March 27, 2021 The End is Near

In a world which promises lots of great apocalypses, our lives have a whole lot of things coming together at one time. Winter was a tough one, we got through it. Covid19 nearly wiped us out, but not the us living at Creekside Farm. The house is too much work, we have got so much done. Civil War, nope, that didn't happen either. We even had a rocket blow up and fall from the sky right over the house, while we watched from the comfort of our hot tub. The Daffodils and Tulips are up and some are even flowering. Despite all of the negative possibilities our lives are pretty positive and we hope yours is too. 

One of our female Bassets, Grizelda Laffee Taffee, looked to be coming into labor about a week ago, so we went into full whelping vigilant mode. Not a whole lot of sleep, splitting the nights into two shifts and napping in the afternoons has left us both a bit foggy in the head. But so far she hasn't really been too serious and so we have no choice but to continue waiting her out. The litter is likely all sold out prior to the pups arriving since we have more than twenty people on the wait list for puppies. 

The house build is going a bit slowly since someone has to stay with Taffee for the time being. But we did get much of the remaining drywall put up since my last post and all of the insulation is done. So the new Farmhouse is very comfortable (just in time for the outside temperatures to rise). All in all the Drywall project is looking very good.

We have about eight more panels to put up in the big front room and I have begun taping up the joints and corners. This is not new work for us, we did quite a lot of drywall work in our business and have the tools too. I have begun the laborious work of making everything smooth during those times when Ann has to stay with Taffee or has other farm work to do. There is about six weeks of taping joints and corners before I can start spraying textures and painting walls. We bought a nice little texture gun and airless paint sprayer from Craig's List in past weeks, so we are certainly ready to go once the walls are flat.

I have begun working on getting water to the house in the past few days. Since we have a well and also a temporary pump house we have to move everything but the pump and switches to the new Utility shed, about a hundred feet away, and then hook it all up. We have had a basic plan in place since we started building, and have a hose connection bringing water to the house today (where the Landry room is now located and working), but actually moving everything over is a bit tricky since we are using the water every day. I did bury nearly all of the new transport pipe a few months ago, as well as the long wire from the new Utility Shed to the old pump house, so quite a bit of the hardest work is already done. Moving the water treatment and pressure tank to the utility shed will have to go in two stages though.

The first part is to change the well pump power supply over from the temporary electrical pole and panel the the permanent electrical panel on the utility shed. This part is sort of an easy one. The second part is to hook up the existing old pump house, with the tanks and treatment stuff, up to the new water pipes so that we have treated and softened water all over the Farm and to the new house. We will also have treated water to the tiny home until we move to the new house. These two things will allow me to take a break from this water project and still use the water system while we get the house ready for all the water projects in the new house to be completed. Once we're done with the interior work on the house we'll move on to moving everything else water related into the new Utility Shed to live forever.

We moved a greenhouse out to the Market Garden a few weeks ago. Since then we have been trying to get out there to finish it and begin sprouting the thousands of plants we will need in the late Spring.  We have everything but time, but it will all need to get done in spite of the time we'll have to spend raising puppies and finishing farmhouses. Once the next step in the watering system is complete we will have water and power directly to the new greenhouse. We put in a fabric floor in the greenhouse and positioned one of the long growing tables, a large water tank we will use for a heat sink, and a propane fireplace to bring heat if it begins to get too cold. We need to get this done pretty soon, so the house build will need to take a back seat for farm-working.

Aside from these few things we are beginning to till the ground around the Farm and to make things ready for late Spring planting. Since we have mostly finished trash removal and have been tilling for three years now the process of preparing the soils for planting will be pretty quickly done this year. We already have the soil amendments and seeds ready to go and good weather is getting easier to come by. So farm life will be pretty good this year.

March 7, 2021 Spring Might Have Arrived

It's still Winter here at Creekside Farm, but signs of Spring are everywhere. Our two large bulb beds are all colored in green shoots and there are a few flowers emerging. Daffodil flowers are usually opening right now but the Farm is at the bottom of Apple Valley so things grow more slowly here. Some of the English Daisies we put in the Peaches and Herbs Garden have begun to flower for the first time. We pruned all of our fruit trees a few weeks ago and they are budding out nicely. So, despite the recent snows and ice storms, Spring is looking good here.

We took most of the week away from the house building project to work on the collapsed shop hoop house and move the new greenhouse out to the Market Garden. The new Greenhouse moved easily. It was the last hoop house we built and it looks like our latest design changes are sufficient to last through the harshest parts of Winter here. The new design was also built using all that we had learned from constructing these things, so all of it came apart, moved, and then went back together in less than five hours. One of the Farm's friends, a guy named C.B., came to help out putting the thing up. He seemed interested in learning how i had built it and has a similar project of his own to do. The greenhouse is up, but we still have to put the end walls together and install the doors and heat vents for when the summer heat arrives. There is a new water hydrant to the greenhouse and we have enough heavy power cords to power the fixtures we will eventually have in it.

The new Greenhouse will be stocked with newly built planting tables, a recently acquired potting table, quite a few high intensity grow lighting fixtures, a three hundred gallon water tank, and a propane fireplace heater, and ventilation fans to keep the air moving. All of this stuff has been collected from CraigsList postings and most of it for free. We also have quite a lot of planting soils laying around which came from CraigsList also. So we are prepared for planting and are ordering seeds this week. The Farm itself will need quite a bit of preparation for the planting season, but is still much too wet to do much tilling. Our water system still needs to be installed, but we have the pipes in the ground and a plan in place.

The new Farmhouse project didn't get a lot of attention this past week but it has been our primary focus all Winter. Since our last post we got all of the doors in and the ceiling drywall installed. There is still two rooms to put drywall walls up. The Bathroom used three types of drywall boards which we still need to bring in. The large front room is about a fifth of the way done and we have the sheets to finish it.

Most of the electrical work is in, but there are still a few things to get working. We have lights and heat in the Farmhouse and it is beginning to look like a home in there at times. We have much of the flooring already on the Farm but it will have to wait for finishing the walls and ceilings.

In other Farm news our hens are putting out about  eighteen eggs a day and all of these seem to be selling out pretty quick. Our Runner Ducks are happily clearing the Kitchen Garden of pests as we get ready for Strawberry Season, but we have no duck eggs yet. And one of our Basset Hounds, Laffee Taffee, has figured out how to get preneant again. So we'll need to prepare for puppies coming at the beginning of April.

We have been preparing for puppies since November. I began by joining quite a few Hound oriented Facebook Groups a long time ago and participating in them. And in November I started putting a Wait List for future litters online. We have about twenty people waiting to hear good news about coming puppies and the Wait List will get notified this weekend. 

There are a lot of projects happening here this year. All of them will take time and effort, most will take money. So we are planning on a large planting project this year, two or more litters of puppies, and quite a bit of luck and hot weather to keep the main projects moving forward. But things are looking real good today.