December 2012 (backdated)

 

Suddenly it was christmas time and the kids were decorating the tree as usual. 

 

On a nice winter day we took down the very last of the apply harvest. We all had a lot of fun working together to get them down.

 

And it was no small amount of apples! A lot of these went to Jula's preschool and about 1/3rd were sliced and dried. Yum!

 

Our friend Krysta came up just in time to help stack a cord of firewood. Lucky her!

Flood!

 

This past Saturday a huge storm rolled in after several days of moderate rain. By Sunday morning our creek was totally choked with water and a fallen tree provided the last straw and the creek jumped it's banks!

 

This is our springhouse with almost 2' of water. The creek is there in the background and is usually considerably lower than the springhouse. Fortunatly the spring pump and breaker box stayed up above the flood line!

 

This is a view looking our our front gate. The whole neighborhood flooded but came just shy of actually filling people's homes with water.

 

The workshop (on the left) also just barely escaped flooding.

 

 

The flooding started in the far corner of this photo and was about 1' deep across the lower part of the photo.

 

Another shot of the springhouse and the creek. So Much Water.

 

Looking upstream from the springhouse. It's clear that we'll need to unclog the creek before next winter. So many trees and blackberry bramble restricting the water flow.

 

 

The springhouse again, this time as the waters started to recede. Thankfully the rain broke and the county came out to help remove some debris from the creek which helped the water level drop quite a bit.

 

Our neighbors who are oh so glad to be on a 3' tall foundation!

 

 

Despite this ugly scene our whole neighborhood managed to escape unscathed by the flooding.

 

 

This is out on the main road where the creek empties into a drainage channel. I've never seen it so high!

Home at last!

 

It's been a long year but this is finally our home! Last weekend we moved our stuff in and turned our rental house back over to the landlord. We've made a lot of progress on getting unpacked, the kitchen is mostly functional and the kids room is play-able. The rest of the house is coming together a day at a time. We have lots of indoor projects to do in the next few weeks, mostly related to organization, putting up shelves, etc. This works out well since winter is really starting in (you can see the frost on the field above!) This weekend we'll be getting some cover crop seed spread in the garden and doing some big compost pile maintenance along with building shelves in our bedroom closet and unpacking more boxes. :)

This morning Nicole and I sat on the porch and watched a doe walk slowly across the field. I feel so much peace here, it's hard to imagine how I lived any other way in the past. :) 

With Thanksgiving just past I have to say that most of all I'm thankful for my family. My beautiful wife and two joyful children. Having us all together in our new home is what we've been working toward all year and it feels amazing.

More plumbing and a new back door

  

The new septic line was leveled out and buried properly, hooray for functional septic parts!

 

Here's a bit of PEX piping sticking out where the washer goes in the mudroom. PEX is awesome, so much more awesome than copper.

 

Here Joel is working on the shower. We decided to just get the pipes replaced and come back later to re-tile everything. Get it all working so we can move in and deal with aesthetics later. 

 

 

Here's the set up for the bathroom sink, incoming water and outgoing drain.

 

This is the maple tree in the front yard. The garden is there in the background. 

  

This was the back door. It was a cobbled together special with many things wrong with it, so we decided to replace it.

 

 

While we were at it we decided that a wider door would be nice too. Here's the door opening with the old door removed but not yet widened.

  

My dad showed up in the middle of the door replacement to watch and help. Here Joel is smoothing out the thinset that we used to seal the bottom of the door frame to the concrete.

 

Joel put in ton of work this day to get the door installed and functional. I think he's proud of it, can you tell? :)

Plumbing work!

 

This is the pipe out to the septic tank which is just on the other side of the blackberry bushes at the top of the photo. The lower half of the pipe is cast iron, probably from when the house was built in 1947. The second half of the pipe is PVC, probably from the 70's when the second bedroom closet was converted into a bathroom. The PVC pipe was just small enough to cram inside the cast iron pipe, so that's how the two were connected. The cast iron is rusted out in several places and the PVC was crushed in at least one place. The whole run had several root balls inside it to make matters worse. Clearly the whole thing needed to go.

 

Here Joel and Chris (one of the plumbers) take a gander at some of the new pipe they laid down.

 

 

A sampling of some of the pipes that were removed from the house. Most of it was rusted-out galvanized pipe.

 

The carport has been the staging area for most of the work we've done this year. Here you can see PVC parts for the new septic and drainage pipes, a nice stack of drywall and even our new back door which is there in the background.

 

 

The new septic line all installed and awaiting proper burial.

 

The demolition of the bathroom has started as well. More to come soon!

Bulk update July - August 2012

It's been a really busy summer. :) Here's a whole slew of things that have been going on since.

We finally found a bought a truck. Hooray craigslist, this truck beast was $1000 and we've filled it to the brim with all kinds of things many times this summer.

 
 

The truckbeast showing it's dump-run capacity.

 

We discovered that the cost of cotton insulation made from recycled denim was actually affordable! Hooray for non-toxic building materials.

 

The electrical work continued through most of the summer. Here's the new attic access hole that we framed out.

 

A beautiful sight, new insulation and new electrical work.

 

The mudroom got quite a facelift too, removed all the funky wall bits, raised the roof just a bit and built a new supporting beam to hold it up. In a few weeks it should be finished off with new drywall too.

 

The kids room had some nasty linoleum laid down (thankfully not glued down!) which revealed more beautiful oak wood floors.

 

The wall behind the main electrical panel had to be opened up to complete the electrical work.

  

The county building inspector came out to inspect our work and we passed with flying colors. woot!

  

Behind the main panel with insulation....

 

Behind the main panel with drywall...

  

Tenzin has developed quite a friendly relationship with the chickens. They love being held and petted now. :)

  

We've had a huge bumper crop of squash all summer long. Nicole has become the canning queen and has come up with all kinds of awesome ways to deal with the abundance. Here are some of her pickled squash, some of the most delicious eats I've ever had.

  

This post that's holding up the carport looks like someone ran their car into it just hard enough to induce some severe cracking. We spent part of a day getting these 2x4's bolted through it to shore it up. The variety and amount of work that's all around the farm makes sure there's never a bored or dull moment :)

Hopefully I'll have another bulk update up in a few days. Maybe I'll get caught up some day!

SuperAdobe Bench

So, it's not really related to our farm/house/land project but we're pretty excited about it.

After many months of dreaming, drawing and making little models we finally started building a bench at our daughter's preschool. It's made of SuperAdobe and we're stoked to finally be using the earthen building skills that we learned last year. Here's a whole series of pictures from our first 2 work days. Woo!

SuperAdobe Bench Project

Giant squash invasion!

We know that squash are the most tasty when they're really little. We've been trying to pick the little squash each day but our squash garden bed has been so successful that we can't always see them all.

This humongous zucchini has been hiding for a few weeks I suspect. I found it on my lunch break today.

Our chicken girls

To meet the demands of our regular blog readers here are some chicken pictures! I have to admit, these pictures are a bit old. Our girls are a bit bigger now and have just started into their adult laying phase and we're getting 3-6 eggs a day now :)