As both of you know you read my post Barn Love, I have a great love of barns, especially round barns like this one, The Round Barn Potting Company in Andover, MN. Round barns were designed for making life easier for the farmers and ranchers who used them, facilitating feeding chores from the center of the structure. This one has obviously been repurposed into a gift shop. Which facilitates shopping in a circle while the owners watch you from the center. Or something like that.

I also love vintage "canned-ham" style travel trailers. This little cutie was parked at an RV place in Rogers, MN, across from the Cabela's this weekend. The salesman said it had been parked at another RV place since 1960 - when it was brand new. It was their very first purchase and it stayed on the lot, never driven, never used, it has never even been titled (how utterly wastefully sad I say!). These campers speak to me of a time when "camping" wasn't equated with 35' quad-slide motorcoaches complete with fireplaces and satellite dishes, units that cost in the upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars, parked in an RV 'Park' complete with bingo halls, swimming pools, motorized golf carts and full-sized wrap-around screen decks. RV Parks equipped with everything to suit your needs except trees and solitude. Camping was a much simpler event back when the Shasta entered the scene, with hardly enough room inside to cook and eat a meal. Which meant, when you were camping, you were mainly living outside. And isn't that supposed to be where you spend your time when you're in the woods? Pappa Bear loves a good Airstream camper. I admit, they're shiny, they're flashy, they're probably roomier than this Shasta, and they hold their value well. But there's just something utterly adorable about a little canned-ham. It's like having your own playhouse when you were a kid. They are so small, there isn't room to take along your extra baggage and gear. When you escape with a Shasta in tow behind you, life gets pretty simple. And isn't that what many of us long for, experiences that simplify our lives, reduce our decisions, and help us leave our baggage behind? Happy Trails -

Southerly 50’ of lots 114 & 116 Block 23 Duluth Proper Third Division St. Louis County

For twelve years I have been the owner and caretaker of a very small piece of Duluth history, a three-story brick house that sits tucked away just off of 7th Avenue West. The house was built between 1885 and 1887 by George W. and Louisa J. Goldsmith, after which the value of the property increased from $675 to $4000. They didn’t own it very long, less than two years, as the next item logged in the abstract was the sale to Henry G. Noble in March of 1887. One can only wonder what caused their hasty departure. Their original stained glass window complete with two star of David motifs still resides above the dining room window, casting rainbows on the dining room walls whenever the sun shines through it. The view from the front of our house has changed many times over the last century. Visitors to our house often comment on the steepness of the short piece of avenue that runs from Second Street down to our house. We laugh and explain that at one point in history 7th Avenue West was actually a part of the Incline Railray, which shuttled passengers between Superior Street and Skyline Parkway between 1891 and 1939. The abstract for my house shows the owners of the property, Josiah B. & Naomi E. Scovell, deeded access to the Duluth Street Railway Co. for $1.00 on 6/12/1889. You can see our house, before its white-wash paint job, outlined in red in the picture below.

I have to wonder if the residents of the house were watching on May 28, 1901, when a fire started in the engine room of the powerhouse and was swept to the pavilion at the top of the railway, completely destroying the pavilion and sending an (empty) 27 ton burning car careening a half mile down the hill, crashing into the Superior Street station. Amazingly, nobody was injured, but a great centerpiece of Duluth civic pride and entertainment, the pavilion, was gone, never to be rebuilt. In 1939, with ridership dropping and maintenance costs increasing, the Duluth Transit Company discovered the main cable would have to be replaced to the tune of $4,000, an exhorbitant cost and one they could not justify. This, in the end, would mark the final demise of the railway. With scrap metal prices being high the railway was scrapped and the pieces sold to West End Scrap Company. Another piece of Duluth history vanished into memories and history books.

Along with a changing view, our house has changed owners many times over the last century, as most 125-year old houses would have, and sadly I know very little about most of its history. A neighbor once told me it had been a boys’ home at one point in time. I suppose that could explain the shadow of the numbers still showing on the bedroom doors on the second level. I am not even sure at what point in time it was turned into a duplex. The back third of the second floor plus the top level and itty-bitty servant’s staircase which accesses the upper floors from the first floor kitchen was turned into a separate apartment before I ever purchased the building.

