January 2023
Was this really a year ago?
We started off with new furniture; a win for Kristten. It’s funny how she looks to improve the house and I tend to look to improve the farm. When we get a new comfy bed, and places to sit, we both win.
Our youngest daughter Katie finished her first MARATHON at Disney. Way to go!
Kristten was part of a speaking engagement at the Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) conference in Ames. She spoke with another female farmer about the unique challenges and opportunities of being a woman in ag. Kristten still owns her mental health therapy practice, and also stays busy working with various mental health nonprofits and boards.
I grew my hair out all year. I’ve never really had long hair so I just let the lovely locks grow. TT was not a fan so before we went on a Caribbean cruise I got it cut (the things we do for love).
The day we boarded our cruise I found out my mother was in the hospital, also in Florida, and it wasn’t looking good. We went on our cruise but as soon as we were off we headed for Fort Myers to see her. It was a sad time but, in the spirit of making lemonade from lemons, Gabe got to see one of his favorite cousins as she did a talent show cover of Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer.
Feb 2023
My mother passed after a short illness in early February 2023. God love the hospice workers who deal with grieving families day in and day out. Interestingly enough, my mother, a nurse, worked as a hospice nurse for several years.
Kristten spent a week at Katie’s house in Orlando before flying home without me. Gabe and I stayed another week in Florida after mom’s passing to make arrangements and clean up her house. We drove her car back to Iowa in one 23 hour period. It’s like foreshadowing.
While we were gone Kristten was in charge of the farm. Everyone survived. 🙂
March 2023
March was a relatively quiet month….which was much appreciated. We started the month with Kyle’s birthday. He’s still in WI and rocking his tiny house. He and his girlfriend, Jill, come visit occasionally, and they are a really cool couple. We don’t have any pictures from 2023, so we are adding a 2022 picture. Forgive us.
Katie and Nathan flew to KC for wedding stuff, so I drove my mom down to meet them and spend the weekend. KT had her makeup trial, and she looked GORGEOUS! While we were enjoying Boulevard brews, G was minding the farm.
We got to host “friends dinner” with the most awesome neighbors ever on St. Patrick’s day, and everyone embraced the theme. We closed out March with G’s birthday.
April 2023
April made up for the quietness of March. We had a Celebration of Life for Garin’s mom. She LOVED The Tavern pizza and got it every time she was back in Iowa. So of course, we had to have the celebration there. She also was wildly artistic, so we had her art supplies there for everyone to show Kris some artistic love. Garin went out with Madison for her birthday…and apparently can keep up with the younger kids;)
G was busy on the farm getting chicken tractors ready and other misc. farm chores to get ready for summer. Gabe came and visited quite a bit. Not because he missed us, but because there is a shop here where he can make his guitars. We’ll take it! We had our last litter of piglets in April. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was going to be our last time “processing” piglets.
I crammed as much as I could into the last 3 weeks of April. My word of 2023 was BALANCE, and its probably a good thing. Could you imagine what my year would have looked like if I wasn’t constantly keeping balance in mind? I flew down to Orlando to visit KT with a few girlfriends. While I was there KT did a runDisney 10k. It was fun cheering her on! runDisney is a vibe! I was back for a few days before G and I flew back down to Orlando. While we were there we took our last trip to Universal. Actually it was my last trip and G’s first trip. It was fun either way.
May 2023
You might be wondering why we went back to Orlando after just being there. Here’s the story: ‘Sort of’ out of the blue Katie’s fiance, Nathan, was offered a job at Boeing in Seattle. BUT they had to move in like 2 weeks. It was tough but Kristten and I flew down to Florida (the sacrifices we make) to help them pack and then, remember February?, we drove Nathan’s truck back to Iowa in ONE DAY. This time we had Hugo to help us. Driving to Florida non-stop is not fun, this is twice in one year!
After Kristten and I drove back to Iowa in one day Katie and Nathan did the same. They rested for a night in Iowa and then they got in the truck and drove to Seattle to complete their move. They picked up Gabe to help with driving and heavy lifting. I think they stayed the night somewhere in between Iowa and Washington but still…
The next weekend Katie had her bachelorette party in Nashville. I guess it’s like Vegas because Kristten won’t tell me much but I did learn that Broadway is “happening”, Katie and her 20 something girlfriends are “feral”, and my cousin Jenn and Kristten can hang with feral girls for at least a few days. (without the being feral part)
Farm camp: We were blessed to have two of my cousin’s children come up for our first ever “Farm Camp” week. Kayla and Kenzie (you may recognize Kenzie from January) love our animals, doing puzzles, and Taylor Swift. Chores? Not so much. Unless it involved driving machinery. We took them on a river float, to the Newton Drive-In, and our friend (and awesome photographer Joann Korpi) took some professional pictures for us. This was also the month we got the Tardis Door complete and hung. It’s pretty awesome.
