Sat. June 6th... Started off Great this Morning... Just to Crash & Burn

We got up this morning with the intentions of securing the ridge board for the rear deck roof, so I gathered the straight ladder, lumber, tools and the special six inch bolts I bought to secure a support board and a gusset. Before actually starting the job, Vick wanted to go to the bakery and grab some cakes and Danish for her Mom and Dad to have with their coffee, so we went to the bank and hit the bakery. Until I got home, my psoriasis was so kicked up that my fingers felt like I was hitting them with a hammer and it was coming on strong. I’ve had this for some time now, and I can tell when it is going to be an issue lasting the entire day and today was one of those! I went upstairs and laid across the bed, watching TV for several hours, before coming down and at least, getting the support board up, along with a gusset and two side angles to keep the ridge board from flipping sideways, dumping the roof. I now have it securely lagged into the last solid logs before the log siding. It will remain safely in position now.

Tomorrow, we must install the door in the “Bunny Brothel” so we can put the Bantams in there and move the Araucanas over; splitting the area we now have cut into thirds.

For now... I’m getting ready to go upstairs, because my everything hurts right now. The damned psoriasis I have affects every part of my body inside and out.

Fri Eve, June 5th... Nothing new... figured lumber... Real Bad Allergy Day......

Today we started out like a house on fire, but soon were stricken by the yellow clouds of pollen, floating in the trees like a dust storm. I fell victim immediately upon going out to feed this morning and it kept up all day long. Vicki suffers from the same affliction as I do and the tree pollen is almost poisonous to her if you remember all the trees she just tested positive for during her allergy tests a few weeks ago. We did manage to figure out how much treated lumber we will need to build the porch on the hospice house, but cannot actually build it until the footer drain is in place. It must be dug down into the dirt and have the top of the socked pipe even with the haunch concrete, so the drain pipe is lower and will direct all the water away from the haunch this winter, so it does not freeze and heave the floor up in the air and crack it. After the footer drain is in and cut into the large drain pipe running to the creek, we can then build the porch deck and install the roof and tie it into the building roof. At least we can install the ridge plate and all the rafters for the building first though.

The Bantams in the brooding house are now big enough to start introducing them to the adult population of the large barn, but we are fearful of just dumping them in over there. The chickens in the big barn can be a little overbearing with new juvenile birds, so we will put them into the new bunny house for a week and then turn them loose to run during the day. During that week in there, we will introduce a few adult hens into the bunny house with them. With this in mind, we will need to go out tomorrow and install the door frame and door that is out there. I suppose closing the soffit with board is also in order, and then it will only need the batten boards installed over the cracks between the wall boards. Once that is done, we can go back to installing the hospice gift shop roof. The picture below shows the support for the ridge board, and then the rafters can be installed on 16” centers. It seems that we are in a stall mode now... I guess we need to get that damned footer drain installed..............

Fri. June 5th... Today is a Roof Type Day... It’s Getting to be More Fun Daily...

This morning was a pretty start to a beautiful, cool, partially sunny day and we love it. It’s not too stifling hot and it’s not bone jarring cold, in fact. It’s perfect for building the gift shop. We are now questioning all the insurance people who want to suck the money we collect for hospice right out of our hands, by charging us $800.00 a year for an insurance rider for selling here on the property and the hospice gift shop. Ever since we’ve started.... we have met with opposition... requirements... demands... and leeches trying to get money from us that will be coming from the funds we collect for the hospice program. After all, we have donated the space, $1000.00 in the concrete pad foundation, hundreds of dollars in lumber materials, $1175.00 for doors and windows, all our labor in building it, the electricity to light it and our dollars to heat it in the winter and air condition it in the summer, then it is expected of us to foot the annual bill for insurance..... It just cannot be... The insurance cost must come out of the funds we collect. We cannot fund it all and it makes us sad to use these funds to pay a glutinous insurance company for expensive insurance to protect us from other lousy, glutinous people who might sue us for nothing. Oh well... it’s no different than the lousy, stinking State, that is requiring us to collect a sales tax on every item we sell for Hospice. We think it’s terrible that we must collect sales tax on an item you purchase to help support a program that gives so little, yet so much, to a person in the final days of their lives. We all must pay for our sins one day and I pity these people who never learned to be loving, caring and compassionate.... all those who govern their lives and actions by money. God have mercy in the end......

