How do you know if you're on the right track?

“How do you know if you’re on the right track?  When resources start to gather around you.”

We came across this quote by Toby Hemenway this week and it perfectly sums up how this weekend went for us. 

First, I have to revisit something from my last post.  The picture of the beetle (large timber framing hammer) Jeremy made last week just didn't do it justice.  This one gives a much more accurate representation of his handiwork!

Jeremy and the Beetle

It was a three day weekend for us (I took Friday off) so the work started as soon as we dropped the kids off at school on Friday morning.  As mentioned before, the greenhouse plastic was in desperate need of replacing, so that was the big job for this weekend.  Friday and Saturday were predicted to be very calm with major wind kicking up Sunday and Monday.  We started by removing all 3 layers of the old plastic and dragging it far enough away from the hoop house to not be in the way.  Then we had to remove all the old hold down channel for the plastic and add some more tape/padding to a couple of edges that had rubbed on the old plastic.  Then we unrolled the new plastic next to the greenhouse.  All of this took until 3:30 or so.  This is where the first resource gathered around us. 

Pulling off the first 2 layers of plastic.

So here we are looking at 128 lbs of plastic (a 40'x105' piece) and a 12' tall hoop house, getting ready to do battle.  Having already done this before by ourselves, we have some idea of the ordeal this is going to be and we have some doubts about whether we will be able to do this by ourselves.  Last time we were able to pull it over an existing layer of plastic which helped immensely.  We had no such bonus this time.

One thing we've learned from all of the things we've done is that sometimes you just have to make yourself do it even when you don't think you can.  So we were mustering our courage, taking a deep breath, getting our last drinks of water and generally preparing for a major ordeal.  Then my brother drove up unannounced!  Hallelujah, the cavalry had arrived!  It is impossible to express how much help it was to have an extra set of hands in this process.  It took about an hour and half, but we got the plastic pulled over the hoop house and locked into the ends on Friday.
 
Saturday morning we were at the farm at 7:30 (yes, AM) to lock down the sides of the plastic before the wind started blowing.  It was a bit chilly with frost on the ground and running the cordless drills made all our fingers get a bit numb, but we got it done.  The plastic looked wonderful - perfect tension and everything.  There were a couple of holes to patch from where it snagged on some loose staples, but they were quickly taken care of.  Excellent!  We got to cross this project off our list!

Then more resources showed up!  Scott came by again around 9:00 and brought presents.  He had some shelves and pegboard he had torn out of a house he's remodeling that he was going to throw on our brush pile.  Instead, we will be repurposing most of it into our soon to be work shop space!  Can't beat that!

At 10:00, our friend Jeff showed up again (we knew this one was coming, but his help is still such a gift).  Saturday he helped us fold up the old plastic to be used on some future project and then he helped start building our new chicken tractor.  The plastic was quite a chore to fold - 3 pieces at 128 lbs each makes for a lot of muscle moving! 

Folding old greenhouse plastic

The chicken tractor, on the other hand, was a bit more technical.  We first had to disassemble some large pallets to get the framing lumber.  We tried the first one with hammers before quickly moving to the sawzall.  The people assembling these things must have been paid by the nail!  It was absurd how many nails were in every piece.  Once we had enough framing pieces, we started cutting and assembling.  Jeff is a carpenter by trade and he made short work of getting the pieces ready and making sure that everything went together correctly.  It was a privilege to work with him and learn some of the tricks to really getting it right.  We managed to get the whole frame together on Saturday before he had to leave. 

Jeff and I and a chicken tractor in process

By the time we got everything picked up and wrapped up, it was 5:30 and we were pooped.  A 10 hour day at the farm is not for the faint of heart.  This was also when we realized we had made a tactical error when pulling the greenhouse plastic.  We did it when it was too cold.  In the 70 degree air on Saturday, the plastic expanded to the point that it was very definitely too loose.  We were too tired to pull off all the side boards and re-tension it on Saturday though.   It was definitely time for showers and some rest!

