Machinery

On the farm there is a lot of machinery. It's used in projects. The most major project going on here right now is Paul's log cabin. Last spring two giant flatbed trucks arrived and dropped off loads of logs, and these were basically full-size trees, behind the machine shed. Paul stripped the logs and then began, with a chain saw, to cut them and size them, and with a telehandler, to lift them into place. Now the first floor is finished, and notches are put in for where the roof will go. The plan is to dissemble the log cabin and transport it two hours to land on a lake that Paul's parents own. Paul will then reassemble it and live in it through the winter finishing the inside.

Paul is a very neat and organized worker. Below see a photo of the scraps from Paul's projects, which he's neatly stacked. You should see his workshop in the barn. He's not your average 22-year-old.

The telehandler comes in handy for other projects, too. Here is Steve, who is afraid of heights by the way, painting the highest spot on our roof. To do it, he extended the telehandler and angled the platform and in this case stood on a ladder to get even higher. I am way too afraid of heights to do this.

Finally, we do grow a few things here. Steve and I have four raised garden beds in the back of the house. One of them is always "fallow" and used for compost, and the other three are used for vegetables. Steve planted them this year, and one had tomato plants, and one had green beans, and the third had squash, which turned out to be butternut and delicata. I'm hoping he'll build one more for next year. I moved rhubarb plants from my home when I moved into this one, and will plant lettuce, carrots, kale, and zucchini. I hope to have even more room by tilling up a small bed in the same area to put the squash in and using all four raised beds for other veggies. Annie and Tim grow pumpkins and gourds. I love this picture of part of their harvest. And yes, that is a frisbee golf basket. I'm not sure where they came from, but there's quite a course here at the farm.

Today I dug up and moved some things around in my tiered flower garden, and dug out the tomato plants. I put the tomato cages in the attic of the barn and marked them so hopefully no one will "claim" them in the spring. I also drove out to a local mushroom farm, hoping to find bags of oat straw for mulch, but there wasn't much left. Still enough to cover the phlox, irises, and lilies I hope will come back next year.