Harvest journal: last of the dried herbs

We harvested thyme and chives earlier, saving the parsley for last as it is frost tolerant. Despite the early snow, the weather has remained reasonably balmy, allowing us a November harvest.  

Bright green and fragrant! 

Michael found our dehydrator at a garage sale years ago. It is an home built item and works like a charm.  

Our venerable dehydrator.  

It is built from plywood, with shelves made from window scteen  material. The hole in the front and screened in area in the back create a chimney. A hot plate in the bottom provides an adjustable source of heat, with a small sheet of metal helping to diffuse the heat evenly. All in all, an elegant design. 

Garden journal: tucking in the garlic

Usually I plant my garlic in October. House building and rain delayed my planting schedule. Thankfully, today brought balmy southern winds, sunshine, and 67 degrees. I previously prepared the garden space, turning under the straw mulch from

last year's crop and adding sand left over from construction.  

Garlic tucked in for winter

Garlic likes being a couple of inches in the dirt. I've planted it pretty closely, to discourage weeds. I use the back of a rake to smooth over the cloves.  

Taking out the bumps

After the garlic is put to bed, I pull up a cover of straw. 

I planted five different types of garlic: Rocambole, River Giant, French Germinador, German Red, and Siberian White.  We have been planting these same strains for almost 15 years. I think I'm the garlic curator because I can keep track of what is planted where. For two years, when we were without garden space, my sister Mariluz and a friend kept our strains going for us.  

Rocambole-lovely large cloves

We hope to expand our garlic harvest next year, now that we have a dry space to store the braids!  

All Hallow's Eve Journal: low key celebrating

Five inches of rain in about as many days has dampened our productivity. Even so, we made an appointment to pick up a couple of bales of straw this morning. This is what a half ton of straw looks like: 

Bedding for the birds/mulch for the plants

Michael made cinnamon rolls to warm the house, and then allowed me to give them a Day of the Dead touch in case any survive until tomorrow.  

Spooky rolls  

The weather has been inauspicious for slaughtering birds, so we got to enjoy their company for yet another day.  

Putting the birds to bed

End of day blessed us with a ray or two of sunshine as we gathered firewood for the night.  

The woodyard  

Happy Halloween! 

Weather journal: first snow of the season

Harvest journal: getting into hot water

We probably should have done in the ducks months ago, but have always had better ways to spend our time. Freezing weather impends and so yesterday saw the demise of five Rouens and our one Cayuga.  

Michael with a Rouen.  

Hauling water to the lower pastures loses its attraction rapidly when freezing weather sets in. 

The Cayuga looking suspicious.  

We gathered them two at a time to exercise proper duck control. Even so, one of the last Rouens made an escape attempt...to no avail. Michael and I shooshed him into the new fowl pen (where the lucky ducks and chosen chickens live) and he joined his brethren on the chopping blocks.  

Rouen and Cayuga

We looked up how to humanely harvest chickens and ducks on line. The process starts with hanging them

by their feet. This calms chickens much more than ducks. The next is to wrap them in a gunny sack so they can't flap. Head on the block and one swift chop. Held neck down until the blood stops flowing. Then comes the hot water bath. We heated water to 145 degrees for the first two birds. The feathers resisted more than we thought proper, so upped the temperature to 160 for the rest. Hotter water worked better.  

Feet in place

We spent half a day processing 6 ducks. We got better toward the end. Today the rain falls steadily. One of the Rouens is crackling in the oven while I jar the dried thyme and prepare parsley for drying. We will have the last of the Swiss chard to accompany the roast duck.

We are slowly recovering from the amazing 3-day house raising extravaganza of last week. We did get a tarp on the roof before it started raining last week. So far, both the new addition as well as the basement have remained dry. We still have a lot of work to do to get ready for winter. Work is something that is never lacking here. Nice that it is good work to do. 

Construction journal: sheathing up!

Paul and Michael spent the day working together.  Paul built the valley and it looks wonderful. I have been worrying about this juncture for months.  

Yesterday  

The original house and the first addition had different peak heights. Paul joined them seamlessly!  

Today

I'll post a photo of Irene's new front door later. While the guys were working, I whiled away the day moving leftover cement block  I figure I lifted 7200 lbs before noon. Then I started clearing the garlic garden so it can be planted. We are late, but we've been busy.  

One last photo:  sunrise today

Construction journal: it has walls and most of a roof!

Day 2 of our time with a professional carpenter and all the trusses are placed!   

