Jungle Fever

You would think that because I hand paint eyes for a living that I could paint my own walls; this is not the case. When we bought our house four years ago everything was beige and every room had a town-and-country style horse border. I immediatly started picking out colors for rooms- I knew I wanted each room upstairs to be a different color and so the painting frenzy began! One room is a deep lavender, another pumpkin orange (sounds hideous but it's really fabulous), one room is a light yellow and another a bright canary yellow (where Art was allowed to put up his dirt bike border). Once I had all the rooms painted I moved on to the hallway. I decided I wanted green and after weeks of several little paint squares taped to the wall I picked "meadow green". I painted one wall and thought, 'well, this isn't bad', but I wasn't in love with it. At this point a smart person would stop painting, think about the color for a few days and then continue or find a different color. But I bucked convention and I continued painting the other two walls...then down the stairs....then over the stairs (At which point Art had to stand on a precariously placed 2x4 to help me).
Everyday after I have hated the color. It looks like a Jungle Green Crayola crayon threw up on my walls. When I go to other peoples' homes I am always so impressed by the colors they have picked out and I wonder how the hell they did it. I asked one friend how she picked her colors and she said "Oh, I hired a decorator to do it." I briefly considered this but I can't justify paying someone a lot of money just to tell me what color I should paint my hallway. Art says that the color has grown on him and he really likes it- I think he says this so that he doesn't have to help me re-paint.


I'm not really sure what to do- but here's a picture of the atrocity:


If anyone has any ideas they are certainly welcome because god knows I don't have any. I think my color esteem has hit rock bottom. The dining room and living room are sorely in need of a paint job but I'm afraid to pick out another ghastly color. Few people see the upstairs which is one reason why I have waited to so long to re-do it but many people see the downstairs and I don't want them to come in and abruptly turn and run for the hills screaming "My eyes! My eyes!!"



And for those of you who don't believe that Pumpkin orange is a fabulous color:

Toasty (or soon to be)

Yesterday Art finally finished installing the wood stove! Well, the inside part, anyway- he still has to install the outside chimney. We decided to put the wood stove in this year for several reasons:

1) Our house is old and expensive to heat on propane

2) Art traded a refrigeration unit for a wood stove our neighbor had sitting in his barn

3) Art traded a few hours of work for two 70' auger pipes (what they use to transfer corn/beans from a tractor to the grain bin) that he will use for the outside chimney (an 8" and a 10"- it will be doubled walled and very safe)

4) The north side of the house is always so flippin' cold

5) A friend of ours rents land that has a 'bush' (Canadian for a 'heavily treed area that's not quite a forest') and it has several fallen oak and hickory trees that Art can cut up (We don't like the idea of cutting down trees, but we figured if they were already down naturally, why not?)

Two years ago we installed a corn stove (when corn prices were lower- but now Art trades hay with a neighbor who has corn) and it does a great job of heating the entry way and living room. But we spend a lot of time in our dining room and it's always so cold on that side of the house. We had thought about putting in another corn stove on that side of the house but then Art acquired all the necessary things for a wood stove and the free wood was just too good to pass up.

Art should be able to put the chimney up in the next few weeks...hopefully. It may have to wait until the ground thaws a little because Art is going to anchor the pipe in the ground and brace it to the house- that way we don't have to cut holes in our brand new roof.

The corn stove (fancy stone tile made by yours truly)

The wood stove (fancy tiling, again, made by yours truly)

One of the trees Art cut up

Life is Never Dull on the Farm....

When our house was built in 1914 there was no bathroom on the main level. At some point during the many updates someone converted what may have been a pantry or some kind of 'sick' room into a bathroom with shower, sink and toilet. The bathroom shares a wall with the boot room (which is basically the outside with walls because they never insulated the it) which normally isn't a problem unless it gets very, very cold (ie, January in Iowa). When they installed the water lines for the bathroom apparently no considered Iowa winters as they put the pipes in the wall that, on the other side, can be a frozen tundra. Nor did they consider putting any sort of insulation around the pipes or even in the wall to prevent the pipes from bursting. We insulated the wall a few years ago but when the temperature really drops the pipes still freeze so we have resorted to space heaters in the boot room to warm it enough for the ice to melt (talk about energy efficiency...) So far we have been lucky not to have burst any pipes...

