Big Purchase at the J-B!

It’s been two weeks since my last update on our lives. It seems like we have been busy all day every day but I cannot think of one big accomplishment with the house. Well, that is not entirely true. Now that I write this I can think of a couple.

The first of was the completion of the loft floor. This has been a long time coming months at a minimum. You see the house was originally designed like this…

Then one day Kevin said “Why don’t you square it off so you have more space up there?” So then the conversation began on how to exactly do that. Seems simple but one thing is tied to another and you cannot finish the loft floor until 3 or 4 other things get done. We cannot do the loft floor until the stairs are reset, the diagonal set for the railing and then the post at the bottom of the stair is set and anchored. Speaking of the post at the bottom of the stairs, one of the bonuses of extending the loft floor was the fact that we could extend that post all the way up so it is secured at the bottom and the top. Anyone who has installed a post on the bottom of a stairway can appreciate how much difficult it is to secure that post. All of that got done in the last few weeks so now I was ready to tackle the loft floor.  It took about (3) half days to get it done. Why half days? More on that later.

Loft floor all done!

But at least it is done so now we can move on to other projects that we could not do until the loft floor was done. Like putting the T&G on the hall wall and ceiling. We were just getting ready to do that when Kevin said “Let’s pour concrete in the garage next week.” Well, when he makes an offer like that everything else stops. But it is not like we can just pour the next day. We have a couple years of construction material and junk to move out of the way in the pour area let alone have room for the cement truck backing into the other bay so we can pour.

This mess is a little overwhelming!

It took Barb and I 3 more half days to get that all cleaned out and organized. Part of which was digging up the RV waste sewer like so I could put a T in it for a sink drain. A sink drain you ask? Well, now that we no longer have the big rig we are putting a woodworking/hobby shop in the garage on the side behind the camper. It will be something like 18’x14’. We are not quite sure yet. That is a project for much later.

Garage cleaned out and plumbing pipes in!

Being later October/early November we really had to watch the weather. As you know we got snow a couple of weeks ago and it had not warmed up enough to melt it for most of the past two weeks, In fact there were a couple of days that the highs were in the teens and the low was…….

Yup, that says -13F totally ridiculous for October. Since Daisy and Dakota cannot go outside and play in the cold, they opt to play tug of war inside...

But the forecast for the following week looked like this….We are scheduled to pour on Tuesday, I will let you know how it goes!

We had a surprise visitor of sorts last week. We knew he might stop by but when we received this photo we knew he did! Chad, the owner of Pasha Lake Cabins stopped by for the night on his way home from hunting in Wyoming. We were not home but when we received this text with him and his son Cavin…… and Daisy? Chad arrived and made himself right at home!

Due to “The Sickness” (that is what our granddaughter calls it), we had not seen Chad in over a year. In fact he was only able to get up to his own resort once this year as the border was closed. As you can imagine it has been a tough  year for Chad and his family as their sole source of income is the resort providing the income not only for them to live on but to pay the mortgage on their house as well as the resort. Both he and Michelle took jobs in Wisconsin and are getting by but they are sitting on a huge inventory of Pasha Lake clothing so if you are in the mind to help someone out and get some great clothing just in time for Christmas and help someone out at the same time click on this link to get to their website. If you do buy something, tell them Jim sent you!

You know you live in the right place when you run into a buffalo jam on the way to the grocery store. How many people can say that!?!?! We were headed to Hot Springs to do some shopping and went through Wind Cave NP when we ran into this....

Which turned into a new sport. Buffalo Weaving! We weaved our way through the buffalo and were quickly on our way. About 1/4 mile down the road we saw two hikers standing a few hundred yards off the road just standing there. We could not figure out why they were just standing there in the middle of the field and not walking until we saw why.  They were headed back to their vehicle which was parked properly in a parking area for the trail they were on. The problem was was that their vehicle was surrounded by buffalo who were licking the salt off their car! I don't know how long they had to stand there waiting for the beasts to move along but my guess is it was quite a while!

Now, several times during this post I have mentioned working “half” days, that is because it is prime time for archery deer hunting and I have been getting out as much as possible in the afternoons. The last two weeks I have been able to get out 10 of the past 14 days. I am seeing lots of deer, a few bucks but not “The” buck. 

Lots of does and fawns out there

Cute, but not Mr. Big!

This guy is very tempting but I think there is a bigger one out there!

The peak of their mating season hits in the next couple of weeks so hopefully the big one will make an appearance!

Our big purchase of the week?

A 1954 Ford NAA tractor! What am I going to do with a tractor? Well, I don’t know, I just wanted it! Actually, once I get the right implements I will use it to level the driveway, clear snow, haul logs, drag the fields…..the list goes on and on. I have been looking for one for quite a while and was lucky enough to find this one less than 2 hours away in Chadron Nebraska.

Our big news for the week is that we sold and closed on our 30 acres in Wisconsin! I had not been writing about it as I did not want to curse it but we received and accepted an offer a couple of months ago with a closing date of October 29^th at 2:00pm CST. Since we did not attend the closing in person we watched our bank account to see if it went through and all of a sudden there were the funds! We have been trying to sell this property on and off for the past 3 years so we are very excited that we were able to sell it. We now have the funds to finish the house the way we want it! (and pay for our truck).

Speaking of our truck, we stopped by there this past week. They have all the parts and it being worked on as I write this. Depending on how it goes it will take 3-4 day so with luck we will have our truck back next week! We are so thankful to Kevin and Cheryl for borrowing us their truck or Jeep whenever we need it!

Last but not least we wanted to include this picture to taunt Farmer Bob.....

Barb made an apple crisp this week with the last of the apples from the farm. Bob.....in case you were wondering, it was delicious!