September is that weird month that still feels like summer but is rapidly turning into fall. Fall, incidentally, is my least favorite of the seasons. The days are getting shorter and cooler, and Nature is shedding her colorful wardrobe to head into winter, the season of rest, repose and restoration (and my second favorite season, by the way).
I had a great start to my September. On September first, I went to my first solo MOFGA farm training (Nate wouldn't have liked it). It was at Herbal Revolution, and it was all about the things I'm passionate about: growing herbs and other medicinals and making holistic self-care products from them. I learned a lot! I also ran my mystery plant by both Katheryn (the amazing goddess who is Herbal Revolution) and Ryan (the amazing goddess in charge of MOFGA's New Farmer Programs Coordinator), and neither goddess knew what it was... I had a really great time at the potluck. Being by myself gave me a unique opportunity to interact with all the other apprentices. Not that Nate and I are anti-social when we go to these things together, and not that I'm not glad that we go to them together, but I guess I act differently when I'm on my own. Plus it was really, really nice just to have some time by myself. Even though I did manage to get myself lost on the way home... that's what happens when I don't use Google maps, and I try to memorize the route from a paper map. I blame the darkness on the way home...
Have we talked about Antoinette yet? This is Antoinette. She's Nate's chicken.
One day, Nate noticed a weird chicken running in circles in the pen. She was clearly messed up in some way, and upon further inspection, it became apparent that her left eye had been pecked out, hence why she was running in circles in the direction in which she could see. Nate took her under his wing (get it? under his wing? a chicken?...) and made sure she always had her own pile of food she could eat without competition, so she took a liking to him. She eventually took a liking to me, too, but not nearly as much as she did to Nate. She always comes around when we collect eggs, and with Nate, she will actually hop up onto his arm or shoulder. She seems to like him carrying her around. I love chickens.
Even though summer is winding down, the farm is nowhere near done producing. Look at these beautiful peppers on their way to the Farmers' Market on September 3rd!
September 4th saw us back at The Land, where our pumpkin is now unquestionably a pumpkin.
I bought several plants over the summer, but since things haven't been built, they have no permanent homes, so I put them into these temporary raised beds near the woodshed. They will get covered in lots of mulch for winter. But we're not there yet. Thank goodness.
Speaking of plants, remember the mystery plant? The one with the astringent black berries in an umbel? I had consulted all the real-life experts I knew, but no one had an answer, so I consulted Garden Compass. This is an awesome app that allows you to send in photos of either plant problems or unidentified plants, and experts will tell you what's going on. I had to wait a whole day to find out what we have all over our land but the answer is... (drum roll, please!)... bristly sarsaparilla! Unfortunately, it's not good for much, but the root is edible and from it root beer can be made. Maybe next year I will try my hand at that, depending on where we are at in our adventure. Some homemade root beer just might be delicious! I hope so, because the plant's berries certainly aren't, and the plant doesn't seem to have much other use. Shucks. Ah well. We don't know what else the land has to offer, so every new find is a gift. And I'm convinced that medicine and healing lurk everywhere in the plant world. You just have to know where to look.
I love misty September mornings, when a slight crispness creeps into the air. I call this one "Chickens in the Mist".
And while we are on the subject of birds, here are the turkeys and ducks. They're getting bigger. We relocated them to this new pen a while ago. They're so funny -- they'll follow humans... until they see something shiny. We had them going along just fine, but then one of them saw the shiny silver lug nuts on the truck, and then it became a challenge to keep them on task and away from the truck. Eventually, their relocation was successful. Ultimately, their fence had to be electrified, because they are quintessential escape artists. And they are very democratic; they seem to do everything as a group. So, if one bird escapes, chances are that they all get out.
As we are getting into September, fewer things are being planted and more things are being harvested. The flowers are just about done, except for the dried ones like statice and nigelia. We are spending a lot of our time getting things ready for the Fair and for the off-season.
