high hopes gardens is a living experiment. Can a creative, hard-working family make a living working with nature? Join us on the journey from idea to practice as we revive an Iowa Farmstead.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room!
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Martin recently celebrated his 7th birthday. Happy Birthday Martin!
Here he is with a toy barn and silo Nana gave him. Linda a Claire went above and beyond the call of duty and took Martin and 4 other boys to the science center to see the dinosaur exhibit and IMAX dinosaur film!
Today was a day of intermittent snow - the big, heavy flake variety.
I got to stay home with a sick Martin today. He had some extra TV time and watched animal life shows and played a game of dog-opoly with his Dad.
It was a bit of a foggy overnight, so that left a winter wonderland this morning.
The pastelly red sunrise wished it could be as red as the barn, but it only managed a deep pinkish hue.
The hoarfrost held on most of the day - the above freezing temperatures did not make it today.
one year ago…
Here’s a view of the farm looking north in the winter time.
The newly refurbished buildings really stand out. Soon it will be time to work on the big barn.
The first snow that required the tractor to come out and move snow fell Thursday.
It was a relatively small wind-free snowfall so it sat nicely upon the branches and landscape.
The girls have started to attack a barn horse stall. This one has been filled with corn cobs (and has been since we moved in). I attached it one afternoon with a wood chipper to make some chicken nest box bedding, but haven’t done much with it lately.
The girls have removed about half of it - filling about 30 gunny sacks full. The barn has a number of these stalls, the first of which Linda uses to arrange flowers, the others are filled with “stuff.”
The alley along the stalls is this nice red brick. We were surprised when we cleaned the dumping grounds out of the barn a while after we moved in to find this wonderful floor. We had someone from the Iowa Barn Foundation come look at the barn and he said if we wanted to the barn would probably be eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of this floor and the unusual roofing support. We haven’t pursued it, but are fixing up the barn as we have time - mainly needs new windows and doors.
Not many days you can see a barn burn down AND hear Wendell Berry speak! First, to the barn. A few months ago, I wrote about a century farm (one that is honored to be owned by the same family for over 100 years) that was let slide into disrepair and intentionally burned).
We were headed to church on Sunday morning and the smoke had just started pouring out of the barn. Mesmerized with the size of the fire, we pulled over on the side of the road to watch (I wasn’t willing to drive back home to get the camera, some moments have to stay that way). It was about three minutes from the time the barn was in full flame until it collapsed to the ground. Huge vortexes of flame shot out of the door to the hay loft. The barn wasn’t it good shape (see picture from last winter), but it is sad to see another barn go. It is way too common. Our skyline changes once again.
That night, about seven hours later, we were driving back to Ames to see Wendell Berry and something had re-ignited the ditch near the barn and the fire was heading south quickly - the fire trucks arrived as we were driving down the road to survey the fire and whether anything was in its path to stop it. Now we have a complex - our 2 now-famous fires (two different trips) where places we were just at/just arriving burned in Texas - and now, happening across the height of two different fires in the same place, the same day, hours apart.
In case you haven’t seen it, Sugar Creek Farm has a post and incredible photos of an old barn burning down.
In the evening we went to see Wendell Berry, an author, poet, social critic, and farmer whose work I have long admired. He appeared at Iowa State in the Great Hall. In an attempt to make the evening more intimate, it was set up like a talk show - with other speakers besides Wendell on stage to make conversation. Unfortunately, the sound system sounded and acted like it was purchased second-hand from a McDonald’s drive-thru, so I wasn’t really sure what all he said - there was an overflow crowd as well.
When they opened it up to questions from the audience, again, unfortunately, there were questions that didn’t elucidate elaboration, or worse yet, just plain ramblings by people using the microphone to introduce the audience to their web site and pet peeve. All in all, it was an unsatisfying event that held so much promise to be good. I’ll have to read his latest book to make up for it.
