80 year old flooring - what to do with it?

The house I grew up in was built by my grandfather, my dad, and his brothers in the late 1930s. They weren't finished carpenters, but they cut the boards and built a house. The house was serviceable, but not a great house, lots of things could have been done better, I suppose. My nephew and brother took the house down a couple of years ago, keeping a lot of the pieces of it for re-use. My nephew then built the house for their family on the same site.

One of the things that they have a LOT of is the oak flooring that was in the house. It is not of the current "style":

the boards are narrow (from about 2" to about 3"),

and a flooring guy told my nephew it wasn't worth reusing as it was not thick enough (it is 3/4").

It is possible that the flooring guy just did not want to mess with it; regardless, they put down new.

 The board lengths range 10'-14'.

The pictures show just some of it, there are probably about 1600 sq ft of it.

My brother is contemplating using it in various building projects (we're about to put a roof on a storage container) or using it for heating the house (burn it up), but... it seems to us that there would be some use for it. I have had people recommend that we look at projects in Pinterest... but... we're just not "in" to that...

Does anyone know of a use for this flooring? If we were going to sell it, say on Craigslist, any ideas about pricing?

Medical tests while on the road...

When I saw my primary care physician in Dallas in April, she indicated that there were two blood tests that she would like to have re-done in 3 months. I said that I would not be back in the DFW area for about a year, but that I could try to get the bloodwork done wherever we were in 3 months. She let me know that she could not order tests in another state, but I confidently said that I could find someone who would give me orders for the bloodwork and I would get the results to her...

Hmmm... my confidence may have been over-confidence.

We've learned previously that physicians in small town areas are generally more accommodating or reasonable than those in cities. I figured the county where I grew up would be a good place to try to visit a doctor and get the bloodwork done.

I called the local doctor's offices - the wife of a fellow that I grew up with is in practice there, I figured that would be as good as any... but... they would not give me an appointment if I wasn't interested in them becoming my primary care physician. The receptionist recommended that I go to a minor/urgent care place like Patient First.

So, I headed to Patient First this morning - fasting - so I was in a really good mood, not! They don't take appointments, but they open at 8am. I got there soon after 8am, and after signing in, they called me back to get more information. The lady took my information, but when she understood what I needed, went back to talk to someone else. Turns out minor/urgent care, or at least Patient First, couldn't do what I needed either. They couldn't write an order for a blood test that they didn't themselves see the need for. I had my previous results, but... no dice.

The receptionist there recommended that I go to LabCorp because they draw blood for blood tests.

Well, I figured LabCorp wouldn't do it either, not without a doctor's orders. I called them, and the receptionist there confirmed that they would not... but! She indicated that there was a group called "Request A Test" that would produce the order for me, as long as it was a bloodwork test that they handled. What I needed was on their list... so I called Request A Test, she took some information from me, including my credit card number for 2 tests at $29 each, and before I got to LabCorp, the faxed order was already there!

If all goes as expected, I will have online access to the test results early next week and will be able to send to my doctor in the DFW area.

Wish I had known about this at the beginning - it was REALLY easy, and certainly lower cost than what I would have needed to pay to see a doctor and get the tests.

Grinding grain

I've mentioned that Dwayne (and sometimes I) go to feed the "Kindergartners" and "Teenagers" (steers and heifers) once or twice a day. Jimmy has a "recipe" that he mixes and it came time to grind some of the grain last week. Dwayne got some pictures...

Corn going into the hammermill

More of the hammermill shown in the picture

Corn coming from the hopper - the corn was acquired from neighbor Edward

From the hammermill the ground grain and ground hay goes into the mixer and ultimately into a storage container from which Dwayne scoops buckets of meal twice a day for the steers and heifers.

The arrival of the container

Since our "stuff" took up the container that is just outside where we park Miss Doozie, Jimmy had a plan to get another container that was currently at Ricky and Kendra's to replace the storage capacity. The mover came to move it last week:

The truck bringing the container from across the field.

I was impressed by how he made all the curves...

Maybe one day I will understand the capabilities of turning Miss Doozie to that amount!

