Snow, stumps, and a mystery marsupial.
We got a dusting of snow overnight, which lasted about fifteen minutes once the sun rose. Traffic to Columbia was pretty light this morning, so I guess many people stayed hunkered down indoors. I know that Metro schools opened a couple of hours late. The little bit of snow was still quite pretty, and made me long for a real amount. That probably won’t be happening until December though.
There wasn’t any snow on the ground at the farm. There was however an unidentified animal, maybe a groundhog. I managed to get a crappy picture of him with my phone, shown below. It was zoomed in to the maximum and then drastically cropped, so it makes the “Nessie” photograph look museum worthy. I took the picture from the front seat of my car while I was waiting for a phone call. Frustratingly, my SLR with telephoto lens was in the back of the car. I have seen him before – he lives under the one remaining shed, but previous spottings have merely entailed him running back to the safety of his home. I got a nice long glimpse of him as he meandered around. He eventually went back underground, at which point I retrieved my camera and prepared it to photograph him. Unfortunately he never returned.
After running a number of errands in downtown Columbia I returned to the farm for a little tractor time. I tried to take advantage of the still rather wet ground and uproot some stumps. These were primarily from smaller trees that I had cut down to a couple of feet. Unfortunately that limited amount of trunk made it difficult to get much leverage, but it went okay. Still a bit of work yet to go though. This week I need to get a fire going to burn the stumps, brush, and the last of the house debris. The weather should be great for working outside over the next few days. I just need to get stuff done before the snakes come out to play!
Updates (or ramblings, to be more precise).
Haven’t been doing a good job of blogging, and I haven’t journaled in ages either. I need to be doing at least one daily for the sake of my emotional stability. I sort of try to use my smartphone’s camera to take notes and record things. It geotags and dates pictures, so at least I have kind of a photo journal. I sure wish I had a phone like that back when I was doing cool things. But at least I do have photographs. Tens of thousands of them to be (in)exact. I was looking at some of them this morning, and trying to upload to Amazon Prime Photos, since unlimited photo storage is included with our Prime account. Unfortunately it seems like you have to upload one folder at a time, not an attractive proposition when you have early 800 folders. I will search for a workaround.
The house is slowly progressing. I have completely cleared and scraped the site, and did a little leveling. There is still a bit of slope, but it is manageable. The surveyor is supposedly coming in the next day or two in order to map out the foundation, then the footings will get dug and poured. It would be amazing if that plus the block work is finished by the end of the week. Then the house gets framed, which should go pretty quickly. The framing package is a pretty good price, so I need to go ahead and get that ordered. It will be such a relief to see the framing done and the roof and sheathing on. Then it will be time for me to take over and really get to work!
I have really enjoyed using SketchUp to work on the house plans. I am getting better at it and understanding more and more of its features. the FedEx store does a great job of printing large copies of the plans. I also bought a Dell laser printer that has been wonderful for printing letter sized documents. I am really looking forward to setting up an office space of my own in the new house. My 8×8 room isn’t huge, but it will be private and efficient.
We sure have had a mild February and March. The forecast shows a low of 27 in a couple of nights, but that is the only time it is supposed to get below freezing for the next couple of weeks. We did actually get a light dusting of snow the other night, but it melted in a flash.
Realistically we are probably about six months away from moving. That is factoring in a few surprises on hiccups on construction, but nothing major. I am definitely excited about moving, but realize there is a lot of work to be done before that happens.
I am also very excited about living in Columbia. It is a cool town that is starting to have a lot going on. About ten minutes from the farm, in town, is a little recreation center. I have driven by but have not been inside, which I will try to rectify this week. The big attraction is that a yearly membership is only $75. So it could be a great place to exercise. There are also some neat looking restaurants that we haven’t yet tried. Mule Day is next month and I want to go to it.
It would really be nice to go on a camping trip this spring, but I doubt that it will be possible. Maybe this fall after we are all moved into the new house. Lots of blooms around here sure are pretty. Maybe we could at least go to Monteagle next weekend. I’ll run that by Liz.
I’ve been reading a bit in the evenings. Not anything serious just spy and adventure type of books. Also still watching The Blacklist and Hawaii Five-O. They have both been pretty good recently. Liz and I have been watching a little HGTV too.
30 hours of Annie.
Well, the Kioti finally has a name – Annie. She is named after two redheads (which of course everybody knows means orange hair) – Raggedy Ann and Anne of Green Gables. We have now spent about 30 hours working together, so I figured I would share a few thoughts.
As hoped for, this machine is quite the beast. The loader is very strong and it can pull like crazy as well. I actually need to build a ballast box to attach to the rear so it isn’t quite so tippy. Even with the rear tires filled I have lifted the rear end regularly. The loader is nice and tall too. I am thankful that the bucket clears the sides of the 30 yard dumpster that I have been loading.
Unfortunately it has been a wet few weeks since I got Annie. I have made a real mess with the heavy tractor, but such is the price of progress. I will level everything out eventually. Fortunately this coming week is supposed to be pretty dry.
