How to Build a Greenhouse

After he ran to the hardware store, and did many intricate measurements, after cutting up a good many pieces of wood and hefting the 2"x6" (by 16'!) home-sawed lumber into the chicken pen all by himself, Phil was ready to start building the greenhouse. It was about noon.

He had purchased plywood, wedged it into the truck bed, and bolted the hoop bender to it (see above).

We laid out the wood base. Due to time and bother, we opted to square the base but NOT to level the land or raise the base to level.

Next, he pounded 33" pipe lengths into the ground with a heavy mallet. Above you can see before and after, to get a sense of how far in those posts had to go. He's a strong man.

He had purchased chain link fencing tubing (available at most hardware stores), and, just with his arms, bent the tubing, using the bender as a guide.

Then we screwed together the two pieces together at the top (I did that job a couple of times! I've never screwed into metal before: it takes patience to break through, and then it goes quickly). We put up the first hoop.

And soon all of them, spaced every four feet. (Total dimensions: 16'x10', with the hoops about 8' high at the center.)

Next we needed to brace the top, and I think Phil hit a wall of dehydration and fatigue, so we took a break. Then I worked indoors, and he put up cross-bracing between the supports.

I came out again to help and we covered the greenhouse with the greenhouse film (very thick plastic) and nailed it down in places. Even the film was an education: I bought 20' wide film, but wasn't sure how easily it would tear or how much we would need. I bought 40', and we probably would have been fine with 33'. However, knowing my inability to wrap Christmas presents well (always too much or too little wrapping paper), I think it is good to be on the safe side.

We have yet to put down weed barrier in the bottom, and Phil needs to make tables for the grow mats. Also, we need a better door than simply pulling up the film, but I think that is amazing progress for a single day. We have a covered space, ethereal inside, where Phil can make tables, even if the weather outside is frightful. I actually like the space so much, I was standing there, doing nothing and Phil said, "What's wrong? You never just stand still!" It's just amazing to have a little structure, boom, start to (almost) finish in a day.

Total cost: about $400 for metal materials, $100 for the film, and $100 for the (reusable) hoop bender. Not bad for 160 square feet of space. Too bad a house doesn't just cost $3.75/sqft!

A friend at church mentioned that her slogan for photography is creative photography for creative people. My sister is the artist of the family, and I am not, and, on hearing her slogan, I mentally thought, "This is not ever going to be a good photographer for me. I am just not creative."

It wasn't until I got home that I thought, "Wait a minute! I'm creating a farm from NOTHING. I AM creative, just not artistically so." It was a relief.

It also inspired me to take some animals photos. I haven't done that for a while.

Our Conduiramour (love-bringer, roughly translated from the French), or Connie, with an eye patch.

Capri, with dalmatian spots.

Fool rooster Strangey, who attacked Phil's back today while Phil was using the reciprocating saw. Phil and he had a stand-off. Then Phil went back to work and I stood guard. Strangey wandered off.

Home hatched rooster and chicken Chanticleer and Pertelote (from Chaucer's famous Nun's Priest's Tale). The baby rooster and Strangey never fight. I think Strangey has enough to manage with the 24 or so hens in his harem. He can allow Chanticleer his one lady. The two often wander around the farm together, but always fly back into the pen. So far, they haven't wandered into the barn. Thus, they are yet living.

Our guineas, in a very common pattern: four inside the fence, and one outside. "Squawk! Squwak! How can we possibly reunite? Let's all run along the fence, back and forth, hoping that somehow we might reach blissful reunion!" Guineas are not very smart, and are VERY loud, but I have grown to appreciate them. I trust they will be good bug catchers in our market garden.

And, finally, Tux, with iridescent feathers.

Birthday Gifts for Me

My birthday gifts: unexpected, but happy:

1) I lost my comb weeks ago, when the RV drove away. I searched everywhere, under the bathmats, in bags and in cupboards. I have managed with finger-combing, but I did think, while preparing to bathe Joe, "I would like a comb for my birthday." And I glanced down and there, in plain view, was my comb, in plain view on the carpet. How could that be?

