Between Two Rivers

Number One Son and I spent a few hours last Sunday at Camp Stranded. We walked the area and discussed my plans for spring planting, pointed out trees that I cut and need to cut this fall, and spent some time plinking.






The cans didn't stand a chance:


To change things up a bit, I shot at the weeds and small willow saplings that was in the field of my limited range. I was doing okay with the old 10/22 that I bought at a DNR auction years ago. The old Ruger Automatic Pistol needed a few rounds through it and the CZ 82 is my carry gun and I sure could use the practice.

I would not have traded those couple of hours it took for us to shoot a brick of 22 and a box of 9mm MAK for anything else. However, I would trade a day's pay for another afternoon like that.

After a cold snap starting today, next weekend looks to be in the upper 50's. Maybe it's Number Two Son's turn for some range time...

the Mrs and I got hitched.

We've come a long way together in spirit, though at times apart.

Our journey does not have a destination, but a direction.

I'm glad I'm not headed there all alone.

I spent some time the past couple of weekends venting my frustrations on horse weeds, poison ivy and any other weeds that happened to grace the blades of the brushcutter.

The results of a few hours:


Looking north from under the cottonwood trees I discovered some more pines that were struggling for daylight, bringing the total to around 20. One of the taller white pines' lower branches were rubbed off by the deer and I replaced the small cages with a woven wire cages.

If I had run the mower through this, I would have mowed over the pines, some hackberry and small walnut trees. Using a hand brushcutter, I've been able to (for the most part) find the small 1-2 foot trees and save them. A few perished under the blades but it's hard to kill a walnut once it's rooted.

Number One son and I used hand sickles last fall and was able to clear off from under the cottonwoods in 8 hours. I cleared off twice the area in about three hours using a polycut blade on a Stihl FS55. I was really pushing the limits of that machine as I was asking allot from it but it did a good job. I've since added a larger weapon in the arsenal with a steel cutting blade and productivity has increased again.

Once cut, I sprayed this section with a mixture of broadleaf killer and insecticide to help control the ticks. It's below the pond so no worries of runoff to harm the fish. Not that we have to worry about runoff since it hasn't rained in almost three weeks and the forecast is spotty at best.

The lack of rain is taking its toll on the pond and hurt the hay, cutting into the yield. The maple seedlings have been struggling while the pin oak are doing okay as they had a chance to grow their deeper tap root. We've hauled water from our sand point at the homestead for the past two months to keep them going.

I really picked a good time start a tree farm...

We had a few discoveries, plenty of mistakes and a pleasant surprise or two this summer at Camp Stranded.

Similar to the unfortunate player above, the Stranded household is darn near flat on its face. With recent projects completed, I have a few lose ends to take care of at work and I can walk away knowing we made things better. A recent layoff of the Mrs. has thrown our budget for the year into chaos which caused a missed opportunity for a new piece of equipment for Stranded Tree Farm.

I have a Camp Stranded update that I'd like to share as soon as I get images off of the new camera. Being a Luddite at heart (causing a paradox because of my IT career choice) these things should be a bit easier. Or maybe I'm due for an upgrade?

Speaking of upgrades and my career, I rolled the dice a few weeks ago and I'm hoping for a little luck to shine my way. No - I wasn't one of the Powerball winners in Cedar Rapids, but I should be hearing something by the end of the week or mid-week at the latest. I'm optimistically pessimistic, or pessimistically optimistic, whichever the case. But Stranded is at a four-way stop and the direction I can go is up to others right now.

I'm hoping Friday will be a day of good news as I should be getting my brush cutter from the shop.

Oh, and maybe other news.

Saturday will be a day of celebration or disappointment. Either way some horse weeds will die.

It's been a frustrating first quarter for the Stranded clan, not the least of which has been a project that was dumped on my lap because of a 6 month period of neglect. (BTW, it has to be completed by June 30th).

There were some dark days that we are still finding our way through. Nothing major like other folks but just enough to keep us humble, as my dad would say.