The pallet forks that I bought have been incredible. They have stayed on about 95% of the time and have really made moving things a breeze. The A/C unit, lumber, blocks, stone, shingles, and more, have all been easily handled. Having the skid steer style quick attach on the loader has been great. I would like a couple more attachments – mainly a stump bucket and in my dreams, a grapple.
I need to repair the three point hitch so that I can run i implements off the rear. I would like a box blade and the aforementioned ballast box. Eventually a finish mower would be nice as well.
I bought a grease gun and lubed up all of the zerks. I need to look into oil and filter changes, probably sooner rather than later.
So far I haven’t had any issues. I have worked this machine really hard and it has kept up. Hopefully it will keep going strong for many years!
Like a Limestone Cowboy.
After tearing down the house we have a lot of limestone waiting to find a purpose. About half of it was previously the chimney and the other half served as the foundation on the original portion of the house. There are some very nice pieces. Unfortunately I don’t have any ideas for what to do with them next. The new house won’t have a fireplace, and we are doing a continuous block foundation (because you know, codes). Maybe some kind of outdoor fireplace/fire pit could be cool. I’ll keep thinking about it.
Windows.
Things are picking up speed in regards to finding and buying the materials for the house. Last Saturday my dad and I drove down to Alabama and bought all of the windows. We got a pretty good deal, and I like the windows, especially a couple of the larger picture windows. It was a nice little excursion that was a little bit of a cross cultural experience at the materials store. Nice folks, but Liz probably won’t be running into any of them at Whole Foods anytime soon. On the drive back we stopped at a gas station that I had previously patronized. They have mediocre food and some awesomely bizarre taxidermy, shown below.
Plans change.
As you might have concluded from the above picture, the farmhouse is no more. We made the difficult, but responsible, decision to tear it down and start from scratch. It became obvious that the core of the house was just in too poor of shape to justify spending the money to try and save it. The foundation repair bill alone would have covered the cost of a new foundation for both the house and garage, along with much of the framing. So we decided to salvage as many materials as possible and wipe the slate clean.
The new house will look remarkably like the old one, both inside and out. It will also sit on the same site. Construction should go a lot more quickly due to not having to tip-toe around the existing structure.
It was more difficult to bring down the house than I anticipated. Fortunately the new tractor was a huge help. The pallet forks really made a difference too. I took off the bucket on day one, and only returned it once the house was pretty much completely down. The free pallets I got in Shelbyville have also been great. I loaded them up with shingles, block, and limestone from both the foundation and chimney. I got a 30 yard dumpster and loading it with the tractor has been a breeze. The limestone is really pretty, and we have some nice blocks of it. I’m not sure what we will do with it though. Maybe a cool outdoor fireplace.
The new house will not be very flashy, just another simple farmhouse. That is to help keep the construction costs down and lower the ongoing maintenance expenses. It will still have three bedrooms and 2.5 baths, along with an additional bed and bath in the garage apartment. The main changes from the previous plan are a little more space in the living and dining rooms, an eight by eight foot office for me, and a little different location for the door between the kitchen and garage.
The county has been great on changing the permit, and the bank was very accommodating as well for this change.
Unfortunately now we are dealing with tons of rain. It stopped a couple of days ago, but the ground is still super saturated. Flooding all over Middle Tennessee. It doesn’t feel like it will dry out until August! I have just a little more of the old patio’s concrete slab to remove along with some block. Then I will grade the house site lightly and we should be ready for the foundation crew. Hopefully they can dig this coming week.
It will be a huge relief once we really get going full speed ahead. There have been a lot of delays and changes on this project, but I really feel like each evolution has improved the final result. Next week is the start of daylight savings time, so it will be great to have an extra hour of light in the evenings. It looks like the next couple of weeks will be pretty warm. February was mild, hitting 80 one day with plenty of others in the 70’s. It’s hard to believe that winter might be over, but that could well be the case. I guess that means no snow camping this year. Oh well.
I’ll try to post some pictures soon of all the mess I’ve made around the farm. Of course I’ll also post some of the foundation as soon as it’s in place.
Welcome to the newest member of the family!
Well life sure has been happening. So much for my goal of posting daily. Oh well. I will try to get everything up to date shortly.
The big news is that I finally got a tractor. Yes, I am now the proud owner of the orange beauty pictured above. The search was a lengthy ordeal and forking over the cash was painful, but man this thing is a beast. It is a Kioti DK40SE, 2012 model with about 850 hours on it. I was prepared to buy a (smaller, less powerful, and more expensive) brand new New Holland at the dealer, but decided to call on this Kioti. It was down at a dealer in Alabama, and priced higher that I thought it was worth, but I could tell they were flexible on price. So my dad and I drove down there to check it out. It had been worked pretty hard, and had a little cosmetic damage, but it ran good. We finalized everything and the salesman said they would bring it up to their Columbia store for free. Unfortunately that ended up taking four days longer than promised. The one down side of this machine is that it is too big for Lexie and my trailer, so I had to get a tow truck to bring it to the farm.
Fortunately once it arrived we got to work! I have put about 15 hours on it so far. I purchased a pair of 42″ pallet forks also, and they have been on the tractor the whole time. I can’t get over how amazing they are. I got a trailer load of free pallets down in Shelbyville a couple of weeks ago, and I have been putting everything on them, and moving them around with ease.
