Growing Season

It's spring.  It's growing season.  And our house is getting taller.  It's finally taller than a concrete slab.  Neta and I drove out to the farm today (Monday) and found a wall!

Guest bedroom (front) and Master bedroom (back).

Where the headers are will eventually be nice, tall windows.  Other framing awaits its debut.

Feel free to look through our bedroom windows...for now.

That's not the only thing growing.  Our garden is doing well.  It's flourishing in soil that hasn't been planted for decades and has been enriched over the years by lots of goat manure.

Tomatoes, Peppers, Cucumber, Eggplant, Artichokes, Okra, Corn, Pumpkin, Watermelon,
Cantaloupe, Mango, Avocado, Sunflower, Zinnia, other flowers...you know...the basics,

Another angle...just to make sure.

Picking time!

Our first produce!  Neta is so happy!  We've never had our
own veggies this early in the year.

UPDATE (Tuesday):  This blog is being written over multiple days because we felt bad about not having much, words or pictures, from yesterday.  Today...this!  The cabin has a bright, red door.

Is that an Elizabeth Arden Spa?

Actually...two red doors!

Terrell should have no problem finding home.

The walls and ceiling have been painted as well as the trim.

They look greenish gray, but trust me...they're light gray...almost like fog.

Turning our attention further down the road...

I see a house...almost

They have the four exterior walls up, along with some interior walls.  It's so nice to see progress after the slab sat idle last week due to weather delays.

The whole enchilada...exterior...downstairs.

The kitchen...looking out over the blueberries and woods.

Master Bath (left) and Master Bedrorom (right)

Office (foreground), Guest Bedroom (behind Office),
Guest Bath (left) and closet between the bedroom and bathroom

The view from the carport.  Those windows along the front and far side will be huge!

So there you have it.  We've got a framed out (mostly) first floor.  We are finally starting to "see" our house as we walk around the rooms and start visualizing furniture and appliances.  The excitement is slowly starting to build.

Rising from the Georgia Clay

It's been another week of progress and activity at the Farm on all fronts.  We have mud in the cabin. We have a concrete slab at the house.  We have huge fires.

First, the cabin.  The sheetrock guys came back and did all of the "mudding" of the seams and nail holes in the walls and ceiling.  Sorry.  No pics.  I forgot and it's not that compelling anyway.  Not that the plumbing and concrete pics to follow will be any more exciting.

Second, the house.  The plumber came and laid out all of the downstairs plumbing in preparation for the concrete guys pouring the slab.

The master bathroom isn't as luxurious as I pictured in my mind.

Kitchen plumbing to the right.  Laundry room to the left.

Layout for the downstairs guest bathroom

Once that was done, they also laid out a couple of in-floor electrical outlets in the living room and office and covered it all up with a plastic moisture barrier before this happened:

A house is beginning to take shape.  Carport, front porch and main house level.

Looking across the front porch into the main living space.

The concrete slab is poured and in place.  Today (Monday, 5/16) the framers are supposed to arrive and start actually building a house.  Now the real, visual progress begins.

We met Tracy (our builder) on Friday and picked out windows.  The ceiling height will be 9 feet so we are putting in tall windows to make the house even brighter, especially with a front porch roof overhanging the sunny (south-facing) side of the house.  We haven't picked out the front door yet, but we'll have a glass transom over it to also bring in more light.

This weekend was another busy weekend of usual and not-so-usual chores.  The usual is comprised of cutting acres of grass (which I love), clearing trees and parts of trees leftover from the timber operations to clear our path around the big pond, Neta adding more to the vegetable garden and adding other little touches to make it look nice.  The not so usual was getting rid of a couple of large brush piles that we've been continually adding to.  We got rid of it the old-fashioned way...fire.  After obtaining a proper fire permit, of course.  

At it's height, the fire was more than twice this big.  The biggest fire I've ever started.

The two piles we burned have been growing for months as we piled on more stuff.  The biggest (picture above) was about 8 or more feet high and about 15 - 20 feet in diameter.  Part of the pile consisted of smaller branches of the cedar tree that was removed next to the old house.  The cedar needles(?) were dry and brown and we knew they'd burn hot and fast.  They did!  At it's peak, the fire was about 40 or more feet high and I could feel the heat from about 75 feet away.  Despite being in an open area, it singed the surrounding trees that were 40 or more feet away.

