Vehicular Voisins

Our barn is currently inhabited by vehicles (5 downstairs, 3 up), junk, and trash. Supposedly, the cars are leaving on Saturday and then the barn will be All Ours so we can really get down to business on the inside--sistering up rafters, replacing floorboards, and scabbing in some new purlin sections. That's the scene:


Ralph wants to take this Buick to his new place and thinks he'll be able to get it up and running again. I'm a bit skeptical...


Each of the four of us (Tyler, Elsie, Seth and Anna) are assigned a different horsedrawn equipment book, and Seth says that, based on his readings in Haying with Horses by Lynn Miller, this will be an ideal side-delivery rake for us.


Here are two of the tractors that came with the farm: an Oliver (big, 65 or 70 horsepower) and Polly, a Ford 8N. Somehow, Polly's gear map doesn't match up with the gearshift, and I haven't been able to find 1st or 2nd gear at all. Very mysterious. Ideas?

Back at the Homestead

These beauties are a few of nearly 1000 lbs of cabbage we harvested this fall, now safely wrapped in newspaper and stowed in the root cellar. Come visit us, and you too can be included in our 2lbs of cabbage per capita per week rule.




The first bake in the bread oven was a raging success--all whole spelt flour in the form of sourdough, potato-rosemary, and cinnamon-raisin-walnut breads.

Roof Antics

Seth and Anna performing OSHA-approved harness strength tests.





The stationary ventilator decided to eat Tyler for tea. Seth was trying with all his might to pull the ventilator off Tyler, but not until Tyler reached solid ground could he get the purchase he needed to totally extract himself from its gaping maw. In truth, though, both ventilators had to come down, and this was the second one. Any suggestions for weathervane designs?

Vehicles

Two vehicles currently on the farm: Big Red, the Farmall (staying to make hay with us) and an old pickup (going, we hope) (though we like it) (but we're not mechanics).

More shingles

On October 17th we stripped the shingles from the northwest quarter of the barn, and on the 18th we got it all dried in as it started raining...and blowing...and snowing...
It's a good thing we have harnesses, although it really prevents us from appreciating what a world-class slip'n'slide we have created.

The whole south side is stripped and dried in! The rotten wall of the milk room is re-framed, and the green tarp is covering a rotten purlin that we have to replace--but not until the antique Cadillac Coupe DeVille gets out of the way.

Here we have applied our newfangled roofing underlayments: Rooftopguard and Bituthene. And it's not an optical illusion; the barn is really quite swaybacked.

End of Day 1, harvesting our new breakfast cereal: asphalt crumbles with tarpaper flakes. Yummy.

Stripping on Day 1 with Seth, Tyler, Elsie, Megan and me.

Barn Roof Before

Here's our barn, October 8, 2009, before the makeover began. Note the two-tone shingles and the industrious new farmowners eager to find rot, wasp's nests, and other valuable treasures.

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A Farm Is Born

So shiny! Here are Tyler, Seth and Anna the day they bought the farm on October 1st, 2009.