Project no-mow.

I do not like mowing the lawn. Ours is actually more of a weed and dandelion patch than it is grass, and requires considerably more care and attention than either of us want to give. And this is unfortunate, because we have quite a lot of it. So in conjunction with our gardening effort, we are aiming to get rid of as much of the lawn as possible- what we don't turn into vegetable and flower gardens will eventually get converted to no-mow turf or wildflowers... and yes, this will definitely be a long term project. We started last week by renting a "sod cutter" from our local hardware store. This machine quickly became my new best friend, and by the end of one afternoon a big chunk of the yard had evaporated. After putting down some fresh soil, Lisa got to work planting all the vegetables that have been growing in our house for the past 2 months. In this photo, she is working on squash, zucchini, cukes, and THIRTY SIX tomato plants (this is not a typo, the girl likes her 'maters). Our sod removal project continued up to and around the old pump house foundation. On this end of the new garden space, I put in raised beds (made from cedar slabs given to us by our local sawyer friend) and surrounded them with wood chip mulch. Then we planted them with every vegetable we could think of, and a few we've never heard of (anyone tried claytonia?).Yum.

And the Deer Will Play...

What... ...the garden is finished?

Wahoo!

Dinnertime!!!

Let it rain.

With showers in the forecast, I installed the remainder of the rainwater collection system so we could see it in action. As I worked on this project last summer, I was stuck with the dilemma of how to divert the snow melt away from the rain barrels during the winter months (there are several diverters on the market, but they are expensive and none of them were compatible with my design or our over sized classic round downspouts). But while browsing at Menards recently, I found some flexible downspout adapters and knew they would do the trick. They were only $7 each, so I got 4 of them and went to work. First, I dug a trench along the foundation wall and buried a section of 3" DWV pipe with inlet stub outs at each rain barrel location. The outlet of this pipe terminated at grade (in the forefront of the photo below) and was covered with a cap that I drilled several small holes in. Then I installed the Galvalume gutter downspouts to the walls of the barn, terminating each one a foot or so above the height of the rain barrel. A white flexible downspout adapter was then attached to each gutter downspout and bent in the direction of the rain barrel inlet. In the Fall, I can simply extend the flexible adapter down to the in-ground drainpipe stub out to divert the snow melt around the rain barrel and away from the barn foundation. The next photo shows the two collection barrels on the south side. Holes were tapped on the bottom of each and fitted with 2" irrigation pipe and shutoff valves. Each barrel is plumbed in series to a common irrigation pipe that travels around the perimeter of the building (you can see the black pipe on the ground between the two barrels, which will eventually be covered with wood chip mulch). Eventually this "trunk" line will extend about 100 feet towards our vegetable garden and connect with larger capacity storage tanks, but I cannot complete that until we finish some site excavation this summer. So just to get the system up and running, I setup the storage tanks nearby and connected them to the rain barrels with an ordinary garden hose. This was done by tapping a hose bib into the bottom of one of the rain barrels and running a garden hose from it... ...to the storage tanks about 20 feet away, as shown below. The garden hose was adapted back to the 2" irrigation pipe fittings which connect the two large storage tanks to one another. These storage tanks are 250 gallons each, so together with the four collector barrels we have about 700 gallons of capacity. There is room on the stand for a third tank in case we want more capacity. The vertical section of pipe to the right of the barrel is the overflow for the entire system- when the water level reaches max capacity, it can spill out of the vertical pipe and drain back into the ground. It had already rained for awhile when this photo was taken, and you can see the water level rising (it had collected 200 gallons in a short time). Here is the south view of the system. There are two more rain barrels on the north side of the barn, connected to these via the 2" irrigation pipe. Since I installed all of the rain barrels and the storage tanks at the same elevation, the entire system will fill and discharge at the same rate, using gravity. No well, no pump, no electricity required- just rainfall and gravity! When building the gardens last summer, I installed a branch line that tee'd off the irrigation pipe with a stub out terminating inside each raised bed garden. With the system now ready for water, I clamped hose bibs to each stub out and laid down a short length of soaker hose. Our gardens can be watered anytime with a just twist of the hand valve :) I will still need to cover the large storage tanks to protect them from sunlight (which can allow algae growth), but for now we can see the system works. The rain barrels are opaque, so they will not need to be covered. Since I often see single 55 gallon rain barrels advertised for over $100 each, I am happy to say our entire system only cost about $400, which includes all 6 of the recycled tanks and barrels (bought off Craigslist), and all the pipe fittings, clamps, valves and paint. For another $50, we can add another large storage tank and have about 1000 gallons of total capacity. I built this system around the irrigation pipe because I had most of what I needed lying in the field from the previous owners. But the fittings, clamps and valves for this large pipe got to be very expensive and I could've simplified the system and reduced the price by about 1/3 by designing it differently...ahhh, the cost of R&D!

