Molly took some beautiful photos this weekend.











We all love the Dinner Bell.  However, seeing this photo, I can sense trouble a-brewing.  One of these days, Maxx will start yanking on that chain and all 50 feet of it will come slithering down out of the sky onto his head. 

He will cry and then someone will have to climb up onto the roof to wire it back on.










We have running hot and cold water.
















We have a potty to flush.

Yes.  This is a teeneency little room.  That's O.K. 

It will be very handy when Sissy is using the washroom upstairs and Maxx begins pounding on the door insisting that he has AN EMERGENCY! and needs to come in right now.  Very few things rouse contention as quickly as that scenario. 


There are also two working lights in the kitchen, one on the front porch and an outside motion sensor light above the side entry door.  Thanks, Mom!


This is a poor photo because it was getting dark and we were in a hurry to get home for baths and bed.  We're making progress!!

This is between us in Ft. Jackson and The Beorningstead.











The drive is now 12 miles instead of 6 - and we have to backtrack to get there.  Sigh. . . .















It makes fun tilt-shift fodder, though

















. . . ..

And our own chickens and a piggy and a bigger garden.

Harvard magazine has an interesting article about Modern Milk over here.  

Sustained milking and unnatural gestation are just one problem with modern milk.  Our modern dairy foods not only have excess hormones, they also lack Omega 3-6-9 fatty acids due to an unnatural diet and no pasture time, come from highly medicated cows, and don't even ask my opinion about rGBH, CAFOs and manure disposal.  We really don't want to go into all that.

I've been doing some research and, while I love the idea of a hairy coo (Scottish Highlander)  I'm just not sure about all that shagginess about the milking area.  I think we want one of these  - A Canadienne.

Lovely creatures, hardy, good browsers, small, great milk for cheese, pleasant dispositions and good meat-makers, too.  Plus, the breed originates in the same place as about a quarter of my ancestors - how could it be wrong?

These seedlings represent a deadline.  We need to move in time to get the garden ready for these little babies.  They are growing fast.  There is no way I will drive 12 miles to tend a garden - it is hard enough to convince myself to walk out the back door to garden.

On another note - we chose to attend conference this weekend instead of working at the Beorningstead.  It was a tough decision.  Bry and his mom got three light fixtures installed and working on Friday.  Today the pump may be functional. 




Still no news on the roof.  We need some more escrow cash to move on that but that may happen very soon - what with all the fixtures and water related stuff happening over there.


The boys played soccer between sessions in Saturday in the 89 degree weather.  Later, there was more soccer related stuff (and some hero worship) in the parking lot.

Here are some photos of the outside of the Beorningstead

Yes, it looks a bit beaten.  It is beaten, to a certain extent.  It is an old, old house that hasn't had any real TLC in a long time.  There is a new addition that is still a bit shoddy and has no siding on it at all.  The front porch is in desperate need of new supports, bottom enclosure, trim and finishing.  The asphalt siding has pretty much seen the end of its useful life.  The well house needs either to go away completely or be completely re-built.  And new trim or a good paint job is needed around all of the windows, doors and soffits.

But the structure itself is amazingly sound.  AND there are no bats and the water is clean.  We all love the layout downstairs.  The rooms are very open and connect in ways that make air and traffic flow through the house very smoothly.  There will be lots of wonderful hide & chase games with the dog & kids in the new house!  The upstairs rooms feel bigger in spite of it being a smaller house overall.  Plus we will have two potties.  Yes!  Two potties!






This photo shows the old, rusty roof that needs to be replaced as well as the recent "sun porch" addition that needs siding and trim.  That big window does amazing things to light and warm my studio. I can't wait to get moved in!  (The dead tree needs to go, even though the kids like to climb on it.)







You can see the well house here - see how it sits so close to the house?  Our well is under there and when this was a working farm,  milk was stored there in a cooler until it was picked up by a dairy truck.  Bry likes the idea of maintaining that bit of history but I would like that side of the house to look cleaner,  the well house also blocks my view of the back side yard from my studio.  Alternatively, there has been discussion about taking the well house down and building it back to join with the house, making our woodshed larger.




Inside, Bryan has finished the beams to replace the supports that used to be in the livingroom.  The wodstove will nestle into a tiled area right there between the two beams.  We are very glad to have the pole gone from the center of the room.  We are also very glad to have had so much help from friends and family getting those beams installed.  It wasn't a one man job!

