Cedar Woods Farm

My friend Fred Dawson came over yesterday and we cut a bunch more dead elm trees for firewood. This is most of it.

Dead Elm Firewood

Susan is very happy now that we have a wood store again … she likes to be warm!

Why we do this

Before:

Dead Elm Tree

After:

Elm After

Stump:

Elm Stump

The result:

A warm glow

Today we’ve got our first real snow of this winter. Here’s a few pics of the animals.

Cows out in the snow storm

The cows don’t seem too bothered. They’d rather eat than get out of the snow.

A snowy little donkey

Lucy is our donkey. She doesn’t eat as much and was sheltering against the fence when I went out.

Lucy asking for an apple

She was happy to eat the apple I took out for her.

Below is a picture I got of a coyote back in our “Secret Field” two days ago. I have an automatic scouting camera back there. This was at 11:25am.

Coyote passing through

All the wall covering is off the south bay window wall. Was some nasty mold behind there that’s all gone. This will have new walls with proper insulation, wiring, lights, etc. Another big pile of scrap wood to turn into heat in the wood stove.

Bay Window wall stripped back to brick

Clearing out the old kitchen walls and ceiling is taking much more time and effort than hoped, but perhaps that’s to be expected. Today was a big day for Susan as she got to remove the old upper cabinets that she refused to use.

Susan & Geoff attacking the cupboards

And they’re gone …

Old Upper Cupboards Removed

With her reviled cupboards gone, Susan attacked the wall with enthusiasm.

Susan wields her LVT "Renovation Bar" with enthusiasm

One of the big pluses of getting everything down to the bare walls is that we can be sure that there aren’t any nasty surprises, like this:

Why do rodents want to eat wiring insulation?

Luckily I’m pretty sure that these wires had caused problems and had been disconnected.

We got the rest of the wall finish off and another big chunk of the old ceiling down by days end.

Kitchen sink wall back to the brick.

Another view of today's progress

We’ve decided to cover the brick on both these walls. The window wall is an exterior wall so needs to be properly insulated. The other wall is now an interior wall, but we’re going to frame a wall so I have somewhere to run wiring, plumbing for the washer, and a dryer vent pipe.

We’ve had a few “off” days (back to cafe to work weekend, provisioning, tidying) but yesterday was back to rip and tear (after finally getting the upright freezer emptied, defrosted, & moved).

Susan's brother Geoff was helping today ... dirtiest so far

This wall was the worst so far to pull out. There was actually fiberglas batt insulation behind the press-board, which unfortunately had 50 years of (ex) mouse “condos” and the like.

More brick!

This wall in now an interior wall (after I built the insulated addition to replace the old porch that got burned in the 2006 Halloween fire). There won’t be much showing though, plan for this wall is (L - R) full height cabinet for stacked washer dryer & broom closet, fridge, 2′ counter as the “comms center”. I think I’ll have to build a half wall to take electrical and plumbing. Need to finalize that today.

Susan has aggressive plans for today, so we’d better get to it. Great to have Geoff’s help again today.

With a day interrupted by newspaper articles and a time out while a friend trimmed our donkey Lucy’s feet, progress was slower than hoped for. The good news is that, spurred on from yesterday’s demo, we got started at removing the ceiling to see what the beams look like.

Pulling nails

They didn’t skimp on the nails at all. The headlight may look a trifle geeky, but it works like a charm. (BTW, it’s stardard farm wear for me working outside in the winter, and lasts several weeks on a set of recharable AAA’a). Susan was very excited to see the beams start to appear.

First glimpse of ceiling beams

We figured this would be more exciting than finishing clearing out the space to make it easier to work. Maybe true, but with things looking so interesting I kept going and got about a quarter of the ceiling down. Enough to get a sense of what it could look like.

Part of today's progress showing Cedar Beams

After this was some less exciting tidying up, and converting some of the demo wood into sizes that will go into the wood stove. Not quite “Burning Down the House”, but at least converting waste into heat. We’re creating fuel faster than we can burn it. We’ll be back at it tomorrow.

We’re finally getting started at building the new kitchen at the farm. Although there’s still stuff we need to clear out Susan was bound and determined to start tearing yesterday (the ol’ “Patience my ass, I want to kill something” sentiment). She was so fast with the crowbar I couldn’t get her into focus (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

Susan in action with the "Rennovating Bar"

We counted at least nine different layers of wallpaper.

A selection of the nine layers of wallpaper

I really like the black one at the left. If we could find something similar I think it could make a great accent wall.

With the softboard off we’re back to the brick.

Day one progress

The house burned in 1952 and was re-built inside the original triple brick shell (but changed from a two story to a 1 1/2 story). The black lines in the brick are the charred remains of the wood lath that they set into the inner layer of brick to give something to nail the internal wall finish to. This wall will become an interior wall once the back addition is insulated, so we’re thinking of leaving it natural brick.

Need to clean up this mess and make some more. Good that a lot of the mess can go straight into the wood stove.

Today we want to get some of the ceiling down to see if our idea of leaving the beams exposed is going to be feasible.

One of the real joys of living on the farm is being self sufficient for our winter heating. I’m way behind in being ready for winter, but today in less than an hour I filled the Treker twice with wood from dead trees around the old orchard.

Second quick load of firewood

This will keep us warm and toasty until the weekend. With the dry(er) forecast for the next few days I’ll let things dry out a bit more before I cut more. This is some of the wood I pulled out of the swamp late last winter, all dead ash trees flooded out by beavers in the 70’s.

Dead ash trees skidded out over the ice from the beaver swamp