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. 

2012 wrap up

In the spirit of the new year, I thought I'd take a minute to look back and what 2012 has brought our family.  It was quite a year!

• Dismantled and moved two 96' long hoop houses in January
• Found our 40 acres in February
• Closed on the farm in April
• Removed our city garden in May
• Purchased an RV and moved it to the farm
• Got the tractor running!
• Built the first hoop house on the farm in June/July
• Purchased, stacked, restacked and stored 200+ straw bales for a house
• Made 3 trips to Colorado to pick up logs and milled lumber
• Milled many logs at Tim O'brien's
• Cut and brought home cedar logs from Arkansas
• Found and moved 16 tons of rock (with much more of this to come)
• Transplanted many plants from town to the farm
• Planted first 12 fruit trees on the farm
• Had Bowen excavation level the pad for the second hoop house
• Moved into and out of 2 storage units
• Put the house on the market FSBO, listed it with a real estate agent and then took it off the market

That's quite a lot when you consider that we both have jobs, we have 2 kids with their own activities and we do sleep occasionally.  Here's hoping that 2013 will be just as productive!

Christmas means....CANDY!

At least at the Lehrman house, that's what it means.  We've been making an assortment of candies for Christmas for several years now.  Today was the big day for getting that done (a week or two behind our normal schedule, but who's counting?).  Jeremy made him amazing fudge and candied nuts.  I made divinity and peanut brittle.  There will likely be another batch of divinity and another batch of fudge yet this year, but this gets the bulk of it done.

In other news, we've planned out where the garden will go for next year and we're hoping it will be close to the size we removed from our house in town.  The veggie mix will focus on things that don't need daily maintenance since we likely won't be living at the farm full time for the entire garden season.  Some things we're just going to grow for seed for the following year due to their harvest requirements (green beans fall in this category - we likely won't have the hours needed to pick, snap and can or freeze them this year, but we can grow out enough seed to plant a big crop in 2014).  We'll have our garden mainstays though - tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, chard, onions, garlic, leeks, spinach, celery, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, corn, black beans, cabbage, broccoli, green peas, melons and some other things.  It will be wonderful to have fresh vegetables again!

Along with the usual garden planning and seed selecting, we're having to devise a fencing strategy.  Not only are there plenty of deer and cayotes on the farm, but our neighbors have wonderful free range ducks and chickens that would also love our veggies.  Since we hope someday to have our own ranging poultry, I'm not complaining at all!  Just pointing out that we have to be realistic about where we're at.  ;-)   Many options are being discussed and weighed against each other, but we haven't landed on the exact right solution yet. 

There will be more details on this upcoming as we set up our seed starting stand again and go through the renewed annual rythm of the garden.  I can't wait! 

Moving dirt and house plans!

We've had a few big projects going this weekend.  First, we had Chad Bowen of Bowen excavation come out and start working on the drainage behind the greenhouse and creating the pad for the second green house.  As of the first day, he's done amazing work.  If you need excavation/dirt moving work done in the Lawrence area, I would highly recommend him.

I didn't have the camera to capture the start of his work, so you'll have to imagine.  First, I marked out a 45x105 foot rectangle to be leveled.  Then, Chad scraped off the topsoil from that whole area and piled it up out of the way for us to use in garden beds later.  Next, he scraped of the next few inches to the side around the pad and did some leveling before starting to remove material behind the greenhouse.  He's cutting about a 12 foot wide flat space behind the greenhouse and then reshaping the hill.  After he's done, we'll seed grass over the space to hold the soil.

Chad Bowen with his excavator

Progress today behind the greenhouse

Larger view of the new pad

HUGE rocks from the hillside

While hanging around watching (marvelling) at Chad's artistry with the dozer, I started working on the final plans to the house.  We're using a plan from one of our timber frame books as a baseline and then making modifications.  In order to start doing the timber frame joinery, we need fully dimensioned prints so that we know where to put the joinery.  I've finished the main side view drawing and am currently working on the end views.  Its only been 14 years since I did manual drafting, so this has been a bit of a blast from the past.  For those wondering why we aren't doing this in some kind of CAD program, I have 2 things to say.  First, are you really surprised that we would do this old school?  Second, most CAD packages are quite expensive and that's a problem.  I would actually prefer to have this done digitally, but this will work.

House sketch

Planting trees

One of the last things that Aaron did at the farm was dig the beginnings of our tree swales.  What are tree swales, you ask?  A swale is a low mound of earth used to catch or direct water.  In the case of our trees, the swales are arcs about 10 feet across that funnel rain water to the base of our trees.  Each tree is planted in the center of one of the arcs.  When we got back from vacation, we widened and deepened the swales that Aaron dug and started planting our trees.  We have 2 trees left to plant.