Not as big or as hot, but it got the job done.

Both fires.  I think Neta took this picture just to show off her garden

We didn't think that either pile would burn down as much as they did as there was so much green on them, though there was lots of older, drier stuff underneath.  The fires were so hot that almost everything except for some larger pieces and a huge stump (first fire) burned completely.

By the time the stump burned more, it looked like a mushroom.

Those piles will continue to be added to and more burns will take place, but it was a good start and we're happy to more progress on clearing and cleaning up.

On a lighter note, here are a few nature pictures to calm you down in case fire makes you nervous.

Neta stumbled upon a pair of geese on Saturday ambling around the farm and then she noticed some furry-looking lumps teetering along with them.  It was a mated pair (we assume) with their two goslings.

Family time!

She noticed them again on Sunday, though something was different.

Somewhere in that pic is FIVE goslings.

Neta snuck up on them...well, they knew she was there.  She watched them walking around between the stands of pines and noticed an additional 3 goslings for a total of 5.  They've also been spotted by the big pond (naturally) and judging by the droppings, they really enjoy that area.

Several years ago a lone goose started coming to the little pond and Terrell began to feed it.  Terrell and the goose formed somewhat of a friendship...until the gator got it.  Terrell was not happy.  He has mentioned that he'll be on the lookout for gators to try to keep these geese safe.

We have one more bit of family news to report.  Mockingbird babies.

This is how I look, minus the downy feathers, right before Neta puts the food on the table.

A house being built, brush being cut and burned, new babies hatching.  A lot of changes are taking place around the farm.  It's fun to watch.

The Beauty of Wood

As we tore down the original farmhouse we asked our contractor, Tracy, to save any old beams he came across.  Despite the destructive nature of the heavy equipment used and, oh yeah, the years of termite damage, he managed to salvage some nice timbers for us.  Looking at this wood got me thinking.  If the house was built in 1892, how old must the wood be that came out of it?  Some of those timbers are quite large.  The larger pieces in the left photo below were 8" x 8" and 12 to 16 feet long.  Those are some huge, old trees...milled in or before 1892!

Oh, the history that wood has seen!

There's a future farmhouse table (frame) in that pile of lumber somewhere.

Pegs...because nails just aren't enough!

Rough sawmilled wood and old square steel nails

I imagine men like in the photo below, hammering in these nails to build the old farmhouse.

Not the actual carpenters of the original farmhouse

We are hoping to use some of that wood in the construction of our new house.  We have some ideas such as a fireplace mantle, framing a large doorway, the aforementioned farm house table that I intend to build using the smaller pieces (4x4s and 2x4s).  We also have that huge cedar tree that we're having milled as mentioned in a previous post.  I hope to use some of that for a coffee table and maybe some smaller tables on our porch and who knows what else.

Walking around the big barn we have also found other wood that we'd like to use for "something".  The loft of that barn is about 16' x 36' (give or take) and it's entirely built with cypress planks.

More sawmilled lumber at our disposal.  Could be used as "shiplap" maybe?

Tracy vetoed our idea to use it as (free) flooring as cypress is too soft, but an accent wall?  Maybe...  Horizontal wainscoting?  Perhaps.  There's plenty of it to use and it would look better in our house than in a barn somewhere.

Neta found this last weekend.  Another vintage piece of lumber that we'll figure out a use for.

It's lined with peg holes.  I joked that it was a giant's cribbage board.

Here are some more pictures I took as I walked around the big barn.  I snapped whatever caught my eye.  Looking at them it becomes obvious that I like lines/patterns.  Must be my inner control freak. Mosaics are confusing.

It's got a little lean, but that's part of it's charm.

Back at the little barn and I took this picture of the side of it.  I love those planks.  Maybe some of them could find themselves attached to the farm house table frame as a table top.  We'll see...

As you can see, we have no shortage of reclaimed or sawmilled wood that we can use for so many things.