It seems like today may be the middle of winter. It’s been cold for a few weeks now, and the coldest days of the year are supposed to be here this weekend, followed by more below normal temperatures. The corn stove has been running like a top (knock on maize) lately which adds a delightful look of warmth to have a constant fire in the house at all times. The last few days we’ve had many brief snow squalls followed by sunshine.
one year ago…
Things at the farm are in a constant state of needing attention. This summer, a couple of windows in the barn lost some panes of glass. Years ago, I would painstakingly reglaze and repoint the window panes into rotting wood, then paint - all told a job over a few days time. Then I got smarter and bought the pre-primed frames and just had a couple of coats of taping, painting, and scraping. Now, I’m a firm believer in the PVC/Vinyl windows for the outbuildings. No painting, no scraping, no waiting, just put them in. (However, I’m not a fan of them for the house!)
Here’s the broken window.
The path to the broken window from inside the barn. I was fortunate it was over the loft, so the ladder journey wasn’t as far.
Finally, the completed fix. I put two new windows in the barn - need one more for the corn crib.
In unrelated news, I was fortunate the battery to the van died in the K-Mart parking lot! I could walk in, buy a new one, and install it on a nice day. I was fortunate in it wasn’t when Linda had the van and kids somewhere on a cold, windy day.
We are scheming to put up a hoophouse (actually GJ is scheming, but we’ll be happy to let her). We really don’t have much level ground left. We are thinking on the south side of the barn, shielded from the north wind and on a slightly south slope may be a good place to start. I’ve measured out a 24×36 foot space between the raspberries and peach trees.
For now, I’ve got the perimeter outlined with electric netting. We’ll first let the chickens at it to get the grass out, work it up/level with the tractor and then spread heaps of compost on it and maybe cover it with straw/cardboard to kill whatever grows up - maybe even try to solarize the area. It’s another great experiment.
Ok, so “goat-proofing” may be too optimistic a term for what we did today, but it sure sounds hopeful! Every once in a while, the goats climb over the feed bunks in the barn and get in the main part of the barn. Today, we put up cattle panels above the bunks to help them decide to stay on their side of the barn. Again, with goats, this is all theory.
If you look closely, you can see the panels up on the far wall. We also fixed one of the doors that the Billy knocked off, and fixed one door that had settled and did not close. So, now we are more ready to the kids - Paullina is scheduled to deliver this Friday.
Today, a student from Iowa State came out to visit our barn. The class was doing a project and was looking at “Adaptive Reuse” of barns. She came out and asked some questions, took some pictures, and we lamented about the vanishing barns
Here is a collection of blog entries that show renovation in progress or other interesting local barns.
Here’s the link that shows the “before” and “after” chicken coop
Here’s some before and after of the inside of the corn crib
Outside of Corn Crib Renovation
Here’s a pretty picture of the barn in winter
Here’s some pictures of a neighborhood barn in good shape
Here’s a really cool posting from one of our friends whose barn burned down due to lightning.
Today it was so warm, the kids were running around in short sleeves outside for a bit. Barn cleanup called us today in the warm weather. We’ve had a few more goats than usual with Billy “the stud” at High Hopes. We didn’t realize it was quite so deep.
The doors are narrow, and there is no way to get equipment, other than the “Armstrong pitchfork” in to help cleanup. The cleanup is simple, scrape the stuff out, load it into a two wheel cart,
and haul it away.
It is a rather dreadful job when it lasts more than a couple of hours or so, and this job helped me make friends with it by thinking of it in a new way. Rather than the drudgery of sraping and cleaning it out, like many things at our farm, we like things to have multiple uses.
The good part of barn cleanup is fertilizing the fruit trees and gardens. I used to have to truck the stuff in, now it was a direct trip from the barn to the soil in one trip - mush more efficient than driving and reloading the stuff and then distributing. So, most all of the garden space, fruit trees, and raspberries have been fertilized, and there is some to spare in the compost pile.
