But the finished product turned out pretty good, considering my limited skills. Finish carpentry is not my strong point.
The baseboard trim was also tedious, as I had to work my way around each of the vertical timbers.
In all, it took around 125 pieces of trim, complete with curves and custom miter cuts, to finish the hayloft...yes, I'm really good at creating work for myself!
Then cut the rafters out one by one and threw them to the ground. With little meat left holding it up, I tied a chain around the center support and pulled the the works down with my truck.
All that remains is to pull nails from all the salvageable lumber (which, thankfully is just about all of it) and stack it up to dry. Feels good to be back on solid ground again!
...and the kale has already grown tall enough to push against the lid of the cold frame:
To speed up the composting process, I've been tossing our weeds and clippings directly into the chicken pen- they go after it like a school of piranhas, and can devour a wheelbarrow-full of stuff in a day. This fall, I can shovel out their handiwork and turn it into the gardens.
We also got got four more little 'composters' this week- Buff Orpington pullets. Here they are spending their days eating, sleeping and pooping in a little pen we set up in our office.
Here it is after filling with some partially-composted scraps from our bins, weeds, grass clippings, etc.
If it works as planned, we should have usable compost in a few weeks...I'll believe it when I see it.
With the garage emptied out, demo ensued on the structure. The skin (siding, shingles and tarpaper) came off in a couple of days, with the help of Lisa and my parents (who thankfully, refuse to act their age and are more than happy to climb up on the roof and tear off shingles).
Other than the rotted wood around the base, everything is solid and will no doubt be useful for upcoming projects.
We hired Dan the landscaper for a day to do the bullwork with his Bobcat, and I helped out with the ground work and generally leaned on a shovel for most of the time.
We decided to dig a hole under the foundation and bury the old concrete on-site, rather than adding it to the local landfill. It was a pleasure to watch him work, tossing around big concrete boulders with surgeon-like precision...in a few hours the site was leveled off as if nothing had even been there. 
I also had him skim away the sod and topsoil to form pathways across the yard. We piled up the topsoil for later use in the gardens, then replaced the material with gravel fill dug out of the foundation site. Then he drove away with his big machines- with a tear in my eye, I set out to finish the rest with a shovel, wheelbarrow, and several tons of stone.
One of the pathways passes by the entry doors to the shipping container, so I built up a little ramp for easy access. I also moved the pathway light posts to the new pathways and buried the low-voltage lines under the fieldstones.
Here's a pic of the almost-finished paths between house, barn and shipping container:
Another shot, taken from the barn side of the yard:
We took a vacation to Whitefish, MT and Glacier National Park. We had a great time. It was beautiful the whole time we were there. Perfect for hiking, biking and just hanging out. The week before we got there, they had just gotten 3-4 feet of snow in Glacier. That made some of the hiking difficult and a lot of the park was still closed, but we found some great trails and saw some great sights.
Hiking in the snow to Avalanche Lake.
And some snow the higher you went. That's Shawn looking
Shawn made it a little higher up than I did. Near the pass, until the snow on the road made him turn around.
It was beautiful.
It was a great relaxing vacation. Time to gear up and get back to work.
Shawn spent hours making the booth. The table was made from our timbers for the legs and
one of our slabs hand cut by Shawn. The picture frames, benches and larger frame were all made from wood from the old barn. The glass for the pictures came from old windows that were left in the barn. My cousin, Linda was nice enough to paint our Green Gate sign for us. Which I must say, turned out exactly how we wanted it. Thank you Linda.
That's us having a super fun time.
We met some great people, had some good conversations, saw some old friends, and had super people in the booths around us. All contributed to make the weekend very successful.
Then I extended the main line to the first two of our four raised bed gardens. The dump loop and each of the raised bed loops have their own shutoff valve so I can direct the heat wherever it is needed.
On a steamy day with the temp in the high 80s, I finally charged the system with fluid and flipped the switch- the heat is pumping through the soil and everything seems to be working well so far!
I don't have the proper tools for working with material this large, so it took a lot of hours with the planer and sander to smooth it up. After about 10 coats of shellac, it looked pretty good.
I cut mortises in the table top and legs to mate them together like the Lincoln Logs we played with as kids. The fit was tight enough that the table is surprising stable without any fasteners. Here's the finished product, ready for a trip to the big city.
If you're in St. Paul this weekend, come check out the expo at the state fairgrounds, and stop by to say "hi" if you do!
The outlet end of the collector passes through the wall to the pumping station- I made the connection using a flexible water heater connector.
The inlet pipe to the collector (bottom right) also has a flexible connector. I have gauges at both the inlet and outlet ends of the collector so I can measure the temperature gain, and knowing the pump flow rate, calculate the BTU output of the system.
We're using this collector to pump heat through tubing lines buried under our raised bed gardens. All that's left is to run the supply and return lines to the gardens and it should be ready to make heat...maybe this week :) 
