Allison took this photo. I love the color. I need to send her out on photo taking trips more often! My work has kept me so busy these past few years, I am relying on Susan and the kids to keep up with the farm chores. Our plans for building a timber-frame barn have been put on hold due to my stiff work schedule. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Help is on the way at work!
More of the floods. The Ohio is north of our farm, but the ground to our south is lower, and runs first to the green river. Flooding has the potential to leave us on a kind of island.
This is from the spring flooding. Trees that were down from the big ice storm were washed and floated out of the ditches into the road.
I like the Wiki photo, but the fence looks like a lot of up-keep. The gates shown below are what Susan has chosen for the front entrance. I like the small pattern, should keep our small animals in, and small predators at bay. She has intalled the two long gates, and fence post, but the fencing is still rolled up on the ground.
Honey the pig. Look at how much she has grown. She loves tomatoes. Between our garden, and the neighbors, we had so much she got a treat most every week.
This is some of the milled wood for our project. David L. has been very busy collecting trees and helping the sawyer. Cold, and wet weather aside, they have put a major effort in trying to get it ready by the end of the year. Susan gave them a Christmas deadline, as a gift to me for the holiday. Now I have to meet the same deadline for finalizing the plans for the permit! Getting the cart ahead of the horse, I guess. But a barn permit won't be too hard, I hope!
You can see mud. So slick I couldn't get close with the truck, and had to slog through it on foot for these shots. I think the deadline may have to be a bit more flexible, but they are close to complete on the take off list, as it exists so far.
You may have noticed a big lapse in posts. Weather, work, school, family matters all have a part to play. Hopefully, we will get back on track as the new year starts. No big plans for the Christmas break here, we'll be together, and that's all that matters.
Here's our newest additon to the family! Two of the four pigs we picked up from Winchester, KY this weekend. They are Tamworth-Red Wattle mix, two gilts, and two barrows. I haven't ever raised pigs myself, just been around them from my various uncles' farms when I was little. So this will be an adventure! Will keep y'all posted!
I've been spending many man-hours working on the plan. We spoke with a concrete contractor regarding the footers, and he had some interesting facts to share with us. The first fact was the two foot [24 inch] frost depth required for footers here. I had been thinking about the amount of concrete we'd need to adequately support those big posts, and had settled on 12 inch depth, 36 inch square footers, but to avoid using excess concrete, we were planning on laying each footer on a bed of ruble 12 inches thick. The local code, however, requires a depth of 24 inches for a footer. No matter, we can accommodate that. But I recalled something I had come across before regarding shallow foundations, and frost protection I'd like to share.
A frost-protected shallow foundation system was started in Scandinavia. They use rigid foam insulation set around the outside of the foundation to protect against frost heave. Such shallow foundations reduce costs several ways. First, you have less excavation and backfill. You can use significantly less concrete by not needing to pour footings below the frost line. Since we plan to use in-floor radiant hydronic heating,
it just makes sense to combine the insulation of the surrounding foundation with the slab insulation.
Allison took this photo. I love the color. I need to send her out on photo taking trips more often! My work has kept me so busy these past few years, I am relying on Susan and the kids to keep up with the farm chores. Our plans for building a timber-frame barn have been put on hold due to my stiff work schedule. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. Help is on the way at work!
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
This is some of the milled wood for our project. David L. has been very busy collecting trees and helping the sawyer. Cold, and wet weather aside, they have put a major effort in trying to get it ready by the end of the year. Susan gave them a Christmas deadline, as a gift to me for the holiday. Now I have to meet the same deadline for finalizing the plans for the permit! Getting the cart ahead of the horse, I guess. But a barn permit won't be too hard, I hope!
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Here's our newest additon to the family! Two of the four pigs we picked up from Winchester, KY this weekend. They are Tamworth-Red Wattle mix, two gilts, and two barrows. I haven't ever raised pigs myself, just been around them from my various uncles' farms when I was little. So this will be an adventure! Will keep y'all posted!![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vh_QO3EFKGtn4XhGXJLIPZhRb4tQo4ZPMMJVDegXLsgdVhyRea5Ol8hYJ-3NJUIxaio_VR777z1MM--s7hTvMc7h89M0r33KWOuiI3Z66pRrqfJl1Xfaxq7DN_REFo5OrIweMKSQVc8zoJHksBPqAC=s0-d)