Sunday was a light day.  We intended to go tension the plastic, but the wind was too strong.  While it has been moving a lot on the frame, it doesn't appear to be any worse for the wear at this point.  We will have to wait for a day that is both warm (60-70 degrees) and still(er) before we will be able to take care of the problem.  Instead we kinda putzed around a little bit and then went to go see our friends Doug and Bayliss for a bit.  ;-)

Later Sunday afternoon, we got to go visit the baby goats!  They are truly adorable little doelings - full of spunk and very lovable.  They are going to be a great addition to our farm in another couple of months.

Kids and kids...

Lastly, on Monday morning we put the finishing touches on the re-organization of the shed!  Jacob put in the lion's share of the work on Saturday while the adults worked on other things, so we just had a few things to finish up.  Check out the before and after!

Before...

After!  :D

Some projects coming up for this week include: 

• continuing to move dirt in the garden and finally finish getting all the beds ready (that project has only been on the list for a year now...). 
• Pull out the cedar limbs from the garden fence behind the blackberries and thread the blackberry canes through the wires.  This should keep them from taking over the aisle again.
• Mulch the raspberries
• Get the next set of beams laid out for the house so that joinery can commence
• finish the chicken tractor

There are some other planting/transplanting things to do too, but they may wait a bit.  This is enough for now! 

Timber Framing and spring gardening!

As the weather has warmed up, we've definitely gotten more active!  We've been hard at work on the cabin of late.  First, we moved all the timbers up from the hoop house to the building site.  This lets us use the nice flat, level pad as a work space and gets everything close to where it will end up.  We were very fortunate to have a friend, Jeff Bloss, come help!

Jeremy and Jeff on one of the completed timber stacks

Then we started doing the lay ups.  A lay up is where you precisely position every part of a plane of the building and then very precisely scribe all the joints where they belong.  This ensures that everything will (theoretically) fit together just right when we go to assemble it.  So far, we've gotten one of the East-West planes done and one of the North-South planes.  That leaves 8 more planes to complete.  Fortunately, only one of those needs to be done before we can get back to joinery for a while. 

One plane set and time to begin scribing

Other than requiring lots of unique steps, timber framing also requires some unique tools!  Jeremy has been hard at work making 2 custom hammers - one smaller one for chiseling and one large one (called a beetle) for "persuading" timbers into the right place.  This one is BIG!  The square in the picture is 12" on a side for some scale.

The BIG one...otherwise known as a Beetle

But wait!  That isn't all we've been doing!  We also planted about 400 onions and 3 beds of potatoes.  Our tomatoes, peppers, herbs and okra are growing nicely and getting almost ready for transplant into their own pots.  The cabbage and broccoli are doing well in their pots on the balcony despite the cold snap and we have a host of sweet potato slips growing.  It's feeling like garden season around here!

Onion starts along the fence

Tomatoes and peppers growing happily

Sweet potatoes and cabbage

Jeremy has been adding soil from the topsoil pile to some of the beds that didn't get enough last year so that they'll be ready to plant.  We've also signed up for a pilot study of biochar in garden soil.  We will have 3 different test crops (tomatoes, potatoes and cabbage) that we are planning to divide into the following test groups:  control (no additions), compost & minerals (we will add compost and a sea solids solution), biochar with compost and minerals, and a half dose of the mineral and biochar.  With these we hope to demonstrate what effect each component has on the overall growth and productivity of the plants in the beds.  We plan to post updates on here as things grow, so keep your fingers crossed that we manage to keep track of this while building a house this summer!

We have some joyous and some sad news to share.  First the good news!  Our future goat, Peaches, gave birth to 3 beautiful daughters about a week ago.  The girls are healthy and active and positively adorable!  The bad news is that Peaches did not survive the process.  Triplets are really hard on a goat (twins are the norm), especially a yearling, and these 3 were all tied up on the way out.  She survived long enough to provide colostrum for the babies and then passed.  She was a very sweet animal and we will think of her every time we look at her wonderful daughters.

