Once upon a time I drove past a crematorium with an opening soon sign and a gas bar-b-que sitting out front. I always regretted not taking a picture of it. This post is about avoiding regret.
Saturday, September 28, 2019
Not for nothing
Once upon a time I drove past a crematorium with an opening soon sign and a gas bar-b-que sitting out front. I always regretted not taking a picture of it. This post is about avoiding regret.
September 29th, 2019 The Build-up to Building
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| This is how the house will appear from the front of the Farm. The house is designed to allow visual access to the entire Farm from the front room. |
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| From the back the house isn't as interesting. But since the house is fairly close to the back of the Farm, and there is a large kennel behind the house made from half of our current tiny house, it doesn't need to be very interesting. |
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| This is the side where the bedroom and bath will be located. The bedroom is located at the farthest point away from the road. The windows above the porch in this area are there to light the attic. |
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| You can click on this to see a bigger picture. The house is simple and relatively small. |
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| This is the site plan with elevations. The blue parts are access. The red parts are things that used to be on the Farm This image isn't really true to the actual scale but it seemed to make the County happy. |
Friday, September 27, 2019
September 27th, 2019 Catching Up
I usually do these things weekly, but last week was particularly taxing and busy.
We started off the week building a new shelter for the Summer Supper, which came Saturday evening. We have built three of these "Hoop House" styled shelters. The first was built two years ago and used for a greenhouse until this Summer's tree took the thing down for the last time. In its short life its film cover had been torn many times by animals and mistakes, the roof completely collapsed by snow and rebuilt. We used many part from this first shelter in building the new one. We also used the experience to make some changes to the design. The second one we built was the shelter for the first Summer Supper last Summer. I had some new ideas, built it larger, and gave it a fabric floor early on. I also tried out a new way of anchoring the thing to the ground by pouring heavy gravel over the margin of plastic film. This scheme worked for the most part, but the older style of using minimal steel tubing and a low pitched roof failed in the show just the same night as did the greenhouse roof. Cheap as these things were, they wore out a bit quickly. This latest shelter is built a bit heavier, using about a third more steel tubing spaced about a foot closer. I also changed the roof pitch to forty-five degrees, much higher than the previous sixty degrees which collapsed easily in the snow. I put a cloth floor in it and put the shade cloth cover on before adding the plastic sheeting. With a bit of luck, this shelter should perform a bit better than the previous versions.
The Summer Supper was a bit of a flop because none of the local neighbors came this time around. They all showed up last time, none of them RSVPd last year either, so the lack of notice didn't give us enough information to cut back. But we did have a good sized party none the less. We made food for seventy-five and fed about twenty-five. The biggest problem was in finding homes to all of the left-overs. We will be eating very good chili-dogs and chili-burgers all Winter long. No complaints from us.
Following the Summer Supper we re-purposed the new shelter we re-purposed the shelter to become a convenient place to store building materials for the upcoming house build. THE BIG NEWS is that we were able to pick up the permits for the new house build! We will begin building as soon as we are sure that the weather will cooperate, but buying parts and tools began right away. We needed a new compressor to push the bigger tools and spray drywall texture once the house is mostly put together. We also got a lazer level to help insure the thing is square and plumb. We will begin laying the new house out this week.
As if there were some spare time last week, on Friday we arranged my driving to LaGrande to pick up our two new Basset Hound females. At the time of purchase, we figured we wouldn't pick them up in the same week as the Summer Supper. We never dreamed we would also get permits in the same week. And the breeder gave us a date which made Friday the only day to get the new girls.
The new girls were a bit skittish at first, but the Summer Supper guests held them sufficiently to break the fear of people. Both of the new girls are very pretty, Abba Zabba is especially so. Her stance is perfect, her coloring is wonderful. Her sister Bit-o-Honey is turning out to have very light brown fur. This is unique in a tri-color, but very nice to look at. Follow the girls progress on out Rocketdog Blog, the link is at the top of the page.
Laffee Taffee is coming near to her due date. We expect she will deliver five or six pups within the next week. So it appears we will stay busy until at least mid-December. But this week has been quite busy already.
