July 1, 2020 The Faster You Go . . .

The weather has been wonderful at the Farm, for the most part. Mid-seventy degree sunshine nearly every day and just a few days of soaking rain kept things happening and then not happening. But we have been very busy this past week. So busy that it took two weeks to get to writing some of it down. It seems the faster we go, the more we get behind.

The Farmhouse build is still our highest priority. We got the walls up and covered with sheathing a bit more than two weeks ago and spent a week getting much of the roof lumber and supplies brought to the Farm.

We got the new farmhouse'
roof trusses lifted into place. 

Last week we rented a hydraulic lift and spent three days pulling the roof trusses up onto the roof and nailing them to the top of the walls. The lift made the job much easier, but it still took every hour of two and one-half days to carefully pull each individual truss up. The height from the ground, once the truss was lifted, was about twenty-eight feet or there about, so  standing a fet feet higher than this was a bit of adrenaline pumping fun. We had intended to raise the trusses from the ground into place, but we found that the lift couldn't do it because the platform at the end of the long arm couldn't turn to the left or the right. The arm the platform was attached to turned enough to work on the project if we moved the lift a few times so we eventually had to settle for pulling each truss up to the attic floor, moving the lift, and then picking each truss up and placing it. Each truss had to be carefully spaced, using blocks of 2x4, and nailed to the top of each supporting wall, then tying each end of the trusses down with hurricane straps so that the roof wouldn't blow off in a storm. We began work last Thursday morning and got the last truss set in place on Saturday afternoon.

An attic view. 

The whole thing wore us out, both physically and mentally. But it looks very good.

Jack and I are putting the roof sheathing boards onto the trusses this week. Another pretty tough job. We have the scaffolding we bought a month back to work from, but it is still very nerve wracking work because the walls are sixteen feet high off of the dirt and everything is either heavy or on a steep slope. The scaffolding is old, a bit wobbly, and the ground uneven, making things a bit more worrisome. But we are getting through it. Roofing is hard work. Once the sheathing is all up there we will still need to  put on the "through gable" (the gable on the front of the house). It faces the front and must be built on top of the roof we already have framing in. Then tar paper.  This is slow going work, probably second in difficulty only to the foundation work a few months back.

If you click on this picture it might
get large enough to glimpse the new chicks.

Ann gets out of the hard work by doing the Farm work, weeding and early Summer planting this week. She is happy to be on the ground. This week she has cleared and reclaimed quite a large area of dirt, and plants that had seeded themselves in the weeds. She's found dozens of corn plants, pumpkins, and tomatoes rising from last Summer's mulch pile. We tilled it in and plant came up.

We bought twenty more Orpington chicks this past Friday. Our flock is getting a bit old and we had planned to put ten new birds into our flock every year. Last years chicks were put off by the tree fall, so we doubled up this year.

Stanley is just visiting.
A handsome boy for sure.

Chickens produce eggs best early in life, so many of our hens are a bit too old to produce the eggs we need and must be replaced. Last year we had five chickens die off, and ten of them escaped through the tree sized hole on our fence, so new birds are a good idea. We don't make much money on eggs, but we do get free eggs.

In other news, as if there wasn't enough to do, one of the families which had taken a puppy from Laffee Taffee's litter is letting him vacation with his Mom and Dad.  He is a delight.
A big boy, considering his parents, but a really handsome boy with a great personality. He has played, run, and barked himself until his feet and voice are sore. His family will come get him on Friday. We're pretty sure he'll be happy about it, but our dogs might not seeing him go back to Sherwood.