October 30th, 2019 Ready to begin building.

Things have been busy this month. This is a bit surprising since October is usually only good for clean-up projects (like clearing out the Summer annual plants). We had quite a bit of dog business: we had a litter of pups and bought two new breeding stock girls. But the most of what we have been doing involved getting dirty.

Since the 9th (my last post) we have been working on the trenches for the new Farmhouse foundation. It has been slow and heavy going. It took five days to prepare the site for digging, then two days to dig everything out using a rented excavator. We had things laid out pretty well, but the newness of using the tools added a bit of time to the project. All in all I spent nine hours digging, but we got the trenches started and dug a long slit trench for the PGE power lines. Then things slowed to a temporary stop.

We had rain, lots of rain, for a week! Things got muddy, slippery, and everything got sticky. We did get the PGE trench inspected and buried on the first day of the rains, but that's about all the happened for a few days. The home site had to sit for a while so as not to destroy all of the work we had done.  But we got back to it eventually, clearing out some extra dirt and shopping concrete providers and such.

We had Jack over to help level the floor in the home site trenches. We rented a plate compactor to level out the dirt after carefully clearing and re-measuring the trenches. We had to add some rock to get the compactor moving properly because the mud is very sticky. but they looked really good at the end. This week we have used three days to put up "batter boards" to keep our string line measurements straight. Batter boards are 2x4s on fence posts, elevated to the floor height of the house, each one is situated to allow us to make and adjust measurements. They  keep the dimensions of the foundation constant so that when we stretch a string between any two points, we can check for accuracy while building concrete forms. Building a square house begins at the bottom and it's hard to build a square house on a crooked foundation, so preparations is key to getting this all right.

After we put up the batter boards we could finally check everything we had done well, and make adjustments. We had to finish cut the walls of quite a few of the trenches and clean it all up and make it work, but today we clean and square.

Finally ready to begin building the forms for the concrete foundation.

October 9th, 2019 Tomorrow. . . We dig!

It took a few years, but tomorrow we will break ground on the new Farmhouse.

The building of the house itself is not a very large project. Ann and I have marked out the rooms, discussed the style points, and estimated the costs. Most of the rooms will be thought of as small(ish), but this is intentional. Ours will be a small(ish) house, very little of which is space intended only on increasing the real estate value of the property. We will put the money we save on building larger into building a very tight, highly sustainable, inexpensive home. 

And it all starts tomorrow with a rental backhoe and some hard work. 

There will be many obstacles, and some miscalculations to contend with, but we will get it done. The weather might get in the way, but we will put on wet foot in front of the next until the weather relents or Summer arrives. The plan is to dig it out, pour it, hammer it, and finish it. The goal is six months from tomorrow.

The lines are the outline of the footing for supporting the foundation of our new house.
I have removed the topsoil completely, leaving only the clay.
We will dig out nine inches of the clay.

The porch space is nearly as large as the interior space.
It only wraps three sides, the back side is for kennel space.

The entire house will be an apartment sized 1026 square feet. 

• One bedroom, merely large enough to hold the bed, a clothing dresser, and a few side tables. 
• There is a small office, only large enough to do the business of the Farm. 
• A large walk in closet. 
• The bathroom has a detached water closet so the space will hold a good sized shower, an interesting old sink vanity, and a two person hot tub. 
• The laundry room is only large enough to hold the laundry machines, and one six foot folding counter top over storage. 
• The "living room is only enough to hold one new couch, a table, and a television. 

Where we put the space where it will do us the most good, in the kitchen and pantry (a lot of pantry). 

The Farm is all about food.

October 8, 2019 Fall color comes to Apple Valley

It is not at all clear that the Valley where Creekside Farm is located is actually called "Apple Valley", but a fellow over in Buxton has a sign up which says it is and that's good enough for us. Apple Valley is a great name for the area and beats the heck out of "Buxton Bottoms" or "Manning Marshes". These may be more accurate, but Apple Valley sounds better so it gets our vote.

Cell-phone pictures don't give the colors their proper due.

The light down in the valley is pretty great most times of the day when the sun shines through. In the early mornings it usually lights the surrounding hillsides long before it reaches the Valley floor where the Farm sits. This morning we got a bit of a light show as the sun peaked through clouds. Between the Farm's magnificently colored flowers and the emerging fall colored trees all around us, it was quite a nice look.

October 5, 2019 A New Google Maps Picture

Every once in a while Google Maps updates their satellite maps, they do this about once every fourteen months. We love it when they do, it takes quite a lot of work to do what's been done, and the satellite picture shows the work. Once of the things we learn from these is how the work we have done aligns with the Farm. Things look properly laid out and square when standing on the dirt, but from above we can see the mistakes.

This Satellite image must have been taken early last May. The new Strawberry field and last our hoop house workshop are there, but the Greenhouse got crushed in June. Also, the Produce Stand  pop-up(the red square) sits where we put it up. I posted about this on May 3rd, and we moved it on May 30th, so it was in May late in the evening when this picture was taken. The greenhouse was collapsed by the tree in June.

To see why we like to see these new images, look at where the Farm was in 2015 when the whole thing began.

October 1, 2019 I found an interesting picture

I was looking around the Internet and found a real estate listing for the Farm which had been made a while before we found the place. It had a picture worth re-posting.

This was the picture I found. It looks like late Spring
The electrical pole is the brown stick looking thing near the middle.
You couldn't get near the pole.

By the time we found it, the pole had become well grown in.
This picture is from a different angle and in late winter.

It took a while to find the dirt.

But eventually this area became the site of our first Farm home.
We have done so much more since then. . .

October 1, 2019 Taffee's first litter

I think the word litter does not adequately describe the concept of having a bunch of puppies, but we'll stick to it and avoid a losing grammatical fight.

Grizelda Laffee Taffee gave birth to five wonderfully healthy little Basset Babies last night and we couldn't be happier about it. For those coming to this page to find out about adopting a long eared fur baby, look at the top of the page for our Rocketdog blog, there is plenty of information to find there.

Taffee finally got everyone bedded down the morning following all of the hubbub.