April 17, 2020 Wasting Away in Coronaville

We decided last week to offer people free garden land to plant and so far we have two takers who will use about eight percent of what we have ready to work right now. Feel free to adopt a garden plot and grow whatever you wish. We have tools, time, water, and space. You can grow food to eat or to give away. Get a tan (right up to your sleeves) and have some fun outdoors.

This year we doubled our garden size and are using the new spaces for large volume crops. These are often called "truck" crops. Corn, potatoes, pumpkin, watermelon, and strawberry, all of the roadside stand food.  All the new space is either planted already, or soon will be. And all of our excess production in these new fields will go to St.Vincent dePaul Food Bank this year. The COVID19 thing is weighing heavily on everybody right now.

We spent our time last week primarily building the first two exterior walls of the new Farmhouse. The engineer who did some of our planning drew a robust design which requires us to sheathe both the inside and outside of the end walls to add greater wind and earthquake resistance. But in order for the building inspector to do his work, and us to do insulation, plumbing, and electrical work, we have to frame the end walls and have them inspected prior to building the other walls. This is slightly out of the ordinary. Usually all of the framing is done and then only inspected once.

The design of the house also adds some complexity, since half of the house has an eight foot ceiling height and half is fourteen feet tall. The eight foot walls are fairly simple and easy to stand up once built. Eventually there will be an attic built over this section and walls on top of that. The fourteen foot ceiling height and the somewhat complex window layout makes building and raising the fourteen foot walls very heavy work. We divided the walls into manageable sizes so they could be raised and connected once standing up. The outcome of the walls is very nice and we can't wait to get the rest of the walls up.

We sent out trusty tractor Rosie to the shop last Saturday for a complete service. The spunky little Massey-Ferguson tractor has had a tough life so far but she cleared the land, dug the holes, and tilled the ground for planting. It is surprising how we got so accustomed to using the tractor for so much. We even use it to carry heavy supplies and clean the chicken coop. It will be nice to get her back this week so we can continue to prepare for the growing season.

The dogs added a bit of fun this week when it seemed all of our females went into heat at the same time. Poor male, Clarke Bar, had to be quarantined to keep from having more unexpected puppies. He is a wreck. Puppies are a generally good idea, but not while building a house and planting crops. We'll let some of them get together a bit later on.

The weather all week was great. Sunny, dry, with a light breeze. A very good Spring pattern. Saturday we had some rain to make the crops as happy as we both are.