Suzy and Joel and Owen and Evie

After several months of work and the typical over-budget expenses, the barn is much closer to being finished. What had originally been seen as a minor queen post repair snowballed into a large-scale restoration project with new posts, girts and sill repairs. You just don’t know how much insect damage is hiding in a beam until you start cutting them in half. Renard, our timberframer, and his crew did a great job fitting in these massive pieces of wood and using the timber framing techniques that were used when it was originally built. It looks great and we are happy to know it isn’t going to tumble over anytime soon.

Now we have to clean out all the construction debris and then we have two more big projects still to do: bringing out electricity and removing the current concrete floor and replacing it with something level.

Filed by suzy at 11:46 pm under Uncategorized
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Today is Owen’s last day of T-ball. The Mets had a great season and he likes baseball better than soccer. Why? Because baseball has less running than soccer.

Filed by admin at 11:59 am under Uncategorized
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Ever since they arrived in the mail Owen has been asking when we’d put the climbing blocks on. Last night the rain stopped so we were able to finish the wall.

This is a Cedarworks set (so we don’t need to stain it and there isn’t any arsenic for Evie to lick up), but we (Joel) built a ramp, the climbing wall, and the safety fence (that looks better than the ones they offer). We also used the smaller slide from the old playset that was wrecked in the move.

All I can say is that I’m glad the kids are amortizing the expense.

Filed by admin at 11:06 am under Uncategorized
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Finally after many weeks of assembly—what with the help of a six-year-old and the constant requests for pushes on the swing by the four-year-old—I finally have a working electric fence to protect the garden. It was a false start really since the solar-powered fencer was defective and only sent out a faint shock that barely affected Joel, the only one brave enough to touch the fence. We did note that he was wearing his Dharma Initiative-style work boots which might have helped moderate the shock, but the voltage meter also showed very little juice. Luckily Tractor Supply gave me a new one.

Most of the garden has been loving this dismal spell of wet weather we been having for the last couple of weeks. All that soaker hose that I carefully laid out has been dry. We don’t have much to harvest yet since it took me a long time to get the garden planted. Because it is Year One for the garden we had to till, take out the sod and stones, and add manure which is really time-consuming. Next year I will have less prep so hopefully the seeds will get planted on time. We do have radishes and lettuce and maybe a small onion or two.

Filed by suzy at 11:21 pm under Uncategorized
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