We spent yesterday moving about half of what is being stored in the Shipping Container into the new shelter. With the space we gained by putting stuff that is not easily damaged out in the new shelter we can now move all of the stuff we have in dry storage in town into the Shipping Container. The move will not only save money every month, it will allow us to use some things we have been missing since moving here. The time it took to get the permits means we will be living in our very temporary tiny home for two full Winters. The missing stuff we had in offsite storage will allow us to make waffles, replace dishes, and wear different clothing than that we brought here or bought once here.
Today Ann and her good friend Beth spent the morning harvesting potatoes for Winter eating. We got a good crop, quite a bit more than last year, and one more variety. I was able to help them dig the dirt for some of the time, but I had to get the new back porch and laundry room set up to have Taffee's litter.
This week started out as busy as every day last week, and it doesn't look like things will slow down for a very long while.
Following the Summer Supper we re-purposed the new shelter we re-purposed the shelter to become a convenient place to store building materials for the upcoming house build. THE BIG NEWS is that we were able to pick up the permits for the new house build! We will begin building as soon as we are sure that the weather will cooperate, but buying parts and tools began right away. We needed a new compressor to push the bigger tools and spray drywall texture once the house is mostly put together. We also got a lazer level to help insure the thing is square and plumb. We will begin laying the new house out this week.
As if there were some spare time last week, on Friday we arranged my driving to LaGrande to pick up our two new Basset Hound females. At the time of purchase, we figured we wouldn't pick them up in the same week as the Summer Supper. We never dreamed we would also get permits in the same week. And the breeder gave us a date which made Friday the only day to get the new girls.
The new girls were a bit skittish at first, but the Summer Supper guests held them sufficiently to break the fear of people. Both of the new girls are very pretty, Abba Zabba is especially so. Her stance is perfect, her coloring is wonderful. Her sister Bit-o-Honey is turning out to have very light brown fur. This is unique in a tri-color, but very nice to look at. Follow the girls progress on out Rocketdog Blog, the link is at the top of the page.
Laffee Taffee is coming near to her due date. We expect she will deliver five or six pups within the next week. So it appears we will stay busy until at least mid-December. But this week has been quite busy already.
We spent yesterday moving about half of what is being stored in the Shipping Container into the new shelter. With the space we gained by putting stuff that is not easily damaged out in the new shelter we can now move all of the stuff we have in dry storage in town into the Shipping Container. The move will not only save money every month, it will allow us to use some things we have been missing since moving here. The time it took to get the permits means we will be living in our very temporary tiny home for two full Winters. The missing stuff we had in offsite storage will allow us to make waffles, replace dishes, and wear different clothing than that we brought here or bought once here.
Today Ann and her good friend Beth spent the morning harvesting potatoes for Winter eating. We got a good crop, quite a bit more than last year, and one more variety. I was able to help them dig the dirt for some of the time, but I had to get the new back porch and laundry room set up to have Taffee's litter.
This week started out as busy as every day last week, and it doesn't look like things will slow down for a very long while.
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
September 17, 2019 Permitted at Long Last
It has always been my habit of recounting the history of Creekside Farm every time we hit a new milestone. Today they approved the permits for building our farmhouse. This approval came at a tremendous cost, monetarily, physically, and emotionally. Every step we've taken has been a part of a much larger plan, also part of the gamble as well.
The whole project has been a gamble from the very beginning, one which we entered into with eyes wide open. I wrote the story about how all this began in October of 2015, about two years after we actually began the project, about the time we actually gave a name to the property which would become our farm. Anyone wanting to read this account can find it in the archive menu to the right of this article. What happened was an extraordinary chain of events.
We found the property by accident, then tracked down a woman who could lay claim to it, who died soon after, leaving a brother behind to take our payments. We bought quite a few hound dogs and went headlong into the breeding business, all in order to find some money to move the project forward. We sold our house in North Plains to get the money to build too. The money we got, along with an inheritance and hound dog profits, has brought us this far. Things started off easily enough, mostly because it was all a big dream. But things did not always go as planned.
