Heading home - St. Louis tomorrow

Heading home tomorrow - or should I say to St. Louis, Houghton has become my home now.

I've spent the last week alone on the farm.  It has been a growing time for me.  I've stretched out of my comfort zone - carried heavy things, made hard and complex decisions, used a drill several times, ate alone, reflected on my life, and cried.  I needed to do these things to become a better person!  We all need to grow and only at the end of our comfort zone, do we grow.   

I sat out in the yard in the evening and watched the sun go down.  I thought, prayed, and talked to myself and God.   I had agreed to move here, but when it came time to ACTUALLY  move, I had to work through the reality of it all. What came out of this week alone is that I am OK with moving here even with my family and friends in St. Louis.

 I would like to invite each of you to Cold Comfort, not JUST because I will miss you all, but because it is a BEAUTIFUL place to vacation.  The weather is great - just ask Patti Warner.  I love you all!

HayDay!

This year with the Midwest weather being odd, the UP is about one month behind normal. They've had a very cool summer so far.  With that said, this week has been Haying week.  Today is HayDay at Cold Comfort - when the final bailing is done on our field!  When a field is mowed, you need at least three days of dry weather to complete the haying process.  Once mowed, the field it is left to dry for about a day, then raked giving it another day to dry, then raked again.  If the weather holds out and the sun has been hot enough to completely dry the mowed hay, then and only then, is it bailed. If you bail damp hay, it will mold in the middle and ruin the hay.

Our neighbor, John Dunstan, mows our hay - for his use not ours - but that is another story.  Today he mows it for himself, someday we will either mow it for ourselves or have animals grazing on it.  Last fall John lost his barn to a 5-alarm fire.  It was a match to our barn in size.  He used to bail regular bails and store them in his barn.  Now that he has no barn in which to put his hay, he had to upgrade to round bails that can left in the field until needed.  

I should share with you - Keva loves to see round bails in fields so I thought I'd dedicate this post to hayday! 

Our field, raked the second time which arranges the hay to fit into the bailer

Tractor and octagonal bailer

 

I took this photo looking out my kitchen window.  We have over 20 bailes of hay we can see from the kitchen

 Thanks to our farm, John Dunstan and his mowing, many animals in this area will have wonderfully healthy food to sustain them this winter!  

Oh, John and his family will be having a barn raising very soon for their new barn (much smaller than the old one).  I will try to take photos and share that with all of you.  

 

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

won't you be my neighbor?  Thanks to a neighbor, I am able to move forward with unpacking.  Our neighbor, Jay Dunstan works for a local plumbing/electrical company.  I called them to move our washer and dryer hook up from the kitchen to the basement - where it belongs. He and his nephew, Lance, came to do the job.  While they were working they offered to help me with moving some furniture.  They moved enough big pieces that now I can move forward in unpacking. I thank them! To top it off, the weather was exquisite!

So far, other than unpacking, I've:

laid carpet in my new dressing room and walk in closet

painted the linoleum floor and now put down the area rug - it looks SOOOO much better

refinished the mud room entry table, which will hold mail/stuff that gets dropped when arriving home

bought bricks and boards, stained them and made a double decker boot/shoe storage

Tomorrow I can get the current stuff that is out put away and then start moving more boxes in from the pole barn. 

Oops, I forgot something...

 this photo is being posted specifically to make Keva smile!  Happy Thursday sweetie!

Patti leaves for home

Patti and I slept late, went to the Armondo Cafe for breakfast, and ran errands before we started for the airport.  We did stop by the farmer's market in Hancock (on the Finlandia University campus) and purchased some last minutes travel gifts.  Patti's flight was delayed but she seemed happy to sit and read a Stephen King novel as she waited.  I just found out that she has not had a great flight experience - delayed flight out of Hancock and then two flight changes in Chicago...I hope she makes it to St. Louis today!  While she sat and waited for her flights, I came home and started working.  

I moved boxes to the barn, cleaned up after our week of vacation and started moving everything out of the den in the farm house.  I need to paint the linoleum on the den floor (see below) because it will CLASH with the area rug that will fit in that room.  UGLY!  I need to paint around the border so I can center the rug in that room.  If we decided to redo the house next year, we will tear up that floor anyway, so I don't want to spend too much time and energy, but I can't stand the horrible clashing right now.  

I read that if you sand, prime and paint with porch paint, the paint will stick, so I'm going to the hardware store tomorrow to purchase what I need and get busy...wish me luck.  I'll post photos of the completed project.

Our visit and time in Houghton

July 11, 2014

Tomorrow Patti leaves to return to St. Louis.  We've had a great vacation - sleeping late, talking for hours, laughing, and crying (just like we did as kids) and now it is back to work for us both!  Patti in Belleville and me here at the farm.  I have my work cut out for me settling things here at Cold Comfort.  I think Patti has enjoyed meeting the farm and the area. I am so blessed to have her in my life. 

We've done most the Upper stuff, like having the Upper Breakfast of Champions - a Pasty and Cronut at Roy's, driving to Copper Harbor, visiting the Jampot, and shopping in Hougton.  Roy's Pasty Shop has now moved under the bridge, so while we had breakfast, we enjoyed the views from their restaurant balcony.

Roy's Breakfast Pasty and a filled Cronut - YUMMMMM!!

Houghton's Huge Lift Bridge

View from Houghton into Hancock across the Canal -

it's prettier that this photo shows, it actually looks like Italy

After breakfast, we drove to Copper Harbor, about 1.5 hours north, stopping at the Jampot (The Society of St. John's Poorrock Abbey) for local honey and sweets, Eagle River's waterfall, Eagle Harbor's lighthouse and finally Copper Harbor.  Enjoy the photos below.

Snow thermometer sign showing how much snow falls in the Keweenaw annually.  Last year it was close to the most snowfall they have had in the last 30 years.  They do get more snow than we do on the farm...but not much more.

                                                 

This photo speaks for itself; it was a lovely day with lots of sunshine!

 

Eagle River Waterfall

Waterfall bridge and Susan with sign

This evening I thought I'd drive Patti on Bay Shore Rd, near Cold Comfort, and in the middle of the road were these sweet family of three raccoons, without their mother.  They were crying for her so I got out of the truck and coaxed them off the road for their safety.  We have no idea if mom ever came back - we can only hope she did.