All the windows are in.
The East Corner
Matt and Artemis came and all went so much better with extra hands.
The West Corner
We even had wee help.
Frogs. I love frogs.
Up next: braiding garlic and putting up interior walls.
German Red and River Giant
Sometime in the night a day or two ago it rained two and a half inches in a short time. It washed out the driveway and flooded the basement...but through the basement door, not through our new roof. Do we care? No permanent damage. The driveway Michael shoveled back in place. The basement we mopped. And then we got to watch the ducks paddle in their pond.
There is nothing quite as cheerful as a duck in water.
Ahhhh.
I never understood that saying. Now I do.
Say goodnight Gracie.
In the past 3 days we have installed 3 windows. The first was the smallest and will eventually illuminate our future laundry room:
Yes, a saws-all would be faster. We aren't fast.
We keep learning as we go. And keep forgetting as well. Good thing we have 3' eaves...which means our minor mistakes really are minor.
End of Day 2 of East Side Windows.
Today's window took some engineering to install, since I am both short and only moderately strong. Michael built a bench to rest the window on, and I built myself a platform of 2"x4" ends and pieces to raise me up about 7 1/2 inches. I put a 2"x4" across the inside so we didn't tip the window through the opening. Frankly, I never thought we would be able to lift it into place. But on the count of 3 it was up and in. Miraculously, it was also square and level! Paying attention to the sill plate paid off.
Rails and steps will have to wait until after windows are done.
Tomorrow Michael will do some re-framing on the west wall (we changed our minds as to where the front door will be) while I take time off to do some paying work. Our bodies need to recuperate a bit before we tackle the biggest window of all. Thankfully, we will have an extra pair of (strong!) hands to help come Sunday.
Let there be light!
Three days ago we completed the deck part of the deck. Yesterday Michael cut away the sheathing that covered the doorway to the deck. Then we read the installation instructions, looked all over for shims, gave it up as a hopeless hunt, and went into town for shims, ice and water flexible flashing, and some lumber to adjust window rough openings. Yes, we should have framed the ROs correctly last October, but who knew the standard dimensions of a window back then? Not us! It saved us nearly $5,000 to go with standard sizes. We will get to windows soon. Today we installed the East Door.
Not exactly a Rembrandt, but looks good to me.
Taking two full days to install one door seems ridiculous, but we had to learn about the ice and water flashing. Wish we had known about it when Irene's door went in last October. Right now, it is a joy to walk onto the deck without having to walk around the outside of the house.
Michael is contemplating how we will put up railing.
I think we need a name for the deck. Something like the Liana Deck...only more appropriate for our project. If we move chickens into the back yard, it will rapidly become the Poop Deck. But chickens aren't allowed while Irene rules this roost, so interim suggestions are welcomed.
Broilers. They are what you get when you buy chicken in the store. They are the swine of the chicken world. They eat. They poop. They grow. They turn feed into meat more efficiently than any other animal in the world. But even they are individuals, and it is still hard to slaughter them...but not as hard as the chickens we sit and visit with and hop into our laps.
Stoking the rocket stove to heat water to scald chickens to pluck feathers
We started today at about 9 am and finished around 3 pm, working without breaks. We could be more efficient, but if we are not being commercial, we can spend a day working to fill the freezer.
Implements of construction: the cleaver I bought Michael as a wedding gift and a modified pillow case to keep the chicken feeling secure until it isn't
I omit the details in deference to a friend who says her life is sufficient in gory stories (anything but an endorsement for being a micro-social worker) and bring you the end result only:
Our chickens weighed in at anywhere from almost 11 pounds to shy of 5 pounds. The average was 9 pounds.
Yesterday's harvest was less bloody but perhaps a better red:
Currant jelly in the morning light
We have preserved July to warm our January.
Today is Wednesday. I know this because I gathered trash for pickup. Days can blend together when you are disconnected from a regularly paying gig. This is not to say that there are no deadlines. Tomorrow's forecast includes rain. That means we needed to get the deck completed so we can pick currants and make jelly while it rains. This is the deck five days ago:
Just getting the deck to this stage entailed a lot of work! Michael making progress on Saturday, June 25th.