June 2023
June was a doozy! G and I tried trail running. We did two different runs in June. They were ROUGH, but we did it! June and July are the best time for river floats, so we recovered from our runs by floating on the river.
Poor Gus got 12 teeth pulled in June. He must have been pretty mad about it, because he ran away from G while they were visiting a friend. He was missing for a week. An ENTIRE week! With hardly any teeth left. We had posters up and were scouring the streets. Nothing. All of the sudden, Gus showed up at the house next door to where he ran from. How can 12lbs have that much hold on your heart? Little stinker. He came back like nothing happened. Hugo was especially happy to have him back. Now he has a ginormous GPS collar. Sorry Gus. This experience was so emotional and it forced us to look at the farm and what is working and what wasn’t. We made the decision to downsize and sell our hogs. When Daphne goes to freezer camp, Stella will go too and we will be out of cows as well. We’ll just be focusing on chickens and turkeys.
I was able to take my mom to visit family in IL, and G had some friends from high school come visit. They are referred to as “the boys.” Its always a hilarious time. But the biggest news of June….
H and J brought home Radar! He’s the cutest little Corgi ever. Lazer is being a great big brother, but still loves to come over and have his chore time with G all to himself.
July 2023
July was another “balanced” trip for Kristten. This time she went to see Katie in Washington because they hadn’t seen each other in like 3 weeks. 🙂 While she was there Taylor Swift was playing at Lumen Field. Which just so happens to be visible from Kate’s apartment rooftop. That counts as her seeing Taylor right?
We went on our last float of the summer (no rain makes the river low) and we went to see the Barbie Movie. It’s a hoot and I’ll stand by that. It’s got great Kenergy.
Kristten got another “home” improvement when we tiled the kitchen. It was another win/win because the kitchen looks great and I got a laser level as a new toy.
Our first batch of birds were ready in July and I think we had to schedule our day to process them around when Kristten was going to be home. She literally had a trip the week before and was going to leave for another the very next day. How do you spell Balance? 🙂
I was also fortunate enough to take questions at a fake press conference at Iowa State. Kristten was invited to an appreciation dinner for their sports medicine program. She took me and I had a blast. Next question….
August 2023
August was time for me to work on improving the farm (to balance out the furniture and kitchen ya know). Our pig barn roof was in bad shape and the leaks were getting bigger. Since we store feed and equipment inside there we had to get it fixed. It so happened that another local farm was selling used tin (steel roofing) from one of their buildings and I jumped at the chance to put it on my roof.
Am I a roofer? No
Have I ever been on a roof, yes, but only for a couple minutes.
Thus began a process of re-roofing the pig barn. The old “shingles’ were 4x8 sheets of corrugated “shingle” material. Some came off easy, some not so much. Below that was 3 layers of older shingles. In August I started ripping off the big old stuff. At Kristten’s insistence I invested in a safety harness. I said they were expensive. She asked if they were more or less expensive than an ER copay. And that was the end of that.
We also started to get ready for the big event in September, a wedding! Of course we mixed in a little Uncle G style fun in there. We saw The Chicks at the Iowa State Fair and canned a ton of sweet corn.
I am happy to say I attended my first professional baseball game in August. I have been a Pittsburgh Pirates fan since the 70s but have never been to one of their games. I decided several years ago that my first pro game would be a Pirate’s game and, it just so happened they were playing in KC a few days before the wedding (also in KC). Kristten, who’s been to MANY games and is a Brewer’s fan, got us tickets and even bought me a shirt to wear. I’m happy to say the Bucs won and now I can go to other professional games having saved my first time for the Pirates (We are family!)
Sept 2023
Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Even! KT’s wedding was the biggest event of September, but not the only event. Gabe moved to Cedar Falls, which is a few hours away. G continued to work on the barn roof. The turkeys took over our back porch. I updated our guest room….and added a whole weiner dog on the walls. I’m obsessed. As it is in life, not everything can be good. We lost Tugg this month. He “came with the house” and was the best little guy. Tugg was 15 ish years old and was full of character. We have great memories of Tugg (and his 1000 nick names).