2) Phil did a dump run yesterday. A very full truck load later, I no longer feel like our farm is a garbage dump, or a constipated piece of land. Relief!

3) Phil also went far away to Lowe's to get the material for our mini greenhouse, only to have them out of an important item. He drove to a second Lowe's, and bought all the needed materials, so we wouldn't have to spend a long time in the car after church today, on my birthday. He spent four hours running errands instead. (Bless him. Isaiah went with him, and on his return, he said, "Guess how many times I had to go to the bathroom? Less than ten." The actual number was only four, but still!)

4) A call to fervent prayer for a specific need.

5) Looking in a box in storage to find a lecture series on poetry (fun!) and several agriculture lectures I hadn't heard already. Awesome!

6) Phil singing happy birthday, while the boys listen in silence. Maybe I need to include music as a subject in schooltime?

7) An eye almost all the way better. I went to church and only felt a bit self-conscious about a slightly droopy eyelid.

A Day of Unloading

We awoke to heavy snowfall, the sort of large flakes and dark grey sky that looks like the weather will just continue as it is, and the world is grey and white forever.

Ha! After an hour, the snow stopped, and by about noon, the sun had come out.

Our truck is almost all fixed! Enough, for now, to drive fairly safely. I forgot to take photos of the new manifolds and the new muffler, but I suppose they are not that visually exciting. Our truck is now so quiet, I didn't even hear Phil come back. I used to hear him, even inside, before the truck came into view! It's always sounded like a monster machine, since the muffler vanished long ago (before we bought it? on the trip out east?). Now it just sounds like a truck.

As Phil drove us all up to get the truck, I read to the family. When we grow tired of the myriad CDs we have, I might use the car time as a way to get more literature time into the boys. It's a blessing I don't get car sick: the roads are typically rural, winding and hilly.

When I drove home, Phil went and used our fixed truck to pick up two important implements we plan to use.

A rotary tiller and

a moldboard plow. Now, if there's one thing to know about agriculture, it's that moldboard plows are quite villified in eco-ag circles. Back in the middle of the last century, a man wrote about how badly they were eroding topsoil and such. So I'm a bit embarrassed to admit we have such a tool on our farm. However, a market gardener shared at a seminar last year that if the user drives very slowly, and turns the soil "like you would turn a baby," all will be well.

Phil hurried home, only minutes late to greet the driver of the greenhouse delivery. How to unload this massive shipment was truly a mystery. It took over an hour of strenuous labor to offload the 2400 pounds, much of it unwieldy. We are thankful for Butch and his tractor. With the rain earlier this week, and the snow this morning, even our driving is a slushy mess. Had we attempted to unload with our Little Blue (Tractor), it would have been sad times. Our treads and the size of our tires is not sufficient (see above).

But Butch's big orange tractor managed just find (above), even if the driveway looked a little worse for the wear (below).

We have 38 curved supports, unloaded two by two (below).

In the photo below, the blessed tractor carried the intact pallet, and the small box that has the covering, and we unloaded all the lengthy poles on our own, one by one, trying not to knock each other in the head, and stacked them on the tractor forks. (No photos of that: I was working hard.)

And that's all the greenhouse. A building that takes up a small portion of a 28' trailer. (We asked the driver how they loaded the greenhouse to begin with, and he said that they would have loaded it at Rimol, and the truck came here. I am so used to the FedEx version, where all packages go to a central location for sorting and dispersement, it surprised me to realize that some trucks actually carry an item from start to finish. Large carriers: it's a whole different world.)

Incredibly, we had just finished unloading the greenhouse when our next delivery truck arrived. The two drivers and Phil chatted for a time, so you can see the traffic jam at the top of our driveway. Our truck off the driveway (hood popped so Phil can do some deferred routine maintenance); greenhouse truck on the driveway; potting soil truck blocking in greenhouse truck.

That's not something that happens every day out in the boonies!