Now that the beams are done and most of the wiring has been run, we can start putting insulation in the living room and kitchen areas.  Then wallboard can be put up and we can get another escrow check out to work on the roof.  We might be able to do that this week! 

Have I mentioned how eager I am to move over there, even though the place is still a shambles?  We are all so happy in that space.  Maxx is happier with the landscape around the house - there are so many more ways to get hurt and messy there!  Plus I am tired of having Bry gone so much to work over there.  I may change my mind, but at this point, I would rather live in the project than have to keep running over there to work on it.  It is also a pain to drag everything over there, pull materials out of storage and then lock it all up again when it is time to leave.  Mom & Dad, Jonathan and Mrs. Proper are all right there keeping an eye on things, but it is a bit worry some to not be right there all the time.

Here are some more neighbors.

Jenna ran over to say hello when Maxx and I went to Jonathan's to take distance photos of the Beorningstead. 











 And Lyra announced to us that she will be providing the neighborhood with some kittens soon.


















 . . . .

We spent the day today working over at the Beorningstead.  Boy do my arms ache.  I uncovered a huge nest of ladybugs in the lawn.

Bry put in the pump and I did some raking &  garbage collecting outside and some cleanup inside.  I so want to be over there right now.  I'm trying not to be discouraged about the roof and am trying to convince myself that there is still some way to make the move before garden season. 

I took lots of photos for documentation purposes but I'm not up to posting them and explaining all about them tonight.  But here are some fun shots that I took and altered with TiltShiftMaker.  I've been wanting to play with this tool for a long time.  It's pretty keen.

There's one of the brook from the bridge






One of Maxx in front of the bridge


 One of the front porch





 And one of the whole Beorningstead from Jonathan's house.






Spring.  The trees are budding.  Pretty soon, it will be hard to get a good photo of the place from that vantage point.

The roof, which was tight and secure all through the storms of summer and record rainy season of fall, has decided to leak.   Everywhere.  Thousands of little rivulets, puddles and pools.  Dribbling down into my studio and warping the ceiling in that room.  This is maddening. 

On the one hand - it is only the back roof, relatively small, over the part of the house we intend to put the main bathroom and, eventually our bedroom.  Because of Bry being so sick post surgery, we did not have time to install the insulation and wall board as planned over the winter.  No building supplies were ruined.  No labor was wasted.  That is a good thing.

The ceiling in my studio was ugly anyway.  We've talked about putting in a skylight in the bathroom because there is no window there but since we didn't plan on doing anything to the roof, decided not to.  Now maybe  we'll put in a small sky light over the bathtub.  (How much costs a little skylight?)

On the other hand, we wanted to move in over Spring Break.  We were all set to install the pump, finish running the plumbing, install and prep the sub-floor, install the shower, potty and vanity, insulate and put up wallboard and prepare the spot for the tub over the next three weeks.  Now those three weeks, and probably more, will be spent pricing, procuring and installing roofing materials.  That will delay our move-in which will delay our ability to really push the Ft. Jackson house (Which is really at it's most lovely at lilac & poppy time) on the market.

We're not sure yet what the extent of the repair/replacement will be.  The back roof is OLD.  The reason it is leaking is because the original tin roof was installed with nails that have no gaskets or other kind of weather proofing.   For decades, those nails have been doing their job, keeping the roof on, without leaking.  We don't know if it was because the house spent the winter without heat (doubtful - that part of the house wasn't heated anyway) or if this spring was just THE END for that particular aspect of the house's construction.  That's likely.  It's been there for at least 30 years.

A good roofing screw will have a bit of rubber thing-gummy under the head so that when you screw it down tight, it creates a water tight seal against the tin.  When we fix this roof, we should be able to expect it to last for the next 30 years or so.  Happily, the rafters are still good and solid so this will only be a repair, not a re-build.  We are a little concerned because most of our available escrow money is tied up in - guess what - insulation, wall board, sub-floor, plumbing and fixtures for the bathroom that is supposed to go under that roof.  We can't get more $ out of escrow until those are installed and the bank inspector comes to check out our progress.  We can't install these beautiful things until the roof that will protect them is repaired.  We can't repair the roof until we have more money to buy materials. 

What fun!  We can probably get some more escrow money freed up when we finish the downstairs wiring, install light fixtures in the front of the house and put wall board in the kitchen and living room again.  That roof seems to be sound - it is newer and better constructed.  We may also need to come up with some creative ways to boost our income in the next little while to provide more cash for this process.

Anybody want to buy a scarf?