When we last saw our heroes they were painting, cleaning, installing appliances in the basement and yes they were moving a few farm related items such as tillers, lawn mowers, etc..
But they had not started on moving the house because they had a plan, a good plan called the Moving Partay.
It all started with a simple email sent in early September:
Greetings,
As you know we are moving and we will be having a moving party. This will occur on Sept. 18th (Sunday) starting at 10am. We want to get the big items moved (we should have the house mostly set up by the time this party happens) What we will be moving is a large 3-door commercial fridge, some grain bins, other fridges, freezers and a few other things.
For this part of the effort we need 5 or 6 strong backs and 2 to 3 truck/vans that can carry weight and large bulky items. We also could use 5 to 6 big coolers to put food from the freezers in while the freezers are in transit
We also need a crew to facilitate clean up at the new place. The old owner left a variety of "farm art" (as my friend Pat Flick calls junk in fields) and we need to get it sorted and moved out of the planting area and put somewhere else. Some of the stuff is good stuff some of the stuff can be recycled and some of the stuff can be burned.
We will supply food (pastured chicken, a big tomato salad, burgers, etc.) and beer, wine and a bon fire for the after moving festivities. feel free to bring a dish your self.
Please let me know ASAP if you are coming. If I don't hear from you I will assume you will not be participating.
If you cannot make this event butt want to see the farm we are planning on having an open house some time in October when we are more settled in
The Partay
And on Sunday Sept. 15th it culminated in a gathering of people, a 17' U-haul truck, our Dodge cargo van and a few other vehicles. Eugene's Brother was the only person to show up in the morning and Eugene had to pick up the U-haul truck so we were only able to get the Dodge van and dave's car loaded for the first run to the new place. We took stuff over, foundf no one there so unloaded and went to lunch in eaton. came back and the ferrario family had arrived as had Molly Willburger, A MU student interested in us farmer types. By 2pm Marc and Lisa biales and Chuck herms arrived and later Steve Dana showed up. Soon both places were a hive of activity. By day's end we had managed to get most of the household items moved and even got the living room and kitchen set up decently. Food was provided by my friends Lisa who brought a deelish black bean soup and Karen who brought a spicy BBQ. We supplied the beer and wine. A good time was had by all
The Big Fridge
Moving the household was not too big a job though we do have 2 big freezers, fridges and a few other big items. The big job of the day was moving this 3-door commercial fridge we bought about 6 years ago from Kona Bistro in Oxford, OH when they remodeled their kitchen. The fridge is HUGE and can hold about 35 bushels of food. It had been sitting on the west side of our old place under an metal roof Eugene had built around the thing. I was not there when the crew got to moving the fridge but from what I hear they had no problem getting the roof down and the fridge moved off of its' pad. But they did have a problem getting it into the 17' U-haul truck-it was too tall by about 4". Bummer.
So the solution was to not load the fridge and load other things into the truck instead and get all that stuff over to the new place, unloaded and in the house or barn. When that was done several people left and a few latecomers arrived and as the sun was setting Eugene, Syd, Chuck and Scott decided to go back and wrestle the big fridge into the 17' U-Haul truck. While they were gone us ladies sat on the deck, watched the sun set and sipped single malt scotch and drank beer. Shortly after dark the guys came back with the fridge loaded on at an angle. They got the thing unloaded and than found that the biggest doorway we had was still 2" too short for the fridge so it sat outside overnight awaiting Eugene to take off all the molding around the doorway so it would be big enough to accept the fridge.
The Following Day
After the moving partay was over we were still needing to move more large items before taking the truck back so the next morning we went back to the Crubaugh Rd farm and moved the chicken tractors (these are movable coops, not tractors like what one would plow with. Our chickens do not drive), rolls of fencing, 2 big grain bins (like 65 bushels each) and many really long bamboo poles. Pile those things in the truck, drove back home and when got there we found that one of the chicken tractors had almost gotten loose. Good thing we were driving back roads and not a major highway in case the thing had fallen out of the truck. It seems we did not secure the latch well on the back and it had come loose and the door was trying to slide open. It did not so no damage.
After the final use of the U-haul we cleaned it out and returned it and ran into a problem. According to U-haul we had not rented the truck and therefore they felt they could charge us more than the estimate. We did not like that idea at all so they quickly backed down and than found we were not in their system and that the problem could be traced back to the poorly trained employee who rented Eugene the truck the day before. this was going to take a while so we went to breakfast at the Main St Diner in Richmond (a little hole in the wall breakfast and lunch place that has been around forever). I had biscuits and gravy and some pretty bad coffee. Eugene had the same plus pancakes. After B-fast we finally returned the truck and drove back home via Lowe's to pick up some hardware items for the new house.
Stay tune for part moving pt 3: Living Between two Farms
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