I was in my third year at Pacific University, headed for law school, when we found the property. We found the lady who could help reclaim the property from tax foreclosure soon after that. We began cleaning the place up as our dogs began producing enough money to pay for tractor rentals and back tax bills. In December I got word that my sore throat was a cancerous thing and our dreams of Creekside Farm kept me going through the pain and loss of my law school dreams. We spent a bunch of money cleaning the place up so that we could actually see the ground below our feet. School, and a lack of sufficient funds, slowed the project, but we did what we could in the early running.
When we first approached the County Land Use and Development desk we had no idea of how to go about securing permissions to build. They seemed helpful enough and pointed out the first step to take. The Farm (we were growing food by then, so it was a farm) was included in the FEMA 100 year flood plain boundary and needed some special attention. We got a flood plain engineer and got going.
We had initially planned to borrow the money to build using conventional bank financing, but this fell through despite massive home equity and long job histories. Rather than get stopped we decided to build a tiny home, sell the house, and use the proceeds to build in October of 2015. I had recently graduated from the University, built the first tiny home, raised two more litters of puppies, moved us to the Farm, built a second tiny home, and sold the house, all in the span of nine months following the throat surgery. Ann's parents had left her a tidy sum at about the same time, so project money was no longer the problem. The problem became finding the way to get a permit to build.
With cash in hand to buy permits and build a house we rejoined the permit process with the County. The flood plain thing turned out to be a major holdup. Siting the house proved very tricky because we could only build a house if we could prove that our home would be sited above the flood plain boundary. We had some proof that led us to believe this wouldn't be a problem, but the County insisted on professionally stamped paperwork proving our assertions. It took nearly a year to get the County to approve the home site and allow us to proceed to the next step: hiring an architect to make professionally stamped drawings of a design I had already drawn. The Architect did some good work and we moved on to getting a structural engineer to once more provide professionally engineered stamped drawings to prove that the house we had drawn up would not fall or blow over. All of this drawing was expensive and time consuming. We spent the months clearing the land and making new fields to plant. Our cash was beginning to dwindle a bit by the time we finally got all of the paperwork together. It was early Spring of 2019 when we finally made our application.
The application immediately became a problem. The flood plain people still had misgivings which were unexpressed and many other things happened to slow the process. There is no need to worry over these things here, just mention them as the most stressful portion of the project to date. The process was nearing completion when a large tree fell on me and ruined the Summer. Fortunately for us, the end product of the permit process waited until I was back on my feet and ready to build. Today we have the go ahead. We know there are still many hurdles to jump, fires to put out or start, and challenges yet un-noticed. But as of today we are moving forward once more.
Today we raked about one ton of gravel from one of the last genuinely trashy places left to clean up and this week we built a new hoop house shelter to house our second Summer Supper party. In addition to all of this we are picking up two move females to continue our breeding program on Friday and one of our girl hounds is having an unexpected litter of puppies in the first days of October. Needless to say it, things are wildly busy, but we like it that way.
As of today we still have the money to build, but not much more than that. The plan we began in 2013, the gamble we entered into in 2015, and all of the ups and downs since the beginning, have all brought us to this place and this time. The next few months will either be wildly busy as we begin to build, or merely fairly busy if the weather doesn't cooperate with building plans. No matter which, we look forward to the experience.
The whole project has been a gamble from the very beginning, one which we entered into with eyes wide open. I wrote the story about how all this began in October of 2015, about two years after we actually began the project, about the time we actually gave a name to the property which would become our farm. Anyone wanting to read this account can find it in the archive menu to the right of this article. What happened was an extraordinary chain of events.
We found the property by accident, then tracked down a woman who could lay claim to it, who died soon after, leaving a brother behind to take our payments. We bought quite a few hound dogs and went headlong into the breeding business, all in order to find some money to move the project forward. We sold our house in North Plains to get the money to build too. The money we got, along with an inheritance and hound dog profits, has brought us this far. Things started off easily enough, mostly because it was all a big dream. But things did not always go as planned.
