Dune Buggy Baby!

Seeking a little adventure on our land in Henry county we researched off-road vehicles, (looking for something safer than four-wheelers), and we chose a Talon dune buggy with four point harness straps and roll bars. We put the machine on lay-away last autumn hoping to get it out for the kids for Christmas 2007. It took us a bit longer to pay it off than anticipated, (like a year!), and we finally got it out this past Friday on Isaac's 14th birthday. It was a big surprise for him. (p.s. Thank God for roll bars! Isaac rolled the dune buggy on the first day. Suffice it to say that I wasn't too happy about it.)

Robbie and Anna - woo hoo!This is fun...Shaughn and his new wife, Renee...Lily Anna and her best friend Michaela - yes, they actually drove this bad buggy... check out the video below.Robbie and Isaac...
This is Isaac's injury after he rolled the dune buggy with his friend Jordan in the passenger's seat. With the dune buggy sitting on it's roll bars and the boys hanging upside down from the shoulder straps Isaac said the conversation went something like this, "Hey man, you o.k.? Yep. What about you? O.k? Yep. O.k."

Friends at the farm...
Silly girls...
Sophie driving... slowly!
Uncle Bobby and the kids...
Now this is my dainty little girl - ever so feminine - not!


Lily Anna and Michaela had to stay in the clearing driving a figure eight, but they had fun...

Brother Bob

Are we farmers now?

We bought us a tractor. Does that make us farmers?

It's a beautifully restored 1958 International Harvester Farmall model 330 Utility Tractor, which Sophia appropriately named "Big Red". It came with a grader blade, middle buster plow and a bush hog.

Oh my gosh, we own a bush hog!

Unloading Big RedIsn't he beautiful? (Well, both of them.)What could be more fun?Antique ad: International Harvester. (Great heading: "He Drives a Weapon!")
Just an old photo I found online.Farmer Rob

A Million Shades of Green!

It's the middle of May and everything has finally turned a million glorious shades of green. Today was warm and sunny with a light breeze. Anna and I, along with our friends Becky and her daughter Michaela, took a mini field trip to visit our land. My brother Richard recently gave us a peddle boat for the pond and we took it out for a test ride. It's really fun! The pond seems so much bigger when you are out in the middle of it. I hope you enjoy the photos as much as we enjoyed this beautiful day.

Shoving off.Michaela and Anna - fun in the peddle boat...

Lily AnnaA rare photo of me. (Robin)A view from the peddle boat.A surreal image from the boat - a million shades of green.Spring flowers."Best Friends Butt Bump" (Notice all four feet are off the ground!)
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Love,
Robin

Spittin' Handshake Video

Have you ever seen two beautiful little girls spittin' like cowboys? You've got to admit the butt slap and apparently accidental simultaneous spit is kinda funny and really gross!

Is it really Spring?

We had our first big day at the land after a long, cold winter. We had expected it to be sunny and nearly 60 degrees. We got cold, gray, over-cast and windy. Yikes! We had fun anyway. We walked off the building site for a shed, barn-studio and a house (again). We changed things and we remarked them with orange tape. We used the four-wheeler to haul large dead trees from the winter forest and built two huge bonfires, which burned until 3 am under the watchful eye of Robert, our three oldest children and six of their friends - who played guitar and sang silly songs around the fire and then played "Capture the Flag" with glow sticks in the very dark woods. A very blessed time! Thank you Jesus.

Marshmallow or snowball? A very cold Spring day.
A new camp site and a warm barrel fire.
Isaac stuck in the mud - never failing to amuse us all.
Uncle Bobby pulling Isaac out of the mud - no kidding - he was really stuck!
Sophia digging a hole. What could be more fun?

Searching for Salvageable Barn Wood

Isn't she beautiful? "Emmett's Barn"
If you've been following our Art Barn blog, you will notice that we've changed our "Building the Art Barn" plans a bit. At this point we are no longer planning on using the barn-like house kit out of New Hampshire, rather, we will build a small barn (20' x 30') on our own. With some help from experienced friends, we're confident we can learn how to do this. The barn will not be attached to the main house, as we had originally designed, and later when we build the main house, the barn will become Robbie's wood shop. We are designing the barn with one large open/main room, one small bedroom (later an office), one bath and finally a loft on either end - temporarily bedroom lofts for our three youngest children. Later these will be storage lofts.

After looking for several old barns from which we can salvage reusable beams, siding, flooring and perhaps even metal roofing - we decided that trying to take down an old barn is too dangerous for us. We've been looking at some old barns that were recently blown down in a storm that have good barn wood already down. We'll have to purchase plenty of building materials, but we want to collect as much authentic old barn wood as we can.

(Note - after deciding we would not be taking down the barn mentioned below - because it simply seemed too dangerous for us to try - the owners offered to pull it over so that we could salvage the wood from the ground. A much better idea!)

We needed to find a relatively small barn. One that is not too tall and is reasonably accessible. We may still find that this job is too big for us, but in the mean time we think we may have found the right barn - just seven miles from our land in Henry County.

The kind owners of this old barn have said we can have whatever is salvageable for free and what remains will be burned on the spot. That means we will not have an over-whelming clean up job and will not have to haul off unusable materials. Although a lot of the wood will end up in the burn pile, we believe that much of it, including the majority of the frame, beams and a great deal of interior wood and a small amount exterior siding, will be usable.






We're calling the old barn "Emmett's Barn" due to some crazy old canceled checks that Isaac discovered deep inside an old trough, on the upper level of the barn. At this point we don't know how old this barn is or who built it, but we are going to do a little home-school, (history class), investigating to see what we can find out about the old checks and the old barn. Maybe the current land owners will have some information for us.

Checks (found in the barn) written in 1952 - a check written for $1.00
A check to Clover Farms Store - sounds charming, and Stewart Motors for $3.00 - a car payment in 1953?