On Wednesday, September 7th, we attended our final MOFGA farm training of the season. It was at Steve Rodrigue's homestead, and it was really cool to see something that is just getting off the ground, as opposed to farms whose teachings come from many years of experience and success (and sometimes from the lessons gained through failure). Steve's been working on his awesome homestead for just a couple years now, and it's pretty amazing. We learned a lot from Steve about construction; his house is about the same size ours will be, and he also did a frost-protected floating slab like we plan to do. Steve's training also satisfied my curiosity about Guinea fowl. They're interesting, but very strange, very standoffish, a little dumb, and very, very annoying. They are absolutely beautiful, and they excel at insect control, but I don't want birds who practically offer themselves up to predators and who make those terribly annoying sounds. Curiosity satisfied. We learned a lot from Steve, and he answered a lot of our questions. My inspiration has been renewed thanks to Steve.
This building a homestead thing can be daunting, frightening and discouraging at times. There is SO much to do, and there probably always will be. Buying raw land opens up so many possibilities... and so many questions and decisions. I trust that whatever we do, we will do in tune with Nature and in the service of the greatest and highest good. And in that, we will have the support of the Universe and therefore everything we need.
Thursday, September 8th, our next half day off, saw us back at the land with our renewed inspiration. This day's project is primarily the shipping container. Since all we have house-wise is a couple of boards surrounding a trench in the ground, we sort of need some sort of livable shelter, and the shipping container is it. We are also working on the carport. It won't be livable, but it will provide some rudimentary shelter from the elements. As you can see, the carport has a crushed stone floor. (I did that, all by myself.) Nate has framed a wall at the entrance to the container, and a door and window will go there.
Nate is also framing out the inside so that it can be insulated. Here he's working on framing out the second window, since a second point of egress is probably a good idea. The metal container will have to be cut to put the window in.
Soon there will be a window here. It'll be a small one, but both of us should be able to climb out of it in case of an emergency. One at a time, of course.
And here it is from the front. For the time being, it's doing a great job providing weatherproof storage for all our tools.
We got our second round of guests on the weekend of September 10th. Nate's mom and her husband came to visit us. We had a really nice dinner and we really enjoyed their company!
Sunday, September 11th, was a day of major accomplishments and fun tool rentals. We finished getting the rest of the first layers of stone into the footer and gravel into the center, and then it was time to pack it down with the plate compactor. That's a fun little tool! It just kind of pulls itself along by its own vibration so as the human in tow, all you have to do is steer. It's kind of noisy, though, so ear protection is a must.
We compacted the first layer of gravel in the middle, then put on a second to get the center of the pad up to the proper height. We hauled in the gravel by the wheelbarrowful, then raked it out and screed it with our scree board originally designed in preparation for the concrete but modified to dip six inches below the surface of what will be the top of the concrete so that we could get the center of our pad level and at the right height.
And then we compacted that. I did use the compactor, but I don't have any pictures of that.
And here is the finished product: two layers of compacted stone in the footer for a total of about eight inches (and a footer depth of about fifteen inches), and two layers of compacted gravel in the center, for a total of about eight inches (and a concrete depth of about six inches). We are getting closer to being ready to pour.
The real question is this: when do we pour? There are a lot of things we need to consider. It's basically a balance among money, weather and time; and it's kind of an all-or-nothing deal. The foundation is one of the most expensive parts of this operation, and if we mess it up, it'll be bad. And winter is coming. So we need to do what will be optimal for the foundation's success. It needs to be able to survive through winter, so here are our choices:
One: Not pour till spring. Obviously, this will be great for the concrete, since it won't be there. But with frost heave, who knows what will happen to our form over the winter? And it also means we will be starting from a not very advanced point come spring.
Two: Pour ASAP. This involves some risk. Temperatures are getting cooler, and I'm told that freezing temperatures are not great for newly poured concrete. Our window of acceptable temps is rapidly closing. Then what, once we get it poured? We can either tuck it in for winter by tarping it, putting a layer of straw, then another tarp, then more straw to keep it as insulated and away from the weather as possible that way; or we can just build the house and have it dried in for winter. But there again, we have to consider time, weather and money. We either do it all to a dried-in finish, or we do nothing. What to do... what to do...?
In the meantime, back in our cabin, we keep our clothes under the bed in our suitcases. So sometimes, when you really just want a shirt, you get a Mittens.
This time of year is all about harvesting (and, of course, getting ready for the Fair), and not so much about planting, although lettuce and other cold-hardy plants are still being started so that they can spend the winter in the hoop houses. Lettuce will grow to a certain size, then basically hold its size until it's harvested as the weather gets colder. And it's okay for it to freeze, as long as it's thawed out by the time it's harvested. Lettuce that's harvested when it's frozen goes limp in a hurry.
