Last summer our Amish neighbor, Daniel, stopped by because he had heard we wanted to get rid of our old concrete silo.  Daniel wanted the concrete staves to use to build sidewalks.  I told him he could have the silo in exchange for clearing the brush and trees around the silo.  During the fall Daniel stopped by horseback to say he hadn’t forgotten, he just hadn’t got to the silo.  On Saturday morning Daniel knocked on the door and said he was taking the silo down.  He was assisted by his father Levi and two young men.  They worked from 10am – 4pm and had the staves stacked, brush cleared and dropped off 30 concrete staves at our house for us to build a silo.

Monday afternoon I began digging 5-6″ below grade.  By the end of the day we had the area prepared.

On Tuesday afternoon we pegged down the landscape fabric and shoveled about 1″ of sand gathered from the roadside and from Eric’s old sandbox for underneath the blocks.  We leveled each block and then placed edging alongside the blocks to deter grass from growing between the blocks.  Finally we back-filled the edging with dirt along the roadside and partly with sand along the house side.  The house side will later be filled with mulch.

Overall we had about 14 hours into the project and used left-over staves, landscape cloth, edging and sand.

Eric and Kathryn treated me to breakfast in bed for my 60th.  Later that day Joe, Barb, Jeanne, Rob and Linda all came for dinner and tomato soup cake.  A fine time.

About 10am Daniel, his father Levi and two young Amish men showed up to take down our concrete silo.  Daniel had inquired about it last summer, stating that he would use the concrete staves for sidewalks.  In exchange they cut the brush and trees around the silo.

Sunday Kathryn and I took a 2 hour hike using the new trail to the old farm foundation on Pen Bonc Hill returning via the loop.  There was logging going on along the logging road and our flagging tape indicating the access to the loop trail was gone.

Late afternoon we joined the rest of Eric’s 3rd-4th grade basketball team for recognition at the Rome Sports Hall of Fame.  There were 7 youth teams honored and the ceremony ran about 1 hour.

Daniel Barden, 7, was one of the first graders killed in the Sandy Hook, CT tragedy in December 2012. A niece of organizers of this event was inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School that day. She escaped physically unharmed. Her dear friend and next-door neighbor, Daniel, did not.  The goal of the Daniel Barden Highland Mudfest is to raise money for The Barden Fund, a fund established for the family, including two remaining siblings. The first annual Daniel Barden Highland Mudfest took place on Saturday, April 13th, 2013 at MKJ Farms in Deansboro, NY. The event featured both a 1/2 mile kids run and a 5K mud run that climbs and falls over the hills of Deansboro.

Eric and Trevor did the 1/2 mile kid’s run, designed for ages 5-12,  in about 10 minutes and declared it to be “too easy”.

The 5k run utilized existing trails designed for hunter pace courses.  There was 900′ of elevation gain, deep ravines, natural stream crossings and man-made obstacles such as a wall, culvert crawl and mud pits.  The course designers were concerned the course was too dry so they asked the Deansboro Fire Dept to water the course on Thursday; then it rained all day Friday.

There were 1,000 participants sent off in waves every 30 minutes starting at 9am.  Kathryn and Beth went off at 10:30.

The last obstacle was carrying in firewood to the finish line.

Kathryn tries to warm up next to one of the natural log ‘torches’.

Here is a good video of the entire course run.

When we came home from volleyball on Thursday night we spied this flock of flamingos.  The Holland Patent Tornado Squad has conducted a fund raiser this winter using pink flamingos.  For a donation they will set them up on someone’s lawn.  Families could pay to have someone ‘flocked’, pay to have them removed and/or purchase flamingo insurance.   The Tornado Squad students will head to New Jersey during their spring vacation and help build a home for a veteran through Habitat for Humanity.

Eric was thrilled.  We were happy to make a donation to the cause.

Eric’s Science Fair got re-scheduled to Friday after school until 7pm.  He had a poster board about Old Faithful.  The poster covered the location of Old Faithful, Interesting Facts about Old Faithful and the three essentials for a geyser (Water, Heat and a Plumbing System).  He had a working model which consisted of plastic storage bins, gravel, plastic tubing, a super-soaker and some benches and tourists made from Legos. The super-soaker represented the pressure caused by water coming into contact with the magma.  Eric gave away mints to those students, parents and teachers that visited his display.  He had a sign that announced the next eruption, but it turned out scheduled eruptions didn’t suit the Science Fair.

The Science Fair started at 3pm after school and ended at 7pm with a pizza break for the kids from 5-5:30pm.  After the break Eric mounted his model on the table.

Afterwards we realized this caused difficulties in pressuring the water.  Below you can see Eric struggling to generate pressure and the resulting geyser.