Bill Fluhrer a farmer for all seasons!

So, there is this farmer I met that isn’t like any other farmer I’ve ever met.  While farmer’s are usually guys and gals that can take things apart and are quite independent by nature, Bill Fluhrer can do, from what I saw, almost anything.

I met Bill while on a trip with the Midwest Travel Bloggers.  Bill lives in rural Charles City, IA. Bill, said that he has lived in the same farm house for 83 years.

Bill moved a former tenant house to a wooded area.  Bill and his wife Pat wanted a cabinThe first house that he and his wife Pat lived in was a tenant house that he has has moved to the woods and converted to a cabin.  By converted, Bill moved it, took the ceiling down creating a loft and put a porch on using lumber from a barn that was converted in 1850.

Outside of the cabin are Bill’s buffalo, a herd of about a dozen graze in the pasture and have since 1992. “I used to have cattle and hogs and chickens,” Bill said. “We had everything.”

He feeds them corn everyday so they come up to the fence and viewers are able to take a peak.

Bill’s latest venture is a silo that he is converting into a reading room, game room and an observatory. “I need to make it move,” Bill said about the observatory he plans to create.

The brick silo was moved to its site and the silo was made in Fort Dodge, IA. Bill found a brick where a young worker Melvin Johnston wrote his name. After calling the Fort Dodge historical society, he was connected with Melvin. “He called me and said he worked here when he was a student at Iowa State.”

Bill moved the 34,000 lb silo on his own. While this sounds quite amazing, it makes sense when we saw the hydraulic ladder he created on his own.  Is there anything Bill can’t do?

“I have used this (hydraulic ladder)to take down windmills and put siding on the barn.”

Not far from the silo he is recreating into reading and star gazing space and the hydraulic ladder he built, is Bill’s “House in the trees”, a tree house he created. With steel stairs and the floor made from a 100 year old silo, Bill said, “I built this in sections in my machine shed.”

Bill amazed me and inspired me. Farmer’s are a breed unto themselves and Bill is a one of a kind.