Here you can see the greenhouse with all the winter squash. In the foreground you'll see what's probably been my favorite task here on the farm: garlic braids. Now, just because I could make garlic braids all day long and be perfectly happy does not mean that this is the only part of farm life that I've enjoyed. It just happens to be my favorite. I'm naturally a crafty and artistic person, and I just love to do stuff like this. We will definitely be planting lots of soft-neck garlic on our land so that I can have the sheer pleasure of making garlic braids. We will also have to plant statice and other flowers that dry nicely so I can dress them up, too.
As time goes by, Antoinette gets more and more amenable to having her picture taken. She's very sweet. I had no idea that chickens have so much personality. They are really entertaining. I can imagine getting a lawn chair and a bottle of wine and some sunscreen and parking myself in the chicken enclosure for the duration on some sunny, summer day. I really can't wait until I can do that!
The pour date is still uncertain, but we keep pressing forward in the hopes that the weather will hold out and we just might be able to pour and have things dried in for winter. The next step after the stone and gravel is the vapor barrier, which is just a 6 mil sheet of black plastic. The next layer is insulation. We used two-inch XPS foam boards taped together with gorilla tape. This is where we had to stop on September 14th, because that's all the foam we bought that day.
We met another one of our neighbors, Dale, this month. He grew up on the road and had a lot of information about the history of the area. Turns out our now dead-end dirt road was once upon a time the main thoroughfare to the railway station. (I'm glad it's not anymore.) Dale also said that he could remember when our land was open fields, and his grandfather had a smithy on the eastern side of our property.
While he and Nate were talking about man stuff, I was playing with the dog, who lost interest in me once she saw and started playing with something that looked strangely like a turtle. It was a turtle. It was this turtle.
We ended up carrying the poor turtle with us while we took a walk to the railroad tracks that cross our road about a mile and a half down toward the dead end. We kept thinking we would find a nice place to put the poor little guy, but we didn't, so instead he got carried down and back. We ended up putting him in the little pond on the edge of our land. Unfortunately, he ended up face first in the mud, but we got him out and cleaned him off. Hope he's okay. But we don't know because the poor traumatized little thing never so much as peeked out of his shell. Can't say I blame him. Harassed by a dog for who knows how long then carried three miles...
I got a field trip in the middle of September. Being in such tight quarters with Nate and the two cats, all of whom I love-hate at this point, is driving me nuts! I'm still having lots of pain in my hands and numbness in my hands and arms, so I have an appointment scheduled with an orthopedic doctor on Monday, September 19th. Since I am still a New York resident (*cringe*), all my doctors (and, let's face it, more importantly, the only medical providers my health insurance will pay for) are back in New York. So I'm taking a thousand-mile field trip to see what the hell is going on with my hands and this carpal tunnel thing. I'm not usually whiny, and I have a pretty high pain tolerance, but I have never experienced this much pain for this long a period of time. It's been over two months now. It makes me generally cranky, and every damn thing I do hurts. I can't grip things; I can't carry things; and I have to drink with two hands lest the glass slip right out of my hands (it's happened several times). And I love it when my trigger finger gets stuck. That feels great.
So, anyway. I decided to make a little vacation out of it. I headed west after I got done with market on Saturday the 17th. There were three things I wanted to do on this foray besides go to the doctor: 1) Take a Baptiste yoga class. 2) Stay by myself in a hotel, and 3) Take a damn bath. I couldn't figure out how I could get to where I needed to be at the right time to take a yoga class, and then I had an epiphany! I could stop in Albany and take a class there! So I reached out to my Facebook yogi hotline, got the scoop on a Baptiste studio in Albany, then found a super cheap (and oh, was it cheap!) hotel just a few miles away. The great thing about stopping in Albany was that it made my drive only seven hours, so I got to enjoy my hotel room instead of just collapsing into bed at the ungodly hour at which I would have arrived in Binghamton. So, yes, I got my hotel room; I got my bath; and I got my wonderful Baptiste class at Power Yoga New York, taught by my fellow Level One and Level Two yogi, Cindy Elliott. It was fabulous! I even had time to go back to my hotel and shower before heading to Binghamton.
