December 26th, 2020 The last week of 2020

 For the World, if not for us, 2020 was a horrible year. Fire, Flood, Protest, Pandemic, and a political system being stretched to the limits. But we made it through with little trouble. Our only New Years resolution for 2020 was to build a house and this actually happened. 

We began 2020 with the wooden forms for the concrete foundations in place. In January we poured concrete, stripped to forms off, and bolted down the "mud plate". By May we had the first floor nailed down and the underfloor plumbing installed. By September the walls and roof were all framed in and sometime in October we had the sheathing and roof paper installed. October and November were spent roughing in the plumbing and electrical, including building the new utility shed to house the water and electrical services. In December we got the house "dried in" by adding windows, doors, and Tyvek sheeting to the outside. The final framing, electrical, and plumbing rough in inspections done in late December and so begins the comparatively easier process of finishing the house in 2021.

The finishing projects are much easier simply because we have done all of it before at a professional level. In our last business we spent quite a bit of time doing insulation and drywall, put in copious electrical components and lighting as well. We also did weeks and weeks of painting, so this isn't a problem. Finishing the house should go pretty fast when compared to the hard job of putting the basic house up from the dirt to  ridge. We began buying and installing electrical components right away, once we got the inspections done, but finding the necessary parts might prove a slight problem. 

Wood prices have gone up significantly in the past few months, owing to the pandemic, unnecessary trade wars, and increased local building activity. Insulation products are also getting hard to find and prices are rising there as well. I ordered insulation from one source who said he couldn't find much of my list but the next guy I talked to sounded a bit more optimistic. We haven't received the stuff yet but we are hopeful to start insulating next week.  

Our main power wire installation is running a bit behind too. We were supposed to have PGE power to the new house on the 23rd of December. Now we are looking at mid-January, before they come, providing there isn't any major storm to deal with.

But the house is up, dry, and the wind doesn't run through it anymore, so we're pretty sure we'll have a house to live in in 2021.

We decided to restart our Basset breeding program in the Spring of 2021. This is a good idea as our bank account has begun to become a minor worry and we want to get ahead of it. We have  much to do and not a whole lot of money laying around to get it done, so we are considering whelping pups in our new bedroom while we do the finishing. Whelping takes about twelve weeks from start to finish and we will do much of the finishing in the bedroom before we get pups. Eventually we will move into the house and repurpose half of our tiny house into kennel space, but this won't happen soon enough  so we'll use the new house temporarily since it will be safe, warm, and dry. We have two females available for breeding this coming Spring, and four girls of breeding age by late Fall, so there's a good chance we'll do at least two litters in 2021. We're also hoping for some COVID relief bucks to come in sometime in late Winter, but every dollar not spent or dollars coming in will help insure we get where we are going in 2021. 

Our land is pretty well prepared for farming in the coming year. We spent quite a bit of time clearing and tilling, fertilizing and tending, and we have some good experience in planting and sowing seed in the past few years, so we are looking forward to a good year for growing and selling crops. Our chicken flock is producing very well and we will add some hens to the mix in late Spring. Most of our farming practices are all well known to us now, and we have sold enough of it to know how to do this too. We have our produce stand ready for when the crops show up and 2021 looks to be a great strawberry year this Spring and we are well prepared and ready for.

All things considered we did pretty well last year. And as the New Year arrives we have vaccines on the way. The World is looking forward to shaking off the virus and the strange politics of the last few years. So we are hoping for a substantial bounce in the worldwide happiness quotient in the coming year and hope everyone reading this is as hopeful and ready to smile as we are. The past year has been one big nasty surprise after another, few of them we would wish to see again, so let's not. 

December 19th, 2020 Our Christmas Letter

 This is the third Christmas Letter here at Creekside Farm. Life is good. 

But there is always room for improvement.  You can click on the image below for a better view.

December 12th, 2020 The Week Started of a Bit Rough, but Ended Well

I'm just going to say it: This was a fairly tough week, and it started on Monday. . .

We had a coupon from Home Depot for ten percent off anything, so we decided to buy our roof shingles now, even if there isn't much time to put the roofing on, and saving a few hundred dollars. I have said this all before -If you do something unnecessary, you are inviting disaster. In this case the disaster was manageable and short lived. 

