Lamb To Lion

When I was a kid growing up in Omaha, truisms were shared and I remember quite a few of them still. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush", "one mans trash is another mans treasure", "a penny saved is a penny earned", and "beauty is only skin deep" are just a sample of sayings that have stuck with me over the years.



Weather forecasting is done much the same isn't it? "April showers bring May flowers" would indicate to me that it will rain in April followed by nice May sunshine and warming temperatures, and with very few exceptions, the truism is in fact...true. From the accuracy of the weather guessers I've observed so far in Nebraska, the extended forecast usually isn't much more accurate.



Our first March in Nebraska is following another weather truism most of us are familiar with. "If March comes in like a lamb, it goes out like a lion" is proving to be pretty accurate. March 1 was a beautiful day in the area if you recall, and I see this morning that McCook is under a winter storm advisory to start the last day of the month. Once again weather history repeats itself in way that reinforces the lamb to lion truism of March weather.



I suppose there are other weather truisms beyond "red sky at night, sailors delight - red sky at morning, sailor take warning", but I can't think of any, and I wonder if there are some here in Nebraska I should be aware of with the upcoming severe storm season? After all, the weather forecast often seems about as accurate.

I'm Going In!

Home improvement shows, books, and magazines provide great information for the do-it-yourselfer on a wide range of topics. From plumbing and electric systems, to landscaping and roofing, you can read about how to accomplish just about any construction or other home improvement project you are willing to attempt. Attempt may be a key word as there are TV shows about botched home construction projects that make someone even slightly handy cringe.

If you're serious about home projects and doing them right, the most important skill I've learned over the years is patience. I'm not a home improvement craftsman like some of you probably are, but I'm patient and know my limitations. I've figured out that the statements "haste makes waste", and "measure twice, cut once" are actually gross understatements when it comes to my taking on some projects around the place. Good thing Al Gore invented the internet (sorry, I still love that story!) because I can learn the how-to of about any project I'm willing to attack.

Being retired is a big advantage around the farm. If we had to work for a living, I'm not sure we could ever get the place the way we want it . With the barn needing repair and our desire to make some major changes in the house, we're having no trouble at all finding things to do, it's more a matter of... since I'm slow about getting things done, the house projects have to line up so our daily living isn't impacted too much, and I can work on outside projects this summer until it gets too warm later in the day.

So with all that preface, I'm goin' in. I'm starting the first renovation project in the house by turning what had been a dining room into an office/guest bedroom. My sanding disks arrived UPS yesterday, and though I could be working outside full time still, I'm ready for change of pace so the old hardwood floor is my first victim. I've pulled the old peel and stick vinyl tile off, the baseboards are history, and I've got my safety equipment.

Since I'm slow and foolish, I'll be attacking the floor with an electric hand sander. The room is quite small, and as I mentioned above, I've got patience to work on it a little at a time. The good part of all this is we have our plan on how the place will come together and progress is being made, even if it is at a snails pace.

Our First Winter

It's official now...we've spent our first winter in Nebraska. We moved the RV onto the farm on December 18 and it's now officially Spring, so we seemed to have found a way to survive. Actually, it wasn't nearly as bad as our worst case scenario thoughts envisioned when we bought the place.

Wrong idea #1 - We thought we'd be cold all winter. The truth of the matter is that this is the most comfortable we've been in in the winter months since we owned our home in Colorado. The wood stove cranked out the heat and kept the house well over 70 inside even on the coldest of days. We worked outside on cold days a lot, but we quickly learned to keep our back to the wind, wear a hoodie all the time, and even though the wind blows some here, it was worse in the desert to our way of thinking. One reason I'm sure is that the motor home, even though equipped with stabilizer jacks, would rock in a stiff breeze, and it's nice to not have the place feel like a tornado is about to pick you up whenever the wind blows.

