Annmarie tells me that drawing plans for a bridge after you have purchased all the materials is a bad thing.  I kinda sketched it out on a couple of stickies before ordering.  I drew it out and got authorization for the design today from the boss.

  I also measured the bridge opening with a 50 foot steel tape today, the bridge is not 38 feet, it is 42 feet 2.5 inches long.  Not quite the same.  Now the nice part was it was that distance on both edges and the middle!!  All said and done, I need to order another 12 cedar 2x6s and I was informed that I would have to face the pressure treated wood so that it is not visible.  I will use cedar fencing slats and cut them to size.  It will look pretty when all is said and done.

For future reference, very detailed plans need to be done in advance…

Looking in from the second room doorway.

Looking from the window back in to the room.  A lot more light after I moved all the boxes out of the side window.

Looking toward our house from the corner of the room.  Eventually, we are going to add a deep freeze to this space.

Wall of tools, destructive and constructive.

I found it!  I have been searching off and on for over two years for this stained glass window.  I had it commissioned for Annmarie many years ago and literally could not find it.  I knew I had put it some where safe!!  It was in the upstairs bathroom hidden in a back corner. It took three hours to dig our way into the bathroom.    I hung it up today for Annmarie.

Farm in the Summer

It kinda rained.

It is amazing how much more normal our home lives can be.  I can truly say that I love my family, home and life.  Sometimes the career I have chosen drains me and I am always revitalized by the ones I love.  Thanks to all for refilling the cup.

More open space to fill at a later date

Before I went back to work I did sneak out and move some more shelves out in the old house.  I just couldn’t help myself.  I was on a role and didn’t want to lose the momentum.  I still have plans on making it out there this weekend.  But today I did not make it.

It took me a week to get the old wheat truck licensed.  Three trips later and one phone call and I ended up with a 10 day permit.  The truck cannot be re-certified as a farm truck unless the farm is “exporting” enough farm product to warrant the need for the truck.  As the farm is in CRP and is not producing it cannot be licensed. If we had a hundred sheep the DMV farm guy said it would warrant a farm designation.  Now here is the weird thing.  A 10 day permit, by law, does not allow the vehicle to carry a load.  But there is nothing that does, so I was told the 10 day permit would have to do.

Today after filling up the truck and grinding a few gears, Sarah and I went to town.  We of course went via the back roads.  This way I didn’t have to have a stream of cars passing us as I went 45 mph.

I need another overhead light.  Starting to look like someplace I could actually work in. I had forgotten that direct linkage steering in an old wheat truck takes a lot of muscle and some serious attention to the road.  Potholes attain a whole new level of respect when the entire steering wheel tries to wrench your arms off at the shoulders.  The whole time we are going to town I made Sarah clean all the surfaces inside the truck.  It was full of dirt, probably had not been cleaned in 30 years at least.  Once we had our load we drove to the car wash place and used the pay vacuum cleaner.  We filled the trash can and our $3 in vacuum fees sucked up about 3# of mice turds and 5# of dirt from inside the cab.  Luckily for us there is a oil changing business right there so I sauntered over and asked how much to have the oil changed.  Someone had to come over and pop the hood to see what size the engine was and we went back over to the boss who told me $45.  Sounded reasonable so after the truck was clean we drove into the bay.  Thirty minutes later it was not so easy.  The old wheat truck takes an old canister oil filter, no one in a 60 mile radius has one.  There is a conversion that can be placed on the truck to use a newer style filter but no one ever bothered to do that.  Luckily, the filter is still manufactured so the gentleman ordered two.  He then showed me the air filter which of course looked awful (even after the guy had beat it out and then blown it clean with a air hose), so I said go ahead and change that also.  No go, another special order item.  So they put clean oil in the truck, old oil filter back on and told me to come back after Tuesday.  No charge, he said we could square up the bill on Wednesday when I bring the truck back.  There are times I do enjoy smaller towns.  Plus driving an old green Chevy 1968 wheat truck does add a certain amount of memorable customer to it.

Bridge on a truck!

 Sarah and I had to make a second trip to town to pickup some used lumber and a 12×20 dog run (all free, best price).  It was hot!!  95 degrees and we were parked on the railroad tracks on hot pavement loading up the pickup.  She did ask what would happen if a train came.  I told her they would honk (it is a private freight spur for the flour mill).  I figured we were pretty safe on a Saturday.  We came home and had to unload everything in three separate spots so it was all in the correct location.

In two weeks it will be bridge time.  I have a couple of people coming to help and it should go quickly.  I am going to spend that Friday before setting all the tools up and getting ready so we can hit the ground running on Saturday morning.  I need to do some calculations so we are cutting everything at the correct lengths before then also.  I am getting excited to get this project done.  After that it is onto the barn and fixing the doors and adding a window so the hay does not get wet!!

Future bridge, these wood piles are 20 feet end to end, the bridge will be 38 feet long once completed.

Both Sarah and Annmarie rode the horses this morning. They weren’t on long, but it was with bareback pads and no reins and the horses tolerated it with no problems.

I had to go to the DMV today to get that 10 day permit for the wheat truck.  Big surprise that they did not want to do that.  She told me that I could not put a load in the truck if I used a 10 day permit.  So I was handed some more paperwork and told to have it filled out.  My mother-in-law, Donna, filled it out and now I will go back and try again.  Does anyone want to place bets on the number of visits it takes me to get something authorized by the DMV so I can use the truck?