Week days and nights for a job I keep wondering about, the one bright spot has been the acreage. It's been tough not to be thinking or planning what needs to be done while at my "real job" or at home, as the only real time I have to work down there is during weekends, if not beckoned because of work.

The hay (which really needs to be rotated out or reseeded) received frost burn last week but luckily not enough damage to make me worried. After intense negotiations with a neighbor (he stopped by and asked), he's going to buy the hay this year. If we treat each other right, we can continue but for some reason he keeps insulting my shed building skills, so this may be a short-lived relationship. Hmmm...

Our reforestation plan got a boost through the generosity of True Blue Sam, and please forgive me Sam, but I shared some of the coffeetree nuts with my brother who lives in Henry county. Hope you don't mind as long as no one tells him I kept the best for myself. We've got them all in the ground, some during the February-March thaw, and others I cold-hardened and then planted in pots. I have a couple up already.

This past weekend, we planted a couple of honeycrisp apple trees and a couple of the delicious variety. And I'm sure they're in the wrong spot as I wire caged them to try to keep the deer out, but I'm not out much except time. I have 30 or so red maple seedlings ready to transplant, a dozen hackberry and about 50 pin oak.

This is my spring harvest:


Two gallons (so far) of red maple seeds. If any of my readers are interested in some let me know as I have more than enough to share. This year's crop has been generous and I won't guess how many tens of thousands of seeds my two trees have produced.

A ten-year rotation of maple trees might make a good cash crop, who knows.

I transplanted a few of the red cedars to a family friend this past weekend and I'm heavily leaning on transplanting others to make a windbreak along the west road. Time being the factor on that project.

I've also got an over-abundance of box elders that need a good home and silver (soft) maples that need to be removed. Anyone interested in either of those, let me know. I'm not interested in keeping any of the soft maples and there's hundreds of two-foot tall trees.

We put some other work on the place to help control erosion and clear brush, but my biggest problem is that there's so much to do, it's a matter prioritizing.

I'll be sharing more news in the coming week (unless all hell breaks loose at work or Herr Oberführer Gronstal actually allows legislation to be voted on in the state senate).

Google must know something about me.

Looks like True Blue Sam tagged me in the latest meme for bloggers. Not one to mess with this version of a chain letter, I'll have to list some of my daily blogs according to the rules:

1. Copy and paste the award on our blog.
2. Link back to the blogger who gave us the award.
3. Pick our five favorite blogs with less than 200 followers, and leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have received the award.
4. Hope that the five blogs chosen will keep spreading the love and pass it on to five more blogs.

Because of my moniker, I'll try to keep this Iowa-centric.

Jim over at Travis McGee Reader has the Northwestern part of the state covered. With a journalistic nose for what's going on in the pig sty called Des Moines, he adds a sharp wit to his posts. A little over a year ago I came up short in an interview and nearly became a neighbor to him in the Spirit Lake area.

Ben at Cold Hard Cashner keeps us informed from the libertarian point of view. I found his blog one day while searching for freedom-loving Iowans and his well-reasoned letters to the editor of eastern Iowa newspapers are a stark contrast to the snark-filled incoherent posts I sometimes spew out.

Speaking of snark, Bawb over at Ben and Bawb's (yes, the Cashner Brothers) sometimes channels the spirit of IowaHawk as he pulls no punches in his posts. Gleaning from multiple sources, his posts under the labels of Military Tactics and Weapons are informative and well worth the read.
(Okay, technically the blog is not Iowa-centric, but Ben and Bawb are Iowa farm boys and that counts as far as I'm concerned.)

MauserMedic at Mausers, Medicine and Motorcycles has given more than one tour of duty in the sandpile of the Middle East. As my dad was a medic in the European theater against the Huns in WWII, I have an appreciation of the service a medic gives to their comrades. There is, of course, the Ugly Gun Sunday posts that you should not miss, but there's more than just those posts.

Robert Fowler at Robert's Gun Shop is another Iowa blog I frequent. I consider him a comrade as he also keeps an eye on the cesspool that is our statehouse, especially concerning gun bills.