Peaches' three daughters curled up for a nap

The last thing going on right now is that we will have to recover our hoop house in the very near future.  For those of you that don't know, we had 2 large rips in the white plastic cover show up last October requiring a midnight recover of the hoop house with the old plastic we took off of it at its old home.  Luckily we kept the plastic or everything in the hoop house would have been ruined.  Sadly, the old plastic is...well...old, and isn't going to last much longer.  We have been trying to nurse it along until warmer weather, but its about done.  After repairing with duck tape, gaffers tape, epoxy and super glue, we have resorted to this contraption to hold it in place for a few more days.

Epoxy and strapping...not a long term solution!

This means that one of the days this weekend will be spent covering the greenhouse again.  Luckily, we have new plastic on hand so hopefully it will all go much more smoothly than last time!  If nothing else, we've had some practice.

Ok, I think that catches us up!  Hope you're enjoying your spring!

Christmas has come early!

After some farm down time where we've been nearly entirely devoted to another project (details forthcoming soon, I promise), we received our early Christmas present today.  Its our timber framing tools!  We ordered these hand forged chisels from Barr Tools (check them out!).  These are heavy and well balanced chisels that should last several generations if properly cared for.

From left:  2" chisel, 1.5" chisel, corner chisel and slick.  The ruler on the right is a 2 foot ruler for scale.

The house plans are also coming along so we should be ready to start cutting timbers once this other project calms down a bit. 

In the meantime, we're studying up on organic grape growing so that we can get our mini-vineyard up and going next year (hopefully).  Winter is a great time for rest and getting ready.

In-ground refrigerator

Now that our farm has long term residents, we had to find a way to keep food cold for more than a day at a time.  We've heard of people digging holes and burying barrels to use as a root cellar in the winter, so we decided to adapt this idea to create an in-ground refrigerator.

First, Jeremy and Aaron dug a hole big enough to hold 3 large coolers (about 2'x5'x2'deep).  Then, they lined the hole with some 1" extruded foam insulation we had left over from building the greenhouse at our house.  The coolers were placed in the hole and more scrap insulation was placed on top.  Then a scrap piece of siding was added and topped with 3 straw bales.  A makeshift roof appeared using the scrap roofing from our home greenhouse.

Coolers in the hole with the top layers removed.

Top insulation

Bales with scrap roofing on top.  A board gets placed over these to keep them in place.

We've been very happy with its performance so far.  The ice that was put in around lunch on Tuesday was still partially frozen on Thursday afternoon!  We think that with a few improvements, it should be able to keep cold for 3 days at a time before the ice has to be refreshed.  When the highs get out of the 100's, it might even last longer than that! 

Woo hoo for low tech refrigeration!

Thoughts about work

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
-Thomas Edison

Over the last several years, we have undergone a significant shift in our attitude toward physical work.  We once considered work something to be avoided – it was uncomfortable, it made our muscles sore, it was hot, inconvenient and any number of other associations.  Shifting from that perspective to considering work like an old friend – something that validates us, gives us purpose and produces innumerable benefits – has taken a lot of thought, determination and adjustment.  I thought I would write a bit about how we got to this perspective in case it helps anyone else.

The first obstacle we faced was deciding that the effort was worth it.  For example, when we decided to build our first 4 garden beds the decision took a while and was made a bit reluctantly – the garden beds weren’t going to build themselves and we wanted fresh vegetables!  It probably helped that we couldn't afford to hire anyone to do it for us.  So, we went out on several fall days and created our first 4 garden beds.  We complained, we drug our feet and we made a great show of being glad to be back inside when we were done.  It took us FOREVER compared to what we would do today.  At the same time though, there was a sense of pride that we had done it and the vegetables were really good!  That made the decision to expand the garden the next year easier – we had already done this once after all.  The work didn’t seem as daunting and we knew the reward would be more fresh food.  Over time deciding that something is worth the work has continued to get easier.

