Some Assembly Requred

Which box contains the instructions?

5/14 we had three truckloads of materials delivered.  While the house is now on site it will be take some doing before it actually looks like a house.  Nickelmen Construction has been charged with the huge task of making it work.  So far they are working on flooring framing and they have not had an easy go of it.  Marrying up an un-level cement block foundation with a new poured foundation had given them a few reasons to scratch their heads.  We are so fortunate to have such accomplished guys working on this project. 

As framing continues this week,  our excavator is readying the foundation for the concrete slabs to be poured.  Chris and Ron Frye came up with the creative idea to use the cement cylinders as fill for the garage.  The building inspector and engineer ok'd the idea and we will save some $ and use up some of those pesky cylinders.

The grape vines have lots of baby bunches of grapes. 
You can see the bee hives in the upper right.

The garden is growing like crazy!  I have canned several pints of strawberries and this week I hope to can peas.    Everything is up and growing.  My June bearing berries are almost done and the summer squashes will be ready to be harvested this weekend.

The warmer than usual weather has had many effects.  This morning I discovered a caterpillar nesting ground on the broccoli.  I harvested what I could and cut out any crawlies I could find.  While I was mourning the loss of broccoli,  the chickens had a feast! The flea beetles have my eggplant leaves looking like lace.  I sprayed them off with the hose then treated the leaves with some hort oil.  Fortunately the three eggplants that are hanging look fine.

I am a bit disappointed in the rhubarb and I think I am going to rip it up and try a new variety.  The problem is that I have a variety that does not turn red.  In my mind, rhubarb should be red and I really don't like eating green rhubarb. 

The End of the Alley, Junk Yard Alley

The area formerly known as junk yard alley is no more.  Last weekend we hauled the last of the trash into the dumpster.  We still have to pinch ourselves to believe the trash is gone.  Some highlights of what we found.....

• 100's of shower door 
• toilets in many colors
• sinks in many colors
• formica laminate
• corian countertops
• whirlpool tub
• shower
• steel girders
• dishwashers
• ovens
• stoves
• cabinet doors
• 6 wheel barrows
• corrugated metal roofing
• culvert pieces
• pvc pipe
• many many tires
• ride on lawn mower
• tile attached to subfloor
• pink and purple big wheel
• hundreds of 5 gallon plastic buckets
• cutouts from bathroom sink holes
• an international truck with 1988 plates
• fire escape ladder

Turkey Nest,  notice the poision ivy.

Now that the tough stuff is done we were able to take on a fun project.  The four of us blazed a trail about 1/2 mile thru the woods.  Jackson is anxiously awaiting his new mountain bike so he can attack the trails.  About two dys after the trail was finished,  we came across a turkey nest with a dozen eggs.  I guess we will have to avoid that part of the trail for now.  Yesterday while making breakfast,  I only had one egg and was very tempted to grab one of these and see if anyone would notice.  I think the eggs should hatch around June 1st.  I am very tempted to go out on May 31, grab a few eggs, and raise Thanksgiving dinner.

The garden looks so nice,  this time before the weeds take over things always look so promising.  We have been getting strawberries daily and if we have the warm days promised by the weatherman tomorrow should be a bumper crop.  The potato experiment is going well.  Both the grow bags and the bed of straw have potatos growing.  We have also been fortunate to have many fresh lettuce salads.

Foundation

This is taken standing on the front porch.  The boys are leaning on what will be the mudroom and behind them are the forms for the garage foundation walls.  looking into the basement you can see the door to the vault room.

The concrete boys did lots of work last week as they set and poured the foundation walls.  It realy gave us a look at the size of the new garage and add-ons.  Chris had a busy weekend moving the water pressure tank to prepare for the concrete floors to be poured. 

The bees have survived their move to their new hives and it looks like all three colonies are thriving. They all released their own queen from her cage and have begun making honey and pollen stores.  Yoda had a run in with the bees in their first days here.  All of a sudden he came bolting around the corner at full speed rolling and rubbing in the grass to try knocking them off.  I guess that will teach him to not play with the hives.

Yoda has been the constant source of entertainment.  Last week while talking to Chris on the phone,  I decided to feed the chickens.  Yoda seized the opportunity to enter the coop and exit via the chicken door into the chicken run.  He had a grand time pouncing on chickens.  They were not amused by his antics.  I had dropped the phone to chase the dog and apparently did a lot of shrieking.  When I found the phone I had dropped in my panic,  Chris was still on the line.  His only comment was that it sounded like a 911 call.

Jackson and I made a planting bed this weekend.  He worked really hard to dig, separate and plant some bulbs.  We also planted some flowering quince and lamium.  We (I really mean me) are having a hard time not buying all the plants that are out at the stores right now.  We did buy some cool things ... pink forsythias, hollyhocks, corkscrew grass and landulum. Since I will have to try to keep some of them alive until the house is ready for landscaping,  I decided to try my hand at propagation.  I've divided and replanted several plants.  Hopefully come fall they will be alive and have a spot by the new house in which to grow.

Progress

Chickens using the "Chicken Jungle Gym"
as well as shading themselves under Jim's chicken pergola.

We have had lots of progress this week. The footers are dug and poured and the basement is entirely cleaned out. The mason has finished his fixes and tuck pointing. We narrowed down our stone choices to one color and the brick color is down to two choices. We made some changes to the garage layout which have necessitated a new building permit so we are waiting on that to come through. We ordered exterior doors and windows this week as well. With all the progress it is hard to not get overly excited. The boys are talking about how to decorate their rooms and I even got a paint chip deck from the paint store.

Hard to read but the bright orange sign says
"Grandma and Grandpa's place."