I'll be off to work before I get comments posted to any blogs, so I'll apologize right now for not getting them out soon.

True Blue Sam and his wife were busy last week making a care package for me.



Coffeebean Kentucky Coffeetree seeds arrived yesterday along with a few Smokey the Bear pocket calendars so I can keep track of my work. Looks like several dozen seeds and according to the USDA guide

In general, about 60 to 75 percent of the seed sown will produce plantable seedlings.

I'm not going to follow their row planting recommendation of "Sow 12 to 18 seeds per 0.3 linear meter of row and cover with about 2.5-cm of firm soil." (That's basically an inch apart if my metric conversion is right.)

Although I won't just toss these willy-nilly, I think planting about 10 yards apart should be good and then transplant in a year or two if necessary. If 75 percent grow into healthy trees, I should have a nice young forest in 15-20 years.

The plan so far is to have a section for hardwoods, another for nut bearing trees and a small orchard of sorts. White pine on the southern slope between where we plan to build the house and the pond. Hard and red maple to the south of our building site. Swamp white oak for the low spot beneath the pond and a few maybe nearer the pond itself. I've got some young cottonwoods that need a new location, too.

Shade, food, wind breaks, and maybe some income from the nut trees. And thanks to Sam and his wife, I should be able to cut some coffeebean lumber in 40+ years.

I keep saying that I bought 20 acres of work and I believe it to be so. It should be a busy year down at Camp Stranded with the reforestation efforts.

Thanks again, Sam. And pass along my appreciation to your wife.

One of the reasons for building a shed was to store lumber that I purchased from the folk's estate. We started with a platform of treated 4x4's and leveled them out, then screwed in pine 2x4's. And we ended up with a sturdy 6' x 12' area to work with.

The next day:


About 500 board feet of quarter sawed red oak, bur oak and a few boards I can't identify without planing first (sorry Sam, that's sad of me). Most of these boards were cut using a portable band saw that a neighbor of Dad's purchased. A lot of boards were cut from trees felled in Des Moines and Louisa counties with that band saw.

We then returned home to re-stack about 300 board feet of planed walnut and now I can almost walk to the back of my garage. That's because I have about 3-400 feet of some of the best cedar I have ever seen, a couple hundred feet of coffeebean and a few cherry, red elm and hickory boards to round out the inventory. Some of these boards will be stored at the shed, others at home. I'm almost out of lath and will have to start making sawdust again.

I've learned this past year how out of shape I am to begin my second career as a "farmer" but I don't think I've forgotten everything my dad taught me. I also called my broker to invest in pharmaceutical companies that produce topical creams and over-the-counter pain relieving medications. I think they are going to have a good year in 2012.

Dad reforested a few acres with hardwoods such as walnut, hickory, and bur oak along with a few white pines. I heard the new owners tore them out but I don't know for sure. Being less than 10 years old, the hardwoods could be removed fairly easily.

I do have some nuts from down home that we're going to plant down on the acreage. If they take root, then I'll be happy that something could be passed on to the next generation (so long as no one takes a dozer to them.) Bur oak from Dad's, and hickory and a few buckeye that came from a neighbor.

It looks like we'll be placing an order with the state nursery for a few hardwood trees soon. We are in the planning stages of what to get and where to plant them. But I think the wife is okay with the plan so far as it looks like I'll be removing some of the walnut trees and reducing the hay ground, our only cash crop.

If the plan holds out for 250-300 trees to be planted this spring, in forty to fifty years, maybe the sons can have a few stacks of hardwood boards of their own.

When my dad would plane boards or saw them to width, one would ask him what he was working on. His reply was generally, "Making sawdust."

He used that term in two ways. One, he didn't want you to know what he was working on and two, he messed up on a project and felt he wasted his time.

As I was working on my own little project, it looked like all I was doing was making sawdust. In reality, I was sawing 2x4's for lath:



Starting January, 9th, another group of people will be making their own sawdust and I assume most of them really don't want the public to know about their projects or, more likely, they will be wasting time.