Much easier to unload 1700 pounds of potting soil, all nicely contained in a tote. And how handy, to have both deliveries back-to-back like that. We were supposed to have the potting soil come yesterday, but the ice storm delayed delivery a day. So nice not to have to bother Butch two days in a row! (Though we severely missed Phil's moratorium on asking Butch to help us unload. After a spate of deliveries in October, Phil said, "No more for six months!" Ah, well.)

Now, maybe, things will really start to happen! Right now, though: a view almost unchanged for the previous year.

The Ice Storm That Melted (as seen through an ill eye)

Thankfully, we live far out in the country and I don't have to see people terribly often. On Tuesday, I wondered if I was getting a stye in the eye, and yesterday I woke up and thought, "I think this is conjunctivitis." I had made it almost 32 years without a case, but I have been fighting it for the last two days. Nasty. (And tiring: I've even needed a nap the last three days! Until I also got a swollen lymph node today, I wondered if I was expecting. Fun though a new baby would be, that really might be a bit much for my plate at the moment.)

Yesterday, we finally had our first real precipitation of the year. We had a little over an inch of sprinkling rain, then pounding rain, then, perhaps, that most elusive of weather patterns called "sleet" (maybe), ending in snow. The ground this morning was an intense sheet of ice, but, with the weather warming soon to the 50s, the ice melted into mud. Still slippery, but not nearly so cold.

Phil, thankful for an indoor day, made incredible progress on transforming his office to a coherent space. He hasn't had access to his filing cabinet for much of the time since we moved here, so you can imagine the backlog of papers, compounded by my occasional box of books or sundry office supplies scattered around.

I spent some time actually plotting, on paper, two of the larger crops we have planned, the potatoes and the corn. What types are we getting? What sequential planting do they need? When does an undersown cover crop follow? Will another crop overwinter? What will be good days, biodynamically, to plant?

It took over three hours, just to figure out these two crops. I have about forty to go. (aaaaaaah!)

Our truck is finished at one shop. Phil drove it to the second shop today, and it may be ready for pickup tomorrow. Finally: real progress!

We watched one of Phil's Christmas presents, the movie Fresh today. It's not as hard-hitting as Food, Inc; much more cheerful and hopeful. Make a difference! Support a local farmer!

It was a good reminder of one reason why we're doing this. Sometimes I look too long at the mud and (soon to be removed) garbage, and forget that there is a more noble, or at least a bigger picture, goal.

And I woke up this morning and thought, "There will be time for everything we need to do." I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it is a cheerful thought.

There was time to work on a puzzle with Joe. He did the final adjustments, and was quite proud of the finished picture.

Tomorrow: we're scheduled to receive both our 1700 pounds of potting soil and our large greenhouse.

We Have a Breakthrough!

After no word yet this morning on the truck, Phil called.

Incredibly, the shop had just stopped looking for the missing kingpins. (I'm not sure if they were just planning to hold onto the truck indefinitely. We were pretty unimpressed.) Phil asked for information so he could look, and within a half hour, he had located the proper pieces and they are shipping here. We hope that, by next Tuesday, our truck will no longer have the "death wobble," as one website described it.

Thanks be to God.

With that stressful block (hopefully) overcome, Phil plugged away at fencing. Now that he knows how to drill holes, he set three posts in less than two hours. He spent some time cutting little pine saplings, to determine where to meet the electric line with cattle panels.

As the road crew came through the last two days, we were blessed to get three dump truck loads of wood chips, We used the chips last year in our compost (they haven't all broken down yet), and I'm not sure what we'll do with this batch, but it's a great feeling to have "waste" products put to use.

Yesterday Phil moved the cows and sheep to a new pasture. They all went joyfully, kicking up their heels and dancing.

He then set up a new pen for the piglets. Once out of their little square holding pen, they zoomed around. I watched, and they would come to a screeching halt by the double strand electric wire. (If they had been cartoon characters, they would have had skidmarks behind them.) The incredible joy the animals showed brought smiles to our faces.

We have started to talk about a website and logo. We have done almost no marketing, besides giving eggs away to friends (often I would even forget to mention that future eggs would be available for sale: oops), so we really need to start actively seeking customers.