I was in my third year at Pacific University, headed for law school, when we found the property. We found the lady who could help reclaim the property from tax foreclosure soon after that. We began cleaning the place up as our dogs began producing enough money to pay for tractor rentals and back tax bills. In December I got word that my sore throat was a cancerous thing and our dreams of Creekside Farm kept me going through the pain and loss of my law school dreams. We spent a bunch of money cleaning the place up so that we could actually see the ground below our feet. School, and a lack of sufficient funds, slowed the project, but we did what we could in the early running.
When we first approached the County Land Use and Development desk we had no idea of how to go about securing permissions to build. They seemed helpful enough and pointed out the first step to take. The Farm (we were growing food by then, so it was a farm) was included in the FEMA 100 year flood plain boundary and needed some special attention. We got a flood plain engineer and got going.
We had initially planned to borrow the money to build using conventional bank financing, but this fell through despite massive home equity and long job histories. Rather than get stopped we decided to build a tiny home, sell the house, and use the proceeds to build in October of 2015. I had recently graduated from the University, built the first tiny home, raised two more litters of puppies, moved us to the Farm, built a second tiny home, and sold the house, all in the span of nine months following the throat surgery. Ann's parents had left her a tidy sum at about the same time, so project money was no longer the problem. The problem became finding the way to get a permit to build.
With cash in hand to buy permits and build a house we rejoined the permit process with the County. The flood plain thing turned out to be a major holdup. Siting the house proved very tricky because we could only build a house if we could prove that our home would be sited above the flood plain boundary. We had some proof that led us to believe this wouldn't be a problem, but the County insisted on professionally stamped paperwork proving our assertions. It took nearly a year to get the County to approve the home site and allow us to proceed to the next step: hiring an architect to make professionally stamped drawings of a design I had already drawn. The Architect did some good work and we moved on to getting a structural engineer to once more provide professionally engineered stamped drawings to prove that the house we had drawn up would not fall or blow over. All of this drawing was expensive and time consuming. We spent the months clearing the land and making new fields to plant. Our cash was beginning to dwindle a bit by the time we finally got all of the paperwork together. It was early Spring of 2019 when we finally made our application.
The application immediately became a problem. The flood plain people still had misgivings which were unexpressed and many other things happened to slow the process. There is no need to worry over these things here, just mention them as the most stressful portion of the project to date. The process was nearing completion when a large tree fell on me and ruined the Summer. Fortunately for us, the end product of the permit process waited until I was back on my feet and ready to build. Today we have the go ahead. We know there are still many hurdles to jump, fires to put out or start, and challenges yet un-noticed. But as of today we are moving forward once more.
Today we raked about one ton of gravel from one of the last genuinely trashy places left to clean up and this week we built a new hoop house shelter to house our second Summer Supper party. In addition to all of this we are picking up two move females to continue our breeding program on Friday and one of our girl hounds is having an unexpected litter of puppies in the first days of October. Needless to say it, things are wildly busy, but we like it that way.
As of today we still have the money to build, but not much more than that. The plan we began in 2013, the gamble we entered into in 2015, and all of the ups and downs since the beginning, have all brought us to this place and this time. The next few months will either be wildly busy as we begin to build, or merely fairly busy if the weather doesn't cooperate with building plans. No matter which, we look forward to the experience.
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Sept. 8, 2018 An easy week
It seemed that the past week proved itself to be of little difficulty. The crops came in well. The weather a bit cool, but nice right up until Saturday in the late afternoon.
With the cooler weather, Ann had little trouble weeding the Gardens and put out a bunch of Chrysanthemums to begin propagating the multitudes we will need. I had spent some time looking at the Japanese people's love of 'mums and thought we needed to start adding them to our future Fall planting plans. We have quite a lot of Spring and late Winter flowers, and a fair amount of Early and mid-Summer plantings as well. But the Fall color is still needed so we began with planting 'Mums for division in the Spring.
The Market Garden put out a fair amount of produce.this week. Ann sold quite a bit of it and gave a bunch to people who have helped us out during my my healing weeks. We also ate a whole lot of it and prepared a bunch for freezing to eat in the Winter months. We haven't got the space for canning or we would have done it this week. There is still plenty of season left for harvesting and we are looking forward to it all.