The legislature will be starting their next session in Des Moines and after hearing from our representative's willingness to muck with the tax code and drone on about federal block grants, I'm betting that we all will be getting the shaft once again.

I usually get the blank stare after asking what laws my representative plan on repealing.

"The focus is on jobs, jobs, and jobs," according to a couple of representatives that appeared on "Iowa Press" this week.

I know that Iowa Gun Owners plan on putting the heat to several legislators that didn't step up to pass constitutional carry during last session. And the wind is in the air for competitive races come fall because of this issue. Time will tell if any action comes out of it.

With this being an election year, I fully expect the pandering to emanate from that black hole with the golden dome. Our statehouse.

I still hope they don't meet my expectations.

During the run up to the 1996 presidential caucuses, I had so many pollsters call that I gave up and just started a list and each time one called, I supported the next candidate on the list. When I got to the bottom of the list, I started all over again.

A few years ago I started messing with them. Asking me questions about a gubernatorial race one year:

Pollster: What's the most important issue? Is it the economy? Unemployment? Abortion? Blah, blah?

Me: None of those.

Pollster: What is your most important issue?

Me: Does a condidate running for office know and understand our state motto.

Pollster: That's intersting.

Me: Do you know what Iowa's state motto is?

Pollster: No.

Me: "Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Maintain"

Pollster: That's a very good question to ask.

I've asked candidates that question, and surprise, most don't even know what our motto is.

This caucus season, we've been averaging 3 polls a night and last night was one of those lengthy multiple question polls that appeared to have been commissioned by Newt Romney but I'm not positive.

Many of the questions were just stupid but one stood out: "Which one of the candidates will get more done as president?" "Get more done?" My reply: They'll all get things done and most of what any of them get done will be to make things worse. Besides, they can't get anything done without Congress and don't get me started about "Executive Orders."

We settled that it was an invalid question and I refused to answer it.

One question was asked if I supported the position that a president had the authority to reject a Supreme Court ruling?

Me: The people have the right to reject court rulings and laws through jury nullification.

Pollster: But the question was regarding the president.

Me: Okay, if it was good enough for Andrew Jackson, when he told the court to enforce its own ruling, then I guess I can see the point.

Pollster: Do you support the president having the authority?

Me: (Thinking in my mind about separation of powers and the House of Representatives has the power of impeachment of judges) The constitutionality of a law should not rest solely on 9 black robed elitists.

Pollster: But about the president?

Me: Hmmm, okay. Yes I can agree on this point.

I just can't give them straight answers.

When asked if I described myself on a scale of liberal vs conservative, I replied that I was libertarian (small "l"). But he didn't have a space to put that in. Was I a Tea Partier? A Born-Again Christian?

What was my most important issue? The Bill of Rights and the Constitutional principle of Original Intent. He didn't have a space for that one.

He made the mistake of asking what I thought about Gingrich and a few moments later he begged me to slow down because his typing skills wasn't good enough to keep up.

After about 15 minutes we were done and I asked who commissioned the poll (as I always do) and he replied that he didn't know who commissioned it but from the way the questions were phrased...

I told him I had a good idea who as I wasn't a political neophyte, to which he laughed and I told him that the next poll he works on should have better questions. He agreed that this was not one of the better set that he's worked with. He said good night and I wished him a Merry Christmas.

On my next pollster call, I can now support the next one on my candidate list.

But Cain isn't on the running anymore.

Reflecting on my previous post on the child labor regulations from the Department of Labor and their impact on the "traditional" family farms, I remember my experiences of hard work, long hours and the trials and tribulations growing up.

My first chore was at age 5 when I was tasked to gather eggs. I didn't wear a mask digging around in the straw and battling possessive hens. And at age 8, my job was to feed and water the feeder calves. I bet I didn't weigh 60 lbs when I lugged the corn and milo mix while fighting the calves to get to the feed bunk.

