A view of the farm where Ford/Amanda currently reside. Pretty awesome place.
Ford taking out the compost.
New Year's fireworks from my front porch in Vermont.
Aparently they don't make skis/bindings strong enough for manly men (or people who crash all the time like me).
Ford riding the 4-wheeler back to get more gas for the chainsaw.
Day 1 of work that I helped with. The walls and braces were already up. We braced the corners and added all the horizontal poles across the roofline.
Day 2, started putting up the siding. We eventually got it up about 3/4 around the barn, but ran out of the 100-year old siding...
Ford insisted on taking my picture...
Attempting to burn some brush down in the field. Way too wet and tons of dirt. Didn't get going any more than this.
The last day we worked, we cut down a ton of small trees to use as the diagonal rafter thingys to support the roof. We also put up some vertical posts to temporarily hold the ridgepole. We attempted to use 2 16' sections of really old heavy wood for the ridgepole, but it was way too heavy and awkward to actually lift up there. Ford tells me that they've now got most of the roof up. Pretty fun doing that sort of work, though it was pretty tiring and rather muddy.
Back here in Vermont, it's still cold and snowy (and probably will be for 3 or 4 more months). Since I've been back, it snowed another foot or so. I really ought to take some pictures to show you just how much snow is piled up in places, and it's only going to get better (or worse, if you don't like snow). There's a worrying amount of snow/ice on the roof now. Basically a bunch of little glaciers. It's going to be kind of scary in the spring when it all melts and slides off the roof. The river that runs through town is also frozen now. However, it's quite warm out at the moment (probably 25!), and getting warmer, so it'll probably melt again before too long.
In other news, I finally got myself a bed! After sleeping on a thermarest (that leaked and was flat by morning) for the first month and a half, I bought a queen size air mattress. That thing worked well for a while, but I've had to repair leaks 3 times now. Got fed up and bought a real mattress/box springs/frame thingy. I was rather giddy about it last night, and even when I woke up this morning. Somehow, my place feels more like home now that I'm not sleeping on the floor.
As far as work goes, still pretty slow. I was going to get sent down to Long Island again on Monday (the 7th), but that's been pushed back a week, if not more. This seems to happen a lot. Something gets scheduled and then rescheduled again and again. Oh well. In the meantime, I'm getting experience repairing things I never thought I'd have to, like diesel heaters, peristaltic pumps, and all sorts of other gadgets. Honestly, I feel more like a mechanic or a janitor than I do a geologist. Whatever, it'll pay the bills for now...
Oh, almost forgot, Mom/Dad and Teal, your christmas packages are finally on the way! Sorry about the delay on that...
2 comments:
Will
Hope you have recovered. Really enjoy reading your blog. We are getting hit with more snow again today. Only thrill has been to go to the landfill. Guess Teal will be coming over next week. We will try to do some snow shoeing and/or xc skiing. I have a bunch of reading to do, so I flipped in the CDs you sent for Christmas and am pretty mellowed out.
Hope all is well and you are having fun
The old man
Yeah, nothing like Meatloaf for mellowing out...
Glad you're enjoying it.
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