After reading and hearing about blogs I decided this might be a way to keep in touch with friends and family, and anyone else who would be interested.
We have finally completed our move to Iowa and most of our spare time is spent preparing for the coming winter. Last winter is an experience we do not want to revisit, power outages, frozen pipes, flooded basement. I don't think you totally appreciate the power of snow until you spend from 12:00 AM to 3:00 PM stuck in a parking lot because the roads are closed. Trying to stay warm and keep two German Shepherds happy in a car is not really my idea of heaven. Of course, traveling the next day and seeing the number of cars off the road, quite a few upside down, made our stay seem much better. We were within one exit of home when they closed the interstate.
We had left Wisconsin to head home with the van and car around 12:00 noon, after leaving Waterloo the weather started turning bad, the rest of the trip was spent traveling at 35 miles per hour. This trip usually takes us 5 hours. At times we could not see the road but kept trucking until they closed the highway. The next day when we arrived at the house it was to find the driveway blocked, I did this by trying to drive through what I thought was just a little snow, wrong. As I sat there Jim went up to check the house and came back to tell me there was 3 feet of water in the basement!! Oh, joy. Through the help of friends and strangers we were dug out, they brought heaters and sump pumps and we were bailed out and warm. It took from Sunday to Tuesday to get all the water out.
Now as I sit here and look out the window at the corn fields, all green and healthy, all that snow seems like a bad dream. The fields stretch for miles in all direction and it has been a treat watching the process of planting and growing. Much of my time is spent trying to keep things mowed and planting new, also uncovering what was here before. Yesterday brought the discovery of a patch of pretty blue flowers, don't know what they are yet.
As Jim works out of town, well out of state, his weekends are full of repairing pipes, walls etc. It always amazes me how talented he is and how he can just jump in and fix all kinds of things. I try to do my part by breaking things so he will feel appreciated, I found pieces of farm equipment by driving over them with mower. This was also my method for finding the strawberry patch, which with Jim's help was rescued from oblivion. It is now thriving, no berries, but the plants look good.
With this page I am going to try and chart our progress with the house and acreage, bloopers and triumphs. I hope you enjoy this, I think I will have fun with it and maybe even get Jim to put in a note or two.
We have finally completed our move to Iowa and most of our spare time is spent preparing for the coming winter. Last winter is an experience we do not want to revisit, power outages, frozen pipes, flooded basement. I don't think you totally appreciate the power of snow until you spend from 12:00 AM to 3:00 PM stuck in a parking lot because the roads are closed. Trying to stay warm and keep two German Shepherds happy in a car is not really my idea of heaven. Of course, traveling the next day and seeing the number of cars off the road, quite a few upside down, made our stay seem much better. We were within one exit of home when they closed the interstate.
We had left Wisconsin to head home with the van and car around 12:00 noon, after leaving Waterloo the weather started turning bad, the rest of the trip was spent traveling at 35 miles per hour. This trip usually takes us 5 hours. At times we could not see the road but kept trucking until they closed the highway. The next day when we arrived at the house it was to find the driveway blocked, I did this by trying to drive through what I thought was just a little snow, wrong. As I sat there Jim went up to check the house and came back to tell me there was 3 feet of water in the basement!! Oh, joy. Through the help of friends and strangers we were dug out, they brought heaters and sump pumps and we were bailed out and warm. It took from Sunday to Tuesday to get all the water out.
Now as I sit here and look out the window at the corn fields, all green and healthy, all that snow seems like a bad dream. The fields stretch for miles in all direction and it has been a treat watching the process of planting and growing. Much of my time is spent trying to keep things mowed and planting new, also uncovering what was here before. Yesterday brought the discovery of a patch of pretty blue flowers, don't know what they are yet.
As Jim works out of town, well out of state, his weekends are full of repairing pipes, walls etc. It always amazes me how talented he is and how he can just jump in and fix all kinds of things. I try to do my part by breaking things so he will feel appreciated, I found pieces of farm equipment by driving over them with mower. This was also my method for finding the strawberry patch, which with Jim's help was rescued from oblivion. It is now thriving, no berries, but the plants look good.
With this page I am going to try and chart our progress with the house and acreage, bloopers and triumphs. I hope you enjoy this, I think I will have fun with it and maybe even get Jim to put in a note or two.
.JPG)
.JPG)