We are hopeful that the swales will enable the trees to survive the drier, hotter summers we are predicted to have over the next 50 years by concentrating the rainfall in their root zones.  Time will tell if this strategy is successful.

Of the 12 trees, 4 were planted to replace the failed transplants from our house to the farm.  Another 7 will be used as a border to our North field and will be incorporated into the larger site plan for that part of the farm.  The remaining tree will be added to the line of trees close to the front of the property.  We can't wait until we can start picking fruit from these guys!

A Trip to the Library

On a trip to the library Thursday, we brought home some books that speak a lot to where we are and where we’re going.  Our list of books includes:

Build a Classic Timber Frame House

The Art and Craft of Stonework

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Living

The Craft of Modular Post and Beam

The Antique Tractor Bible

The Scythe Book

You can probably guess that the timber frame, stone and post and beam books relate to our house/cottage/whatever to be started and hopefully enclosed this fall.  Truth be told, we’ve read these books before and are now re-checking them to clarify some points.  We also own books (yes, plural) on these subjects that have been referenced and re-referenced and are now being re-read for the third or fourth time in some cases.  It pays to be prepared when taking on a project of this size!

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Living is more for pure review.  We often talk to people who are interested in learning more about the kinds of things we do (growing food, being more self-sufficient) so we keep our eyes out for good general reference books for beginners.  We’ll look through this one and see if it makes the list.  Carla Emery’s original Encyclopedia of Country Living is a reference we go back to often, so if this one lives up to that it will surely be on the list.

The antique tractor book is more of a concrete guide at the moment.  We have a 1949 Ford 8N tractor on our driveway that needs a little bit of work to get going again.  Specifically, it needs a new battery, new front tires and new brakes.  We’re hoping that we can glean some key details from this book to help us bring it back to life.  It will then become a great help on the farm as we start building.

Lastly, the Scythe Book.  This, more than some of the others, tells about where we want to be.  The scythe in many ways represents a return to a different kind of farming.  It is an elegant and multipurpose tool that requires attention and care.  It repays its owner with the kind of elegance that few tools can match.  It is also the anti-tractor, anti-engine, anti-hurry-up-and-go-go-go tool.  You cannot speed a scythe.  You can only step through the grass as fast as the scythe can cut it.  You can only do the work at its own pace and let the rhythm of the tool and the job take over.  It is farming the way it used to be.  It is also farming the way we want it to be again.  We have 2 scythes on order (shipped on Tuesday, should be here any day now).  With these tools, we hope to take a very concrete step toward our own independence as well as gain some key functionality we are currently lacking (i.e. we have no good way to cut down the 8 acres of weeds and overgrown grass on the farm).  I’m sure there will be other posts about the scythes when they arrive and as we use them.  For now though, we are reading up so that we’ll be ready when they get here.

So in case you’re wondering what we’re up to when we aren’t working on the farm, we’ll be curled up with one of these deep in thought about how to apply it to our soon-to-be lives! 

Every Day, Little Up

We get asked the question “How do you do it all?” any time someone hears the list of things that we have done/are doing/will be doing soon.  It is quite true that we have a lot going on.  We have two kids who each have activities and play dates.  We both work – me for 55 hours a week including commute and Jeremy varying amounts by season.  I am active in the local Transition group promoting sustainable living in a variety of ways in Lawrence.  I teach workshops on canning, food storage, localizing the economy and a variety of gardening topics.  I co-organize a community garden for the Ronald McDonald House in Kansas City.  I teach childbirth classes one day a week for 2-3 hours.  And we grow food – lots of it.  We’ve also managed to build a greenhouse, a barn, a cob oven and a variety of other projects over the last few years and now we’re building a farm.  With all that, we manage to have a little bit of a social life and occasionally even talk to each other.

Are you tired yet?  We are too, so don’t feel bad. 

So how do we accomplish all this?  At work, I do a fair bit of Lean Manufacturing stuff.  For those of you not at all familiar with what “Lean” is in an organization, it’s the management/problem solving philosophy that pushed Toyota to the #1 carmaker spot a few years ago and is responsible for many fortune 500 companies managing to revolutionize their businesses.  It centers around continuous improvement and solving the real cause of problems.  If you’re wondering why this has anything to do with this blog post, hang on – I’m getting there!

One of the stories I read as part of learning about Lean really struck me.  There was an older Japanese man who was a lean consultant to an American company.  He spoke English but not perfectly.  As the plant manager and the consultant walked around the manufacturing plant for the first time, the consultant was dismayed by the lack of regular, continuous improvement activities happening.  Every change had to be approved, debated, discussed and modified by several levels of management before it could move forward.  This resulted in very few changes happening and a workforce that was completely dis-engaged from doing anything to improve their workplace.  In other words, this company was losing out and getting nowhere.  After trying to convey the idea that continuous improvement must be a way of life – change and progress must be normal, everyday occurrences – the consultant became frustrated.  Finally, he told the plant manager “Every day, little up”.  Every day, do something to improve.  Every day, lift yourself a little higher.