I spent the week on my feet without any trouble at all. I saw the foot doctor on Monday and he told me that my foot is pretty far advanced in the healing process. I'm guessing this is because I take my own counsel over his and work the bone harder than he would have me do. All of my other injuries are nearly insignificant now as well.
Since we are expecting puppies in early October I spent the week building an eight by eight foot addition to our tiny home. This involved putting up a deck and some short walls, then putting a hoop house styled roof on it to keep the rains out. I got it finished just as the rains came in. We moved all of our door hanging coat racks out there and this opened up quite a bit of space in the tiny home. We will eventually move the chest freezer out there when Laffee Taffee moves into the house for whelping. The space will become puppy play-land after a few weeks of growth and the Hounds Winter home after the puppies leave us in December.
We spent Saturday moving things around to get ready to build the Summer Supper shelter. I had already leveled the space last week, but the surrounding area had a lot of parts on it that made the place look disorganized. I tilled the area in front of the new shelter to knock any rocks or trash to the surface and we will rake all of it up this week.
We spent Saturday moving things around to get ready to build the Summer Supper shelter. I had already leveled the space last week, but the surrounding area had a lot of parts on it that made the place look disorganized. I tilled the area in front of the new shelter to knock any rocks or trash to the surface and we will rake all of it up this week.
The Summer Supper plans are going forward with two weeks left to go. Make sure to RSVP using the form at the top of this page to let us know you are coming. As was last year, there will be plenty of everything. The menu is simple Burgers and Dogs this year, but also Ann's Camp Creekside Chili, which is delicious and not at all too spicy, so don't miss it. We're really looking forward to the Supper and hope everyone comes that can.
Next week is mostly taken up building the Summer Supper shelter. This will will eventually become dry space where we can begin accumulating parts for the new house. We may get the County's go ahead this month, but the rains will come too quickly for us to start building this year. Buying parts is going to take a while and we need to save as much money on parts as we can by shopping sales and closeout places.
The statistics tell me that quite a few people are reading these posts. I would do them even if nobody was reading, but I appreciate the time people take in keeping up with our progress. Thanks to all.
Monday, September 2, 2019
Sept. 2, 2019 A nice week
The Farm started throwing us nice days this week. Every one of them a winner. Warm in the daytime, cool at night. A wonderful week. To be honest, since the tree fall a few months ago, my love for the place had started to wain just a bit. This week brought all the love and enthusiasm for it back to me.
The Market Garden started to produce some really nice vegetables this week. Peppers, Beans, and Cucumbers all started producing as they should. There are twenty-two Sugar Baby Watermelons growing on the fifteen feet of row-space that made it through the rodent wars. The Corn is giving us six to eight nice ears daily too, and we even got a few zucchinis this week, so we know there will be way too many of both of these things in another week or so. Tomatoes are everywhere, particularly the yellow pears, which are bit sized and wonderfully sweet. Ann made Camp Creekside Pico de Gallo using fresh produce and a ton of fresh cilantro and we are eating it on everything. Plus we are either selling or giving away a whole lot of good food. Ann started fermenting pickles. Looks like hell, but this is how our great grand-mothers did it, and they were smart, so we'll have to see the result. Fermenting pickle means they can live on the counter instead of our way too small refrigerator.
I began a new craft project this week, carving Feather-stone into landscape decor. So far I have done one good rustic pagoda, and one little frog house which came out nicely.
Feather-stone is a volcanic glass, something a bit lighter than pumice. It carves very easily and looks great without much finish work. We had always planned for the Farm to produce craft items and this one is the first of many we hope to someday make for people to buy.
This first one was quick and fun to make. the picture on the left shows what an unplanned hour can do with very few tools. I have since bought a few new tools and taken the time to finish it. Afterward we plan to "paint" it with a moss and yogurt solution so that it has a sense of age to it.
We started in building the shelter for the Summer Supper on the twenty-first. Make sure to sign up using the form at the top of this page. It will be a good time and everything is provided.