I do know that when I walked into the meeting room to close on the purchase of my new house back on Dec. 31, 1998, I was startled to see a familiar face – Lisa (Lukken) Bruer, a gal I had gone to high school with! We swapped stories, she told me how they had begun to refurbish the house little by little, including refinishing some of the hardwood floors in the bedrooms and painting the kids room blue with Care Bears wallpaper in the closet. That wallpaper remains in that closet to this day – when we moved in my then 8-year-old wanted to keep it, and it has remained there ever since. I always get a chuckle out of showing that room to a group of prospective tenants when they are college-age males! Along with the changing views and changing owners over the years, the rooms inside the house have also gone through many transitions. When Pappa Bear and I remodeled the upper unit bathroom, I was using a "safe" stripper to remove layers of paint off the beadboard trim. This non-caustic stripper could only remove about 1-2 layers of paint per coat. I counted over 17 different colors of paint I removed from some of this trim! We removed wallpaper from hallways that was sometimes three layers thick. The walls and ceilings were all plaster-lathe, many of which had cracked and had to be replaced with drywall. There isn’t a room in this house we haven’t touched in one way or another in the twelve years I’ve owned it, ten of those years with Pappa Bear by my side playing a major part in every update and repair. From refinishing floors to brand new floors to rebuilding walls and ceilings, reroofing to redecking to un-wallpapering to painting to trim-work, we have touched every room in one way or another. The entire upper unit was completely remodeled from 2005-2006 as we shuttled back and forth from Mpls to Duluth every weekend for an entire year. We never did live in the unit once it was refurbished. But we did get to enjoy many a 4th of July celebration, watching the fireworks over the harbor from our perch on the the 3rd floor deck of this hillside house. Our blood, sweat and tears (not to mention a pile of money) has gone into this home. My first home. Our first home together. The only one of many homes C-baby has lived that has ever felt like a “real" home to her. It is not without some emotion and sorrow that I face turning her over to a new owner this month. (The house, not C-baby). Will the new owner love it as much as I have? Will she continue to remodel it, leaving it in better shape than she found it, as we have tried to do? Will she tend my carefully planted perennial beds? Will she snip some lilac blooms in June and place them on her windowsills? Will she admire the forget-me-nots that take over the backyard in the spring? Will she leave the Bluejay nest on the back porch and witness the miracle of babies taking flight? Will she feed the chickadees and laugh at the antics of the bushy-tailed grey squirrels that call her backyard their home? Will she stand by the kitchen sink with the back porch door open, breezes playing joyfully through her hair, watching sunlight filter through the lush green canopy of vines draping elegantly over the neighbor’s wall, and hold her breath as the light hits the day lilies like fire? Will she put down her dish cloth and towel and walk out onto the new boards on the old deck, being held up with a piece of our history, and pause in her day just to admire the beauty contained in her hidden, tiny back yard, offering up a prayer of gratitude to the universe for this good, solid house that is now her very own? I pray that she does, and when she does, she feels my spirit there beside her, and the spirit of all those who have enjoyed this backyard before her, breathing in the beauty and the stillness. Blessings - Victoria

On the farm, even the farmgirls get to learn how to do things like fix the doors on the barn. Here Betty works at putting the wheel back in its track.

I lived at the end of a long dirt road for 18 years. Not on a farm, mind you, but in the woods, on a lake. As of, Sunday August 1, 2010, I now live at the end of a very short dirt road, off of a very busy highway west of Minneapolis. It is a far cry from the quiet of the country where I first experienced life in the hush of birch and pine forests and the gurgle of rushing creeks and crystal clear waters of Gitchee Gumi. But, it is in the midst of beautiful rolling farmland, and quite a few lakes. And it is a farm. Kind of. An itty-bitty, 2-acre parcel with an 80-year old farmhouse and one acre of fenced horse pasture. Well not exactly pasture, more like manure and dirt. The grass will come later. Once the horses have been gone awhile. But, it is a farm, our first farm. Never mind it is not really ours. We’re renting again, like we have been doing ever since leaving the duplex in Duluth in 2005 and moving to the metro area (anyone want to buy a 120+ year-old piece of Duluth history?). Never mind this itty-bitty parcel doesn’t have a barn, like the Barns I Love. It does have a horse shelter though, does that count? What it does have is possibility. It is two tiny acres chock full of possibilities. This is where we plan on raising our very first chickens, moving our little herd of alpacas, and planting vegetable and flower gardens. Many of the things my heart has been longing for these last five years when we had no space or sun to garden aside from a few containers on the balcony. And this is where, just off the shoulder of busy Hwy 7, we will capitalize on the crowds of people zooming back and forth every day to market a few of our farm-raised goods. Alpaca yarn, rovings, raw fiber. Maybe some veggies, flowers, and fresh eggs. Our first real farm enterprise. Tiny as it may be, it will be the start of our next big dream, the next phase of our lives. When we opened up the side-garage of our new place to put some items away this weekend, Kelly noticed a nest of robins in the rafters. Two little sets of eyes watched us nervously as we quietly put items in the back of the space. No matter that we tried hard not to disturb them, both little birds took fright, I mean flight, and flew out of the garage this morning, landing on the driveway and the doorstep with mamma robin not far away, clucking reassurances to her two little fledglings. C-baby is now mostly grown and gone, just like the baby robins. The nest is empty. Which gives space to Kelly and I to stretch our own wings now and take flight in new directions. And that empty nest? For now at least, I think it’s time to fill it with chickens. Blessings – Victoria

Grace is now over one month old. She just passed 30 pounds today. She has a good buddy - a fawn colored male who was born on the 4th of July. Betty is calling Deganawida, who was a native American known as The Great Peacemaker. He along with Hiawatha are credited with founding the Iroquois Confederacy, a union of native american tribes in New York. Betty thought that was a fitting name for being born on the 4th of July. This little guy has taken a shine to Grace and they can often be seen wrestling and chasing each other around the pasture. (Not to mention, he seems a bit precocious, already climbing on her back and orgling!). It is so much fun to watch this little herd of fuzzy babies running full-speed across the grass. After all that chasing, Joy takes a break in the sunshine. Joy is very sweet and curious - she came to check out my flowers before anyone else dared approach. Happy Friday everyone!