The next challenge was integrating work into our self-image.  We both saw ourselves as academics.  We did well in school, we liked school, we liked to read and discuss and debate.  How does that jive with wanting to go get sweaty with hand tools?  How can these 2 things go together?  It felt a little like telling the class nerd that the school was depending on them to win the basketball tournament. It just didn’t fit.

Then we discovered that there is no end of things to learn!  Learning to use a tool or build a raised bed is a different kind of learning than reading a book or taking a test, but creates the same sense of satisfaction.  We found that we could use our love of books to learn about anything we wanted to try and then we actually got to do it!  There is such a sense of satisfaction in taking something from abstract words on a page to something you can see, touch and feel.  We became hooked on finding new ways to learn and apply that knowledge.

We also had a perception that somehow people who did physical work were special and separate – they must have some kind of training that let them do that kind of work.  Our grandparents had grown their own food, but they grew up doing it.  Clearly someone taught them what to do and that’s how they became good at it, right?  We didn’t have any training or any special skills.  We didn’t even know anyone around us who did any of these things.  How would we know where to start?

We still occasionally run into this one when we contemplate trying something new.  However, after trying quite a list of new things over the last several years we can confidently say that none of it was nearly as hard as we thought it would be.  There isn’t anything we’ve done that any adult willing to try couldn’t do.  That only makes sense when you think about it.  For millennia, people survived on what they grew themselves.  That means that growing food has to be something that everyone can do, right?

An interesting side effect of work being this accessible is the sense of self confidence it breeds.  The skills don’t take long to master and from then on you have a skill you can use, teach and rely on.  When I think about how this might change people’s view of themselves and others around them, I have to wonder if having the opportunity to be good at something would make people more confident in themselves.  I think of this particularly for our children.  My kids will always know that there are tons of things they’re good at, even if none of them relate to current social norms.  It is my hope that this confidence will form the foundation they will need to go through life.  They have value – concrete, real and tangible value and ability.  That’s a powerful thing that more people should have (in my humble opinion).

So what’s the moral of this story?  Do more work!  Just kidding…mostly.  Changing our perspective from "hating" work to enjoying it has opened up a whole new worrld for us.  We are happier, healthier and more secure in our lives.  Being willing to do work has allowed us to meet so many amazing people and try so many cool things that we now can't imagine a life where we aren't working.  Work is our friend - we like it!

What to do when a foundation falls from the sky…

Most of you are probably unaware, but we have been deeply embroiled in a debate about the foundation for our future house.  Both of us would like to have a stone foundation for a variety of reasons.  A stone foundation means we need A LOT of stone – many, many tons worth.  Buying that much stone would be completely out of the question for our budget which leaves us with the unappealing prospect of quarrying it out of our woodlot.  Digging and moving that much stone would take all winter when we need to be working timbers and means that we would need to clear a road into the woods to be able to get the stone out.  We would also have to dig up a large chunk of the ridge which would mean clearing several trees and figuring out how to get rock up the ledge to the top tier of the ridge.  Ugh.  Thus our debate – do we quarry on our property or do a traditional concrete foundation?  We’ve been going back and forth on this issue for several weeks.

Then, this past Sunday we saw the following ad in the Lawrence Journal World:  “Scythe - includes spare blade. Also barn stuff. All for $50.”

We’re always looking for good tools and even a cheaper, heavier scythe would be put to good use on the farm, so we called.  It took until Tuesday to make it out to look at the scythe. 

When Jeremy arrived, he met the current owner - a wonderful older lady named Peggy.  She took him into the barn to see the scythe and proceeded to tell him that the “barn stuff” listed in the ad included all of the following:  a small stock tank, a garden cart, a digging/pry bar, a cider press and a hand cultivator.  The scythe also turned out to be 2 scythes, 2 blades and a hand held brush cutter.  Wow!  Jeremy expressed his gratitude, put the scythes into the car and explained that he would have to come back with our truck or the hatchback to get the rest.

