Thanks Fall, for Holding Out

Every extra hour that the weather holds out, is very possibly an extra hour of serious outdoor business getting done at the homestead-in-progress.  Check out this photo essay of vital last minute projects, and some less vital – but still very nice projects, we’ve been up to.

We put windows in the sun room, goodbye wind-torn plastic, hello warmth and being able to see. Also, notice the sweet mortar job at the bottom;)

We mixed up tons of plaster and mortar the seal the exterior of the main house, addition, sunroom and cottage. We worked so hard that we broke every hoe, and now we need new ones.

We finally got a brush hog attachment to the tractor and began to landscape! Did you know that brushhoging/mowing in mid-November will ensure that there will be no more nesting birds in the way of the super- helpful, but in may ways destructive process. Brush hogging our meadow in varying rotations of 1-4 years will help maintain a mixed habitat for birdies and other animals.

Here Joe and Danila are putting up snow bars on the roof above the chimney. This will prevent snow from pushing down on the chimny, and bending it like it did last year. No more leaks!

It looks like summer here, but its really mid-October, apparently a perfect time to collect duck-weed from the living water system to use as incredibly potent natural fertilizer for our soil and plants.

Halloween can be important business. Here Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx practice their act.

We finished our berm!! Well almost all the way! Now we have enough earth behind the house to keep the back and west walls at the stable temperature of the ground. Next spring we will seed the berm, creating a grassy knoll for children to frolic around on, or something like that.

We put a wood stove in the addition! We purchased it at Finger Lakes ReUse, and have found that it is a really kicking’ egg shaped mass of warmth.

With the help of our friends we planted over 600 cloves of garlic, enough for eating and planting in 2012.  Arrow, the doggy, helped by spreading the straw all about and being cute.

The installation of an evacuated solar tube system will help heat our hot water. Solar evacuated tubes are rumored to work well even in partly sunny conditions. We will post on this as we have more information and get deeper into the cold weather season. So far, they are doing an excellent job. Hot showers for all!

We transplanted herbs for kitchen use. With care they will provide fresh accents to our winter meals. Also they make the sun room smell like a pizza pie.

Now its time to sit back and watch the winter weather roll on in, with the few exceptions being: building a wood shed, insulating the Jenny shack, and the last wall in the cottage, etc. Well ok, we didn’t get everything buttoned up just yet, but we’ve been told by old hands, that the work on a homestead is never done. So why not kick back and watch a movie already?