Wrong idea #2 - We would miss traveling. Well...true and not true. We are starting to feel settled in at the farm now-a-days. At first, we felt a bit overwhelmed by the project we purchased, and thought maybe we should head south and start the project in the spring. We're glad we stayed and dived into the work. We feel like we've accomplished quite a bit outside the house, and now we're getting prepared to start some inside work as well. Working outside as much as we have has really helped keep our mind off traveling anyway, and with the price of fuel lately, it's nice to sit tight for a change.

Wrong idea #3 - I thought writing a blog about our experiences would be pretty easy and fun. It's been fun for the most part, but I've also learned that you can't please all the people all the time. Someone early on as part of their comment to one of my posts stated "It is better to remain silent and be suspected a fool, than to say what you think - and thereby remove all doubt". It's an especially good point about blogging that if you are unwilling to take a little heat and constructive criticism now and then...don't blog!

The right idea - Buying the farm. I know it's not a real farm. It's just an old farm house and some outbuildings in a nice windbreak surrounded by a real farm, but it has virtually all the qualities of the best camping sites we found with our RV. A nice view, trees, convenient water and dump, solitude, wildlife, a place the dog can run without being on a leash, convenient to a town for supplies, quiet neighbors, no length of stay regulations. If you wish to camp on public lands for extended periods of time, with very few exceptions, you must change campsites every couple weeks. Now that we've found the perfect camping location, it's nice to not have to leave it.

So spring has sprung, green stuff is popping out of the ground, and I still haven't gotten a mower. The weed war is about to shift into full battle mode, and I am so unarmed. We hope to remedy that in the near future.

Hi Jolly

Hadji "Hi Jolly" Ali was born in 1828 and was was one of the first camel drivers hired by the US Army in 1856. The idea was to use camels for freight hauling across the southwestern deserts, but the horses, mules, and burros the government was using were frightened by the bigger camels, and the Civil War took priority and funding for the experiment was lost. There is a stone monument in Quartzsite to Hi Jolly and it's the most visited location in town.

What brings this up is on our way home from North Platte along I-80, Margie spotted a camel. Maybe seeing a camel is something you see everyday, but I have not seen a real live camel anywhere other than in a zoo. You may be able to imagine our surprise at seeing a camel on property next to the freeway in of all places Nebraska, so we're chalking this one up to things you don't see every day!

One other quick note about our trip through North Platte. This was our first trip there, and our purpose was to check out Menard's home improvement store. Menard's is not a name we'd heard of in the western US, and the TV ads and newspaper sections make it look like they have everything we could possibly need for our house renovation projects...which we discovered is pretty much true. The store in NP is the largest home improvement stores we've been to anywhere, and I imagine more than a couple trips for supplies are in our future.

Our mini road trip covered just under 200 miles, but we did go a scenic route home. I'm still amazed that we saw a camel living along the freeway in Nebraska, and wonder what other highly unusual things we'll get to see along Nebraska's highways and byways.

Bee Wranglers

A news article about a freeway closing in California caught my eye the other day and I thought I ask you folks for help figuring out part of the story. It seems that a truck loaded with bees bound for Washington state overturned and closed the major highway for several hours.



The accident responders had to deal with being stung as they tried to upright the truck and help the injured driver. Police and rubberneckers got attacked as millions of bees swarmed around their former home on the truck.



Now in case you don't know it yet, bees are shipped all over the country to help pollinate crops. Some areas have seen their bee populations disappear for no apparent reason, so some enterprising folks came up with the idea of renting bee colonies to growers in these areas. It often means the difference between a viable operation and having a going out of business auction for the growers renting one of natures best pollen spreaders.



The article reported that local bee wranglers showed up to help recover the stinging insects, so my question to you is...what EXACTY does a bee wrangler do? Do they chum with honey? Fly around in ultra light aircraft and herd the bees home? How about an army of folks with nets capturing them to be placed in special bee containers? Maybe they just run around waving their arms to scare the bees home? Maybe the wranglers use teenie lasso's and are real good? And for that matter, do the bees consider a hive on the back of a truck their home anyway, or perhaps did most of them exclaim "We're Free!", and fly the coop... er... I mean hive?