At 14 my dad put me in charge of 20 acres. What and when to plant and we cultivated back then, too. I paid enough attention that I knew about crop rotation and Dad agreed with my decisions. I didn't run the combine in the fall, but everything else was up to me, including the expenses. And a profit was made that year that was shared with Dad because the real world worked that way.

I later came to realize that I benefited greatly from my work experiences as a young-un. These new rules, while exempting "family farms" (for now) would have prevented that type of work, if those rules had been in place then.

Lauren Ritchie shared her experiences growing up as she explains in her commentary. One thing I didn't think of:

Theoretically, kids could continue to do whatever they want on farms owned by their parents. Some 1.3 million young people under 20 live on farms in the United States.

But nearly all "family farms" are incorporated today, just as most small businesses are, which would put them back under these proposed rules.

Exactly. These rules will hit almost every farm in the US, maybe not at first, but selective enforcement would compel everyone else to fall in line.

She continues:

A press release stated: "The Department is committed to helping youth enjoy positive and challenging work experiences — both in agricultural and nonagricultural employment — that are so important to their development and transition to adulthood."

One safety advocate called the proposal "timid." My word would be "clueless."

This is not a case of banning thoughtless 13-year-olds from racing Jet Skis on public waterways packed with partygoers on the Fourth of July. That's called common sense. Rather, these rules would apply to what legal activities parents choose to allow their children to participate in while on private property. There is no risk to the general public.

For some reason the Labor Department and a whole lot of nanny-state interventionists, would rather a kid waste their time playing video games than learning about responsibility, resourcefulness, and a damn fine work ethic.



Regarding the regulations, Rep. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma City:

"Some of these things are downright silly."

Under the federal definition, "employment" doesn't necessarily include cash compensation, Lankford said.

"It varies greatly. For instance, if a grandfather owned a farm and his grandchildren came to work there, they wouldn't be exempted under the rule. Their own kids on their own family farm would be exempted, but their grandkids would not," he said.

Leaving wide open the interpretation of the regulations up to some bureaucrat has worked out so well for every other federal and state agency, hasn't it?

Two things that angered me on this:

One - the feds thinking they have the authority to do this under the Interstate Commerce clause.

Two - I'm angry at myself for not knowing about this ahead of time. According to the last link, only 4000 comments were taken. There should have been 100 times that many but no one knew about this. Or at the very least, they thought this will only apply to the Big Ag operations and not them.

It might but I'm not going to bet on it.

Remember, we are all Kulaks now.

The government, the planners, the leaders who directed the robbery, even the government employees themselves "knew better than the peasants how they should live, and what they should sow and when they should plough."

Page 168, "Death by Gun Control", Zelman and Stevens

It's open season at Camp Stranded to prevent more of this:



I spit a curse on them all...

An obligatory holiday wishes to you all. I hope everyone travels safely if they are on the road or in the air and have a safe return from whence you came.

Thanksgiving is traditionally spend with family and friends.

I will be enjoying the traditional family gathering full of insults, putdowns and humiliations.

Good times.

And thank you to all of my readers for stopping by once in a while.

My tractor wouldn't start today because this guy declared a jihad on electricity a while back. It was out of juice.

Since mid October I've been engaged in an upgrade process for our main records system. From the user's perspective, it's a few hours of interruption, but from my end, it's days of preparation, planning and testing, culminating in a marathon (25+ hours) upgrade process that rarely goes well. I've not had one upgrade with this system that went smooth.

All that prep work and the vendor doesn't inform us of several changed requirements for our environment, nor a systematic change in their folder structure. This results in our scrambling to figure out the problem and then correct it.

"It's a fun experience," he said with dripping sarcasm.

I've had little time for politics, news, Camp Stranded. It's a bit frustrating.

But...



Just as this small flower sprouted from the clay on the pond, it reminds me that life sometimes gives another chance. The next couple of weeks are going to be "interesting" from the Stranded perspective.

But not less busy.

If readers think I was wallowing in self pity during my previous post, please understand... that's my schtick.

I'm known as the Rodney Dangerfield of IT.