So much was I enjoying my solitude that, despite all the people who would happily have taken me in, I stayed at another hotel in Binghamton. (Bear in mind that these are craptacular Motel 6s, okay. And I got what I paid for. All fifty bucks of it... Okay, it wasn't that bad. The rooms were clean, and the bathtubs were bathable.) Ah... so nice!
I got in touch with my dear friend Shannon (remember her from Grassroots?), who played the role of mom/chauffeur for me on Monday morning. I had been really hoping to do a lot of yoga outside of my usual routine while in town, and it worked out perfectly! Shannon told me that Allison was teaching at 6:30 a.m. at the new downtown studio on Monday. Perfect! I've never taken Allison's class, and I've never been to the downtown studio (it just opened a couple weeks ago)! So Shannon and I had a great class with Allison, then Shannon took me to drop my car off at Good Year to get new tires (why not? Good Year has done right by me with tires; there are no Good Years in Maine, and Bob [my delightful Maine mechanic] told me that my tires are pretty close to dangerously bald, so the timing is right) and then drove me to my doctor's appointment.
The doctor says I have all the classic symptoms of carpal tunnel (and that trigger finger, of course), but I need a nerve conduction study and muscle test (EMG, I think?) to confirm it. And get this - like this EVER happens - they were able to get me in for the test the very next day. I know, right?!? So, out of money for hotels, I connected with Kristen and Jason, who, as always, gave me a place to stay. I had originally planned on just heading back to Maine immediately after my appointment on Monday, but I ended up getting two bonus nights in Binghamton, since my test wasn't until 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday. And who wants to start a nine hour drive at 5:00 p.m.? That's just crazy! So I got to spend some time with my dear friend Holly, then have lunch with Ron and Linda on Tuesday, which was a very nice treat. I even snuck in a chiropractic adjustment! And what about this: my nerve and muscle test? Completely negative for carpal tunnel. So now I am a medical mystery. All the symptoms of carpal tunnel but it's not carpal tunnel. I have another appointment with a hand surgeon (yeah... surgeon... I don't like this. Surgeons typically like to do surgery, and I'm not exactly a fan of surgery...) on November 2nd.
So, it looks like my plans for winter are getting set for me whether I like it or not. I have no idea what this hand surgeon is going to recommend, but it will probably involve some sort of medical intervention, which means I have to be in New York. Fortunately, it looks like Ron and Linda could make use of me at the yoga studio, and that's a very good thing, so things will probably work out just fine. There are a few more things that need to come together, of course, but as it stands, this little princess is heading back to New York in November, to stay at least through the end of January, I suspect. But we're not there yet.
Anyway, I got to enjoy some time with Kristen, Jason and Jack Tuesday evening before I turned in for the night. Seems most people like to stay up late, like past 10:00! Me, I like to be in bed by 9:00. I'm either old or I'm a farmer. I'm going to go with the latter.
As a corollary to the above, I also wake up super early, all by myself - no alarm!, around 4:00 a.m. every day. Wednesday was no exception, so I hit the road around 5:00 a.m. in order to make some great time. There's this place in Vermont that has a scenic overlook, and I've always wanted to stop, so I stopped. It was scenic, as promised. I called Nate from there and told him my ETA was around 2:00 so I could go back to work for the afternoon. He asked me if I was crazy. And come to think of it, I kind of was. It really didn't make sense to rush just so I could go back and work for three hours, especially since I'm wounded and they can manage just fine without me. So I heeded Nate's sage advice and decided instead to have an adventure.
The adventure started with a selfie with a fiberglass moose:
I bet real moose don't stand so still for selfies.
For the rest of the adventure, you'll have to read my other letter, the one dedicated strictly to my adventure.
I ultimately got back to the farm Wednesday evening, two days later than I expected, just in time for a half day Thursday, the day before the Fair on Friday. Good job, Tamarra. Very impressive way to do barely any work that week!