But, overall, it appears to be progress on all fronts. More seed orders, plow and potting soil in transit, and, so thankfully, the truck on the way.

We Need a Breakthrough

Please pray for our truck. We just heard from the third of the shops we've taken it to, and they cannot locate the kingpins, which are discontinued.

I'm not sure how our whole farm hinges on the kingpins, but at the moment, it feels like it does.

I have seedlings that need to get planted this week: we need a truck to buy the final pieces for the mini-greenhouse.

Aesthetically, we haven't been to the dump since early September, and I feel like we're drowning in garbage. We need a truck to deliver.

We were hoping to pick up a bull this weekend. Need a truck for that.

Buttercup needs to go to a boar to be bred in the next few weeks. Need a truck for that.

In order to prepare our beds, we need to till the ground. We've bought the tiller, but can't pick it up without a truck.

I know that there are work-arounds, most involving rentals and expense. We'll deal with that as we need to (no need to post comments with suggestions).

But, even if we manage without a truck for the next few weeks, we won't be able to farm long term without a truck.

Please pray for a breakthrough. It's been a long three weeks of waiting, without any progress at all.

Phil's R&R

Phil, I think, was physically exhausted yesterday, so when the weather dipped into the low 20s, we had an indoor day. He wrestled with the boys, and hiked with the older two down to the lower pasture. He was encouraged with how much he had cleared in the fall.

And he again spent most of this afternoon, dozing on and off, while I read to the boys for about three hours straight. I love it when that happens.

For myself, besides enjoying the boys' introduction to King Arthur and middle grade fiction (so fun to listen to the guess the plot!), I spent some time trying to figure out where we we will actually plant the planned crops. Eliot Coleman again proves invaluable, and the four hours or so I spent on Saturday night were, again, productive.

I had been feeling very behind in planning, and I realized suddenly this week that, overall, we're doing well. We had all last year to acquire many of the items we need, and many of the animals we'll need. I also have hopes that the weather this year will not be so unusual as last year, offering us a better chance to make a market garden work.

In completely non-farm news, I began the fascinating book What Mothers Do. The author says, correctly, I think, that we have a lot of words for the bad mother, like neglectful (not mothering enough) or overbearing (mothering too much), but we don't have words for the nurturing-just-the-right-amount mother. Our language fails us when it comes to describe the excellent mother.

Further, I know when the boys were little, I would get to the end of the day often and wonder, "Where did all my time go?" It probably often went towards settling petty disagreements (socialization), making meals and cleaning up (nutrition for health), reading or playing (education), taking a walk (nature study, exercise). This is all important to raising good men, but it seems so petty or easy to overlook.

Sawyering Continues

Today, Phil worked on creating dimensional lumber out of the enormous planks he sawed yesterday (2x4s, for example). It's not a fast process, but he worked on the project most of the day, in the constant wind on the ridge. Although I have, at times, bemoaned our lack of view on our eastward facing slope, I don't envy the wind our westward facing neighbors withstand. I'll admire the Blue Ridge mountains as I drive, and live in relative warmth and calm downslope.

When the boys and I went to visit him, we found 16 2x4s (16 feet long), and ten more 8 feet long. Also some 4"x4" posts, and some others.

Also a good-sized pile of bits and pieces, suitable, I suppose, for burning or chipping.

Jadon walked through the inch or so of sawdust as if it were snow.

And Isaiah played with Phil's new tape measure, that has a magnetic tip. He managed to get a good ways away from the metal bucket on the tractor before it snapped off.

Above, you can see our animals right now, and the trees in the background show the drab exterior in every direction. If you look closely, you'll see that one small sheep on the right looks like it's out of the fencing. Sadly, it is. Five or six more soon followed, along with the two billy goats. With Phil away sawyering, I had to corral the animals with entangled netting. Finished, I heaved a sigh of relief, only to come out a little later to see those animals scattered further abroad, and looking curiously at the orchard. Almost sobbing, I strung up more netting. Beau, the more aggressive goat, looked to sneak through a small opening, and I stepped up to him with a T-post and thought, "If he gets closer, I'm going to bean him!" Thankfully he backed away, or Phil might have come home to find a dead goat. Small mercies always, I suppose.