On Monday I took our big trailer down to the Tigard Home Depot to pick up the ninety bundles of roofing we ordered. This was the closest store that had enough of the roofing to allow us to get it all in one place so this is where the whole story started. The crew loaded two palettes on the trailer and it was all going very well. . .  I tied the load down with truck straps and began the trip back to Creekside Farm. . . I got the thing onto the highway and began accelerating to highway speed . . . And at about forty miles an hour one of the straps broke and the whole thing got really interesting for a few seconds. 

The forward-most palette shifted to the right, at the front of the trailer, sending the trailer to the right and fish-tailing the truck because the truck itself is perhaps quite a bit too light for this much load. As I corrected the steering to the left the load shifted once more and the trailer began pushing the truck around.

I tried to steer toward the shoulder but the whole thing was out of whack, so the trailer pushed the the truck hit the guard rail. The entire load became airborne and nearly every bundle of roofing jumped over the guard rail. The trailer broke free and kept going down the highway, eventually stopping fifty feet ahead of where I had finally stopped, but the trailer crossed the highway and landed against the concrete barrier in the middle. 

Needless to say it, but the whole thing shook me up a little. But my luck held out. Nobody got hurt, no other cars became entangled in my follies, the trailer landed right side up, and the truck was still running when I stopped. 

I called 911 and they sent a Tigard cop out. He stopped traffic and I re-attached the trailer and pulled it across the highway and onto the shoulder. I called Ann and she arranged the rental of the big truck and trailer we had used to haul horse compost a few weeks back. Our son Jack jumped out of bed and drove the big truck to where I was sitting and the hard work of loading all of the roofing, much of which was now loose, into the new trailer. While we worked the project a few caring people pulled off the highway and helped out. All of them are appreciated, the Hispanic guy name Christian is especially worthy of praise because he really did a whole lot of work helping us pick all of the stuff up. Jack drove back to the Farm and I stayed behind, solving the problem of getting our trailer hooked to the truck. Eventually I got the truck back home and all of us allowed ourselves to decompress. It was a tough day.

We held off unloading the big trailer until the next morning. The load weighed about six thousand pounds, so moving the load from the highway embankment, over the guard rail, and into the big trailer was quite a lot of work. Moving it again the next morning was quicker work, but the weight was still significant. Eventually we got the load sorted out and back onto our flatbed trailer. We lost about six bundles of roofing in this, but saved enough of it to roof the house.

All in all it wasn't an especially expensive episode. The trailer wasn't hurt, the Truck wasn't hurt. All we lost was a day and a half and about a two hundred dollars in roofing and rentals.  This is the end of the story, but the week didn't start off very well. 

However, the week wasn't a complete washout. We finished closing up the stubborn leaks in our waste water system in the new Farmhouse, called for inspections of water, waste, and electrical rough ins. Got through the inspections with very little trouble and even less necessary changes, and began closing up all of the trenches we had crisscrossing the front of the house. So the week ended pretty well, all things considered. Though all of this was very stress filled, we find ourselves little worse for the wear on Saturday.

In other Farm news we decided to re-open the Rocketdog Wait List. Our new house will soon be livable (soon being a fairly malleable term) so we will once more commence our breeding business and trying to show a profit. We already have three people singed up for the List but expect we will have puppies again in the Spring of next year. Our Chickens have begun providing a dozen eggs a day, which is about right for the size of our flock in Winter. The eggs are beginning to increase in size as the hens get better at making them. We are selling eggs once more. The ducks are happily disturbing our newly planted Tulip and Narcissus bulb bed, but not giving eggs. And the dogs are having a very good time. The Farm looks Christmas-messy, more messy in the daylight, more Christmassy in the dark. All in all we are making good progress on the place.

The weather has been very cold and rainy, so pushing mud back onto the trenches is a bit of a hassle. It is hard to smooth out the mud and the tractor makes ruts more and more as you drive over the bare dirt. But PGE needed the trenches near the Utility Shed filled in so that they can hook power up to our newly approved electrical system in the new house. It will be nice to have water and power out there, but it will still be a little while before we can move into the place. There is still insulation, drywall, a few windows, and a long list of other things needed to make the place our home, so for now we live in the tiny home and look forward to the coming of Spring. But first . . . Winter@CreeksideFarmOregon.

December 3, 2020 Lighting things up a little

 

We put up some of the few Christmas lights we have done since moving into our tiny home cabin. We have lit one of our smaller pine trees every year and this year we added this nice silhouette, The piece is hung on the new utility shed we put up near the driveway. We found the silhouette in the free ads on Craigslist. It is about four feet by four feet and came new in the box. We modified it a little, added back-lighting, and hung it up. Very cool.