Winter used to be a time for Mike to catch up on paperwork and do some household projects that he didn’t have time to work on. This year, though, has been different.

No major household projects are going on right now. We still have multiple outside projects going on.

For starters, the silos around our barn have finally been taken down. Mike was able to rent a man-lift, and with the help of a good friend, they knocked the silos down — literally top to bottom with sledgehammers — in two days.

This was something we had been talking about doing since we bought the farm. We don’t use them. The roofs have blown down on the road since we’ve owned them, and they caused major blind spots while trying to pull in or out of the barn, or even just trying to walk across the road.

Honestly, we both thought they would be a bigger pain to take down, so it was put off. Little did we know how smooth it would go.

Next up is the back of our barn. An addition was added to the original barn at some point. The upstairs works OK for us, but the downstairs has been pretty much wasted space, and it’s a disaster. Mike stores all the stuff he doesn’t know what to do with there, and if he’s lucky, he can find it when he needs it.

The roof is too low to really store any equipment other than the skid loader. At one point, we were able to park the service truck in there, but that spot has been taken over by more “stuff.”

We have wanted to clean it out and start from scratch for years; maybe pour a new floor and put in some shelves. But that didn’t solve the low roof problem, and Mike needs a shop.

REDOING THE BARN: The siding of one the barns was completely removed. The Reskovacs are removing a past barn addition that is no longer functional.

One day, our new feed delivery man, who also happens to be Mike’s best friend and an engineer, suggested taking off the addition and building a new one, making it into the shop that Mike always wanted.

While the man-lift was here, Mike was able to take all the barn siding off the addition. We now have it stored and will hopefully use that to finish our basement with next winter — meaning he’d better wrap up all these other projects before then!

My plan is to pressure-wash and stain them this summer, so they are all ready to go when Mike has nothing else to do.

The last upcoming project is a small patch of trees that sits just off to the side of our house. The boys like this area, and they want to play there. The problem is that most of the trees are dead and have tops lying in the tops of other dead trees. I have deemed the area off limits to them, not that they are happy about it. Mike has convinced me to let him buy an excavator so we can tear out the trees. This would also allow us to enlarge our pasture field.

We got bonus points with the boys when the excavator showed up. Caleb said, “It is never, ever, ever leaving. Please don’t sell it!” Cole is looking forward to planting new trees and some berry bushes once the old trees are cleared away.

The view out of my kitchen window is pretty messy right now. Piles of rubble from the silos and metal that needs to go to the junkyard; a half-naked barn; and very soon, a mess with the trees. But I love watching the view change and the progress we make as we continue our farm journey.