And, yes, when Phil came home, he corralled the animals in about five minutes. Animal management, apparently, comes more naturally to him. Argh! (I mean, I'm glad at least one of us is gifted in this. Ahem.)

As Phil puts up new fence, above is a recent photo of the cattle panels, that still line the southern part of our driveway.

And, this is the electric line that is along the northern part of the driveway.

As you can see, unless you catch the light right, the electric line vanishes. That can be a little disconcerting!
Our orchard now, has plenty of soil exposed, and the bare branches of the apple trees disappear.

More Practice Sawyering

We've kept busy. On Wednesday, Phil finally managed to fix the sprayer (I was cooking in barn kitchen when I heard strands of the Hallelujah Chorus, and I knew that all was finally well. What an ordeal that little broken piece was!)

He also drove to town to move the truck from one repair shop to the other. I think the first shop continues to have trouble locating a piece we need for the front end, so he brought the truck to a second shop that will repair the back end. However, it is now Friday, and we don't think much has happened at the second shop, and, as we have about six pressing needs that all require the use of the truck (purchase feed by the ton; bring five months of trash to the dump, as we're drowning in it; buy larger support pieces needed for hoophouse, and so on), we hope and pray it gets fixed soon.

Phil moved the chickens up toward the orchard. It took him a long time to dig out the deeply mired pen, to take down and set up the netting. He has incredible patience for such tasks; they make me want to crawl out of my skin. Hmm. Sounds like I have a bit more to learn about patience.

He's been working on a feed box, so we can buy feed in bulk. The small logs he'd sawed when we first purchased the sawmill he quickly used up on the first half (above), so he took the mill to the neighbor's land to cut up the two larger trees there. The first pine was "only 19 inches across," but when he went to lift off the first 2" plank, since the log was also about 16 feet long, he found that a 2"x19"x16' plank is QUITE HEAVY.

He also noticed that the pine was quite infested with white grubs. Some type of pine borer, I expect, as the poplar he cut up next was not at all infested. I've seen the decimated pine forests of the west, with mile after mile of dead trees, and it gives me no joy to find the nemesis here.

I spent several hours rendering all the fat of Socks and Fox. I ended up with more than three gallons! We use it on our eggs, and a good bit when we have refried beans. (I made friend rice with some of the cracklings, but I don't think that was a big hit with the boys.)

A Day in Exclamations (!)

In looking back at my notes for today, I realized I thought of all four tidbits as more-than-usual. In chronological order:
Electric bill: high!
Sprayer: frustrating!
Bethany: bred!?
Fern: sways!

Our electric bill doubled this month. Was it from the 100W bulb we have to keep the RV water line from freezing? Was it because our space heater runs 24/7? Was it because we plugged in our industrial freezer? We aren't sure what caused it, but to double our bill was extremely discouraging to Phil. How could we manage to go electric-free?

Compounding his irritation, the sprayer has a broken fitting. Whether it broke in shipping, or in the transit from upper driveway to living area, I'm not sure, but the sprayer is no good without a functional fitting ("It's like a nylon piece worth the price of the entire machine!" Phil said). He had gone to the hardware store and bought an "Easy Out" tool that was too small, so wrestled with the two halves of the fitting for a couple of hours before he went back to sleep, depressed.

My optimist husband was tired, so while he slept for a few hours, I called the manufacturer. They confirmed that the Easy Out tool was what we needed, but when Phil woke up, he did some more checking and found a set that has five graduated sizes. We hope that will help.

"Nothing is ever easy," is, for us, the saying of the day. I suppose that's also known as LIFE.

While the boys and I enjoyed time with visitors, Phil came in to say, "Bethany may be in heat!" I ran out to watch the cow mounting others, and what I saw was a cow lying on the ground. Phil said, "Oh, a minute ago, one of the little ones was licking her!" Which I've seen almost daily.