I came home after picking the child up from the dentist’s office.  She didn’t want to come home as her mother had “promised her” they would go bra shopping.  Now mind you she is going to spend the next two days in town and could go then, but no she wanted to go today.  I won, and she came home (I just went out to the car and waited).  Once home the child started complaining of not feeling well.  We ate lunch and then she curled up in the chair while I cancelled our weekend event plans.  She fell asleep in the chair and slept for the next four hours!  I guess she really was not feeling well. I planted some more starts but there are still two whole flats to go.  We  are going to run out of containers with holes so I am going to have to create some more with the gun.

It is starting to look like a shop/shed and you might even be able to find some tools when you look for them.  I have found three palm sanders and two roto zip tools so far.  Still missing some T-squares…

Instead I went out and worked on the old house organizing and cleaning up.  I threw out another three boxes of trash.   I even had to take one of the racks out to use it for the plant starts.  I think I may keep it out or move it to a different section.  I might even put it in the root cellar as it is all metal and can stand the humidity a little better than the press board shelving on the others.  I made a top shelf and spot for some wood working tools.  I made it out of 2×4 and one inch plywood.  I figured it should be plenty strong.  So now I just need to attach my scrollsaw, table sander, and drill press to the table top.  I also need to get my shopvac, radial arm saw and compressor off the breeze porch and out to the old house.  I may move some more shelves around and create another work top out there.  Still figuring out where the new freezer is going to go that we are buying next year.

This weekend we are going to build fence but I think we may spend one whole day emptying out one side of the old house.  I really want to get the shop setup now.  Got the woodworking blues.  If I get it all cleaned out then I can start planning on laying in the wiring for the three 220 V plugins and I can rip out the central adjoining wall.  The wall is not load bearing so I am just going to rip it out.  I looked when I was crawling around in the attic and this will save me much labor not having to install a beam.  If nothing else I am going to make some puzzles.  I really enjoyed the one I made previously so I will give it another shot.

My non-progress on the bridge.  Still shooting for first full weekend in August.  I need to get this thing done!

I spent the day playing catch up today.  I have had to deal with the creeping thyme starts we have been growing from seed.  We started almost 1000 plugs with seeds.  They have been dying in droves lately.  Annmarie thinks they need more soil.  I think they are getting too wet.  So Sarah and I are replanting them so they have more soil.  Unfortunately, even with lots of them dying that leaves about 600 plugs to plant.  That is a whole lot of plants to transplant.  Luckily, we have been saving yogurt containers for just this reason and my father had an entire trash bag full of small plastic containers also. The next problem is how do you put drain holes in 600 plastic containers?  During this Winter I used my drill to put holes in the bottom of the containers, but this was going to take me a single day just to drill holes.  Unfortunately, I don’t get to take credit for this brainstorm of an idea.  The credit lies solely with Paul a friend at work.  He told me to shoot a hole through the containers with my 22 pistol!!  I should have thought of it myself.  I trimmed one of the branches out of the large tree out front that way.

So for all those inquiring minds, Dannon yogurt containers work the best.  They are very flexible and this allows the bullet to go through without cracking the plastic, just leaves a nice round hole.  You can only shoot through about 10 containers at once as they don’t stack well and if you don’t stack nice and straight or shoot straight the bullet ends up coming out the side of the distant containers instead of continuing down through the bottom.  The hard plastic yogurt containers are nice containers but they break from the bullet impact.  They still work but the entire bottom of the container has cracks all the way to the edges.  Yoplait containers are a no go, they are shaped incorrectly so I won’t use them.  The container has to go wide to shallow or how else are you going to get the dirt out in one piece?  I sat on the edge of the porch and shot up a few hundred containers.  One more word of wisdom, muzzle blast.  Keep the pistol muzzle back away from the containers or the muzzle blast will break or move the containers.

Sarah and I have 6.5 flats of starts to re-pot.  We did four tonight.  It is a fairly laborious process.  Near dark we went out to see if the old wheat truck would start.  I wanted it to be as cool as possible as last year the yellow jackets were living in the truck and under the hood.  I was hoping they would be dormant.  I brought the jumper cables to give the truck a little extra juice.  Of course, I had to knock down two different yellow jacket nests and dodge them for five minutes.  Sarah and I had a discussion on how to use jumper cables.  She knew the colors and what terminal to hook them up at (thanks to phinnius and pherb cartoon, for which I was informed she should be allowed to watch more educational TV).  I told her how to do it, what to look for and as I attempted to hook the positive terminal up sparks flew everywhere.  Then I had to tell her that that was what happened when you attempted to hook the positive terminal to the ground and don’t do it, it is dangerous.  After correcting the polarity, I hooked the jumper cables up correctly and attempted to get into the truck.  I had to scrape out one more yellow jacket nest and then wait a couple of minutes.  Amazingly, the truck started with some gently persuasion.  I could not believe it.  I had not started it for almost one year.

Tomorrow I will get a 10 day trip permit at the DMV and pick up some scrap 2×6 boards and a dog kennel. Got them from a friend for the price of removal from the scrap pile outside his shop.  While I was talking to him we got on the topic of my greenhouse.  I said I was looking for free windows and he was removing 10 from a house he is working on.  So I scored some more windows.  I want to put some in the barn also to increase the light inside the building.  Once I have gotten the scrap home and unloaded it I will go into the hardware store and get everything for the bridge.  I still have to have a load of gravel delivered, but I will call for that tomorrow.  Everything will be in place except for some help.  Still working on that.