The moving begins and the garden grows!

Now that the shed is complete, we can start moving out to the farm.  Our house is now a maze of boxes and stacks - some destined for the farm, some waiting on the garage sale in two weeks.  Bit by bit, we're getting there.  Our goal is to be moved and ready to live at the farm by July 14th.  That gives us time to clean the house and have it ready to rent by the last week of July.

We took a load out to the farm this morning and did a bit of work in the garden.  I mulched the bases of our 20 grape plants to help hold in moisture now that the weather is finally acting like summer in Kansas.  I also mulched in the 2 planting beds with our arbor and our rhubarb so that hopefully I won't have to keep weeding it now!  While we were there, we picked several tomatoes, 2 small cabbages and a green pepper.  They will become part of our dinner tomorrow.  ;-)  Here are a few pictures of the garden.

Peppers growing happily

Tomatoes

Newly mulched corner bed

Flowers in the other corner bed

We ordered solar panels and the associated inverter and controls this week also.  With a little luck, it will arrive around the 14th also.  Then we'll have to get the stand built for the solar panels and get the system wired and ready at the farm.  It is a 2kW system that should run the RV and, later, the cabin with no problems.  It can also be expanded later when the house is done. 

Lastly, we said goodbye to some friends of ours that are moving to Norton, KS to continue their journey toward living sustainably.  You can follow their progress on their blog (Hale's homestead on the blog roll on the right).  We'll miss having them in Lawrence but we wish them all the best as they start this new and exciting chapter in their lives!

Building the shed part 2

Another busy week and weekend have passed.  The shed is done except for siding the peaks.  That is waiting for us to finish building my brother's shed (we're work trading on the 2 sheds) because we're going to use some extra pieces of his lap siding to finish it out.  It should give the shed a nice look when it's all done.  Here's our last week in pictures:

Loft inside the shed

Starting to put the vapor barrier on

The (almost) completely wrapped shed

Starting the siding

Jeremy on a hot tin roof!

The current shed...

In other news, we applied for our building permit today!  Once we get the final permit in the mail, we'll be ready to break ground on the cabin.  We've already lined up the contractor for the foundation work, so with a little luck that work will start soon. 

Building the shed - Part 1

Given that we are scheduled to move to the farm in about 4 weeks, it's high time we got a structure built to start moving stuff into!  To that end, we began construction on a 12x16' shed this weekend.  We started on Friday evening by setting blocks and leveling them.  Then we built the floor structure.  We were also able on Friday to construct the first wall. 

First wall being sheathed on the platform Friday evening

On Saturday morning after home depot delivered three 16' long 4x6's, we installed the pressure treated 4x6's underneath the platform.  Then we installed the decking on the floor so that we could work on an actual surface.  While Jeremy and Scott started on the other walls, I cut the roof rafters.

Putting the runners under the platform

Then the sky got really dark.  Then it rained.  Not a sprinkle, but a full on downpour.  We had enough warning to move all the tools under the 10'x10' canopy and tarp over the rest of the wood, but Jeremy, Jacob and I got to spend a very intense few minutes watching buckets of rain come down (Catherine was visiting the neighbors and Scott had gone home to feed his dogs).  Thankfully, the rain cleared up about the same time that Scott got back and we were blessed with no sun and cooler temperatures!  Well worth sitting out in some rain for.

Rain clouds to the south

 

Then came the rain!

That afternoon, we finished building the remaining 3 walls and then finished cutting the roof trusses.

At this point, we called it a day (it was 8:30PM and we'd been working since 7:00AM).  In the morning, Jeremy and Scott put up the first 3 walls and braced them securely.  I cut gussets for the roof rafters and started assembling the roof trusses. Once the rafter's were gusseted together, we moved them into the shed through the wide open hole for the 4th wall.  Then up went the fourth wall!

 

 

 

I would just like to mention here that lifting these walls into place was no small task.  We pre-sheated them, so each wall was 8' tall, 12 or 16 feet long and had plywood on one side.  The two short walls had to be lifted 1-3 feet off the ground and set on the platform.  It was an impressive feat of manliness on the part of Jeremy and Scott to get it done.  Thank goodness we didn't start this adventure any later in our lives!

At this point, we decided to go ahead and build the 2 lofts (one on each end) so that we could use them as a platform to do some of the roof rafters.  That took a good part of the morning between cutting and mounting the structures and cutting the decking, but man was it nice to be able to stand up there!

