Celebrations

I've got a couple things to celebrate tonight. After 3 days of concentrated cleaning, shoveling, sweeping and hauling things out of the granary, Daisy, my vintage Shasta trailer, is finally inside! The doors of the granary have rotted over the years where the hangers are attached, which has dropped them down and they no longer close (or open further) so it was a bit of a squeeze getting her past the doors, but with her backed in there is room to move around on both sides. And it only took me jockeying back and forth a couple times to get her lined up well enough to roll inside without scraping anything. Snow will blow in this winter so I still need to get a tarp over the top of her to keep the melting snow getting in through the leaky roof next spring, and to keep the barn swallow poop from building up on the roof next summer.

This was a pretty major accomplishment for me. The granary had 7 motorcycles, a large garden tiller, a 16' church pew, 8 large rabbit/bird/small animal cages, a bunch of garden tools - rakes and such - 2 enamel-top kitchen tables and chairs, an old Victrola, and several old desks, cabinets, dressers, wash stands and miscellaneous junk stored in it. The swallows poop on everything, and the sparrows build nests but seem to leave more hay and grass on the floor than they get into a nest. There was about a bale's worth on the floor, plus several inches of dirt that had blown in over the past few years.

Several pieces of the old furniture were shoved into the shop, but much of it was put on a bonfire last night. I hated to do it, but I've got a lot more that was already in the shop that's in better condition that I may or may not eventually get around to refinishing. The old dog hung around the bonfire until it burned down to coals.

Basking in the warm glow of the fire.

 

 The other thing I'm celebrating is my brother finally bought a plane ticket and is flying into Minneapolis on Monday.  We will meet in Aberdeen, South Dakota on Tuesday to transfer the land up there, but I plan to go up Monday to mow it.  I talked to several people at the courthouse in Aberdeen earlier this week, and the land now has a street address. I'm hopeful with a SD street address that isn't one of the "known" full-timer mail forwarding addresses that I can get health insurance. I really don't want to become a Texan due to having to do the vehicle inspection each year. I guess I'll find out Nov 15 when open enrollment starts. I don't think the weather will hold out long enough for me to stay up here that long, and the vehicle tags all are up for renewal in November so I'll have to do that before I head south. It would really be the pits if the health insurance doesn't pan out and I have to pay to register them right away again in TX. 

I'll leave you with this feathered visitor I had early in the week. I believe it is a female Yellow-rumped Warbler. I hadn't dumped the bucket of apple peels on the compost pile yet, and it was after the flies/fruit flies/bugs that were in the pail.