This and That

I just can't get this blog to look the way I want it to. I designed a nice new theme in Photoshop that was brown and blue. One Friday night, I decided to change out the header and the background really quick. Well, my "really quick" turned into 2 hours of wrestling with it. I finally just left it and went to bed because I had to get up early the next morning to go to the farmer's market. One afternoon last week, I tried again. After working on it two more hours, I got the header right, but still couldn't get the background up correctly. So, I gave up. I'm beginning to despise Blogger for causing so much frustration. Who knows, though...It might've just been too much airspace between the ears of this blonde user. ;) Anyway, I'm going to leave it like this for awhile.

I finally have pictures of the completed timber-frame building. I took these last Saturday when we began staining it. We've almost finished staining now, and it looks really nice.

Jacob always gets elected to perform the high-up tasks.

We've also started putting siding on the house. I think it's almost halfway done. Hopefully, we'll get the rest up in the next couple weeks. The guys are doing a fantastic job. The house is looking more "homey" now, as Mom says.

Some of our wonderful friends have come to help. It really moves faster with a three-man crew - one cutting and two nailing.

-Tricia Ann

Planting Spuds, etc.

Now that it's getting warmer, we're in the full swing of planting. It's been pretty wet and rainy lately, so we've had to hustle on the dry days to get everything planted. Last week, we planted 375 pounds of potatoes! We planted them on top of the hill this year, since the whole of last year's crop was washed away in the flood.

We have a new tractor implement this year that digs the trenches and covers them up again, which makes the process so much easier and faster. We used to use rakes to do it all by hand. Even with the aid of the tractor, it still took all day and almost half an acre. The weather was nice, and we had fun working together as a family.

Planting potatoes is fairly simple. You cut up your potatoes into pieces that have at least one eye each. Then you plant them, cut side down, in a trench and cover them up with about 6-8 inches of dirt.

We space the pieces 12" apart, using the precise method of "eyeballing". ;)

Jacob is a very talented farmer. He can talk on the phone and plant at the same time.

I'm so thankful that the Lord has given me such a pretty place to live!

We've also been setting out lots of lettuce, kale, and bok choy transplants.

I spent almost all day on Saturday planting all kinds of seeds - spinach, radish, turnip, beet, Swiss chard, carrot, etc. I'm trying an experiment with carrots, so I'll post about that soon.

CSA season begins in a month! I can't believe it.

-Tricia Ann

Sunrise...

Timber Frame Raising - Faces, etc.

Here are the last of the timber-framing pictures I'm going to post. I took over 400, but that's a few too many to share. ;)

We had plenty of lovely photographers on site, all sporting their Nikons.

This is one of my favorite pictures from the whole day. Daniel is such a good sport, always ready to give me a funny pose.

I still haven't taken a picture of the building that is the result of all this hard work. I never think of it at the right time. We are planning to use this building as a pavilion, as soon as we put a roof on it.

Praise the Lord for a fun and successful community project, for a new building, and that no one had any major injuries!

-Tricia Ann

Timber Frame Raising - Part 2

Here's the second bent, assembled and ready to go up.

There were lots of spectators.

By this time, the number of workers had diminished significantly. So, they used a bobcat plus manpower to get the 2nd bent halfway up. At that point, the bobcat wouldn't go up any further, so the guys braced it and stopped to evaluate the situation.

They decided to just go on and push it the rest of the way. Being the rugged and mighty guys that they were, they gave it a shove, and it went right up.

Okay, so that's not how it really went. ;)

It was getting rather dangerous, and Granddaddy insisted that they call a crane.

Even with the crane, there was still a lot of work to do. In fact, I don't think they could've finished it all in one day without the crane to speed things up some.

Emma re-stained some pegs.

The whole building is held together with pegs - there are no nails.

The 3rd and final bent.

Sunset.

It was dark by the time they were done, so I don't have a picture of the final result yet, but I'll try to get one soon.

Stay tuned for the final timber-framing post.

-Tricia Ann

Timber Frame Raising - Bent #1

Last March, Jacob went to a timber-framing workshop with some friends. Before they went, they cut down a bunch of oak trees from our property and used the sawmill to make the timbers. They loaded the beams on trailers and hauled them to NC where the workshop was. While they were there, they cut two out of the three bents. When they got back home, they planned to finish cutting the timbers and assemble the structure, but the flood happened shortly thereafter. To make a long story short, we didn't have time to finish and erect the building until now.

Yesterday we had a big Timber Frame raising here at our farm. Here's the first installment of pictures.

Sunrise

They built this brace-wall to hold the bent in place, once they got it up.

Raising the first bent, which weighed about 2000 pounds.

-Tricia Ann