First new baby of 2010!

Our farm has its first new baby of the year, but he wasn’t born here. “Flint” comes to us from Merryl Winstein of St Louis, Missouri, and will be our new herd sire. At only four days old, it’s hard to imagine him turning into a stinky, horny, lewd billy goat, but that’s his destiny. He’ll be bottle fed for six to eight weeks, but hopefully he’ll be able to join the rest of the herd in a couple of weeks, once we have other babies on the ground, so he grows up as “one of the gang”. Then after about 8 weeks, all the males will be separated from the females to avoid any unexpected winter births.

Flint will be our only in-tact male goat on the farm, unless we get another one from Merryl in a couple of weeks. Since he is completely unrelated to any other goat on the farm, he will be bred with Eliza, Maisie, Sarah, Lily and Phoebe in October. Eliza and Maisie (the goats) are just about ready to have their own babies. I think Eliza will have her baby this week, but since it’s rainy and wet right now, I’m hoping she’ll wait until the sun shines. Maisie should be a week or two later. Up to five ewes are also expecting, but probably not until later this week at the earliest. Keep checking back for more babies!

Merryl has the most amazing set up, raising dairy goats on just half an acre in a normal St Louis neighborhood! This is her new website: http://www.cheesemakingclass.com/. In Missouri, she is allowed to sell raw milk from her farm.

Roof Stage 2 Completed

After we installed the board on the roof of our house, we thought the house would be fairly waterproof. We were wrong. It was better than before the boards went on, but we were hoping for even less water. Stage 2 was completed this week, when we put synthetic roof felt over the boards. Charles and I spent almost 4 days up on the roof rolling out, stapling and nailing. We’re both very glad we don’t have a steeper pitched roof, because it was very hard to stay in place as it is.
Our metal for the roof may arrive this week, but we don’t have a delivery date yet. In the meantime, Charles will be working on the last four interior walls and starting to figure out how to install the windows and doors. Once the windows and doors are in, we have to put some anchoring framework under the house to close in the crawlspace. Then the exterior metal goes on the walls, along with all its associated trim work – window framing, corners, soffits and the chimney for the woodburning stove. At that point the exterior work in done. Then it’s on to plumbing, electricity, wall board and flooring. “Eventually” remains my favorite word.

Finally up to date - February 5, 2010

It snowed last night - about 2 inches. That brings us up to about 1 foot of snow this year. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much - after last year's ice storm, snow is a welcome alternative. However I have shoveled snow out of my living room THREE times in the past month. I mean, it's good exercise, but it's very demoralizing.

All of the roof rafters were finished the first week of January (before the first snow), and then we worked on the plywood wall cladding for the upstairs. Last weekend we put house wrap on most of the upstairs walls, and started installing the overhangs for the roof at the front and back of the house. I suppose that if we were being filmed, it would be a comedy. It might be R-rated, though, because there's a fair amount of swearing going on. I hope we're getting the hang of it, because we're only 40% complete, and we hope to get done tomorrow. We had to take today off because it was too cold, wet, windy and icy to work upstairs on ladders and scaffolding.

We took two trips down to visit my mother in Tennessee in January. The first was the weekend of January 15 - 17, when we combined Christmas and Charles's birthday celebrations. We ate out with friends, went shopping in Birmingham, Alabama, and played on the Wii a lot! The following weekend, we stayed with Ma and Scott while we attended the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference in Chattanooga. It's the third time in four years that we've attended and we get something really good out of each visit. Around here, I'm known as the weird farmer - small livestock, bees, market garden, near-organic or natural practices. At the SSAWG conference, I'm way on the side of normal compared to some people!

Catch up on November and December

The weather favored us in November, with beautiful, warm, sunny days. We got the walls finished downstairs on our house, thanks to help from my mother, stepfather and uncle. We even had our first family meal in our house on November 7. Ma and Scott were here to help put up plywood wall cladding, so Aunt Bev brought Uncle Steve, Scott's mother Juanita, and a pot of chile out to keep the workers working. After the walls downstairs were done, we started working on framing the upstairs walls and putting up the beams that will support the roof.


Ma and Scott returned for a second weekend of work in November, and we tore down a couple of old sheds so our electricity pole and transformer could be installed. That was my birthday present from the electricity company - one very tall pole and a shiny new transformer on top!