On Friday morning we got the revised engineering drawings for the new house delivered to the County. The counter girl said this is the last hurdle, but we're not celebrating until we have the approvals in hand. There's a good chance that we will get our permits too late in the year to start building. Rains come in less than two months and the mud keeps large equipment from moving on the Farm. Perhaps we'll get the foundations in before the rains come. . . If so we might get the framing done before Winter sets in. . . And if the stars all align and the Winter is dry we might even get the roof on it so that we can begin making a house. But the Summer weather has been cool this year, so we'll look hard at things before deciding.
Friday after noon brought the final word on Laffee Taffe. She is going to have at least five puppies in early October. It is not entirely good news, but we have made peace with the idea and are getting ready for their coming. We started to build an eight by eight foot addition to the back of the tiny home to give the babies somewhere to play during the day. It should be done this week. In mid-September our two new females will arrive from Idaho, so things will be a bit "poopy" around here until December when the babies go to their new homes. Christmas Basset Hound Pups are always the perfect gift for anyone eight to eighty. We had our little hot tub put back together last week and spent nearly every evening soaking the pains of life away since then. But we had to empty it this morning to begin building the puppy room extension, so we'll be sad for a few days before it heats back up.
All said and done, this has been a good productive week and it looks like there will be another following after it.
The Market Garden started to produce some really nice vegetables this week. Peppers, Beans, and Cucumbers all started producing as they should. There are twenty-two Sugar Baby Watermelons growing on the fifteen feet of row-space that made it through the rodent wars. The Corn is giving us six to eight nice ears daily too, and we even got a few zucchinis this week, so we know there will be way too many of both of these things in another week or so. Tomatoes are everywhere, particularly the yellow pears, which are bit sized and wonderfully sweet. Ann made Camp Creekside Pico de Gallo using fresh produce and a ton of fresh cilantro and we are eating it on everything. Plus we are either selling or giving away a whole lot of good food. Ann started fermenting pickles. Looks like hell, but this is how our great grand-mothers did it, and they were smart, so we'll have to see the result. Fermenting pickle means they can live on the counter instead of our way too small refrigerator.
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| My first effort. |
Feather-stone is a volcanic glass, something a bit lighter than pumice. It carves very easily and looks great without much finish work. We had always planned for the Farm to produce craft items and this one is the first of many we hope to someday make for people to buy.
This first one was quick and fun to make. the picture on the left shows what an unplanned hour can do with very few tools. I have since bought a few new tools and taken the time to finish it. Afterward we plan to "paint" it with a moss and yogurt solution so that it has a sense of age to it.
We started in building the shelter for the Summer Supper on the twenty-first. Make sure to sign up using the form at the top of this page. It will be a good time and everything is provided.
On Friday morning we got the revised engineering drawings for the new house delivered to the County. The counter girl said this is the last hurdle, but we're not celebrating until we have the approvals in hand. There's a good chance that we will get our permits too late in the year to start building. Rains come in less than two months and the mud keeps large equipment from moving on the Farm. Perhaps we'll get the foundations in before the rains come. . . If so we might get the framing done before Winter sets in. . . And if the stars all align and the Winter is dry we might even get the roof on it so that we can begin making a house. But the Summer weather has been cool this year, so we'll look hard at things before deciding.
Friday after noon brought the final word on Laffee Taffe. She is going to have at least five puppies in early October. It is not entirely good news, but we have made peace with the idea and are getting ready for their coming. We started to build an eight by eight foot addition to the back of the tiny home to give the babies somewhere to play during the day. It should be done this week. In mid-September our two new females will arrive from Idaho, so things will be a bit "poopy" around here until December when the babies go to their new homes. Christmas Basset Hound Pups are always the perfect gift for anyone eight to eighty. We had our little hot tub put back together last week and spent nearly every evening soaking the pains of life away since then. But we had to empty it this morning to begin building the puppy room extension, so we'll be sad for a few days before it heats back up.
All said and done, this has been a good productive week and it looks like there will be another following after it.
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