Our Website

Our website is up and running. We are very excited! It was designed by Jennifer Gordon of Idun Design. She is excellent to work with, very creative. It's official! Check it out and let us know what you think!

Moving Day.

Back in 2003, my first attempt at chicken-rearing was a dismal failure. After raising the little chicks inside the house, I moved them out to one of the barns where I had fashioned a nice little coop for them with some 2x4s and chicken wire. The chickens looked content in their new home, until a weasel got in a few hours later. The death toll included all the chickens and the weasel, and I suddenly became a Norwegian bachelor farmer with no farm animals. Trust me, dead chickens are not much fun. Hoping to increase their life expectancy this time, I made the chickens a new and improved portable coop. They get a sheltered area up above for roosting and laying, and a screened-in space on the ground where they can pick for food all day long. It's not as good as free-ranging, but hopefully it will keep them alive beyond our previous record of 3 hours! Here are the photos from moving day. The side panels are removable so we can clean the roosting area. The nesting boxes on either end are accessible via hinged doors. I also made a little ramp that can be raised and lowered from the outside via a rope and pulley system...pretty slick, and I built the whole contraption using reclaimed barn boards from last weeks deconstruction project. Getting the lay of the land. Here's Lisa teaching them what a door is all about... But you know how kids are- they insisted on doing it "their way": Finally...they figured it out on their own.

More unbuilding happens

Our five-year plan includes deconstructing one structure each year- We took apart the big barn in '07, the pumphouse last summer, so 2009 called for the other barn to be put to rest. With the help of family and friends, we dismantled the whole building in a refreshingly quick 3 days...if only all my projects could go this well.

So here's how it looked just before the prybars and sledgehammers came out:

Day 1- removing shingles (there were 3 layers) and roof boards:

By the end of day 2, only the brittle skeleton remained...

...and we were happy about that:

Day 3 involved knocking down the walls and pulling apart the timbers, saving what we could for later use:

In the end, we're left with a crumbly foundation and a much improved view of the new barn:

Growth happens.

With a little heat and alot of light, our seeds sprouted and took right off. After a week, we were transplanting them into larger pots. Note the wire cover on the chicken box- the little girls learned how to fly on day #2, and had to be restrained! When you remove the chicken wire, they do this:

They love to fly up to the ledge and see what's outside, but none have gotten up the nerve to leave home just yet.

Our cucumber plants on the heat mat, growing at about the same rate as the chickens.

Earth Day, every day.

After several years of dabbling with the simpler life (actually, being whipped and beaten by it), Lisa and I decided to put forth a more serious effort at growing our own food this season. Purely by coincidence, we kicked off our "keepin' it local" project on Earth Day by picking up our first batch of chicks. We got six little peepers, half of them Brown Leghorns and the other half Gold Star Browns. The photo below was taken at naptime...they often segregate, but can also play nice when they are all awake. We also started a variety of seeds for our expanded garden. I built a stand for the seed trays, complete with grow lights (which we found out in the barn) and heated pan underneath. The heat lamp for the chicks also seems to be keeping the seed trays warmer too. We have all this setup in our office/guest bedroom, which is now the warmest room in the house and smells like pine shavings...happy Earth Day!

3 granola bars, 2 water bottles, and a passport.

