So... there's some stuff I can't talk about getting ready to go down. Maybe next time.
But I can talk about this...
We put in the garden - actually we put in about one and a half times the amount of garden we normally put in - in roughly the same amount of time. Having Anna around helps a lot, she's really good at garden work. Jack was almost tempted to put in twice the amount, but if we didn't eat the overstock he wasn't sure if he could trade enough of it without spoilage. We are going to try to get a second crop though. That was big last year. We've also started laying in the foundation for the expansion of the barn, and Jack and I started talking about the greenhouse I want to build more seriously.
We decided we'd add it on to the barn, which means I really need to get the glass thing figured out fast. The original barn was built with concrete footings and while we could get some of that from Bottineau, Jack decided to try using locally sourced stone - its hard labor, but it should work. We're digging slit trenches down about four feet, then drilling another foot below that with a post hole digger. Then we'll put in the posts we're going to use as our wall supports, fill the trenches with three to three and a half feet of stone, then backfill the rest with dirt. We've got one wall segment done and the posts are really sturdy... but its really hard work. We've also had to pack more dirt down then I expected as it settled. Thats made things even more sturdy, I think. Still... work like that is going to take us most of the season.
Tomorrow we're going to take one of the horses over to the Odegaards and get them started plowing the field. The garden tractor we've got could do it, but we don't have enough gas that either group is willing to burn, and we do have a horse and the proper plow. Neither of those boys has ever done it though, so Jack is going to have to give them some 'dual'. I still don't really understand that use of the term.... hrm. I suppose that'll mean more reading for me.
I was going to go with and learn some myself, but Anna asked if she could go - and Jack doesn't like leaving the Farm unattended since the bandit incident so I'm elected to do the daily chores alone and keep watch.
Thats ok, though - I've been looking forward to a little alone time.
I hope all goes well for you and Anna and Anna's sister. I can't even guess at the logistics involved but, as someone who escaped that fate, I have to really really really agree with trying to save someone else from it.
ReplyDeleteI'm settling in here. Living in a town is so much different than living outside of the town. I see a lot more people every day, and I don't really know how to talk to them. Well, I say it's a "town". It's more like each of us have a house and about four to six acres of land, so you walk about a half mile down the road and you see maybe about five or six houses on either side of the road. We're all clustered around a village green that they built after knocking down an old office building that I'm told was just falling apart.
I don't know how it is where you are, but Papa says all of New England used to be forest, and it's always trying to be forest all over again. Uninhabited buildings get this big thick vines wrapping around them and tearing them apart, and then you get trees growing up through the middle of them anywhere that the sunlight breaks through. There are brick shells surrounding trees here. There are some kinds of trees that actually grow six feet in a single year. Mom calls them 'weed trees'. I don't know what they're really called. I should look that up.
Everyone kind of has their own farm that does almost everything. Everyone has chickens, and some of us have ducks, and pigs, and all of us have sheep and goats, and most of us have at least one cow, but goats are more common. Some of us have honeybees and some have alpacas. Since my father is a sea captain, we just have the basics, goats and sheep and chickens and ducks since our place is near the water, and a vegetable garden, cornfield, potato patch, and hayfield. Then my father brings in fish and an occasional whale.
This place is amazing. It's full of historical stuff, like really super-old historical stuff from several hundred years ago. The big population centers were in Boston, Providence, and New Haven, and none of them were *quite* close enough to overrun the old Mystic-Saybrook area, though we stay away from New London, that place's just wacko, or so I hear. The really brave folk are just across the river from that place. Anyways, the historical sites in Mystic already had forges and glaziers and people who knew how to use them because... I... don't really know why. But I'm glad they did!
So there isn't a lot of salvaging technology here, even though there's plenty to salvage. Instead, they're kind of focusing on living as if it's hundreds of years ago again. I don't know, it seems to be working for them. We aren't likely to get electricity in our house for the foreseeable future. Most folks here don't have it and don't bother trying to make it. Instead, a few central buildings have it, like this library. My mother says we're living like menites, whatever they are, and she says it both fondly and wryly. Take that as you will...
The good news is that I could ask them how to make glass and tell you what they say.
Oh, by the way, I figured out what that long island is called. It's called Long Island. Isn't that the funniest thing you ever heard?