Then I lost my Supreme Court case on Monday (disappointing but not surprising) which meant I needed a distraction. Physical labor is good for that. So I cut boards and Michael installed them and this is the deck today, Wednesday, June 29th:
All the floorboards in! Rails and bracing will come later.
So we toasted the new deck and are off to gather wood for the rocket stove, so we can send the broilers to freezer camp on Friday.
Ahhhh.
The deck allows us to put in the door, and the door allows us to put in windows. Everything in its time.
Or at least what I suspicion was a raccoon wasn't willing to wait for them to grow any bigger. Michael has taken Irene to Mayo Clinic to get things put in order and back inside her abdomen and so I had the pleasure of facing this alone:
Feathers where feathers don't belong
Stop reading/looking here if the sight of a mangled chicken carcass bothers you. But this is what we've been trying to fence against:
I removed the uneaten half of the carcass before documenting it as the other chickens were beginning to peck at their former playmate
I explored the perimeter and found evidence of a well fed raccoon:
Not far from here there is a path beaten through the grass going under the new duck fence. We haven't had time to put the ground wire on that section of fence yet.
I didn't find Dudley's head until I was putting the birds away at eventide.
I had to clean up the bits so the other birds don't develop a taste for each other.
In order to not have a repeat diner, I put down chicken wire everywhere a varmint might get a paw inside and secured it with ground staples. I figure we lost a broiler because they are too big to roost and not fast enough to avoid being caught. The ducks are hyper vigilant at night and the other chickens roost out of harm's way.
My favorite chicken photo of the day.
This morning dawned on all my chickens and ducks with their feathers intact.
We have been eating radishes as if they were popcorn. Here is my favorite photo of the day:
Fresh water is such a blessing
The baby ducks are not so small anymore.
Those teenagers harass our older ducks and hog the pools.
And the Cornish crosses are about to become broilers!
Hanging out under the pines during the heat of the day.
So happy the Cornish got out in the pasture at least for a while. They like the tops of their heads rubbed, whereas the smaller birds prefer being chucked under the chin. The ducks do best either with a belly rub or hiding their heads under my wing, er, arm.
Sitting with our birds at the end of the day is the best.
The third week of May, Michael's brother Douglas came and worked fast and steady with Michael. They got the soffit up and began a back porch. Three weeks later and we just bought the last of the lumber for the back porch:
The framework for the porch is just visible in the background
We have done a lot of other things in the meantime, such as getting the windows and the back doors purchased and in the addition waiting to be installed. We want to start on the back so we make any of our mistakes on the far side of the house. We also needed to stop erosion on the back side. So there we start. Soon.
In the meantime, we've slowly been finishing off the base boards where the original cabin meets the first addition.
It took me a long time to get brave enough to make this cut
We have had to be somewhat creative in filling in spaces that are anything but uniform. It's slow, but we are getting there.
Somewhat hard to see, but the plate size and base board are all different sizes.
It fits!!!
I still need to slice skinny boards to fill in the space at the top (again, anything but uniform) but just getting this one in felt like a triumph. We spent a while trying to make the porch joists square to avoid just this problem. We'll see how well we did right soon.
We are having a bunch of visitors coming next weekend, which coincides with our Cornish crosses getting big enough to die of a heart attack. We like the skin on our chicken and so needed a way to scald the chosen one. We have a gas burner, but are always looking for ways to avoid buying things. We have cement block. We have a fire pit grate. We have brush piles. So now we have a rocket stove:
What you can't see are the bond beam blocks, which form the chimney.
Actually, this is the original effort, but it made us stoop too much to feed the firebox. So we modified the plan:
Ergonomically more satisfactory
We heated the stockpot full of water from 70°F to 175°F in about an hour. It took three buckets of small sticks.
While I was puttering around, clearing out the space and running the weed whip to keep the tall grass at bay, our resident chipmunk stopped by and said hello.