Abe Invades

Cambridge held it's first "Taste Of Cambridge" on Saturday, and from our prospective, it was a big success. There were food samples from local establishments, and clubs and organizations had booths so new area residents could find out about the available activities and services. There was lots of food and good conversation to be had, and we got to meet more of our neighbors and townfolk. We hope Cambridge will make this a yearly event. The food alone made it worth going!

Something we found a bit unusual and interesting to do Sunday was see a traveling exhibit of an exact replica of Abraham Lincoln's casket. The display was set up at the mortuary and seemed well attended to me. The casket is one of 3 traveling boxes created by the Batesville Casket Company, and gave us a very different glimpse of our nations past.

If I was Abe, I'd as soon had a plain pine box, and I expect he had little say in what they planted him in. The casket was very ornate with silver studding, handles, and other appointments, and I believe the decorations were fitting for the President. We also got a nice handout with historical information about Lincoln's last journey to his burial site at Springfield Illinois. What I didn't know was that a plot to steal Lincoln's body was foiled when the theives were caught RED HANDED stealing Abe from his tomb in Illinois.

Since the casket display was across the street from the town museum and it was open, we dropped in to look into the areas past. It only took us a couple minutes to determine that we would only be able to see a fraction of the displays closely as there are a lot of things to look at. Old pictures, native artifacts, early Nebraska home and farm items, firearms, wildlife mounts,

and much more. If you like museums and have not been to ours, come on down and see some of the past. We've seen a lot of small town museums over the years, and this is one of the best in our opinion. And one last thing, according to our volunteer host, he doesnt' get paid unless you sign the guest log

We're just starting to reach into the community as we've spent most of our time working around the farm to start making it our place. We've volunteered to help out with a large charity event that gets pulled off this summer, are visiting local chuches, and starting to see many of the same faces around town. A few folks actually know our name now and it's really different for a city slicker to walk down the street and actually say "hi" to someone and know who they are. It just keeps getting better here in the heartland for us!

Population Explosion

We've been staying busy this late winter around the farm. I got a great comment about my use of the terminology "the farm" in reference to our vintage farmstead, and it answered my question about how long it would take before someone called me out on it. In my defense, I commented on my use of the term in like my second or third blog post saying "...hereinafter refered to in this blog as "The Farm". I know it is NOT a farm, but it's located in farm country, it is our blog, and we'll call it what we want to thank you very much." That however was a post from last year, and looking back on that comment it sounds rather arrogant, but I still wanna call it the farm. Please indulge this city slicker closet farmer.

I've been meaning to comment on the population explosion around here. The number of calves dotting the corn fields amazes me. The number of the little cows seems to outnumber the big ones, so either it's a very good year, or I don't know a darn thing about cows...which is true of the latter, and may be true of the former.

Buy A Car Through The Internet!

As many of you already know, I'm a big fan of email, and I've jawed on a bit about businesses that don't check their email. Well, today's post is affirmation that I won't do business with companies that don't check their email, and encourage you the next time you look for a new vehicle to use the Internet to your advantage to save time, money, and avoid much of the emotional stress tied to buying a new vehicle.

We bought a new Ford Fusion from Wagner Ford in McCook yesterday. We skipped the other guys in the area that didn't respond to email that we might have otherwise considered. We didn't see the car we actually bought until yesterday, but we had spend hours driving a rental Fusion for a trip from Denver to Cambridge before we bought the farm. We made several trips over the course of buying the farm, and had opportunity to rent several different cars. and for us the Fusion was our choice.

Since we knew what kind of car we wanted, we then could narrow our Internet research to make sure we were not missing something troublesome about the car, see prices from across the country, and learn about sales techniques and products that all car dealers have and use to separate you from your money. We avoided any high pressure sales gimmick, got the exact car we wanted, didn't haggle over the price, and frankly it was the easiest car deal I've ever made. No price dickering, no high pressure, we just showed up, took the car for a test drive, and signed the papers.