When things break or when something's wrong and they need it figured out, I get the call. I have a knack for identifying what's not running right (debugging) and although I may not have the tools, resources or permissions within a vendor's code, I have been able to steer the vendors in the right direction.

And with the work ethic instilled in me by my father, I'm also known to keep at a problem until a solution is found and keep at a project until it is finished. I've put in more than one 24 hour stretch over the past two years. In fact, way more than the Mrs. cares.

These two traits, while highly valued, aren't always rewarded by my current employer. With my belief in the Laws of Reciprocity, that can be frustrating to say the least.

But then I get a short query asking where I've been and if I and the clan are okay. It took me awhile to realize that that person is going through a battle of their own. My problems seem petty compared to someone who recently went under the knife and recovered, and currently going through repeated visits to hospital to continue the battle. And I'm certain will win these upcoming rounds as well.

Here's to Bea and her speedy recovery. A tough spirit can bend but never break.

On each work time to Camp Stranded, we make the time to cut brush, weeds or general cleanup. This is outside of my goals for what we want to accomplish there, although part of my overall plan. Because of the lack of a good brush mower (still in the works) we've had to rely on good old fashioned sweat, blood and toil. (After cutting a knuckle, the bleeding looked like I lost a finger last weekend.)

Using a corn knife I starting cutting back the mulberry trees, horse weeds and ragweed from around a 5 foot pine and discovered a few foot tall maples. A little later and after plenty of hacking, I found another foot tall pine and a couple of 3 foot walnut trees. Another pine was found hiding close to a 6 foot tall maple and after clearing several hundred square feet of weeds and tall grass, we had a nice collection of 10 pines, ranging from about a foot to about 6 feet tall. None of these I expected to have.

Sure, it's not like winning the lottery as it maybe is closer to finding change in the couch cushions, but this is a positive for the place. I thought we only had one pine and each discovery motivated me to keep hacking away to find another one. I'm not 100% sure of the species but they ain't ditch cedars.*

If I had pulled a brush mower over this spot, as I intended to do, I would have mowed them over and lost them and I would have tangled up the wire cages in the blades. In order to preserve some of these smaller trees, I'm going to have to swing a sickle. The wire cages will be used for the next plantings of sugar maples that I started from seed.

I won't mind the work if we find hidden treasures like these.

* I call them ditch cedars because these little cedar trees are growing throughout rural southeast Iowa's ditches. I've got quite a few growing among my other trees and I'd like to keep them for songbird habitat, although snakes are known to climb up to get at the nests. My brother encouraged me to get rid of them, but I'm not in a hurry.

After another day among several of banging my head in frustration, imagine coming home to a thank you card from Sam's Mom, Bea. She had been recuperating after major surgery and the Stranded household sent their get well wishes and sent a set of DVDs after Sam mentioned her preference for old westerns.

It brightened up my week to receive a note of appreciation and I wanted to publicly acknowledge her kindness back to me.

And yes, my wife picked out the card because I'm not good at those sort of things and she does enjoy Guideposts.

It warms my curmudgeon heart.

Thank you and we're still pulling for your speedy recovery.

In Mathew 18:21-23, Peter asks Jesus how many times must he forgive someone who sins against him, the reply being, "Seventy times seven," depending on your version of the Bible.

Today, I received an email asking that we forgive those who trespassed against us 10 years ago. Being the contrarian that I am, I had to question this thought. Why must we forgive?

I'm not questioning the teachings of Christ but the application for this instance. At no time did He suggest that the restitution laws proscribed in the Old Testament were abandoned, nor is there any indication that earthly judgement was ignored.

As the email sender happened to be a spiritual leader of sorts, my first thought was that of a shepherd tending his flock. One night when he wasn't on a diligent watch, wolves crept in and stole several of the sheep. In retrospect, the shepherd forgave the wolves for they were hungry and needed to feed their young.

The following week, a few more sheep were taken by the wolves and the shepherd forgave them that night as well. A few nights later, more sheep were taken and the shepherd again forgave the wolves.