Heading down beside the shop...

Going alongside Miss Doozie...

We had gotten Miss Doozie prepared so we could move her if needed...

But the container mover had told us he didn't think she would need to move, and he missed Miss Doozie by a foot or so...

Heading back to its new location...

Backing into the site...

About ready to offload...

It seems to be lined up on target...

 Why didn't I take pictures of it being placed? I guess I got caught up watching!

Container now in place.

One of the tasks we are to do before leaving is to help get the roof put onto this container... so that's the next big chore on Dwayne and Patti's list.

From here to Casper

Happy Independence Day! Happy 4th of July!!!

You know, when you're retired, and especially when you're visiting or living on a farm, holidays are not much more of a day off than any other day!

We're thinking about our journey to Casper. We are to be there by mid-August for the solar eclipse that is happening on August 21.

These are the most direct routes - say 1900 miles, at 200 miles per day, 10 days of driving.

If we want to try to "collect" more states and provinces...

This is one of the less direct routes we are considering - a bit over 3000 miles, and with stops along the way to see some sites and friends that we would like to see.

The latter route would include the only two states that I have never visited: Wisconsin and North Dakota.... but our tentative 2018 plans could include this area of the country, so maybe we'll hold off on some state/province collection until next year.

We'll probably do something that is somewhere between these two routes... will know more when we eventually leave Virginia!

Baling hay and cleaning up

Last week, Jimmy and Regina baled the hay on a field near Talleysville.

Hay field near Talleysville with round bales in the field

Round baler back at the farm getting cleaned up - you might be able to notice Jimmy's legs as he is standing on the tire on the left cleaning...

There you can see him a little better.

Hay trailers and truck with hay from the Talleysville fields.

Combining and baling rye straw

Yesterday family friend Edward was going to combine his rye on a field in the county, so Jimmy and "crew" were to bale the straw that remains after the grain is harvested. Jimmy made a comment that the quality of the raking wasn't as critical on straw, so the determination was that maybe Dwayne and I could help...

The first task was to get the equipment to the field which was about 4 miles away - I was driving the pickup truck behind Jimmy and Dwayne driving two tractors. Jimmy had the baler and accumulator (the accumulator would sometimes get to swinging pretty wildly that kept the semi truck from being willing to pass at this point in the trip) and Dwayne had the rake.

This link shows the field in satellite view on GoogleMaps, where "Lee Hy Paving" is indicated to be. Let's just say that we would not have "happened" upon the field on our own!
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4451437,-77.0925007,2398m/data=!3m1!1e3

Edward and the combine coming around the corner of the field.

After Jimmy took the rake on one round of the field to ensure the settings were correct, I got on to try my hand at raking for the first time. Realize that I was supposed to be remembering the tractor-driving lesson/experience from a few days ago (http://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2017/06/driving-tractor.html).

While I was raking, Jimmy started baling, and Dwayne went for a "ride-along" in the combine with Edward. He took a video: https://youtu.be/ljyv4qR3rdk - note the encounter with a groundhog hole at about 1:30 into the video... when I first hit one while pulling the rake, I thought the tractor and I might disappear into the hole! I guess if I were more experienced or observant I would see it coming - every once in a while I would, but then one would come up by surprise that kept me on my toes.

After Dwayne finished his "ride-along" on the combine, he took over the raking task.

  After a number of bales were on the ground, Ricky and Regina (first string) arrived - Jimmy and Ricky returned to the farm to get the trailers and loader to collect the hay, and Regina took over the job of baling.

Hard to see, but that's Regina baling.

There you can see the equipment a little better... it probably would have been easier baling if the people doing the raking had done a better job of separating the raked rows of straw... but third (fourth? tenth? hundreth?) string operators aren't the best!

Jimmy and Ricky loaded two trailers and a truck full of bales of straw, and one of the trailers has been unloaded today. The first string (Jimmy, Ricky, and Regina) have headed back to help with unloading the other trailer and truck, and to return to the field to finish the baling and collection of the bales this afternoon. The third string operators (Dwayne and I) are awaiting a call if we are needed, primarily probably to ferry equipment around.