In lieu of all this, we continue on... for we know that God will guide us and make it happen...... That we’ll find what is needed to make this immaculate hospice project come to fruition in spite of the money mongers we encounter along every step of the way.
We will snap progress pictures this evening to show where we are now. Stay tuned!

Thurs June 4th... Beauty With the Best of Them...... A Day to Build On...

This morning was a beautiful gift, as the sun arose over the distant hills and the Hudson River. I wondered back to the 1800’s and envisioned Thomas Cole or Asher Durand, standing in the clove

at Haines Falls or maybe

Asher Durand's " Kindred Spirits" Portrays Thomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant in a Catskills landscape

Frederick Church as he gazed at the tranquil Hudson River from his studio in Olana, perched high on the ridge... Surely they were awe struck by nature’s beauty, every bit as much and as often as Vicki and I.
Nothing has changed in those one hundred fifty some years, except for the hustle and bustle folks place upon themselves...... the beauty of nature is still there, still unspoiled, except for expansions of new roads and a few new homesteads build out in the sticks, as their occupants try to escape the aforementioned mistakes of over zealous entrepreneurs of years gone by. Occasionally, Vicki and I take a day to go to these very places and stand where these great artists once stood; viewing the very same landscapes we now look at. They spent time looking, enjoying, memorizing and painting or sketching what they knew would capture the world, as it had them. They were correct! The Catskills and Hudson River Valley is as beautiful a place as God ever created. And just as Thomas Cole, Frederick Church or Vicki Alderman-Watt captured or captures that beauty, it will live on long after the artists are gone and we are all the richer for their gift to humanity.

Today we will try to finish the fourth wall to the gift shop and then the roof section to the shop. We will then need to stop and go for the treated lumber needed for the front deck. Once that is down and in place, we can set the porch roof posts and header, and then place the deck roof. Installing the metal roofing will be a cinch once all the purlins are set. Here it is, the first of June and we almost have the gift shop up. The rear deck roof is also under way, but sitting idle until Jeff finds time for us.

Other than these plans and a trip to somewhere for coffee.... we’ll roll with the flow.

Wed. June 3rd... Joe is Much Better... So We Need to Run Errands for Animals...

Vicki’s Dad is doing much better and can move around a bit better than yesterday, so we will leave Vick’s Mom and Dad to relax and watch TV, nap or whatever and we will run our errands. We need to go to Dean’s Mill in Coxsackie for minerals and alpaca feed, which are both needed for them. We will stop somewhere for groceries, so we can make tonight’s dinner. Perhaps, when we return, we will get a little work done, either in the barn or at the hospice gift shop project. I need to frame in the inside doorway to the bunny house and close in the soffit and install the batten boards. If it rains this afternoon, as they are calling for, we can still build the doorway and maybe build a few bunny cages and a grooming table in there. Maybe we might just stay in here and keep Joe and Anita both company too. After all, they may only be here another few days until Joe can move around and negotiate steps...then they will be going home to the mountain. Having them here is nice, although we would rather they came to stay a few days, just for fun, so we could ramble around to restaurants and enjoy some sight seeing or something rather than have Joe in such pain. Perhaps someday......

Tues June 2nd... We spent the day at the hospital in Hudson with Joe...

Vicki’s Dad, Joe... had his operation this morning at Hudson Memorial Hospital and everything went well, except that they took their good old time as usual. We waited an hour and a half in the surgery waiting room after he was taken in and the actual operation was about a half hour procedure. This evening, he is really sore and doesn’t wish to move about too much. He is on pain meds which help deaden the pain, but can never take it completely away. He will have a rough three days and I know how he feels, because I had the very same operation when I was about fifty years old and it was rough enough then. Joe is quite a bit older than that, so you can imagine his discomfort.

