I have been given a moment of stillness.  It is not normally in my temperment to be still.  I have much work to do, and I struggle against being still.  It is that German Rosenow blood of my Grandfather's.  Always stirring, working.  It is a shame that my Irish half doesn't come out stronger ( Read more... )

On Sunday we made an offer on a 40 acre farm.  It's 2 miles east of Clotho, where my folks and aunt and uncle farm.  The buildings consist of a 2 bedroom house, a barn, a machine shed, garage, and grainery.  There are 15 acres of tillable land.  Another half acre could probably be squeezed out of it if the yard were reduced.   On Saturday we ( Read more... )

I've more or less pulled out of the Hart Building project.  With the bid from the sprinkler company coming in almost near the value of the building, I was told by my banker that I'd have to likely come up with a 50% down payment.  So that would be about $150k that I'd need in assets.  Oofda!  Running through the numbers, my mortgage payment would ( Read more... )

A winter weekend in Ely, where the only paths north to the arctic circle are taken by canoe, ski, or snow shoe.


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This weekend we were going to meet with Dick Wenker (YES ... say that name aloud to yourself a couple of times), esteemed realtor for Re-Max Lakes, to look at a 61 acre Amish farm (it has it's own small lake (=pot hole)) in Gutches Grove. I called Mr. Wenker the week before. He thanked me for giving him so much advance notice, as he had to send ( Read more... )

The bid came back for the sprinkler system on the building the day before yesterday. Took me very much by surprise. $130,000; about double what I had been expecting, and is nearly the asking price of the building. So I'm kinda left scratching my head. I think (though I speak with very little knowledge) that this could cause some very serious ( Read more... )

I really love the MoodWatch feature in my Eudora client. That oh so cool slightly melting ice cube that typifies my normal email correspondence to my Chinese counter parts.

I love typing

"Dear Digitizing Staff ( Read more... )

Over the weekend, we listend to my grandmother tell stories of living in the same part of the city we live in. She left her parents's farm during The War, in search of a paying job, which were damn hard to find at the tail end of the Depression. Sometimes it's strange thinking of my 85 year old grandmother as a young woman. She frequented a soda ( Read more... )

Anna and I went over to the neighbors to cut firewood in their pasture. The farmstead is what is called a “dog patch.” Rusted equipment from last spring’s planting, with children’s toys scattered in for good measure, lay about the yard. The hay wagon Dad and I returned 4 weeks ago hasn't moved from the spot just off the driveway. A lame cow dog ( Read more... )

Walt, I thought you in particular - as a former N owner - would get a kick out of these photos. This was my first, and unfortunately only attempt so far, at plowing. We had an old strawberry bed that needed to go fallow. I did this in early July, about 6 weeks into our worst drought in 19 years, so the ground was pretty hard.

( Learnin' to Plow )