Paul with his saws all.  

First, the eaves of the original house and the first addition came off. 

The first roof truss.  

The first trusses were designed to sit on the wall of the first addition.  

Love the shadow pattern.  

Each truss weighed about 150-200 pounds.  

Matt peeking out of the hipped trusses.  

The hipping took more time than contemated all trusses were up by end of day, with fascia boards and sheathing more than half done. 

Looking fabulous! 

Another long, but good, day.  

The bonus photo:  the King Kong Carrot I gathered for our soup! 

Scary carrot (it was delicious). 

Ok. One more. Artemis was awesome tipping up the trusses.  

Construction journal: it has a wall...then two!

Today started early and ended late, but we made good progress. By about 3 pm, we had a wall standing.  

The northeastern wall is UP.  

By about 6 pm we had the second wall raised.  

The southwestern wall is UP. 

Then we ran out of boards (oops) and it got dark. Or it got dark and we ran out of boards. None of this would have happened without our amazing work crew. Paul Treml is the chief carpenter and the guy who tells us all what to do.  

Paul squaring the first wall.  

Our son in law Matt, his brother Austin, and our daughter Artemis added to the labor pool. Then there were the three guys who were visiting our neighbors, who weren't home, and so instead came over and helped lift that second wall off the floor. Thank you anonymous neighborhood angels of mercy!

Construction journal: buttoning up the basement

The basement guys came by and put in the finishing bits. The big rain came soon after, making the area immediately around the basement a sea of mud. We laid down boardwalks to do some cement finishing work, but we couldn't begin to work on closing off the final bits until a week ago. We thought "Ok, we'll get the windows in today and the top board tomorrow."  Ha. The first window used to fit before we glued the sill plate down...but not afterwards. This required cutting down the bottom face plate (thank the gods for vinyl) by 1/4" and finding a piece of green treated plywood to substitute for the 1x10 board we used for the other windows. Then the boards we used to frame the sides were a wee bit too wide, so we had to adjust one side on the table saw.  

Michael installing the framing for a basement window.  

One whole day devoted to one window. We would have gotten the second in as well, but it began to rain again.  

The second window went in much more quickly, with no fancy pants adjustments needed.  

Two down!   

That black strip above the windows is open air. We had a brown treated 2x6 we were going use (leftover from the sill plates boxing in the floor trusses) but it was too warped to give a good seal. Back to the lumber yard for straight sticks and some type of flashing to cover the top face plate of the window.

Another day gone.  

Today we put in the 2x6s. Again, there were a number of interesting obstacles that required precision adjustments. 

Tie bolt and the bottom trim of the house required a bit of sawing and chiseling.  

It took us two tries to get it right (and yes, we had put down glue the first time!), but we got both boards in. Viola!  No ladybugs will be sneaking in that side! 

All closed off. Yay! 

We celebrated by going out and trying to cut down an old dead basswood. The tree didn't fall. We didn't die. It was a good day.  

Construction journal: it has a subfloor!

This past Wednesday (two days ago!) we put down the last of the subflooring, which came to the edge of the sill plate without any trimming. We couldn't have planned it that well. Just in time, as Irene returned from her fabulous Bermuda vacation Tuesday night.  

Irene doing a happy dance on the new addition.  

Mother Nature blessed us on Thursday morning with 3/4" of rain. It really was a blessing because the guys we bought our roof trusses from later that day told us they got an inch and a half. Due to the sea of mud surrounding our house, we opted to cut some firewood...a constant recreational activity around here. 

Today I vacuumed up approximately 300 gallons of water out of our new basement and Michael toted those up the ladder 5 gallons at a time.  

An interesting beastie brought in with the rain.  

Golden leaves of the sun.  

We can tell we all lifted a bunch of weights today. A gallon weighs 8 lbs. A 5 gallon bucket weighs 40 lbs. The 8 gallon shop vac weighed 64 lbs. The ibuprofen is taking effect. Time to sleep.  

Livestock journal: our first chicken egg! (Plus a construction update)

I found this in one of the nesting boxes in the chicken hut this afternoon. It wasn't there this morning!  It is as large as the bigger duck eggs we've collected. The duck eggs have been amazingly buttery tasting. Can hardly wait to taste the chicken eggs.  

Hand framed floor joists

For the past several days we haven't cooked much, as we've been working on creating a floor. First we framed in floor joists above the landing area of the stairwell.  

The stairs will start at the top of this wall and descend into the basement.  

