Framing is taking place

Now that the foundation walls are in, it is time for the framers to work their magic.  The floor trusses arrived Tuesday and the remaining lumber arrived Wednesday.

The framers marked everything off Wednesday and then added the sill plate.

Thursday they worked on getting the support beam in under the main floor.  Then they added the floor trusses.

View of Master bedroom/bath area.

View of main floor area.

Potatoes in the ground

What a whirlwind day.  We finally got a break in the weather and the ground was dry enough to disc the garden.  Then all the rows were laid off and the potato plow was used to lay off those furrows.

Then it was time to cut the three hundred pounds of potatoes.  With the potato cutter it took only a couple of hours.

If you look close you can see the seed potato sitting on top of a grid of stainless steel knives.

This is the potato being ready to push through the knife grid to give a chunk of potato with an eye.  It takes the eye to grow the plant.  This cutter was purchased through US Small Farms in Wyoming.  I found them on the internet and they specialize in equipment for the small farmer.

This is about two hundred pounds of the cut potatoes.  The easy part is cutting.  They still have to go in the ground.  That process took about three hours since the furrows were already done the day before.  Now it is all up to mother nature to work her magic.  Harvest time is predicted to be early October.

Septic in, garage ready for concrete.

Yesterday and today was a busy day at the building site.  The garage area was filled with gravel and the boards were installed to contain the concrete.  

The excavating crew marked the walls to apply the waterproofing compound and then installed the drain tile.

Later today a large truck arrived at the site with the 1000 gallon septic tank.  It was installed and the distribution box was placed in the designated area.

Now the drain field has to be installed and inspected by the county health department.  Hopefully next week we will see some framing taking place.

Fence building wife!!

My wife will surprise you at times.  She grew up in urban Florida.   So the other day when the weather was nice I suggested we start deer proofing the garden by adding a higher section of fence.

This shows her using a hand stretcher to tighten the woven wire.  The extra set of hands sure did come in handy.   The section we added was a little over 200 feet.  This makes the fence at or just under eight feet high.

Now that we have that section done, there is only three more sections to work.  All in a days work on the farm.

Wall's Up

It has been a little over a week since we had 5 inches of snow and the footers on our new home were dug and poured.  Who would have thunk it but workers showed up Saturday morning to start laying the blocks.  My wife went by the site and there were four or five workers laying the cinder blocks on the footers.  We went by the site  Sunday morning on our way to church to see how much was left to complete.

View from the east side facing northwest

View from the north facing south

View from the northeast facing southwest.

Those guys finished in one day.  It sure does look small just visualizing where the rooms will be and how they fit in.  After viewing the plans on paper and knowing the size of the rooms, it does not compute.

Now the next step is the framing.  I don't think it will be framed in one day but who knows??

Now the fun begins!!

The DREAM of building a new home on the family farm is beginning to come true.  I met the builder on the lot two days ago, along with the excavating person to talk about placement of the house on the lot.  The plan is to remove the topsoil, get the footers dug and inspected and possibly in two days have the concrete footers in place.  The push to get this done in a short period of time is due to rain coming this way in three days.

View looking South.  

View looking East 

After looking at these plans on paper for the last five years, it sure looks smaller than envisioned now that the digging has started.

Good news is the building inspector has inspected the footers and they have been approved.  Next we will see concrete being poured.

Easter Sunshine

No the sun did not shine in this part of the world on Easter but this cake sure brought out a ray of sunshine.

My wife made this for me.  It is a chocolate cake topped with PEEPS, the sugary coated marshmallow treat.  I prefer the chocolate coated PEEP which you can only find at Christmas and Easter.    She layered the outside edge with the yellow PEEPS and then placed chocolate chips in the center.  Made a tasty sunflower.