I contacted Wagner's initially through the Internet, and we made our final offer over the phone. The car was delivered to us exactly as we discussed with only a low pressure sales pitch from the paperwork expert inside for extended service and a high tech wax job. For us, Frank Burke at Wagner's was a great salesman to work with and I recommend him for doing a fine job for us! If you ask for Frank, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

For those of you thinking of buying a new car, even if you want to deal face to face with someone about a vehicle purchase, I'd recommend that you check out http://www.carsdirect.com/ as it provides the best overall information I found on line to help you save some money.

Could we have saved some money by going to a larger dealer? Maybe, but the expense of traveling to make the deal would quickly eat up the difference. Believe, I thought about it!

We still need a hauler, but I think a utility trailer will likely do the job I thought I needed a pickup for, so I'll be looking for one of those in the near future. "NebraskaLand" responded about a possible source of a rental wood chipper, and I'll be giving them a call in next few days too. Thanks for the tip.

Today the project is to continue cleaning the debris field left by Dad and Gary.

Damage Path

It amazes me the quick changes that occur temperature wise now and then. From 80 to 3 in 24 hours seems like a rather large drop in temperature that I'd just as soon not experience again this winter. I don't really mind winter I guess, but these warm days mixed in sure have me ready for Spring!

Margie's Dad and brother Gary dropped in to provide more needed assistance around the farm, but I got to thinking that I'm glad when they leave too. These guys work so hard, and the path of destruction left in their wake is so large, that it takes Margie and me a couple weeks to get most of the leftover waste moved and removed.

One area of the farm has been especially full of neglected trees and shrubs that hid partially buried wire, hog fence, steel fence posts, railroad ties, assorted crushed building pieces, chicken coops, rubber hose, propane tank, broken concrete, cans, and lot's more. It obviously was a heavily used area for farming operations! Gary and Dad have spent a lot of time helping, and the result is always bunch of stuff to cut to size to fit in the dumpster.

We're getting close to have the majority of what we plan on clearing around the farm complete. We've got a big brush pile to deal with, and perhaps I can find a wood chipper to rent somewhere in the area. If you know where I can rent one, please let me know!

We wrapped up their visit with a construction project! This is about the first time that any real improvements have been made around the farm. Our carport appeared to be in danger of collapse from some questionable construction materials and got some major repair work. We jacked up the roof, and replaced all the pole buildings support beams with new timber, and I'm certain the building will now outlive me.

We've got a lot to learn about summer maintenance around the place, and there is still a lot of vegetation clean up to do. We think we've got the majority of stuff removed that needed to go, though there is a tractor wheel and tire I've got to move, and some pipes and odd partially buried wire marked for removal once the ground thaws in those areas. I'm hoping I don't find too much more hidden treasure around the place.

So it appears we're turning a corner from major cleanup and demolition, to improving and major repairs. This is big for us! We've spent nearly 3 months working on this phase getting settled on the farm, and I'm glad it's behind us! The reason is simple too...I'm not sure how much longer Margie and I could have kept cleaning up the damage path of the human machines from Colorado. Thanks guys!

Antique Store

The other day we decided to head to Arapahoe as I wanted to get a haircut, and we thought we'd check out the business district since we have not spent much time there yet. Unfortunately, we still have not explored the Arapahoe downtown area as we got sidetracked on the way.

On the way to Arapahoe, we passed through Holbrook and I decided we'd drive down main street and see what things of interest we might find. My "Special Delivery" blog post elicited a response about checking an antique store in Oberlin for class insulators, and suddenly a half block off Holbrook's main street was a very noticable white building with large red lettering proclaiming "Antiques", I thought of the blog, and decided to see if they had what I wanted.