Now we were ready for the roof!  We stood up the rafter's one by one making sure to keep them the right distance apart and straight.  We cross braced them from below with 1x2's to hold them together until the decking goes on.

Then we put the first piece of roof decking on.  Now we saw a problem.  While we braced the rafters with the 1x2's, the bracing didn't go high enough so the rafters were not all the same distance apart at the peak of the roof.  Bummer.  They have to be lined up or the metal roofing won't be able to go in correctly.  Double bummer. 

The shed at end of day Sunday

 

At this point, we decided to punt for the day.  We'd worked from 6:30AM until 1:30PM and it's Father's Day.  'Nuff said.  Tomorrow, Jeremy and the kids will install a 2x4 down the line of the roof on each side of the peak to hold the tops the correct distance apart.  Then we'll be ready to deck the roof and put on the metal roofing. 

Mowing and mulching

We are definitely behind at keeping the ground covered in the garden this year with everything going on.  We also haven't knocked back the 4 foot high grass and weeds along the fence or the front of the property.  Guess what that means?  That's right!  Get out the mower, cut down grass/weeds and mulch.

It took 7 hours of mowing and 5 hours of mulching and weeding on Saturday, but we got it done.  Well, actually, we didn't quite get everything mulched.  We got all the tomatoes and potatoes, but the peppers are only partially done. 

As a bonus, we can now see our front planting bed that we made last summer again!  It had become overrun with grass and weeds. 

deeply mulched tomatoes

Jeremy halfway through mowing the front of the farm

The finished product - 5 hours later.

Our strawberries are also ripe at the farm.  Unfortunately, most of them are going to waste this year because we don't have time to pick and process them.  We did have a couple of pounds of them for lunch Saturday though.  Yum!

We will also be building a shed this coming weekend (well, we'll get most of it done over the weekend we hope).  When that is done, we'll start the process of moving to the farm.  Our goal is to be living at the farm by the middle of July.  There's lots to do between here and there though.  If you feel like doing some normal stick-frame building this weekend, come on out!

Grape planting and then some

The grape planting went well today.  We managed to plant and stake 21 grapes in the first grape swale.  That required extending the swale by about 30 feet - a wonderful problem to have (too many grapes).  Here is our budding vineyard as of Monday afternoon:

21 grapes are in the first vineyard row!

While we were there (and we had help - thanks Matt!), we got the garden shed settled into its permanent home.  That took some significant lifting, shifting and shimmying but it was accomplished without major incident.  We even had time to move all of our garden tools and most of the garden supplies from the hoop house to the shed.  It will be very nice to have all the tools in the garden now.

Our new shed, complete with front step.

With the grapes and shed done, Jeremy and Matt started rearranging the hoop house and I started planting peppers and eggplant. I planted about 40 pepper plants and the kids planted about 20 eggplant.  The garden is starting to fill in!

2 beds of peppers in a row.  The cages aren't on all of them yet.

The hoop house needed to be rearranged for 2 reasons.  First, my brother was coming with the load of wood Jeremy brought back from Colorado last week and it needed a place to be unloaded.  Second, we need a place to start working on the timber frame joinery.  Fortunately, by the time Scott got there, they had made ample space for the new lumber. 

Because of all the rain we've gotten, it took several tries to get the trailer anywhere near the hoop house.  There are now tracks all over our bottom field and we are thoroughly convinced that we need to get a driveway done pronto.  On the upside, we were finally able (and by we I mean my brother) to get the trailer reasonably close.  Then we all started moving lumber.  In total, there was somewhere around 5000 lbs of wood on the trailer as near as we can estimate it.  This will finish out the vast majority of the wood we need to build the cabin and it gets us well on our way to starting the joinery.

Carrying the timbers into the greenhouse.  This was a 12' long 7x10.

 

Here is the growing pile of lumber in the hoop house.

In other news not otherwise reported here, we spent last weekend helping my brother convert our mother's carport into a finished room.  We managed to get everything framed in and the exterior sheathing and siding done.  It was a busy weekend!

This is shortly after we started framing. 

 

We hung the door after this, but its close to where we left it after 2 days and about 80 labor hours of work.

Ok, I think we're caught up now.  Stay tuned - it will be a busy summer!