Friday

Hannah and I pulled in at 5:00 pm. Lyssa and the boys are down in Kenosha to see their new cousin this weekend and I’m going to be helping my folks make a major push to clear out Mayville while spending my nights here.

My truck will finish what the storm started.

After unloading the truck and getting the keep set up, I grabbed the green ATV and small yard trailer and aired up all the tires. I got the chainsaw out and fueled up, then started work on downing the apple tree that was partly uprooted by Tuesday’s storm. It took three trailer loads to feed the tree remains to the pit, but after an hour, I was left with nothing but a tall stump. I figured that since it had been twisted and snapped by the storm, I’d have a decent chance of pulling it out instead of leaving a flush-cut stump to trip over and mow around. I got my tow rope out of the truck, wrapped it around the remains of the trunk, set my gearbox to 4-low and started tugging. I ended up having to pull from three different angles but eventually got the tree out.

I got the ATV out again and dragged the root ball back behind the woodpile. This thing had very shallow roots and didn’t leave much of a hole. It was also surrounded by some pretty rich-looking soil for this place, so it shouldn’t take long at all for this part of the yard to bounce back. By the time I had everything cleaned up and put away it was almost 8:00, so I headed into town for some A&W.

After dinner and a shower, I spent the rest of the night in the keep setting up the new bedroom TV with a Raspberry Pi running LibreElec. The TV supports HDMI-CEC, so I can use the stock remote to control the menus in Kodi, which saves on clutter. I also installed a backlight LED strip on it. I let Hannah out one more time and was asleep by midnight after watching some episodes of The Venture Bros.

Saturday

Woke up around 8:00 and cleaned up in the keep for a bit. I got a call from Carol across the road a little before 10:00. She moved a lot of the rummage sale stuff out of their pole barn and there’s room for the pop-up camper now. I grabbed the green ATV, hooked up the pop-up, and headed over. We talked for a bit and Peter rode in on his bike. He was over to check out some issues with her well. We’ve got a bunch of good neighbors around here. I rode back, parked the ATV in the pole barn, and Hannah and I were on our way to Mayville by 11:00.

I spent the whole day clearing out the garage and loading up the beds of Dad’s and my trucks with stuff to go back to Oshkosh. Drove back to my folks house to unload, had dinner with them, then headed home. The house was miserably hot and humid. I didn’t feel like dealing with waiting for it to cool down, so I showered and headed back to Puckaway. Pulled in the yard around 9:30, watched TV for a few hours, then passed out.

Sunday

I woke up around 2:15 am to Hannah squirming around on the bed, panting and drooling. A big thunderstorm was rolling through and she wasn’t having it. I wasn’t awake for ten minutes and we lost all power. Great. I opened the bedroom windows to get some fresh air and tried to go back to sleep, but it wasn’t easy with 80 pounds of nervous fur panting and shivering next to me. The storms died down a little after 5:00 am but the rain kept up. Power finally came back on around 6:30 and I was able to get a few hours of sleep.

This area is going to be easier to repurposed than I had anticipated.

I was up for the day a little before 11:00 am. The rain was still coming down and the radar didn’t indicate that it would let up any time soon, so I focused on an indoor project. I pried away the wall panel on top of keep’s old oil furnace to get a better idea of how things were mounted and connected in there. It looks like this is going to be much easier to remove than I thought, and I shouldn’t have any issues converting the area into shelving. The surrounding walls are finished and paneled, too.

I left for Mayville a little after 2:30 pm since it looked like the storm cell was finally breaking up. I drove through Alto, which had a tornado touch down during last week’s big storm. What a mess. Every property has downed trees and limbs stacked at the curb. I saw someone burning down the frame of a giant barn since it was the only part left standing. Puckaway got off lucky with a flipped table, twisted apple tree, and downed deer stand.

So much more room for activities!

We didn’t get much done at Mayville because the rain picked up again. I ended up back at the keep a little before 6:00 pm after stopping at Piggly Wiggly for some pizzas. I spent the rest of my night removing the furnace and patching the hole it left behind. We’re going to get a lot of storage utility out of this new space.

After washing up and downing a pizza, I was in bed by 10:00.

Monday

Good riddance, sooty boat anchor.

Up early around 6:30. Got dressed and started packing up. Pulled the truck around and hoisted the old furnace and ducting into the bed, then backed around to the scrap metal pile with it. Now I can move forward with designing and building some shelves for the open area. Today’s going to be a long day clearing out Mayville, so I headed out a little after 8:00.