However, we later went for a closer look, and she had mucus on her tail! Signs of heat! Giovanni came, and he said, "Well, it doesn't feel quite right, but she may have ovulated already." So we did AI with one straw, and we'll watch again in about three weeks. I do hope she's bred; it's been one of my greater concerns, the lack of signs of ovulation for the cows.

I've also felt some concern about Fern keeping her pregnancy. But today, I noticed that she's a good bit rounder, and sways when she walks. Not dramatically (only about halfway through for her), but definitely different than the yearlings. I am so, so thankful for that.

In other baby news, we're watching Buttercup the Pig for signs of heat. Apparently, her vulva will turn red and grow swollen, and then we'll take her to her farm-of-birth for breeding about two weeks later. She's so friendly, it's hard to see her backend: she wants loving on her face. I throw her a banana peel, and then she turns around.

And in other farm news, I spent about five hours yesterday planning the planting, harvesting, and seed starting dates for the next year, for the crops I have. It was helpful, and I'm excited to keep going with this coming year's growth.

Reading for Fun!

Friday morning, we drove the truck to the repair shop (the traveling truck repair guy recommended it). Phil worked on fencing most of the rest of the day (more productively—thankfully!), and I realized that I can do more than read to the boys for school work. We started to read for fun, from the Squire's Tales series, which I recently uncovered in my stored boxes of books. All the boys beg to continue, and I usually do. I'm as eager for a romp through Arthurian England as they.

(As an additional plug for these books, Arthurian legends have some pretty salacious stuff. Author Morris is a pastor and theology teacher, and I appreciate that he doesn't ignore the infidelity, but doesn't make it romantic or exciting, rather foolish and grievous. True wisdom is from right action and right thought, and he throws in enough pithy sayings to discuss that I feel like I'm being both fed and entertained.)

Saturday saw more fencing, and then Phil headed to the laundromat. Incredibly, Phil has done laundry only once since the first week of October, perhaps in early November. We skipped December entirely, so he used 11 machines (one a quadruple loader!) and over $40 in quarters to get the laundry done. He said that he was still loading dirty clothes when the first machine finished.

He had brought books to read, but had no time, between juggling two months of dirty laundry for persons and farm. But he brought it home, mostly folded, for me to push into nooks and crannies of dressers. What a great guy!

I finished my work-for-pay for the week and resumed garden layout planning, which has taken a back seat to other needs. I feel like I'm closing in on where crops need to go, and what cover crops need to be sown when. Thankfully, I have a lot of resources, and I appreciate that.

Jadon remains listless, and Joe, too, has fallen ill, though he is more energetic in his sickness. In fact, at midnight, when I went to bed, Joe sat up and asked for water about every three minutes. I was, happily, not tired, and sat up until 2:15 reading my favorite parts in another favorite book, The Blue Sword.

I fell asleep happy, and Phil headed off to church today alone for the second week in a row. The boys and I started the second book in the series mentioned above, and life at the farm continues on.

Appalachia Jadon Goes to the Doctor

Jadon was listless and exhausted this morning. I looked at him, with his crusted, swollen eye, thin burn next to his mouth, and thought, "I feel like I'm a poor, uneducated white woman in Appalachia in 1900, with a son who fell in the fire!" Phil took him to see Dr. Bush, mostly to just make sure that Jadon had the same fever Abraham had: that he felt bad because of sickness and not injury. Thankfully, yes, Jadon was sick. It will probably be a long week of illness for him, but he can avoid the stares of curious strangers while his face heals.

We moved our piglets today. We want them to start rooting in our future garden area, so Phil hooked their little pen to the tractor and we dragged it down the driveway, with them trotting along inside.

They also got their first taste of whey today. They seemed somewhat unimpressed, but hopefully their appetite for it will grow.

Another day of research: I have quotes on potting soil and peat moss. We have talked through dates for chicks to arrive. We got our construction manual for the greenhouse, and Phil was thrilled to see that there are actual blueprint drawings, not just cloudy photos.

