We Were Floored!

Cris working on the floor of the shop

Teddy dug himself a hole and slept in it. I guess by digging a hole, he found cooler ground.

Saturday-Sunday, May 15-16, 2010

Despite the disgustingly humid weather, we managed to get the 24x24 sq. ft. floor installed this weekend. We had hoped to put up the 18 remaining tin roof panels but it was just too hot to be working on the roof and working with hot tin. We put in 40 floor joists and 18 sheets of 4x8 flooring.

On a happy note, we finally saw signs of the fish that we placed in the pond in March. We had not been able to find the fish since the initial placement but this weekend they were swimming near the edge of the pond. Looks like the minnows had baby minnows and hopefully the bluegill will be having baby blues soon too. We have to build a spillway on the part of the pond where water runs off into the ditch because after the major rainfall we had a couple weeks ago, some of the bluegill washed down into the ditch a died. Alex saw about 3 of them so hopefully that is all that was lost.

Next weekend the goal is to finish the roof (going to start early in the morning before it gets to hot) and then start putting up the walls.

Some native grass is starting to grow on the land so that is good. The more native grass that spreads and grows, then less we have to plant. There is some beautiful native fetch growing on the terraces; it has purple flowers. Hopefully it will spread into the fields.

Any more major building projects we take on will be started and completed before summer and the heat hits. Because of having lost so many weekends due to rain, our barn project is taking longer than expected and we are now getting into the hot weather. Saturday I think we both ended being a little dehydrated even though we drank lots and lots of water.

Our planting is behind schedule due to the barn taking longer but we hope to get everything planted the first week in June.

TICKS are really bad this year...I guess because of the rain. Alex walked into the woods and came out with 4 crawling on his pants. Cris and I usually find about 2 on ourselves after checking on the bees in the woods. The dogs...well, the ticks seem to love Nugget but they can't get through Teddy's dense hair. Most are just regular ticks but we have pulled a few deer ticks off the dogs and ourselves.

So far I have learned that I cannot live without running water (showers!), electricity (or some kind of power source to run my a.c.!!) and plumbing for a bathroom. I can live without cable, Starbucks and a house larger than 2000 sq. ft.