The Common Ground Country Fair is probably the best thing Maine has to offer (and that's saying something, because Maine has a lot of amazing things to offer). This year it was September 23-25, and we spent a good part of the month getting ready for it, as the farm has a booth at the Rose Gate Farmer's Market. Nate and I got lucky and got to be at the fair on Friday - lucky because Lauryn stayed on the farm to harvest for market, and it FINALLY rained... and it rained as if to make up for not raining very much all summer. It was a full-on drenching, soaking rain. And it was a cold rain. A relentless rain. And poor Lauryn was out in it while we were at least sort of dry under the tent. It eventually cleared up toward the end of the day, but it made for a rough first day at the fair. We didn't go the second day; I had market in town and Nate had farm duties, so we just relaxed and planned house stuff Saturday afternoon, but we went back on Sunday. I volunteered for a shift at the MOFGA country store (I'm not great at folding t-shirts, but it turns out I'm the same size as a lot of people's daughters/mothers/sisters/cousins, so I made a great body double for people who were wondering what the shirts looked like on and how the sizes ran) and spent a little time at the farm booth. I also wandered around a bit and got another great canning recipe, learned how to make a basket out of rope, and tried my hand at a little bit of felting. And of course, there's fair food, and fair food is always good. That was a big part of my motivation for the volunteer shift: fair food is pricey, and volunteers get a free meal. The fair was fun but tiring. Lots of standing, not much sitting; lots of people, not much quiet. I think next year I will go without a booth or a volunteer shift.
Back on the farm, the sheep entertain me so much! We harvested the last of the beans and pulled out the bean plants and gave them to the sheep. The sheep were so excited that they just kept going after the beans as I threw the plants off the truck. They wouldn't move, so they got covered in bean plants, which made me giggle. And then they would move under the bean plants so it looked like the bean plants were alive, which made me giggle more. So I just kept throwing bean plants on the sheep and giggling. Growing up is so overrated.
And the very end of the month saw great progress. It has been determined that we shall pour the foundation this year. Starting October first, we go to half-time work on the farm, since the fair is over and there's less and less to do (but still plenty to do; it's a farm, after all). So now, instead of having half of Thursday, half of Saturday and all of Sunday off, we have all of Sunday and Monday, all of Thursday and still half of Saturday off. This makes a huge difference! That gives us so much more time, and we can even stay up on the land on Sunday nights to get a head start on things on Monday mornings.
It has been determined that the concrete will be poured on Monday, October 3rd. Holy crap.
Ten and a half yards of concrete have been ordered from Owen J. Folsom. Holy crap.
We need to buy magnesium trowels and finishing trowels and rent a bull float. I don't even know what a bull float is. Holy crap.
Nate bought this awesome DVD that shows how to pour a concrete foundation from start to finish. I fell asleep around the part where the guys showed how to get the forms perfectly square. This is why I don't know what a bull float is. We will be watching it again before the pour. Holy crap.
One of our big debates (arguments...?) has been about whether or not to put radiant heat in the floor. I positively hate cold floors, and I realize that they should be plenty warm with dark tile and passive solar, but I also know how cold and unforgiving concrete floors can be. So I did my research, got some expert tutelage (thanks again, LPJ3), and procured the appropriate amount of Pex tubing. Turns out the best place to get it is PexUniverse.com. It costs about 30% less than in the store, and it comes with free shipping. So in the final analysis, it was determined that since you only get one chance to put radiant heat tubing in a concrete floor (and that's before the pour, obviously) and since 300 feet of Pex (with oxygen barrier) only costs about eighty bucks, we can put in tubing for radiant heat and worry about how to make it work off-grid later. But, since it was my idea, that made it my baby. Nate helped figure out the layout, since 300 feet doesn't quite cover the entire floor (it's not advisable to have a loop greater than 300 feet). (We opted not to put it under the shower or the kitchen cabinets.) And Nate helped uncoil it (turns out it's really, really hard to work with without a second person; it kind of has a mind of its own), but it was up to me to secure it to the wire mesh. I'm getting really good with zip ties. Watch out.
So here I am, slaving away in the hot sun, meticulously zip-tying my precious Pex tubing to the wire mesh.
Speaking of the wire mesh, we have that throughout, and we have re-bar in the footers. This thing is really coming together. Holy crap.
But here we are on September 29th... only a couple days till the pour, and we are nervous. Did we do this right? Will the forms hold (they're backfilled, so hopefully...)? Will we have enough time to work with the concrete before it sets? Will the weather hold? Will it cure properly? There are so many factors, so many things that could go wrong! We are nervous.
And thus September draws to a very nervous close. October brings new things!
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