A Good Gift, a Long Talk, and a Bad Faint

We started the day with a multi-hour conversation about critical path for our farm projects. What has to happen in the next two weeks to keep work progressing later on in the year? It's a lot of discussion and a lot of research.

Some examples:

• How to store bulk feed? A hopper that hold 2 tons of grain costs about $1200: is that worth it? Do we need a hopper?


• How important is the big greenhouse? We need a little space in a greenhouse for seedling planting: is a larger greenhouse a necessity or a luxury? (And, now that it's on order, do we put it up right away, or delay?)


• Master grower Eliot Coleman puts two inches of peat moss on his garden the first time he grows. How much peat moss would we need to buy in order to cover our land? (We figured about 144 cubic yards of peat moss would be about right.) Where would we source that incredible quantity? How much would it cost to ship it? Is it worth it? (Haven't heard back from a source we contacted.)


• Of the several metal buildings we've received quotes for, which of the buildings is the best value? Which has the most usable space? Is it a purchase we have to make this year?

After we settled, as best we can, these and other questions, we made a list of needed items, and Phil headed to Charlottesville to shop. Before he left, he was able to fill up the RV's water tank, which I appreciated. The backlog of dishes had grown extreme.

***

I was bringing the tacos for dinner to the trailer when Isaiah opened the door and yelled for me. I came in to find Jadon, writhing in pain on the floor, bleeding from his eye area.

We think he passed out and slammed his face onto the radiator. His upper eye lid is swollen and oozy, and he has a light burn along the side of his mouth. His hand, too, has a little blister on his wrist and one finger. He probably then fell onto the floor, since he has a little scratch on his chin.

Of all the places to pass out: the one spot in the house that could burn him. Thank you, Lord, that it isn't worse.

When a girl, I passed out a few times (usually at the sight of blood). My guess is that Jadon hadn't eaten enough of the food I made at lunch, and had low blood sugar. From now on: more protein for him.

***

An indifferent gift giver at the best of times, I managed to rouse myself enough this year to mail my grandma a Christmas package with little goodies from the farm. I was thrilled today to get a Christmas box from my grandma (approaching her 90th birthday!), filled with Dutch treats I remember fondly from my childhood. Sinterklaas, the Dutch Santa Claus, always left us a good Dutch chocolate letter from our initials. Six chocolate letters in the box for us today.

The boys also each got a pair of booties to keep their feet warm. I loved these as a child: beautiful, hand-knit booties. And I had a pair of hand-knit socks.

Grandma sent us Dutch Gouda cheese, chocolate sprinkles for bread (the beloved hajelslag, or /HAhl/, as we called it), and Wilhelmina peppermints. My grandpa used to give us Wilhelminas before church. We could suck on a peppermint when the service got a little long. So many happy memories in that box!

***

Two days ago, Phil let Isaiah drive the tractor for the first time. Three years ago, when Phil and I were thinking about farming, we were thinking about a six-acre lot in Boulder. My Dad said, "Amy, go somewhere that's big enough for your boys to drive a tractor."

And here we are.

Alone in Freezing Drizzle

After school Monday morning, the older boys and Joe got dressed in warm clothes, and we went out to help Phil. (Abraham, after a week of fever, is still not feeling sprightly, so he stayed behind.) The boys were going to help Phil pull T-posts—Isaiah proudly demonstrated that he can now haul around the T-post puller, no light tool—but when Phil tried to pull a T-post, the ground was too frozen around the post to budge it. Phil even sat on the bar, but no luck.

So the boys helped Phil string new line, and clip old barbed wire. I mainly took down barbed wire. What a nasty, nasty piece of work that is. The first two lines we rolled primly on the spinning jenny, but then Phil needed that for the high tensile wire, so I wrapped it gingerly and messily around a fiberglass pole. The barbs catch in the mittens, and hang up on each other: I've been reading about WWI recently, and the miles of barbed wire along the Western Front, and it horrifies me. Besides the men who died, caught in the nasty stuff: after the war, who had the unpleasant job of cleaning that stuff up?!

Phil completed the first 200 feet or so fence, all five lines. He has a long ways to go.