We are now finishing up from a hectic, draining day... fed the dogs and other animals late and are ready to crash, so we’ll blog a bit more in the morning over a nice cup of hot coffee and a good nights sleep.....

Mon. June 1st... Slowly, we see the gift shop take shape... Too Slowly...

We started this morning fairly early, in fact, I went to the barns while Vicki was getting dressed this morning and fed the boys and chickens in the big barn, knocked the hole in the wall where the door will go for the bunny house and then went to the brooding house to feed the babies. I placed the last hatching duck in the incubator, over into the brooding box to eat and drink with the others and when I turned around, the Guinea chick was missing from the incubator. He was just there when I picked up the duck to place it in the other box. I looked all over the shelf and then unto the floor, in case he had fallen. I finally found it in the far corner of the shelf. Any Guinea fowl that can run that fast, is definitely ready for the brooding box, food, water and keeping up with the other older chicks, so I thrust him over into the “box of plenty”!

After a bite of breakfast, we started on the third wall of the gift shop. We started cutting 2x4’s for the floor plate and the top plate, then Vick cut a few wall studs before I realized that the walls were 1” different. The wall toward the road was an inch wider than the wall toward the house. To make a long story short, we spent the next three and a half hours making it right, so by five o’clock this afternoon, we only had the one wall completed.... but it’s all right now, so when it’s time to start again, we can go like we should have gone today. Just as we finished the wall, Vick’s parents called and informed us that they were coming to our house to stay the night, so they were closer and ready to go to the Hudson Hospital tomorrow. Vick’s Father has a torn meniscus which he is having operated on tomorrow morning, after which, he will be staying with us for several days to eliminate steps. Our guest room is downstairs and the bathroom is ten feet away with walls on both sides of the hallway between... A real piece of cake, for someone with knee a problem. We suggested they stay here, because they like the bed in the guest room and they can relax all day long. Joe will be bed ridden for a day or so and then he can sit on the porch and sip coffee and read or watch TV in the living room. Anita, Vick’s Mom, can soak up the sun on the pool deck during the day as she reads her novels, which she loves to do but has no place to really do it. We’ll not even know they are here, because they just do their thing and tell us to go ahead and do ours.

Lumber everywhere... Lots of lumber.

Looking through the opening where the door to the new bunny house will be. This will be our inside entry for winter.

Looking from inside the new bunny house back into the barn.

An "up close look" at where the door goes.

Mon June 1st... Recovering From Yet Another Fox Attack... A sad Experience!

Sadly, yesterday I killed a mature, male red fox as it ran across the yard with a live chicken in his grasp. He was heading for the tall grass of the rear field, where he would have finished off the chicken and had his gourmet meal in the woods. These times of human intervention are always a dismal, ceremonial event, which weighs heavily upon your conscience afterward. What about the fox... he was only trying to survive... what of the chicken... doesn’t the hen deserve to live... to be protected too? What if the fox was taking the hen to her litter in a den? What would happen to the little ones? (Thank God it was a male or I’d still be feeling guilty, wondering) Killing a creature to protect our own is not a pleasant thing, but must be done. This is one of the harsh realities of farming... a new experience Vicki keeps telling me she doesn’t care for. I can’t make her see that I don’t care for it either... but that I’ve become visually calloused, but resent it inside. She is changing slowly. I can see it in her actions and hear it in her conversation with me and others as we recount the many tales of woe bestowed upon our critters of the farm. A farmer becomes steadfast and somewhat complacent to the fact that his animals are worth more than God’s other creatures... and to him, they are... but really, they are not. All God’s creatures deserve to live, but God also created all creatures and the food chain which exists between all creatures. (man included)

You must study things thoroughly and honestly if you are to come to the real conclusion in these matters. The fox is not killing... or hunting... or shopping... or sporting. He was living. Surviving. PERIOD. I was not killing... hunting... shopping or sporting either. I was striving to insure survival... simply living as the fox was... except for the fact, that I am at the top of the food chain. (Well really just a notch below the IRS since everyone knows they can devour you) Anyway, there comes a time in life that you must let go of the human aspect and become a creature of God also. All the great knowledge and understanding we receive with God’s gift of superior intelligence, reasoning and conscience in mankind, clouds the real issue of survival of the fittest. It’s really, kind of like they say... dog eat dog... to live... to survive. Putting all the human feelings aside, I did what must be done to insure the survival of ourselves... as farmers and the caretakers we were told to be... caretakers over all the animals.
Life simply stated... you’re born and you die... in between, you live the best you can.