This went on for weeks and the numbers of the wolves grew. They were feeding very well on the shepherd's flock and their litters of wolf cubs were quite large. Other wolves in neighboring hills came down and joined the first pack. By now, more and more sheep were eaten until all were gone.

The shepherd, now without sheep, could not rightly be called a shepherd now that his flock was gone but he could rest because he had given the wolves all the forgiveness that he could. He had no hard feelings because they had a right to eat, didn't they?

This passage on forgiveness and "turn the other cheek" are used by peacenik apologists and I don't think they understand their meanings. If some dirtbag broke in your house, raped your spouse, and then shot your kids, you're supposed to just let it happen, turn the other cheek by offering up the neighbors and then forgive the guy?

Really?

Under Old Testament Jewish law, if a man did not protect his family, it was considered a sin. If a king did not prepare his country to repel invaders, judgment was upon him.

Our political leaders are delegated with the power to form our armed forces, who are sheep dogs among us. And God bless every one of them. The shepherds would be the politicians and when all they are interested in is fleecing the flock, there are plenty of wolves waiting to take advantage of that.

If I remember correctly, Jesus' indignation was towards the Pharisees, or the shepherds of the time, and not towards the sheep. I think our leadership will be judged and found wanting as they ignored the signs, we were not prepared, they've placed our armed forces in an impossible position, and in the end we, as a people, have paid with our freedoms.

All because our shepherds lacked the diligence to tend the flock.

As I so often do on Labor Day, I celebrate by working. This year was spent on Camp Stranded as we finished the roof on the shed.

I understand this begs the question of, "What the hell have you been wasting your time on?" And, "You should have been finished with that by now, you lazy bum."

Both valid comments and with spending the last several weeks catching up on work, fighting with getting the right materials from a "local" big box store (since the closure of our home-town lumber yard) and saving my wife's dog from the vet, I've been interrupted a few times.

Oh, and then the adventure that started out with replacing a wax ring on the toilet that turned into replumbing my upstairs bathroom. Next is a new floor...

But now I have a roof over the newly acquired Farmall H:


Since my mower deal fell through as I was looking for a tractor (kind of a cart-before-the-horse kind of thing, which to get first), I sat on upon my new metal roof and looked upon an impressive field of horse weeds, burdock and foxtails and questioned my purchase of 20 acres of work.

But I also contemplated upon a family with each member contributing effort during our first construction of an amateur shelter. Yeah, it took longer than I wanted, but the next one will be better and built with experienced team effort. And I watched my wife take her first tour of the treeline without me but with her faithful dog at her side. The same dog we nearly put down because the vet gave up on him a few weeks ago.

As we were screwing the roof down, the turkey buzzards glided just 80-100 feet overhead and later hummingbirds came to visit as we took a break. The hummingbirds were a welcomed surprise and we will definitely encourage their return. Blue herons stopped at the pond for a brief rest before flying southeast of us as they spread their wings just above the mature trees in the corner. All this reminds me of the variety of nature in Iowa as we paused to watch the menagerie.

As the last screw on the last metal sheet was turned only half-way, my battery died on the drill. Perhaps a metaphor of the life of a short balding fellow from Iowa (he just never quite gets the job done). But a ratchet wrench works in a pitch, as I was taught to be prepared, bring a backup and always cover your ass.

And there were others at work yesterday as David Codrea reported of another ATF gunrunning fiasco, this time in Indiana. It makes me wonder why we even have the NICS check at all. If it wasn't for David and Mike Vanderboegh I wonder if we would have heard about the gunwalking into Mexico by the ATF.

To little Jimmy Hoffa Junior and to Joe Biden who opened their mouths yesterday, there are more of us than there are of you... This country was built by hard-working Americans, free and unionized, and not by loud-mouthed freeloaders who grabbed power for their own benefit. I'd bet that neither of these two bums ever worked a day in their lives. Calluses are for regular folk.

So Jimmy and Joe, shut the $%@#$% up. This SOB has to get back to work.