Fast forward a few hours.  I get home from work and Jeremy shows me the scythes.  They’re all a bit rusted, but in very salvageable condition.  All 3 blades are stamped blades, not forged blades which means we will either have to peen out the edge a fair bit or continue to sharpen them with a file (and much more often).  Jeremy rattled off the list of other things we needed to go pick up and my eyes kept getting bigger, and bigger and bigger.  The scythes by themselves were easily worth the $50.  I’m sure it was evident on my face that I couldn’t believe our luck.  After dinner, we got in the matrix and drove back down to pick up the rest of the “barn stuff”.

Everything miraculously fit into the back of the matrix with the seats folded down (we were surprised to – this is why we bought a hatchback).  After loading, we went to the house to tell Peggy thank you and so that I could meet her.  When we got there, she was rolling a small compost tumbler out of the garage which she said we were welcome to have as part of the “barn stuff” also.  We inquired about a set of scaffolding that was in the barn and she replied that she had bought it for $15 and would be happy to sell it to us for $15.  Sold! 

As we were saying goodbye and getting ready to drive home, we complimented her on the stone facing on her house.  She explained that the stones came from the foundation excavation.  Then she said that they had dug up a lot more stone when they recently re-did their water line and the stone was piled up at the end of a road into the woods (she pointed the road out).  If we could use some stone, we were welcome to it. 

At this point, I’m about to fall over in shock.  Did she really just say that she had free stone?  That all we needed to do was go pick it up?  I looked at Jeremy and could tell that he was thinking the same thing.  We calmly say that we’ll walk over and take a look.  What we found was 2 piles of newly dug rock.  The first was about 6 feet tall and 8 or 10 feet around.  The second was about 4 feet tall and 6 or 8 feet around.  There was also a 50 yard long, 2-3 foot tall windrow of older stone that had clearly been dumped there many years ago.  In total, we were looking at enough stone to do the bath house foundation, the house foundation and likely the root cellar and barn foundations.  It was all right there at the end of an easily drivable road, piled and waiting to be picked up.  We couldn’t believe it.

We walked back up to the house to talk to Peggy.  We asked if she was talking about just the new stone or all the stone.  She laughed, looked around the yard at all the stones growing out of the ground and said, “take all you want – we have no shortage here!”  Apparently the older stone came out of the foundation to the house when it was built in 1980.  We asked if we could please pay her something for it and she flatly refused.

From here the only possible sticking point would be if we needed to move stone right now.  We had planned to quarry stone in the winter after we finished the bath house.  Taking a few weeks (at least) to move stone now would mean delaying that project to the point that we could easily run out of non-freezing weather.  So we asked how long we had to pick up the rock.  She said they weren’t going to sell the house until next March and we were welcome to pick it up anytime between now and then. 

So, in short, we went looking for a scythe and found a foundation.  Unbelievable.  Absolutely unbelievable. 

In other news, we will be spending our winter ferrying many tons of rock from Peggy’s house to the farm where it will get sorted and stacked in preparation for building the foundation.  If any of you have some free time and want some good productive exercise – let us know! 

Becoming a Master of the Tool

Have you ever seen a master work?  A master at work makes the task seem almost effortless.  The tool(s) become an extension of their thoughts and motions.  Jeremy has achieved this with his painting, but otherwise we are not masters of anything – only beginners.  It is something that we aspire to, however. 

There is an art and a craft to doing physical labor that is akin to the art of any sport or dance.  The body learns to move in a certain way to manage the tools and materials; each muscle learns to act in unison with the others; the mind learns what to focus on and how to compensate at every instance.  The result is beautiful and awe inspiring.  When that work is done with others who are equally skilled, the symmetry and rhythm, the coordination and balance are even more astounding – it makes you realize the true power of people working together toward a common purpose.

This grace doesn’t come quickly or easily – it takes hours of repetition and practice.  Everything we do with our bodies goes through this cycle of learning and improving.  Each time we pick up a tool, we must learn how to make it an extension of ourselves – a projection and instrument of our minds intent for the task.  At first, the projection is rough and clumsy - the shovel glances off of hard earth instead of digging into it, the splitting maul bounces off the log instead of dividing it cleanly.  If we keep going, we learn the right angle for the shovel, the right swing with the maul that starts to do the work, but we are not yet masters of the tool or the task.  We are merely able to get the job done. 

