The walls are up...

It's been a busy week, but the walls are up (goat barn soon to come), the boards are down, the scaffolds have both been moved for the third time, and we've only had one day of pouring rain ;-) Seriously though, it's really cool to see the concrete walls somehow, and to walk around down in the basement under where the garage will be. The shiny metal in the picture is sitting on top of huge 400 lb I-beams, and will be part of the floor of the garage but we can walk on it now. Next steps are filling in the dirt and drain rock around the outside of the concrete walls, then the metal framing going up and concrete slabs for floors and the concrete lower walls of the goat barn (just enough to get them above ground level). It's been fun lately, lots of activity and trucks, joking around, and bees buzzing around our pasture of buttercups...

Also, here is Jon using tractor's forklifts to unload insulation for under the concrete slab floors from a semi, those forklifts have paid for themselves so many times over!

Soon to be pouring...

Sorry it has been a while since I posted about the house but things are moving surely if a little slowly. Since we decided to use the extra space excavated, our concrete guy has been working six days a week to get the forms up for the monstrous concrete walls that will enclose our basement, root cellar, and part of the bedroom floor. Saturday the last of the exterior forms went up so now the only way in or out of the structure is using the scaffolds that Jon spent days constructing. Anyway, the walls should get poured Thursday or Friday.

We've also spent 'a few' hours digging trenches around the outside of the foundations so the water drains without undermining the concrete, and which will hold drain pipe once all of the dirt gets filled in around the house again. Once the walls are poured the dirt will get filled in again up to the current ground level. Then Jon will breath a huge sigh of relief that we're to the framing and processes he is more familiar with. And maybe he'll get to take a day off and relax ;) You know it's serious when he has to turn down an arduous backcountry rescue mission...

The bees are building!

Yay! After weeks of peeking in on them, only to see them clustered up like I'd brought them to the coldest, wettest place on earth, lo and behold what did I see the other day but beautiful homemade honeycomb! Most beekeepers use frames that already have comb but to avoid pesticide residue and some other issues I wanted to let my bees produce their own, and they've been busy...

Click on the picture to see it larger... They have five full-size combs going here and a sixth started, and they're loving the sun today. This is looking in the window of my African Top Bar Hive, you can see the entrance holes to the bottom left on the other side of the hive. 

Nothing is constant in life but change, right?

So after digging out a lot of lovely fill dirt from the previous owner, we decided to use the extra 8 feet dug out to solid footing soil to build a basement under the garage, move the root cellar around to under the entry way and I don't think we can say any longer that our square footage is under 3000'... Oh well, I'm sure we'll appreciate the extra storage space and opportunities for a finished basement later on, but it's meant more work with the engineer and Jon out here digging into darkness with a jackhammer to get things ready for the inspector.

The cement footings started going in today!

And the digging begins...

Don't ask about the extra eight feet of dirt dug out of the entire layout... Yay extra concrete and our own private stream running through the foundation! All will be well though, just a few thousand extra in concrete walls and some nice sink-hole mud to play in until then. Here's Jon filling 100 sand bags to hold down our 20,000 square feet of plastic over the dirt piles. 

A Cause for Champagne!

Well, it's official, because we decided it was about time! We opened our 2.5 year old champagne at the farm, after a few obligatory digs with the golden shovel, and to calm the adrenaline of me hiving my two colonies of bees today!


It was a busy morning, as I got last-minute word that my bees were in and impatient to be in a hive, so I dug out a platform for the hives (so many fat worms in our soil, yay!), got all of the last things ready, and then sat in the shop with my mom and the bees as a hail squall swept through the valley. Once it slowed to a slight drizzle, out we went, with Jon taking so many pictures it's like a flip-book, and my mom fearlessly helping. Thankfully it is supposed to be sunnier tomorrow, though not above 60 (so excited for summer!).

Click here to see more pictures of the hiving...

Spring has sprung!

Yes, this is the first day of spring in Washington... What you can't see are the 30+ mph winds that kept us hunched as we headed for the summit of McCausland, a peak near Stevens Pass. Thanks to Lisa for the pic...

In other news, our permits for the house came through, and we're planning on breaking ground April 4th! Already spring seems to be racing by, with too many things to do in too short a time. The bees are to come shortly after, any volunteers to come take pictures as I dump them in the hives?

Hope you're all enjoying spring!