Leaves of Three, Leave Them Be!

It appears that J did not only collect good memories last week at Pioneer Camp, she also got a pretty bad case of poison ivy (another summer time special). She has been waking at 7 AM (quite early for her) every morning complaining of her hands hurting. Her little fingers have been swollen, red and bumpy. After a cocktail of Advil, Claritin, and an ice pack, things seemed to calm down again until the next morning. I finally took her to the Allergist this afternoon, who feels that it is an atypical case of poison ivy (rhus) dermatitis. Now we get to add Benadryl and a topical steroid ointment to the medical cocktail. Hopefully this will settle things down so the poor girl can get a full night sleep again.



On the home front, we are slowly getting the trash pile cleaned up that the barn building crew left behind. J and L earned $1.84 (a penny per nail) for picking up nails around the barn. There are several other projects in the works and I will post pictures later. We are slowly, but surely whipping this place into shape.

Barn Raising - Day 4

Today is the one year anniversary of living in the house on Poplar Ridge. How fitting that the barn was completed around lunch time yesterday. Now it appears that we have a compound up here on the hill!

Unfortunately, the crew left the metal siding lying in the mud, so it's really dirty, we'll have to hose it off eventually.

The new tractor is due tomorrow to live in the barn.

Barn Raising - Day 3

It was a busy day today with Pioneer Day Camp and Birthday Parties. I had just enough light to shoot a couple of pictures tonight of what was accomplished on the barn today.

Does it look HUGE, or is it just me?

Barn Raising - Day 2

I'm pretty sure the 175 Mennonites, buoyed by 3 gallons of cornstarch pudding would be finished with the barn by now. Our crew of 6 diminished to 2 for the afternoon, then 3 when one returned from driving one the 2 hours home to Ohio due to a death in the family, and then drove the 2 hours back.


As it was, they managed to raise all of the roof trusses (by hand) by lunch time,



and had the metal roof on by evening. (Even with a break due to thunder and lightening storms, and calling it a day early due to another one.)

Barn Raising

This is scanned from my Mennonite Community Cookbook, by Mary Emma Showalter, and first published in 1950. I thought I should be ready for our barn construction crew today, but there are only 6 of them instead of 175, and I just don't have 6 pounds of stewed prunes on hand or the time to bake 115 lemon pies!

We are finally seeing progress on our barn! The area was excavated and prepped back in April. Now we are actually working with a different company than we started out with. After dragging their feet since January, Company 1 told us in May that they couldn't start building until August. Company 2 got us quotes and drawings within hours (not weeks or months) of JP contacting them and said they would start building in June. So here they are.

And this is what they've been doing:

So Long Old Red

Our Super-Duper Handy Man came this morning, strapped Old Red on his trailer, and took it away. The thing died over the weekend...won't start. So it appears that JP and my Dad are getting their wishes of having a BIGGER tractor on Poplar Ridge granted. Perhaps it will even be here in time to initiate the new barn (tentative start date 6/23/10).