Then we built a wall to set the final trusses in the area the stairwell isn't.  

We started laying the floor sheathing yesterday. We finished a little more than half the floor today and then ran out of sheathing. So we spent the rest of the afternoon buying the last load of subflooring. We hope to get this done before it rains!   

Season journal: first fire of fall

Michael cleaned our chimney today. It needed it. Now we are enjoying our first fire of the season. We've put the plants inside and bought subflooring glue good to 22 degrees. Hope it doesn't get that cold, but if it does, we're prepared!   

Construction journal: our basement has a floor!

We awoke at 12:30 am to deliver Irene, Johnny and Lori to the airport for their fabulous trip to Bermuda. We returned home and Michael climbed tall ladders and tore down soffit. The guy designing our roof trusses arrived a little later to do his measuring magic.  Then the cement guys arrived and poured our basement floor. We puttered around making roosts and nesting boxes. Early to bed for us tonight.  

Door journal: getting closer to have winter quarters for the birds

As the designated door designer, creating a gate for our chicken run fell to me.   

Open

It took most of the day, but it works! 

Closed

Yesterday I made a duck ramp. The chickens will be able to hop through their fowl flow flap just fine, but ducks don't hop as well.  

Duck hiway

Michael finished fencing yesterday and restacked wood today. People have mentioned stacking wood as a mindless job. It's not. If not done correctly, the stacks fall over. Our stacks are particularly tricky because Michael cuts the log lengths to about a foot to 18 inches. We have two wood burning stoves (one in the pole barn) and one takes short sticks. First frost last night. We need to be ready for winter! 

Construction journal: trusses boxed in and house squared

Michael and I moved slowly but surely toward getting our house on a secure footing. We boxed in the ends of the floor trusses.  

This, our final chance to make sure our walls are the same distance apart and the same length, took some time as we measured, re measured, and then adjusted the 2x6s to fit those measurements.

The basement guys are due to pour the floor Tuesday. They will also give us a footing for the wall we need to build to support the stairwell trusses. We'll see how long it takes to get the final trusses set and the subflooring  on.   We begin framing October 17th. Anyone who wants to come and hammer nails in planks, feel free to stop by!

Construction and livestock journals: progress!

The day began with a pleasant surprise: one of our ducks laid an egg. Our first! 

Double yolk and buttery rich.  Breakfast had to be good because we worked through the rest of the day.  

Artemis, Matt, and Matt's brother Austin came and provided the muscle to get the floor trusses on.  

We all worked and worked and got them mostly placed. The last two must wait until the floor gets poured on Tuesday. Oh, and we had a little helper hanging out in the aluminum ladder. 

Marbled orb weaver

A good day all around! 

Construction journal: the doors

Slowly but surely we are finishing the tractor shed/bird barn.  Doors present certain challenges. First, they need to be rigid, yet not too heavy.  

We solved the not-too-heavy stricture by splitting 2x4s lengthwise.  The table saw came in handy for that job. We used a full 2x4 on the hinge side to have sufficient anchor area for the hardware. The frame received a skin of 3/8" plywood.   5" construction screws attached the full-width 2x4 to the split cross pieces. I used our new drill press to pre-drill the 2x4 to prevent splitting the wood. 

Closed

Open

The rain started shortly after we hung the second door. The far side doors will have to wait for dryer weather. Whew! 

Garden journal: blue Hubbard bonanza!

Our summer squash seeds moldered in the ground due to the cool, wet spring. We had two blue Hubbard plants survive. The mice love the squash.  

We noticed in time and perched the squash on top of a 5 gallon bucket.  

We made squash pie and squash pasta sauce and fed them to friends visiting from Washington.  The friends are gone but we still have squash. May make squash soup tomorrow. It will be rainy (again!) and cool. Blue Hubbards save well when they haven't been sampled by the mice. Good thing we like squash!

Philosophy journal: low tech and space thriftiness

We love tools and are serious about having things that work well. For instance, meet our salad spinner: 

It looks a lot like a percale pillow case. Don't be fooled. It allows us to spin dry bulk amounts of salad and then can easily be dried and stored.  Michael, when he sports a full beard, looks like a mad Santa when spinning salad; a bonus benefit!  It does require outside space appropriate for flinging water. Luckily, we have plenty of that. 

Engineering journal: fowl flow flaps

First flap finished.  

Closed.  

Open.  

Looks like it should work, even in the snow while wearing mittens.  

The latch.  

Michael described his vision. He assigned me the task of making his vision a reality. Check.