I'm so bummed it's a little blurry.

Anyway, Dave got the addition pretty well ready for drywall (you'll notice the vapor barrier is up), and the drywall lift he ordered showed up on Thursday too, so the addition is humming right along!

And we have now scheduled the spray foam insulation guys to come back to do the rest of the house -- they should be here on Monday.

It will be interesting to see if there's any difference in how the house feels or if we have any maintenance issues in the addition versus in the main house, since we're doing the insulation differently. ... I'm hoping they both keep out mice (I type as I hear a funny scritching in the ceiling).

... Both kids have been sick (colds and ear infections), but both are on the mend. Gotta love antibiotics! That medicine sure can transform a crying child into a laughing one overnight.

... Sofia and I discovered that the snow was perfect for making snowmen on Thursday! She made four total, two with me and two with Daddy. Good thing we did that Thursday, though, as the temperature dropped today and the snow is all crusty now. Fun to crunch under your boots, we found, but no longer good for snowmen.

A little accomplishment

I promised I'd post a picture or two of my weaving once I finished -- here it is!

It took at least three times as long for me to make this as it would have for Mom to have made it, and it's still not quite as good — I'm still working on getting the sides straight and the width even. But I had fun weaving it! It's such fun watching the colors work together and deciding which color to use next for best effect.

I did list it on Mom's Etsy shop — maybe someone else will like it, too!

Daydreaming about a "Savo Summer"

I bought an exercise machine in January, and I've been pretty dedicated to my exercise routine since then — a half-hour a day, five days a week. It's getting to the place where it's a habit, for both me and the kids (Sofia eggs me on most days: "Mommy, I think you can go faster."). I was sick of feeling trapped by the weather, like the cold and wind were conspiring to keep me inside and lethargic. So, on the up side, I'm now getting my exercise. The downside: I spend a lot of time staring at the same wall.

Luckily, this wall does have this nice print of a painting by local artist Lora Schaunaman on it. It's titled "Savo Summer," and it shows Savo Hall and Savo Lutheran Church, both less than a mile from our farm, if you walked across the section. In fact, the viewpoint of the two buildings is nearly exactly what it would be from our farm (especially from the upper story of the new house), if a shelterbelt wasn't blocking the view. (Lora and my mom are good friends, both artists as they are; I always wondered if Lora did that on purpose.) The hall, the church and the township are named after the region of Savo in Finland, where some of the settlers to this area came from.

Lora's taken a few artistic liberties in her painting. (I purposefully didn't take a great picture of the painting, as I don't want a perfect copy of it to float around the Internet without credit to Lora, but you can get a better idea if you click on it.) There are trees around the two buildings, but not quite as many as she painted; it doesn't look as much like an oasis on the prairie as she depicted. The field in the foreground is also more likely to be planted to corn or soybeans than prairie grass. But the feeling of a Savo summer she's created is spot on. The bird — a hawk, likely — is floating on a touch of a breeze, the morning sun is shining, the world is big and wonderful, and the day is full of possibilities.

Years ago, life around here did center on the hall and church. The church had its weekly importance, as well as its place as the scene for weddings and funerals. The hall was the place to gather for school programs, traveling plays, band performances, dances and more. It shined brightest at midsummer, when it had a program that lasted all day and into the night. Speakers (quite often rabble-rousing, union-minded, populist types — sometimes called "Communists" outright) would come from all over to step on their soapbox in front of the crowd. Athletic events took up the afternoon; Dad said he often played baseball in those days. And a dance would follow, as these people who lived in a place that's dark and cold for much of the year celebrated the time of light and warmth.

The Savo Hall Association (of which you, too, could be come a lifetime member for just $1) sold prints of it at Savo Hall's 100th anniversary celebration in 1998. (In fact, I think there are still some for sale, at the Community Store and the Historical Society's gift shop.) The celebration was much like the midsummer celebrations of years ago, though without athletic events or the speakers (Communist or otherwise).

The group also auctioned off the original painting then. My uncle Arnold was one of the last two bidding for it; my sister and I were really hoping he'd get it. At one point he hesitated, and I remember going up and leaning over and telling him that we'd all pitch in to help him get it. He didn't respond, and I got the feeling I shouldn't have said anything, as it wasn't the place of a young woman to tell an old man what to do.

In the end, the bidding went quite high and Arnold let it go to the other man, who was the decendent of someone who'd grown up here but who now lived far off in California or some such place where it's summer yearround. I wished Arnold had gotten it, but he was happy enough with a signed print. He had it framed nicely and put up on the most prominent wall in his living room, where he spent much of his time in those last years.

I got a cheaper unsigned print, which has traveled with me to every home since — including back home to this one, and on to the new one across the yard, where the view of the hall and the church is just a little bit better.