The tractor is very easy to operate, but it will take a little getting used to certain aspects. Primarily the fact that the hydrostatic transmission is controlled by two separate pedals, as opposed to the treadle setup on our old Kubota. The other adjustment will be getting used to so much power! I think that the some scientists from the Russian Olympic program must have visited the Kioti factory. One of my biggest requirements in a tractor was a super powerful loader, and this one delivers. I need to get some sort of weight on the back end in order to keep from lifting the rear tires.
We have had tons of rain recently, so I have made a bit of a mess. Came close to getting stuck a couple of times too. I don’t think the ground is going to dry out any time soon, unfortunately.
One thing that gave me confidence in buying a well used machine is the fact that my new next door neighbor is a diesel mechanic for the county. He offered to help me maintain it. There is a great dealer over in Murfreesboro that has been very helpful. I bought manuals there and appreciated their friendly service. Hopefully I won’t be seeing much of them though!
A big challenge is coming up with a good name. I was going to call the New Holland “Bonnie” and I was considering a Case IH which I would have named “Ruby”. Nothing comes to mind for the KIoti. My friend Tim has been calling her “Big Orange”, but I’m not really into that.
Overall I’m very pleased with my purchase. It is a very capable machine that should help me get a lot of work done. I need to buy some implements for it, most likely a mower and box blade to begin with. First I need to repair the three point hitch. One of the arms is missing. Soon I’ll do a post on all of the little accessories I have bought and plan on buying.
The master plan – orchard.
Like the garden that I mentioned yesterday, the future orchard will be a great source of healthy and delicious fruit. Which I am super excited about because fruit is a) tasty and b) expensive. My goal is to have apples, pears, figs, apricots, peaches, plums, and anything else that will grow. I am most excited about figs because fresh ones are amazing and difficult to find here.
Once again I hope to benefit from my father-in-law’s expertise. He is an expert fruit grower, with many years experience raising apple, pear, and cherry trees up in Michigan. If he is in town soon we might go up to the nurseries in McMinnville and Smithville to buy trees.
I would really like to load up the front yard with trees. I think 50 or so would be a nice number, if there is that much space. The soil seems pretty good. I wish the space was a little more level, as it might be a bit of a pain to use a ladder on the hill, but that’s okay. We can also use the tractor and front end loader, as long as nobody calls OSHA.
The master plan – garden.
I love fresh fruits and vegetables. I am not so crazy about the high prices. Therefore I look forward to growing my own on the farm. There is an area of about an acre that I have identified as being the best place for a large garden. My neighbor Russ told me that it is great soil and that anything will grow there. Right now it has some exceptionally tall and healthy looking weeds. Hopefully I will have a tractor before too long, then I will determine what implements I need in order to efficiently work the land.
I want to grow a large manner of things, particularly items that are expensive and hard to find in the stores. It will be lots of fun to experiment. Liz gave me three heirloom seed catalogs for Christmas, and I have really enjoyed looking them over and thinking about what I want to order.
It might be a bit of a challenge to plant much this spring though. I will be super focused on trying to finish the house as quickly as possible that it will be difficult to devote time to planting and upkeep. Maybe there are some seeds that I can just throw out and forget about.
I also want to grow herbs, although that will probably happen in a dedicated little garden just behind the house. I have also looked into growing potatoes and sweet potatoes in tires. Tires should be pretty easy to get, and the process seems pretty simple. It will also be fun to can the produce so that we are ready for the zombie apocalypse.
Going to my in-laws’ farm in Michigan is something that I have really enjoyed over the past few years. They grow about twelve acres of heirloom pumpkins every year, probably around twenty varieties. I hope to grow many of the same types that they do.
The master plan – goats.
Go, go, goats
For some reason Liz thinks that goats are pretty much the greatest thing ever. I think they are marginally cool. Anyways, she wants us to get about four to start with, with the possibility of getting many more. In my mind that will entail four small paddocks so we can rotate them, and two little houses. Those sheds should be pretty fun to build. Installing the fence posts, less so.
There are lots of goats listed on Craigslist in Middle Tennessee. I have also found websites for several goat farms in the Columbia area. It will be fun to visit them and speak with the owners. There are tons of types available but I am partial to the pygmy types. They look so cool with their horns and beards. We definitely don’t want billies, but are okay with either neutered males or females. The ladies obviously have the advantage of producing milk, and babies. I am thinking maybe two of each to start with.
Last fall we went to the fainting goat festival in Lewisburg, which was a lot of fun. That is where these photographs were produced. There are also lots of goats on the campus at Sewanee. We go see them every time we are up in Monteagle. I think that goats on the farm will be a nice attraction for our friends’ kids to come see.
My dad is obsessed with the idea of making goat cheese. However he hasn’t mentioned anything about milking the goats twice a day. We’ll see what ends up happening with that.
Spring seems to be the main time to buy new goats, but it looks like there are always some being born. This fall will probably be the ideal time to acquire some, once we are settled into the farm house. I am looking forward to getting them and having fun with them. One guy told me that they are awesome pets.