The door was locked when we tried it, but someone soon appeared and we were soon looking at a place with so many things in it that I wonder how much of the stuff the owner really knows is there. Narrow isles with stuff packed to the ceiling in several rooms. We headed into a back building looking for glass insulators, but couldn't find them, and neither could our hostess. She commented that "he" would know where they were and off she went.

While she was off locating the gentleman that would know where the insulators were, we got a chance to look around. This place is begging for Ebay to unload merchandise on. Collectables of all kinds, some stuff I'd consider junk, but is probably worth a fortune to the right person, but no glass insulators...we thought.

A pleasant fellow comes out and says he's sure there are some in the back, and he has buckets of them in another building down the street if he can't find them. A couple minutes later he came back and asks if we'd seen the ones in back, so off we go again. We are either completely blind, or there was something stacked in front of the two 5 gallon buckets filled with clear and colored glass insulators. I asked how much, and for 5 bucks I could have 6, and he gave me his "if they get stolen, I'll replace 'em free" guarantee.

We visited a bit about the local economy and off we went to Arapahoe. We'd spent a lot more time in Holbrook than expected, the barber shop was closed until 1PM, and I had an afternoon appointment so we returned to the farm. I've got the insulators for my mailbox project, and will be wrapping it up in the near future. Thanks to NebraskaLand for the idea of checking an antique store for glass insulators. I've got a lot to learn about finding things in the country!

The Barn - One Thng Leads To Another

Old McDonald had a farm, and like old Mcdonald's farm, we've got a barn. Problem is what to do with it. The poor old think hasn't seen a paintbrush in a few years, farm operations have helped speed up wood deterioration, and the building just looks like a candidate for scheduled firefighter training and a match as it stands.

It would be pretty easy to give up on the barn, but it has it's good points. #1 - I like it. Even though it looks tough. #2 - I can recover and recycle much of the building materials needed around the farm to make repairs inexpensively. #3 - The roof has been metalized and the major building support and foundation is in fairly good condition.

My main reason for making the barn look like it won't fall down anytime soon relates to it's good point #1 above...I like it. It will provide dry storage for a lot of stuff, and be a pretty good workshop if all goes according to initial plan. It's like the ultimate Tough-Shed for city slickers.

In the city, a Tough-Shed is most often used to house a lawn mower and other garden tools, and our barn will be no different. Since we've gotten an upper hand in the weed war, we realize that it won't be long, and the little devils will be starting their own offensive attack. We'll need some heavy armor to fight back, and it will be nice to have a good storage location for a big mower and whatever other equipment we end up needing around the place.

It won't look new, but it won't look that bad. Having doors that work and the walls fixed and painted will sure help improve it's appearance. Now all I gotta do is figure out how I'm gonna get all the way to the top to paint it. I guess a ladder is needed...hmmm. I need a way to haul a ladder from the store to here...hmmm. I need a pickup.

Special Delivery

I mentioned a month or so ago about starting a mailbox and post project for the farm. I got permission from the phone company and local land owner to take down a couple of old telephone poles and use them for my project.

My brother in law and I went and got the first one, but I quickly discovered that the old cross arms on the poles were too far gone as were the poles themselves. The only really salvageable pieces were the metal lightning arrrestor support than goes on the very top of the pole, and the metal cross arm supports.

You may wonder why I want a phone pole for a mailbox post? In my past life, I started my career climbing phone poles as an Installer/Repairman, and I've not seen another phone pole mailbox support, so I figured I'd be pretty unique.

So now you can see how the project turned out. As soon as I find some, I'll be adding glass insulators and and their support pins to complete the look. As is often the case with something old made new, newer parts had to be used to accomplish the finished look. The "phone pole" is made up of an old building post, an old REA cross arm cut to length, and an old 3x5 fence post. The only thing that makes the pole authentic is the metal pieces on it, but only you and I know it. So if you happen to drive by and see it, forget it's make up and think of the old time phone man that had to climb something that looked like it. It brings back fond memories for me.