When I came home this evening I turned the space heaters on in the boot room as I have had to do for the last three days and turned the knob on in the shower. I started watching Project Runway (I just bought season 4 and so far it is so 'fierce'!) and about thirty minutes later I hear the water running. Usually I have gone to the bathroom and just shut the water off, leaving the space heaters going to keep things liquidy. But tonight, as I pull back the shower curtain I notice that the water is not flowing from the shower head but instead from the knob of the shower- and not just flowing- pouring. Of course I stand there dumbfounded for a few moments looking from the shower head to the knob and back again as I start turning the knob while becoming more and more confused and panicked as nothing happens and the knob just keeps turning 'round and 'round. Something finally clicks and I think "I have to turn the water off!" and I run downstairs where I, once again, stared dumbfounded in front of the breaker box and the list of which breakers do what. Finally I figure out the right breaker and shut off the water- only to notice that the floor below the shower area is wet. I'm terrified that we have finally burst a pipe and I call Art, who tells me "Oh, it's mostly leaking from the pipe that drains the shower."
"Shouldn't we get that fixed?", I ask.
"Eh, it's not a big deal, we'll fix it in the spring when we re-do the bathroom. It's been leaking for awhile so it's nothing to really worry about."
I think this sounds made up, but I have no knowledge of plumbing to backup my suspicions so I prefer to believe his lie.
So just when I thought the worst had happened, it turned out to be a big deal: the valve on the knob froze and broke, not the pipe. We won't be able to have running water until Art fixes it but we have plenty of gallon jugs (left over from past ice storms) and we'll have to abide by the old Canadian rule "If it's yellow, let it mellow." Crisis averted!

Lindsay's No Good Very Bad Day

Today hasn't gone as planned. Not that I had much planned but, still, I didn't plan for all of this.
I woke up very early this morning in anticipation that the roads may still be snow covered. What I discovered was that just my road was snow covered. And not just snow covered but drift covered. Luckily Art was still home (having been the first to discover the drift covered road) and was trying to get the tractor started. He had left his jeep up at the point of no return and came back for the tractor. It was 6:15 in the morning and it was -29 degrees with a stiff breeze. Come to find out, batteries don't work well in that cold of temperature so I had to drive Art back up to his car, get his battery and bring him home so he could switch it out for the one on the tractor. Once he got the tractor up and running he drove up, cleared a path and came home. I then drove him back up to his jeep (battery in tow) and the jeep started right up, and then proceeded to die quite suddenly. Another reason to hate the cold: diesel tends to gel up in extreme cold, no matter how much additive you put in it. So as we are sitting in my car wondering what to do, one of our less-than-friendly nieghbors drives by in his very large, dual wheeled pick up truck. He stops and asks us "Is the road clear?" when I tell him 'yes, we cleared it' he nods his head and drives off. Did he think of asking, "Why are you sitting in your car in -29 degree weather behind another car with no driver?" We drove home, picked up our other jeep, and drove back to the car with the hopes that we can tow it home. This did not go as planned. The snow that was light and fluffy last night, had now turned rock hard and had somehow adhered itself to the jeep making it immovable. Finally we call our neighbor (who, I might add, has a snow plow blade on the front of his truck and, I might add again, it's in front of his barns that this scene is unfolding) he is able to tow Art home and finally, finally we can leave for work. During the frequent back and forth between jeep and home I had to drive through another (not as deep) snow drifted area (well, not so much 'drive' as 'barrel') Did you know that constantly barreling through snow can cause your power steering belt to come off? I didn't either. But it did and now I'm driving around with no power steering. On the upside it's an excellent work out for my arms.
All this before 10:00am.
It's days like this that I wonder why the hell I moved back. Did you know that we haven't had temperatures this cold since 1972? And that yesterday, Santa Anna, Calif. had record temperatures of 87 degrees? If this isn't global warming than it is certainly the apocolypse.

And So It Begins...

Well, I've done it; I've jumped on to the blogging band-wagon. It has been suggested that I blog so that friends and family can hear all about my exciting (or not so exciting) life on the farm. I think that's mostly because no one can believe I actually live on and participate in a farm.
A little background: I live on a small 10 acre hobby farm in Tipton, Iowa. We raise 2 pigs to butcher every year (the last set were named Pork and Beans), chickens for eggs and our newest additions are Helen and Keller, our mostly blind Black Angus calves. I do a lot of gardening in the spring, summer and fall and I seem to always be mowing the grass so I get a pretty good tan during the warmer months. I'll try and post pictures and keep everyone up-to-date on the latest farm happenings! But, being that it's winter there isn't a lot going on so you will just have to read my ramblings until spring.
I've been told that it is very enjoyable and even cathartic to blog. So far I'm enjoying myself!
So here it is, my first blog. Enjoy!