That phrase has taken a life of its own for us and really embodies what we try to do.  Each day we try to do something that moves us forward.  Some days it’s really small – I managed to hang 2 sets of blinds Sunday, for example.  Some days it’s huge like when we move 10 cubic yards of dirt in a day or plant 100 strawberry plants and 350 onions.  The important thing is there’s something every day.  The quote doesn’t say “Every day change your entire world”.  It says make a little change every day.

We weren’t always this way.  We used to think that if we didn’t have at least half a day to devote to working on something, it just wasn’t worth taking the time to start.  We used to think that if we couldn’t finish the whole project in a day, we should wait until we could.  It’s no surprise that if you wait until you have a whole day with nothing at all going on, you’ll be waiting a long time.  We also used to get paralyzed thinking about all the things that we needed to do.  It can get really overwhelming. 

Then came this quote and a convergence of other factors (read “super stressed out time”) that made us reconsider our perspective.  We started breaking things into smaller pieces.  We gave ourselves permission to put something down today and pick it back up again tomorrow.  We started looking for the opportunities to use the extra 10 minutes we have here or there to do something to move us forward.  Where I used to think “I have 10 minutes before I have to leave for work, there isn’t anything I can do in just 10 minutes.”  Now I have a whole list of things that I know I can do in 10 minutes.  I can weed a small patch of garden in 10 minutes.  I can knit or crochet a row or two in 10 minutes.  I can work on a blog post for 10 minutes.  I can clean the counters or fold a load of laundry or harvest lettuce for dinner in 10 minutes.  If I don’t have enough time to finish a whole project, can I at least do half?  A quarter?  10 percent?  Something? 

So that’s all there is behind being able to do lots of stuff.  You just have to do it, and keep doing it, and then keep doing it some more.  Eventually, you’ll look back and be amazed.  “Every day, little up” adds up to a lot in less time than you think!

Goals for the Farm

In creating our plan for the farm, we’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking about what we want our farm to provide.  Essentially, we’ve been answering the question “What should our farm do?”  After a lot of debate, here’s where we are on it right now.  Please understand that all things are evolving as we go on this journey – this list may very well change over time.  Also, many of these will take many years to happen – please don’t expect to come to the farm right now and see much of any of this!

Our farm should:

1.       Be Home.  Home is the place that puts you at peace and renews your energy.  The farm should be laid out in a way that encourages us to slow down, notice our surroundings and feel grounded.

2.       Be sustainable.  We plan to use appropriate technology, organic growing and sustainable building practices to create our farm and maintain it.  This is an important point and drives many of the other goals for the farm.  It’s also the most challenging element to do.

3.       Grow Food.  Our farm should provide us with all that we need to eat otherwise it isn’t a farm!  We want to have a varied and healthy diet from what we grow – fruits, berries, vegetables, milk, eggs and some meat.

4.       Provide an Income.  We want the farm to be a working farm that provides our primary income.  The income earning parts of the farm must be integrated into the whole in a way that maintains the overall property’s sustainability. 

5.       Have multiple living spaces.  We recognize that most people of our generation will have their parents and their grown children living with them at some point in their lifetimes.  Our property should provide for this in a way that lets all parties have privacy and community at the same time.  We also want to be able to host friends and family who may want or need to stay with us for a while due to changing economic circumstances.

6.       Be educational.  We feel that helping others learn what we have learned (and are still learning) is an important part of the work that we do.  We want to create spaces, both indoor and out, that facilitate teaching and learning so that we can continue this part of our work.

7.       Require minimal maintenance.  Using permaculture principals, we want to set up our farm such that most things happen as a natural course without our intervention.  The goal is to get our part of keeping the farm going down to something we can do when we’re 70.

8.       Age with us.  We will get old and be less mobile than we are now.  The farm should be set up so that we can do that while still providing for our own livelihood.  We also want it to be something that can be handed down to the next generation.  The greatest gift we can give to the next generation is a working farm.

9.       Be robust to climate change.  We recognize that weather will get both more extreme and more variable.  Our farm should be designed to handle both serious drought and consistent drenching rain.  The challenge of designing for the unknown is huge but critical to our long term success.

10.   Involve animals.  We don’t know yet what animals we will want to have – both wild and domestic – but we know they are a key part of the farm ecosystem we are trying to create.

That gives you a flavor for what we’re trying to accomplish.  The next step is figuring out what each of these require and how they interact.  What features combine to satisfy these goals?  How should we arrange them?  How do we balance the different goals so that each one is satisfied without dominating the others?  These are the questions we’re working on now.  Stay tuned!

Looking west from the garden bed at sunset