You might be wondering what the perfume bottle is all about. Well. It boils down to this. If there is a weird vehicle thing that is going to happen, it will happen to us. We have no shortage of weird things that have happened, including someone living in our van while it was at the shop. This time someone got into the truck and rifled through all of our stuff. They tore apart the glove compartment and console. Ultimately the only thing they took was G’s backpack….that had a change of clothes for running, including a spare pair of underwear. They left my purse and several dollars worth of change…..and a full bottle of Marc Jacobs Daisy perfume that did not belong to us. G did some recon around the neighborhood later and found his underwear, but no backpack:(
Oct 2023
Since starting the barn roof in August it’s been a long but thankfully pretty dry project. The money saved by using “old” tin (used steel roofing) is great but more care must be taken when installing pearlings to the roof so they match the holes in the old tin. Before the last pieces were installed Kristten and I painted our farm logo on 4 sheets of tin. We used a projector to trace the image and then painted it on the sheets before installing. We thought it was HUGE and would easily be seen from the highway but….. Well, it’s a 60 foot roof so our 10’ logo looks pretty small, when you can see it at all. But it’s still awesome!
October was our second chicken harvest. These birds looked and tasted great!
We made chicken stock with some of the left over bits. We do this outside over a fire and just let it boil all day. We put it in tubs to cool and the next day we pressure can the stock so we can use it all year. It’s so delicious (and nutrient dense).
I’ve often said we grow animals better than plants but I do like to grow (and eat) hot peppers. These little guys (Thai chillis I believe) are awesome and have been dried into a topping for everything short of ice cream.
Katie has the running bug and she completed the half marathon in Portland, Oregon. When we can’t be there for her runs, we try and keep up throughout the day.
And finally here’s some tree art that I created. Being a big nerd (if you couldn’t tell from the Tardis door on the barn) I opted for the “home” symbol from the Stargate movie/show (I’m partial to SG1). I added some solar lights behind a piece of steel I cut the work “home” out of.
Welcome home.
November 2023
Hold on for the wild ride that was November. The turkeys continued to commandeer our back porch. Thankfully they went to freezer camp in early November. We ended up keeping one of the turkeys for ourselves and took it across the country for Thanksgiving.
My aunt Noreen turned 90!!!!!! I was able to fly my mom to KY to visit family. While I was gone G stayed back and processed chickens with a good friend and his son. We got a new plucker too….and for us, that is exciting. Stella was acting a little off so the vet came out. Her buddy Daphne is playing a little too rough with her. She got some steroids and pain meds and should be good. She has not been able to be bred for a few years, so she is basically a 1,000lb pet.
For Thanksgiving we offered to bring all the kids to Seattle on the train to visit KT and Nathan. Kyle was the only one who wasn’t able to be gone that long. It was a LONG trip. We took Amtrak from Minneapolis to Seattle and spent the holiday there. Since we didn’t have the same TSA rules, we brought a whole home grown turkey and tons of other things to cook. We got to witness Gabe’s first experience being ID’d. And it was for WATER. No joke. Since it was in a store that sold mostly liquor they ID everyone no matter what. He’s so metal. We went to a few arcade bars and one with an old school cigarette machine. It had been modified and still worked. Very nostalgic. The trip was great. We had a great time hanging out with Nathan’s parents and KT’s dad’s family.
While we were there, KT did the Seattle Half Marathon. We weren’t quite up for that so G, Gabe, Claire, KT, and I did a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day. On our way to Seattle on the train, Garin got out at a stop in each state to run a mile. He has a life goal of running one mile in every state. He crossed North Dakota and Montana off his list. Our Idaho stop was too short:(
December 2023
So here we are. What a year. Compared to the rest of the year December was pretty low-key.
We have a buddy with a 60 foot lift. I got to use it to complete the trim on the pig barn. Just for fun I raised it up all the way and took a few pictures of the property from 70ish feet in the air.
The same buddy had some more chickens to butcher so we helped him out with 25ish birds. It’s amazing how quick you get with lots of practice.
Christmas was pretty quiet this year. In keeping with tradition, it started with monkey bread and ended with family.
We don’t have a lot of rules in the house but here are 2 of them 1) you can’t tell someone to stop singing. If there’s a song in your heart, let it out 2) if you’re not old enough to legally drink (under 21) then you are exempt from bringing alcohol to older people. There’s no “Hey my 8 year old cousin, go get me a beer.” You need to get that yourself or have someone over 21 get it for you. Well, Gabe finally turned 21 in October and this was the first time we had him bring us a beer. Here’s a blurry shot of him bringing one to his sibling.
I also had a goal of walking (or running but mostly walking) a mile outside every day in December. Mission complete by the way. It was a very warm month but here’s a quick pick of me bundled up on one of the cold and windy days.
Happy New Year everyone!!!!
