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 :)

Fruit tree survey

Yesterday evening I took some time to walk among the fruit trees. Earlier in the year it was hard to tell exactly what kind of trees were where but now that they're all fruiting it was time for a survey.

The pears are at least of two types, mostly Bartlett's but also some Comis pears. There's a real possibility that there are 3 other types out there too. We were surprised to find a few apple trees that we hadn't noticed before as well. The Japanese plums are pretty well hidden too, being literally swallowed by the blackberry.

Pear harvest, at least for the Bartletts is just around the corner, in the next 2 weeks or so!