He's cute when he's not busy building nests in Irene's car's engine compartment.
Michael spent the morning putting the riding mower back together after our neighbor welded the mower deck for us. Thanks Rick! Then spent the rest of the day mowing while I was playing with the rocket stove. Tomorrow we will mow some more!
Yikes! Summer always goes so quickly and there are more things to do than there are hours in a day...and we get some pretty long days here in Wisconsin. So I'm playing catch-up while making dinner. Here goes:
Michael made one new duck hut while I was in New Mexico, and I got in on making the second chicken shack when I got back. We start by wiring together two cattle panels and attaching them to treated 2x4s.
The start of the shack.
We notch a second set of treated 2x4s, lift the cattle panels into an arch and attach the front and back boards. The notches keep the front and back boards off the ground, making the shack easier to move over rough ground.
Bracing the corners once the shack is squared keeps everything, well, square.
Once the base of the shack is done, then the back "wall" is put up and the front door constructed, and roosts strategically placed. Michael discovered that using metal perforated tape and screws to attach the front and back walls to the cattle panel works better than hammering in metal staples. Then fence is put over the front and back and chicken wire over that. We over build them with the idea that they are fortresses against any night time predators who may get over the fence.
This is at the end of Day 2!
The final steps are to rig ropes to pull the shack around (mobile shacks allow you to move your birds off their poo rather than moving the poo out of the shack) and then to cover the shack with a tarp (we repurposed the tarp that we put over the addition until we could get it shingled).
I fold. Michael attaches. Having two people to build these makes life so much easier.
And the young ones seem pretty happy with their new home!
The end of day 3!
Our thyme wintered over, but like the currants, were getting lost in the weeds.
Where's Waldo?!?
One of the many chores Michael tackled while I was building a shed in NM was to continue my feeble efforts to rescue the small garden.
Mountains of dirt and fewer weeds!
The currants were still drowned, so I tackled beating back the creeping Charlie and crab grass. Then Michael shoveled the dirt back and I raked.
Voilà! Ready to be planted tomorrow.
Our thyme wintered over, but like the currants, were getting lost in the weeds.
Where's Waldo?!?
One of the many chores Michael tackled while I was building a shed in NM was to continue my feeble efforts to rescue the small garden.
Mountains of dirt and fewer weeds!
The currants were still drowned, so I tackled beating back the creeping Charlie and crab grass. Then Michael shoveled the dirt back and I raked.
Voilà! Ready to be planted tomorrow.
A couple of years ago I knit my parents some small blankets to keep them cozy while watching Westerns (or the news). I knit them on the bias as a design element.
Grandma Clare's chair
Papi's blanket
While I was knitting them, or even perhaps afterwards, I would drape them across my shoulders and think: "Oh, this would feel so good as a garment!" It took me a while before I could indulge my craving, but I finally designed a vest knit on the bias.
Same pattern different designs. My mom liked mine so much, I knit her one during my visit. It took a little longer to complete than the lawn mower shed.
Little did I know that she had been experimenting with knitting on the bias as well!
The green vest is made in 3 pieces and sewn together. My vests are knit in one piece and connected on the sides to form the sleeves.
Knitting on the bias allows a garment to drape on the underlying figure, which means the vest fits short/tall/thin/voluptuous equally gracefully. And yes, they are as wonderfully snuggly as I had hoped.
I had some yarn left over from my projects, and so my cousin Mary picked out some colors and requested a hat, one that was just knit and could be pulled down over the ears. This is it:
Now I'm back home and will devote time to writing appellate briefs, weeding the gardens and helping Michael install windows in the addition.
We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled post about building a 40 acre farm in the 21st century to post news from another home base: my parents' house in New Mexico. I managed to lure my daughter and her husband to be here while I was visiting so we could do what we do wherever we go: work on projects! My papi's birthday is rolling around soon and he wanted a lawnmower shed.
Always start with drawings. It helps consolidate and share the vision.