The die-hards around here know that the best time of year starts after most of us have shoved our skis in the basement closet. Its called crust-skiing, and I was fortunate to get an invite to make a loop across several lakes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area along the US-Canadian border near Ely. Over a smooth layer of packed snow, it was a day of fast, blissful, wide-open skiing, with occasional stops for photos, portages (we had to walk them), and snacks. A cool rock on Moose Lake.

Elton, the speck on the shoreline, making a run (er, ski) for the border.

Some rapids along one of our several portages...walk across this log and you're in Canada.

Refueling stop, somewhere on Basswood Lake. 30-something degrees and sunny...what a way to cap off the 2009 ski season!

A fine mistake.

When designing the floor plan, I allowed enough space to build a simple L-shaped staircase in the corner of the barn. Despite my compulsive tendency to check my calculations repeatedly, somehow I made a critical error- When it came time to build the staircase, I didn't have the space needed and didn't want to cut through floor joists to make up the deficit. To further complicate the design, I needed the steps to move away from the wall to allow adequate headroom when you reach the top landing (where the arched ceiling meets the knee wall). So, my original design was thrown out and I started sketching layouts that might fit in the space, meet building code requirements, and satisfy the headroom issues at the top landing. After a couple days of drawing various scenarios, the only good way to solve both problems seemed to be a winding staircase with a dual radius. A sharp curve near the bottom would turn the corner in the least amount of linear space and a more gradual sweep along the upper section would gradually drift away from the wall to provide the needed headroom at the top. But how to build it?Conventional stair building methods (using stringers) wouldn't work with my curved design, so I decided to support the staircase with a stud wall on the inside and ledger boards, attached to the building's wall, on the outside. I established the path of the steps by tracing out the radii on pieces of plywood, then laminating them to some treated boards that would form the sill plate of the stud wall. This assembly, which looked strikingly similar to the Nike Swoosh (maybe my subconscious would rather be out trail running...), was anchored to the foundation with concrete screws.

I'm one of the few people that goes shopping at the dump. Last summer, I amassed a sizable collection of reclaimed lumber by scrounging through the demolition pile at our local landfill. Most of what I usually find are shorter length boards perfect for a project like this one, so I was able to frame almost the entire staircase using somebody else's trash.

I needed to terminate my stud wall before reaching the top, as it was encroaching on the yellow brick road below. So I cut stringers to support the final two steps. This also allowed enough headroom to frame in a standard sized door so we can use the area underneath the steps for a storage closet. I had enough cutoffs from my previous drywalling projects to skin the whole stud wall without having to buy any new material. Here is a sneak peek at the roughed-in stairs. Eventually I will install thick pine slabs for the treads and build a nice curving handrail and skirting, but for now it is usable- no more ladder climbing to get to the second story!

Still on the skinny skis

For most of the frigid winter, it is best to 'time' your ski workouts for the warmest part of the day. Then comes March... Ahhh, March. Longer days, abundant snow, and warmer temps- so much warmer that now it pays to get out there at dawn before the sun turns the trails to mush. And if you're lucky, the groomer just laid down fresh cords.

The view from the top of the alpine runs.Admittedly these pics were taken on a frosty morning about a week ago, before we got several days of rain. But with more snow in the forecast this week, we could be back in business for a little while longer.

Full circle.

The last wall went up today. This is the corner where the staircase will someday carry guests to the upper floor. Yeah, someday. I put in the top beam just to hold the posts in place and see how it looks. Once the flooring is installed in the haymow, I can continue with the second level of timbers.

If you're following the progress, then you're likely bored with the timber framing photos. Now that i've circumnavigated the barn with posts and beams, it's time to put down the chisel, sweep up the shavings and move on to something different for awhile.

The south wall.

With the walls and one of the cornerposts already fixed in place, this one was the trickiest. But I'm getting the hang of timber framing and the process is getting much easier with experience.

The beam spans about 28 feet, supported by the 5 posts centered between the windows.

My longest timbers won't span the room, so I had to splice two shorter beams over the center support post. Normally, a "scarf" joint would be used here, due to its greater strength. Since it wasn't necessary here (AND since I didn't feel confident that I could cut my first scarf joint without destroying several timbers), I opted to go with a simple lap joint.