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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

The Fall Report



A busy summer has blended nicely into a warm and forgiving fall, and we are bringing in the last of the garden's bounty (despite the deer!) : tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, winter squash, pumpkins, green beans, lettuce and kales, potatoes, garlic, onions, shallots, peppers, carrots, beets (mostly eaten by those pesky deer!), and herbs galore: thyme, oregano, basil, sage, fennel, tarragon, chickweed, calendula, echinacea, valerian, chamomile, coriander; the list goes on.



Now we have time to reflect on all the help on the house and land, for which we will be eternally grateful : lets see if i can remember all of your names! In no particular order, you are Ryan, Kevin, Emma, Craig, Leslie, Roy, Oliver, Steve, Nathan, Odin, Sage and Cedar. Some of these fine folks hailed from the WWOOF program (yay WWOOF!), one from the Caretakers Gazette (check that out if you want to travel and stay in cool places for free!), and others are friends or friends of friends, but ALL of our helpers are now newly, and hopefully proudly, appointed Friends of the Buck Creek Ranch Straw Bale House on the Foot of Vast Mountain. (My poet husband sleeps while i write this so please bare with me!). We may not have gotten as much done as we would have liked, but hey, what the heck, the process as much as the end result is what turns us on (well we'll see once there is an end to this...if ever?). It was sure a lot of fun hosting our helpers, and many thanks go out to Crannog Ales for keeping the fluids up.
Here are some recent pics that unfortunately do not fully display the amount of time and work and effort it took to get even to this point.

One of the most time consuming parts was figuring out and constructing the footing for the masonry heater, which you can see is the concrete part in the floor platform. This is built as such to take the weight of the heater weighing up to and around 3000 lbs. yikes.







Jonathan and i and Jamie too will continue to putter away on the house as much as we can over the winter, and see how far we get.

Help is always welcome and let us know if you would prefer the deluxe tipi with firepit, the separate cabin with its airy ceiling and woodstove, or if those are full, a tent, or a couch inside the cosy (translation: small) trailer. I know it sounds like a B&B ad, maybe its practice for the future.

Time to get more firewood in, clean and organize indoors in order to maintain (or acquire?) sanity, and plan for next year.