We rustled around and found some treated 2x4s to repurpose.
Framing a wall on the ground makes life easier. Having a flat space to work is a luxury.
My mom had a wood working shop set up, which helped speed things along.
Extra hands (and feet) also help in framing.
We made all the walls before we put them up. We relied on the siding to be square...which it was!
Painted the walls before raising them.
The roof went on and, by golly, the darn thing was square! (No photos of wall raising-it took all hands!)
The tall guy with long arms got to fasten down the roof.
My papi picked up a door at the Restore and did an expert job replacing the hinges.
Look and learn!
And voilà: a lawnmower shed! Happy Birthday Papi!
A five day project
Michael's brother Douglas recently retired from engineering car parts. He graciously volunteered to come and help with our building projects.
Michael and Douglas closing off the top of the walls and installing soffit
Far be it from us to turn down an offer like that! So while I am off visiting with my parents (and thinking of undertaking a small construction project here), they are making progress!
Holes are for round soffit vents
We are still in the midst of the agonies of ordering windows, but closing off the house from the elements is a step closer.
Our gardening efforts have been hampered by cool trending to frosty temps. I did manage to rescue my thyme plants from the weeds and Creeping Charlie.
Thyme with mufflers.
Michael had piled straw on top of them to help them survive the winter, but spring came, the straw was unpiled, and the weeds were not suppressed. I have been saving the snarly parts of my fleeces, as I've heard wool makes good mulch. I am willing to give it a whirl!
Updating the garden progress: the onions are up but the potatoes are not. The lettuce is showing, but the spinach is suffering from cut worms. We planted kale, carrots, peas and winter squash today. The volunteer squash on our compost heap succumbed to frost. It will frost again tonight. The ducks and chickens are feathering out and looking awkward.
So excited to be eating again. Two weeks old in this photo.
So much has happened in the past two weeks. We graduated a daughter from law school and I mostly wrote an appellate brief. We have been investigating windows for the addition. We've celebrated Irene's 84th birthday and cleaned the house. And the lilacs and trillium are blooming. Ahhh.
Sunshine and 60° has inspired us to gets the starts in their second homes and get onions and potatoes in the ground.
Before
I like styrofoam coffee cups because you can cut off the bottoms and use the uppers for cutworm protectors.
After
The wee birdies have outgrown their tubs as well, so Michael built brooding boxes for them in the coop.
Checking on the chicks.
Yesterday we had help with cuddling the critters.
Nancy and Yellow Duckling # 5.
Artemis and Yellow Duckling # 2.
We will slowly harden off all our starts, moving the plants to tall-sided totes to protect them from the wind and slowly lowering the temperature on the birds and allowing them access to the rest of the coop before they get to venture into the fenced-in yard. Off to tuck in the potatoes now!
All in one box.
I received a call this morning at about 8:30 from the feed mill: our wee birds arrived! 15 minutes later I held a box of babies on my lap. We spirited them back home. We started preparing yesterday. Michael started a fire in the "guest room," I located the watering and feeding jars, and we put pine straw in the buckets. I've been sitting with the babies ever since.
One of the 8 black chicks we ordered. 29 chicks in all. Wood burning stove keeps the chicks comfy and me wishing I knew where my bathing suit is. We will keep them at 90° for a week.
I dutifully dunked each beak in water as I transferred them to their bins. The chicks found their food without help, but the ducklings needed to be introduced to the feeder as they were trying to eat the dried leaves that came in with the pine straw.
Irene even came out to cuddle a duck. Last year she wouldn't even look at them. Over winter, when the birds were closer to the house, she started to become fond of them.
I'm mainly hanging out to get the ducks accustomed to being handled (something that couldn't happen last year due to unforeseen emergencies), and to gauge how our lighting system is working. The lights will keep them warm over night when we may not tend the fire constantly.
Sacked out. They eat, they drink, they poop, they keel over with sleep.
Half as many ducklings go through twice the amount of water as twice as many chicks. Back to my spinning and singing with my birds.