We also had a nice visit from Julie's parents. Boy did they accomplish lots while they were here. Jim cut vines and trees along the driveway, the property front and in the woods. We are lucky he can wield a chainsaw. Jim and Marie cleaned the future movie room in the house, that was a chore we have been avoiding for weeks. The chickens needed a spot for shade so Jim and Marie also repurposed a pallet into a chicken pergola. Those are just some of the highlights. The chores they helped us with are just too numerous to mention. We tried to get them to stay longer in the lush accommodations of the barn, but the call of a hot bath and actual beds won out over the port-a-potty and camping cots.

Chris installed 3 new bee colonies this week. They seem to be doing fine and settling in to their new homes nicely. Julie had to pick up the bee packages in her car (not the open bed truck). Ask Jim and Marie about their ride with 10,000 bees, some of whom were not in their nice bee packages. I am sure you will get a good story out of them!

The garden is just waiting for life. While the asparagus had several spears it is lacking the quantity to feed the family. So we will wait another year and hopefully next year will be a bumper crop. The blossoms on the strawberries look so promising, they are both large and numerous. The broccoli is looking good, and the parsnips, fennel, squash, lettuce and cabbage have all germinated. This weekend I hope to put in lots more to really get things going.

I give this week 5 shovels

shovels and some other things we found

That is how many shovels we found this week.  We worked on cleaning out the basement and we finished cleaning out the little shed.  We still have not found the box of money that must be here somewhere,  but we keep trying.  We all found some treasures this weekend. Chris plans to salvage the little shed to repurpose as a wood shed and I have been saving some random wood to make some sort of a wall hanging.  Jackson found a whole box of switches to which he said "These are exactly what I need!"  He also salvaged several spools of wire which he plans to put to good use.  Cooper would have found treasure as well,  but every time we came across a dead snake, snake skin or animal skull, we swiftly tossed them out of sight.

I installed the automatic solar chicken door this week and Chris is still working on the nesting box, otherwise the coop and run are looking good.  We moved the chickens into the coop yesterday.  I am sure it was a comical sight to see Cooper and I trying to catch them all,  transfer them to a pet carrier then walk them to the new coop.The chickens are very wary to leave the coop and explore their new surroundings so the chicken run remains unused as of yet.  We have clearly identified one rooster and possibly a second,  which means we will probably need to have fresh chicken for dinner soon.

This week we had enough material to write our own country song.  The bees are all dead,  the pipes froze, turkeys ate all our newly planted grass seed and the toilet overflowed.  However we are lucky enough to get on the list and we have 3 packages of bees arriving April 7th,  warmer weather is coming and I have 100 lbs of grass seed waiting to be planted.  As always,  life is good!

Bringing down the house

If you were to see Chris or I this week,  we have huge grins we can't get rid of.  They took down the old house this week,  it was a huge milestone for this project.  It took two days to get the house down and I think a lot simpler than anyone had anticipated. 

Telehandler getting ready to knock down the fireplace.

I have been keeping myself busy planting grass.  I hate planting and growing grass,  but it is a necessary evil and I only do so much each day.  Then I spend the rest of my day on more fun things like getting the chicken coop ready.  They are ready to move,  but we have no fence up for them.  I dug a trench to bury the fence and buried hardware mesh around the coop structure 4in deep and 12 inches out. Hopefully this will keep the digging predators out.  I dug two of four post holes for the fence,  we should be able to get the fence up lickety split this weekend.

I have also been trying to work in the garden sporadically.  I am doing an experiment with the potatoes this year.  I have some growing in grow pots (black bags)  in straw and some growing in a bed covered with straw.  I am curious to see which method produces the nicest and the most potatoes.  This week I got our "orchard" planted.  We have 6 trees including peach, apple, pear and cherries.  The pies will be wonderful!

Another monumental event happened today when the Steves (scrap metal guys) came to the door and said they were finished.  Hard to believe that that job ended as there was more metal here than Wrigley's has gum (thanks JT for that analogy).

Things are looking good these days.  We are giddy with the progress we have made and Chris is happy that I have stopped looking at finished houses for sale.

Busy, Busy Busy

Now we have tractor envy.

I has been a busy couple of weeks!  Our guy Ron,  has been busy clearing away junk from what we affectionately call Junk Yard Alley.  He also cleaned up the brush and little trees behind the house.  They worked about 3 days and it looks like a whole new place.  I will refrain from commenting on what we did with a lot of the cylinders,  but they will forever be close by. 

Ron also came by one evening and moved the shed.  I painted it red and have some minor modifications to make then we will have a bonafide chicken coop.  Not a moment to soon either,  the chickens are ready for their outdoor home this weekend.  We did loose one chicken so we have 11 now ready for the cozy new home.

Steve and Steve came back to collect scrap metal after almost a year long break.  Today they are going to take the copper wire out of the old house and a few misc scraps.  I am always amazed by the little scraps they will go to great pains to collect.

I have been selling bricks from the piles.  So far we have three different people taking bricks and you still can't tell where they took them from.  We have decided to use one pile ourselves to brick the house to grade in the back.  Something tells me that we will still have extra when the project is complete.

We are still working with the county to get our building permit.  Health, engineering and zoning have all signed off and tomorrow I meet with land development for the grading plan and final sign off...hopefully. 

We have had so many people stopping by this week.  Several people to look at bricks and cylinders,  one neighbor stopped by and took me to her house for advice on fruit trees and moving a Japanese maple,  another neighbor and his daughter hiked thru the woods just to say hi,  but the most interesting was the soils testing guy who stopped by.  He had done a soils test for us back in 2009 before we bought the property.  He happened to be in the area and wanted to see how we were fairing.  We chatted about the progress and he asked about our plans for the old doors and windows in the house.  Apparently he is building a log cabin and is going to take the old doors and windows for his own project.  It just caught us by surprise but we are so happy to reduce the amount of waste from this project.