Today he took down the fence along the road by our apple orchard. Despite the freezing drizzle, he was set to string wire on the next section, when he had a horrible realization.

If you let go of the end of several thousand feet of high tensile wire, it will spring back and bury itself into the hundreds of coils, and any attempt to unwind the wire results in a huge mess.

So Phil spent his afternoon, not just alone in freezing drizzle, but he spent it doing hours of mind-numbing work, trying to loosen an enormous knot. No progress, just a little knowledge gained. (And I had the foolish temerity to question whether he could have just set the wire aside and started with a new batch. Now that he knows he needs to hang onto the edge, he could have plowed ahead, and the messy wire mess could have been left for another day, or, dare I say it, brought to the dump. Some questions are better left unsaid.)

I think one of the things I've noticed lately is that we're not communicating as well as we normally do. I remember when my parents started their business, they had little disagreements almost every day, about best shipping methods, or how to sort books, or what kind of discounts, or employee questions. It was a rough time. And I suppose we're dealing with similar things now: a lot of new information, new tasks, new direction, and about almost all, we have different ideas of how to do things. It leads to friction.

I, for one, don't like friction much.

I spent some of today mixing up two types of sausage. The abattoir ground the meat of one of the pigs so we can season it ourselves. I made a garlic wine sausage (with garlic and coriander from our garden), and a breakfast sausage. Flavor was very good, but I was a bit disappointed: it was really, really greasy. I'm not used to spooning grease off the meat I prepare. (When we made sausage from the pigs we butchered ourselves, we didn't add extra fat. Sometimes I would cook our own sausage in lard to keep it from sticking, so clearly our sausage wasn't fatty enough. But I wasn't wasting any of the precious grease, and I fear the abattoir sausage will have extra grease that might go to waste.)

Fence and Frames

Friday saw just two more posts in the ground. That was all. Both times, the auger sank in and could not be pulled out, so Phil, twice, used the backhoe to carefully extract the auger. Was digging by hand the only option left?

Yesterday, Phil realized he could set the tractor to only allow the auger go to a certain (safe) depth. He quickly managed to put in several more posts, and built cross-bracing. Above, you can see the end of the nail he pounded in, between the six-inch diameter post and the cross-brace.

By the end of Saturday, he had the two ends of the first section all cross-braced. He had pounded in the intermediate posts (the white posts), and pulled the wire tight (the tensioner, specially designed for that task, broke right off, but he managed to improvise).

The five wires will be strung at different heights. He has to drill five holes through each post, then inserts a cotter pin in each hole and bends the ends back.

Phil now has a good understanding of how the whole system works, which is a huge step ahead. The first attempt at something is always the hardest; now he knows, and the remainder will, hopefully, go well.

After a few days for my brain to recover from the mind-bender of ordering seeds (how many heads of broccoli does your family eat in a year, would you guess?!), I started to plan the garden. With about 60 beds, each 4 feet by 75 feet, I have to figure out if that will be sufficient, or if I'll need to plant between orchard rows. Eliot Coleman's books remain a lifesaver, and I study his books to help estimate how many beds of corn or onions or cabbage I might need.

I also decided that there's very little chance that we would be able to finish getting a greenhouse all the way up in the next two weeks (onion seeds and asparagus I'm hoping to get into soil blocks before the month is out). So we've ordered a Lost Creek hoop bender, to make a small 10'x14' hoophouse, just for growing seedlings. That seems like a more reasonable accomplishment.

Our bee hives arrived earlier this week. I ordered based on a recommended list from a beekeeper I know, but the box came without any instructions, and no instructions showed readily on their website, either. I poked through several books, and came up with the two hives in the photo above. How handy, to order them preassembled (they are not in their permanent spot: I just needed a place to put them). I'm thankful I looked, because the order came missing lids.

The inner parts of the hive, though, are a bit more scattered. Four hundred little pieces of interlocking wood, to eventually make 50 large frames and 50 small frames, and, again, no instructions. I have some idea now how they are all supposed to fit together, but a large box of Lincoln logs was a bit overwhelming!