Sometimes I walk around the farm and remind myself that we own such a wonderful place and think of all the potential that comes with it.  I'm sure to some folks owning a 50 acre farm in rural Georgia is not necessarily a dream life, but to me it has become just that.  I could be happy living just about anywhere, as there is no perfect place, as long as I had a large piece of land to enjoy. I'd love to capture elements from my childhood home around the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, the climate of San Diego and the fresh air and mountains of the Colorado Rockies, along with the wide open plains.  If you find that place, and they have land for sale, please let me know.

Looking around the farm we both see so much around here to re-purpose, fix up, clean up and change, but most of all we love what we see and can't wait to watch as it evolves.  It's become a beautiful place to us already.

Neta enjoying her "Honeysuckle Bench" on Mother's Day

Busy Mother's Day Weekend

That was fast!  The sheetrock guys showed up at the cabin on Friday afternoon and in two hours or so, they were done.  Wow!

Living room & hallway looking from the side door/carport

Kitchen walls

Bedroom (from hallway)

Bathroom (obviously)

Down the road, dump truck load after dump truck load kept coming to the main house to dump fill dirt into the block foundation.  They spread it out with a tractor and then went over it with a vibrating compactor to smooth it out and make sure it was, well...compacted.  There is a little block work left to do - one side was left open for the dump truck and tractor to get in/out - and then it will be time to pour the concrete.

Carport to the left, front porch in foreground and main house area everywhere else

Dirt is graded up to the edge of the carport on one side

While all of that was going on Friday afternoon, Terrell and I were busy clearing brush in a ditch next to the cabin.  He was pulling some old fence out of the overgrowth with his truck, while I was cutting weeds and small trees from the ditch and surrounding areas.  We wanted to clean up his future view looking out over the field between his house and ours.  I don't have any before and after pictures, but I do have some product placement instead.  Here are some tools that I have purchased to get work done on the farm.  They have saved me so much time and effort.

I use Consumer Reports and Amazon to review products before I make a purchase.  I was looking to replace my old gas chainsaw.  Consumer Reports gave this one a great review:

EGO Li-on (battery operated)16" chainsaw

I initially scoffed at battery-operated chainsaws, but the CR score compared to some of the Stihl chainsaws along with the Amazon reviews I read sold me.  THIS THING CUTS!  It's got a 56 volt lithium ion battery.  It has approximately 1.5 hours of cutting (actual trigger pull) time per charge, which for me has been almost a full afternoon of tree cutting.  It takes about an hour on the charger to bring it back to a full charge.  The batteries comes in various amperage sizes (1, 2, 5 and 7 amps).  The 16 inch saw comes with a 5 amp battery.  You can also purchase a 7 amp battery which can give you up to 2 hours of cutting time.  It's also so much more quiet than a gas powered saw.  I love it.  I've probably cut down about 50 trees so far, ranging in size from an inch or two up to about 8-10 inches in diameter.  I'll never go back to a gas powered saw again.

Another item in my bag of tricks is my new brush cutter.

This baby was sorely needed around the farm.

I already had a nice Stihl string trimmer, but I needed something more robust.  Something I could attach a blade to and do some serious cutting.  This fit the bill perfectly.  With that 3 sided blade I can cut everything from grass to thick weeds to small saplings.  We have so many black berry brambles and small trees and bushes (less than an inch) growing along edges and fields that a string trimmer just wouldn't handle.  The model doesn't matter.  If you need to do more than just edge grass, get yourself a blade on that trimmer/brushcutter.

The most important product of all that I just started using on the farm is this:

Rock solid cupholder!

I was lamenting to Neta about my lack of a cup holder on the tractor.  Hey...a hard working farmer needs to stay hydrated.  Neta did some research and found this.  It's magnetic and STRONG!  It'll hold at least 10 pounds.  I've been using it for a couple of weeks and it hasn't budged, no matter how bumpy the ride is.

She also found some magnetic hooks for holding items that I can't carry by hand when I'm on the tractor, but those have yet to be tested.  If I need to carry stuff on the tractor I use this:

Think it looks rickety?  It is!  But it gets the job done.

I throw in my chainsaw, brushcutter, rake, chain oil, gloves, etc. and I'm off to clear some land.

If you've read this far down, congratulations!  If you're a Mother, Happy Mothers Day!  If you're not, find one and wish her well.

We hope to have more progress to report on later this week!