For those of you who don't know this already, Pappa Bear and I own a very old house in Duluth, MN. Since it's origin in 1890, it's 3 levels and 6 bedrooms have been divided up into a charming duplex and used as a rental property. I purchased the building in 1998 as a young single mother on one income, trying to support my little family of two. I could not have afforded the mortgage otherwise, even though the payment at the time of purchase was only $475. Like every 100+ year old building, there are always lots of projects and repairs that need doing. Since PB and I moved to the Minneapolis area five years ago, we have had precious little time or money to sink into repairs and remodeling jobs. Apparently, according to the realtors trying to sell the place for us, this now equates into a lot of "deferred maintenance," which, for some odd reason, cause buyers/prospects to submit low-ball offers on the place. So, on a whim last week, with a (low-ball) sales offer pending on the place, PB and I decided to road trip up there and take care of some of most aggregious repairs - such as, the crumbling cement stairs on the front walkway, and the rotting porch deck boards (both porches, front and back). We figured either the home inspector or the appraiser would ding us on these and give our prospective buyer even more leeway to lowball us, so why not just nip those projects in the bud? So, without further ramblings, here is the whole process we followed to fix that front walkway. First step: Remove old pavers that we placed temporarily until steps could be fixed. Ogle hubby’s bum. Beneath the pavers, remove old chunks of sidewalk (see above, under Pappa Bear’s foot). Under that layer, remove old chunks of asphalt. Under that layer, remove old pieces of brick. Under and between and around all the different layers, remove piles and piles of sand. Ogle hubby’s bum again. Sorry, can’t help myself. Admire the pile of stuff being removed from the hole. Wonder to myself, who gets to move that pile? And where to? Answer: Yours truly will carry this pile by the bucket load to the back porch, where it will be dumped down the burrow holes that were made by skunks/woodchucks (or like my neighbors like to call them, “whistle pigs.”) Do I have to do everything around here? Just kidding. PB let me pose for this shot, just to convince folks I worked on this project, too. Build a form across the open end of the now empty hole. Ogle hubby’s biceps. Here comes the cement truck! Please make note of the fact that A) the truck is NOT backed up next to our hole, and B) PB is pushing our very old, very tiny, very rusty wheelbarrow towards the truck… I really wish I had pictures of the next sequence of events. Unfortunately, I was busy pushing cement around a hole, and PB was busying carting plops of cement by tiny wheelbarrow from truck to hole. And then we switched jobs, and PB pushed cement around while I carted plops of it from the truck to the hole. While you’re picturing this scene, please picture me without my double chins and about 10 pounds lighter. Please do not picture my red face or the sweat dripping down my back. Thank you. Our first couple plops of cement. Notice how it appears to have the consistency of rocks. That would be correct. Try pushing rocks around in molasses. That would about right. Push rocks/molasses around with a bull float, tamping it down as you go. Ogle hubby’s biceps. More tamping, more pushing, but now – cement looks more like, well, cement! Lots more tamping and pushing. Until finally… finishing touches with a hand float. And, of course, ogle hubby’s biceps. Texturize the setting concrete to make it grippier. Don’t you just love making up words? Keep it moist and let it cure for 3 days. But you can walk on it in the morning. Probably sooner, but that’s what we did. Cheers –

Like most house projects, our plan to resurface the back porch ran into a couple of snags. For one, the cost of replacing the existing tongue-in-groove porch floor boards with something similar was like 4x the cost of replacing them with red cedar deck boards. For another, the supporting beams were a bit, um, weathered at the far end of the porch. And, not quite long enough to reach the very end. Which meant Pappa Bear had to locate another support board that could be screwed next to the old ones, so we could use that one to screw the new porch boards into.

We keep a lot of scrap boards under the front porch, so PB began digging through them until he located a likely suspect for our project. When he laid it out on the back porch to begin measuring where to cut it into 3' lenghts, he laughed and told me he knew exactly where this board had come from.

It was from when he built a frame on the back of his Chevy 1-ton pickup truck to move himself and his stuff to MN, to be with yours truly. This board was as old as our relationship, 10 years on August 12th. The staples were still stuck in it where he had stapled the tarp down over his load. The staple+tarp system proved to be a bit less than ideal... thirty miles out of Sheridan, WY, we had to pull the truck over and head back into town to get more tarps and bungies, as the tarps had ripped out of the staples. It was, of course, freezing with blowing rain that night as we struggled with those tarps and bungies in the pitch black roadside off of I90. That board now has a second life - it has been cut into two pieces needed to hold up the back porch. Ten or twenty years from now, when the next owner of this old building rips up the back porch decking, they'll see some newer boards spliced onto the old beams. They probably won't notice the staples. And they will never know where this old board has been. But we know. And it makes me smile knowing a little piece of our history is now holding up the back porch. Cheers -