Next we enter the mastery phase.  Each time we pick up the tool, we notice something new about its balance, its angle.  We try slight variations on what has worked in the past – we learn to lean on the shovel a little differently, hold it with a different hand, move it side to side in a certain way.  We learn to swing the maul with a different angle or motion.  Each of these changes feels different to our bodies and makes different imprints in our brains.  Through our senses, we evaluate every shift to see if we should continue with that or find something else. 

This is not usually a conscious or rational process.  We don’t think “Now I will try angling the shovel at 25 degrees and see what happens.”  No, this is an intuitive learning process.  After the motion, we sense whether the work was done better or not.  Did the job get done more quickly?  With less effort?  Was the result of higher quality?  Without thinking we begin repeating the new motion and then continue experimenting. 

If we are very lucky, we will have a master of the tool available to jump start our learning.  This is the person who when using the chosen tool makes every motion seem effortless; the person who has truly integrated this task into their subconscious to a level that it is as natural a motion as breathing.  Often, asking how they do it is completely useless – they don’t know, they just do it.  Occasionally, someone has taught enough other people that they can express how to do the job very well.  In either case, by observing  we can sometimes find the secrets.  We can watch how the arms are raised with the maul, the angle of the down swing, where the blade is aimed, what muscles flex when.  Then we can try to use our rational mind to jump start the intuitive learning process.  “He lifted it kinda like this and then brought it down like this” and through many fine refinements the right angle and swing are found that begin to replicate the master’s ability. 

Through still more refinements, our bodies learn the secrets of the tool and we notice that the job is easier.  Our muscles become conditioned and ready for the work.  The act of lifting the tool changes our stance in preparation for its use.  The feel of the tool in our hands stops being awkward and clumsy and becomes calm and purposeful.  The tool takes on a personality and the status of a trusted co-worker in the task worthy of respect and appreciation.  Gradually we come to understand the before hidden interactions between our finest motions and the tool’s performance.  We become the masters. 

One day we notice that our relationship to this task has changed.  It is now a source of pride in a job done right and done well.  We smile to ourselves every time we see the tool and secretly look forward to the next time we get to use it.  This feeling, this deep satisfaction and pride in mastering a difficult task, is what makes life on the land so wonderful. 

I will leave you with a story from our family illustrating the difference being a master of the tool makes.

When my brother was 13 or 14, our family was splitting wood for our wood furnace.  My grandfather, then in his 70’s, was there observing the proceedings.  I should say here that my grandfather had cut and split several cords of wood every year since he was old enough to pick up a maul.  This was my brother’s first attempt.  Being new to the task and the tool, he was having mixed results.  The first logs split for him after several sturdy strikes of the maul, then he found one that wouldn’t.  It was a largish oak log and every stroke of the maul just bounced off.  Again, being new to the task, he tried to hit the log harder to get it to split resulting in nothing much happening at all.  Eventually, my grandfather stood up from his seat and asked if he could show Scott something.  My brother handed the 70 year old, thin, slightly stooped 6’3” man the maul and stepped back.  After weighing the maul in his hands, my grandfather proceeded to look at the grain on the end of the log and choose his spot before stepping back.  He slowly raised the maul and let it fall on the log end directly on the place he chose.  The log split cleanly in two.  What had been as stubborn and hard as iron was transformed by the skill of the master.  It was art.  With 4 more strokes he had taken the stubborn oak down to 6 pieces of normal firewood.  He handed the maul back to the very impressed 13 year old and sat back down.  Then he took the time to explain how to read the grain on the end of a log and talk about what he has learned about splitting wood after doing it for 60+ years.  My brother is now very proficient with a maul and enjoys the task.  We should all be so lucky to have that kind of teacher for every tool we pick up.

One day, we will master the tools we use.  Until then, we keep learning.  I hope you too can one day become the master of the tools of your trade, whatever they may be!