January 15th, 2021

The world has been very strange of late. Politics, insurrections, and so it goes.

But here at Creekside Farm it has mostly just been wet. Buckets of wet, wet, wet, wet.  Two days ago the West Fork of Dairy Creek came over its banks down the road a bit. Flood stage is 225.6 feet at the back of the property and we got at least that high, but the back of the Farm is really 231 feet so -no problem for us. It has rained nearly every day since my last post. Perhaps two sunny days since Christmas. Wet, wet, wet. The Farm has become its customary mud pit. Walking around requires a bit of care. Luckily for us we have a nice dry house to work on. 

The Farmhouse project was stuck at the framing inspection stage for the past few months and that broke free around mid-December. We also had the rough plumbing and electrical inspections at the same time. All three inspections happened about the same time as main power was hooked up to the house. The inspections had just a few fixes necessary and let a few other things go ahead. 

One was the insulation. We had a bit of a worry getting insulation but it turned out easier than it sounded at first. Another was a slight framing problem which was solved by adding a few boards. The third was replacing one of the Bedroom windows with something that would let a fireman in with a full pack. All of this took a bit of time and money, but it got done. We also needed to bring in some OSB board to finish the framing of the inside of the end walls, and boxes to finish the electrical stuff. Wood prices have continued to rise so a sheet of Oriented Strand Board, which cost twelve dollars in the Summer, is now thirty-two dollars. We only need a few so we were a bit luck anyway. 

Following on the fixes we had the Inspector out again and he gave us the go ahead to insulate the place. This is good since our son Jack is living in the office room of the new house and it was like a refrigerator in there most of the time. We did the insulation in just a few days and invited the Inspector out once more to approve it so that we could finish the sheer walls and start drywall. I did some of the outlet and switches so that we could use the power and disconnect the house from our tiny house cabin. There's less circuit breaker tripping now. and fewer power cords lying around in the mud too. The house is much warmer and once we have drywall up in the main room we ought to be able to heat it with a hair dryer. Improvements abounding at Creekside Farm.

We started carting the drywall out this past week. My little truck can carry about fifteen hundred pounds, so it will take three or four trips to get it all. With that much weight it is also a problem of driving over mud. The truck sinks in a few more inches with every pass. So far, so good.

We built a section of scaffold and put our new panel jack on it so that we can put the drywall ceiling in the great room. The ceiling is fourteen feet high so pushing an eighty pound sheet up and nailing it down is a problem that needed solved. We think we will be able to do the job now but won't start the work until next Monday. The lower ceilings of the Bedroom side won't need scaffolding at all. Note to self: build the next house with eight foot ceilings. 

With the house coming along quickly now we will soon be moving one of our hoop houses out into MacGreggor's Market Garden so that we can begin growing plants for Spring. There is much to do before Spring. A few trees must come down too. 

Our Chickens are laying eggs at a rate above one dozen a day, so egg sales are good. If you need some, and you do, just get in touch. Between egg sales, puppy sales, and stimulus checks, we ought to do okay in 2021.