The weather in December was not as cooperative, but Charles soldiered on, getting most of the roof rafters up before Christmas. On December 19, he had to stop working because his cutting jig froze to the board he was cutting. That was also the day I went to St Louis airport to pick up my cousin Joe, who flew in from Minneapolis. He came to the farm to work for the week before Christmas to work off his airfare. Charles and Joe did a lot of work on our Uncle Paul's house getting it ready for Christmas guests - fixing the outlet to the septic tank, installing new heating ducts, and building new steps and porch off the front door.

Christmas was really nice, with family split between Paul's house, Dad's house and the Morganfield Hometown Inn. I cooked roast mutton for Christmas Eve and roast turkey and ham in Coca-Cola for Christmas day. All of my father's brothers and sisters were here Christmas eve and morning. There were 16 of us for Christmas Eve supper, including Ashley (my Girl Scout/farm help). She spent all of Christmas eve with us, and really had a great time with my family, especially my cousin Sarah from Minneapolis. Now, they're the modern version of pen pals - they text each other!

The week after Christmas, with everything done and everyone gone, I didn't know what to do with myself!

Now you can see our house from the road!

The two weeks since we returned from Spain have been consumed by putting board up on the downstairs exterior and covering that board with house wrap. Challenging, but immediately gratifying, the cladding adds strength and substance to the building. The house wrap is a moisture barrier that is supposed to stop condensation forming on the wood and causing rot or mold growth.

My mother and step-father came to help for one weekend and we finished putting up the board in the middle of the next week. We started wrapping the house on Veteran's Day, and finished a couple of days later. Installing house wrap is an all-body workout - pulling the 9-foot long roll tight, holding it level, climbing up and down the ladder, moving the ladder, stapling and then hammering.

It was totally worth it: the house wrap is white, so you can now clearly see our house from the road.

Spanish Holiday

We spent the last 10 days of October with Charles's family in Spain. Uncle Paul, his daughters Debbie and Alison, and Alison's family, Mark, Maisie and Eliza, came from England, and we rented a lovely villa less than 2 miles from Charles's parents' house. We even had our own pool, even if it was unheated and very cold. The weather was fabulous - we brought some back with us, I hope you all enjoyed it. We shopped together at supermarkets and outdoor markets; we spent one afternoon on the beach; we ate and drank a lot. We even got to spend one day just hanging out at the villa enjoying peace, quiet and company.

It was great to be able to spend time with the cousins, because we only just met them three years ago. Debbie is about a year older than us, and Alison is just a few months younger than Charles. Although we've emailed and web-cammed, we really enjoy being able to sit around the table with them, eating, drinking and playing games. Not to mention the deep psychological and philosophical discussions (proving that every family is nuts, not just mine!).

To be honest, though, the real reason we went to Spain was to see Maisie and Eliza again. Maisie is 10 years old and started secondary (middle) school this year. As a fellow oldest child, we were able to compare notes about being big sisters, and we talked about Magic cards and Harry Potter books. Eliza just turned 8 and is my new hero because she beat Charles at Monopoly - twice! We made pizza together, baked and decorated birthday cupcakes, learned how to do iris folding, and drove up to the top of the world to the Calle Alto Observatory. We even found a ghost town with a dragon's cave!

It had been two years since we were last in Spain, so it was lovely to spend time with Mike and Sue, although it really felt like we hadn't been away at all. Both are in good health, especially with Sue now walking daily. Her doctor warned her about high blood pressure last year, so she started walking and lost a lot of weight. Sue's also met a nice group of women who walk - and shop - together. Mike turned 65 on the day we all got together to celebrate all our birthdays, and got a special two-cupcake salute from Maisie and a song from all the rest of us.

More flooring

Did I ever mention how much I love putting in sheets of sub-floor? Well if I didn't it's because it's a terrible chore. I'm glad we only ever have to do it once. After 4 days (it rained too much on Friday), we have already installed about 70% of the upstairs subfloor. It's going quicker because we don't have to build upwards as we build outwards - on the downstairs, we could only put on upper beams once the relevant subfloor was in place.

We also put up one of the end walls and installed the first roof beam.

Most importantly, we can now sit upstairs and enjoy our view, or we can sit downstairs in the shade/rain cover!