Sunday May 31st... What a Day!! We lost a Chicken and GOT A Fox......

This morning, Vicki and I jumped into the hospice gift shop project with both feet and in short order... had the rear wall cut, nailed and standing. We propped it so it couldn’t fall and was ready to start on an end wall when Stanley and Joyce pulled in looking for eggs. As we were talking, it started to rain hard enough that we quit and put all the tools and equipment away.

We had Christa and her half sister Joslin were here cleaning stalls and buildings, and when they finished, we decided to take them home and pick up another box of framing nails for the nail gun before GNH Lumber closed at 2:00 o’clock. We picked up the nails and went to P&L Deli in Westerlo for sandwiches and soda for lunch. After eating, I sat down on the couch, to allow the Motrin I’d taken (for my pustule psoriatic arthritis) to take effect, before going out to try to build an end wall. I had sat there for about five minutes before I heard Vick screaming for me to get the gun, because an animal had a chicken. I grabbed the shot gun I keep at the rear door and burst out into the back yard. Vicki said the animal she had seen, was behind a parked trailer in the yard, so I proceeded to the far side of the trailer, looking carefully around it and under it. I saw nothing, so started walking through the yard, looking for an animal. I saw a brown, moving thing out in the yard, which I thought was a chicken nesting on the ground, but on closer observation, found an almost dead hen. Suddenly, I saw a fox running from the barn or the woods between the road and the barn, carrying a black hen. I carefully watched his progress across the yard and I picked an opening in which to shoot where I would not hurt anything and wouldn’t be shooting toward the road. I shot a round at the fox, which instantly dropped the chicken it was carrying. It continued to run across the yard, so I picked another opening and shot, this time it looked as though I hit him pretty hard, but he disappeared out of my line of sight behind the house. I went around the corner of the house and found the fox lying dead at the corner of the yard, near the stone wall. We immediately went into recovery mode now, looking for injured or dead chickens... more than the one I'd already found. After looking around, we found only the one chicken we had previously came upon. The black hen the fox dropped when I first shot, obviously wasn't killed, because we didn't find it and later in the evening it showed up. We decided to clean the dead chicken, to be offered to a neighbor who asked us to save any roosters we didn’t want and he would eat them, so after skinning and gutting the chicken, I finished cleaning it up and Vicki washed it off good and placed it into a baggie and into the refrigerator. Tomorrow, we will take it to the blind neighbor who asked us to remember him. I will make sure he knows the fox killed it and he can decide if he wants to eat it. Once cooked, there would be no reason to worry about that though. In any event, I will make sure he knows how the chicken died.

Jeff and his crew came this afternoon and placed the ridge beam in place for the rear porch roof. He will return Tuesday sometime to finish the mainframe, and then start placing rafters and fascia boards. We will then order the steel roofing necessary to cover both sides. After this project is completed, Vick and I can eat our breakfast on the deck or grill a meal when it is raining. The rain will never again go through the screen door and soak the rear door. We’re looking forward to a dry kitchen floor in a rain storm.

We hatched a few ducks and a guinea fowl today and right now, we have another duck, a guinea fowl and a regular chick that should be ready to go to the heat box tomorrow.

We’re hoping for good weather tomorrow, so we can finish the walls on the gift shop and do the ridge board and start placing the roof rafters in place.

Here's where we started this morning

Here's where we finished... What, with the rain, fox shooting and such......

Look how big the goose babies have gotten...

Our own little domestic guys we hatched out so far!

Another duckie on the way.

Here we have Guinea Fowl #2

The two week crew.

These guys are a month old

The ridge pole for the rear deck project

Another view

The post on the Sonna tube, filled with concrete

This doesn't look too trustworthy just yet!!!!

Does it???