Calculating my Work

Posted on June 20, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

I have been running around the last couple of days. I spent two days at Kim and Dennis’ working on tiling, although we didn’t work that whole time. The job is drawing to a close, depending on how much more Kim wants done.

I came to the bush Thurs evening when the family went to Erin’s graduation and I was so tired from staying up late talking to people and then waking early that I slept at eight in the evening until three in the morning and then was back asleep from five until eleven. I haven’t slept that much since I was young, or anemic.

Today when I arrived was similar. I did a tour of the garden after I dropped the two sheets of chipboard I brought from the pallet shed, and then came inside to snack and then nap.

The evening was a lazy time with listening to music and doing some rough calculations for the floor covering. It should cost me under a hundred dollars for the half inch foam board under the mismatched covering of chipboard and plywood from pallets. I need twelve sheets of 2’ x 8’ foam board, and more plywood than I have. But I can begin on that job and let the rest wait until next year or more wood. I am in no rush to insulate the floor in the new part.

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An Answer for the Future

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

It was brilliant and sunny again today and incongruously I spent the first part of the morning inside. I did some more work on the cedar cladding and then set up the foundation of the old woodshed. Then I repotted some beans that have come up. Some of the cucumbers are coming up in my raised bed. That might be the answer for the future. A few raised beds, although I don’t have a lot of metal sheets any more. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I decided that I should do some work on the new bridge today, although I wonder why sometimes. I peeled some more of the log by the stream and cut it off at 26 feet so it is the same length as the old bridge. I walked on the old bridge to measure it and it cracked under my weight. It is hard to say whether it would work for another season anyway. I guess I could have installed it and then waited for the inevitable flood to carry it away. Instead, I’ve been wading.

I brought back some cedar from the pallet shed, since I ran out today, and I can see now how I might be able to use it all up. I’m nearly there already. There are perhaps fifty pieces left, which is perhaps a fifth of the original.

This evening I ran the chainsaw to slab out the piece of fir I dried from its fall from hurricane Arthur. I was only able to make three slabs before evening threatened, but it is perhaps ready to store against a day that I make a bandsaw mill.

I carried the other two beams into the workshop, although I cut off the end of one the ants were beginning to colonize. It is hard to stay ahead of them.

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Gardening and Moving Wood

Posted on June 14, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

I guess today was productive, after a fashion. I dug the new hole for the fridge, or perhaps more properly, root cellar, and then half filled the spot where it had been with wood.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA I’d built that as an extension on the woodshed last year and only now, with the spring ice long gone, am I using it for its purpose. The food should stay a little cooler now on hot days, and I will have much more wood if I come in early spring like this year, or over Christmas, like I did in the winter.

I am clearing out the old woodshed as part of the procedure, so I can get a good pallet foundation under it.

The garden is growing OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAwell, although the greenhouse plants are faster. Something about that thirty degrees every day. Even my potatoes are up and doing well. I only hope no slugs smell them and move in for the kill.

I woke this morning to a dream that I then tried to work into a story. I’m not sure how well it will work, especially since it is only half done and I ran out of steam. Hopefully I can take it up again. It is meant to fit into my Code World collection.

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Cutting Down Trees

Posted on June 13, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

Today was a chainsaw day. I slept better, and then after breakfast I went for the log I’d left in the path. I brought it into the yard, cut off four feet or so I don’t need for log purposes, and then began to cut trees out front. I only cut down a few although I cut them up as well as what was left in the sawhorse. I have a fair pile under the side of the porch now. I also have a much bigger pile of brush and more of a view.

I went around with the clippers this evening and cut bushes along the edge of my yard as well as along the trail to the road. It was all buggy work but I wore a bug jacket with no shirt on underneath to keep cool. I also peeled the log I’d cut from the tree that fell across the trail in the winter. Surprisingly, it is still easy to peel. I should work on the other ones too. Although I have no idea what I would use the logs for. I might square off the one I hauled in today, using the chainsaw. I also had a vague inkling of a machine, a kind of rough bandsaw I could make out of stuff I have here that would mill such a log. My new hot water system with the pipe from Maryam is working well, and I’ve not even been using the solar shower which saves filling it in the morning. I have decent pressure and lots of heat as long as I take my shower just before dinner.

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Bugs in the Grass and Knots in the Trees

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

Today was sunny and a bit windy so I managed to get some work done. I slept poorly largely because of mosquitoes, but I improved on the day by using the whipper snipper to trim back the ferns and raspberries where I want grasses. Since the electrical system was on anyway, I pulled out the chainsaw and cut down a few trees that were shading my garden. I also cut up about half the wood I had piled on my sawhorse. The bugs were bad enough that I wore the bug jacket, and I noticed, for the first time, the deerflies have arrived. Usually that means the blackflies are not as bad, although there is a time of overlap. I saw three snakes yesterday, with one of them quite young, about six inches long and a quarter of an inch wide. Today there were none about, for I kept my eyes open when I was cutting the grass. Too warm I suppose.

In mid afternoon I tried to bring the log that had come down in the hurricane last year and I’d limbed and dried. It is still heavy, and since the knots are poking out, it is heavy to drag. I don’t even have a plan for it, but rather didn’t want it to go to waste. I brought it part way and then left it on the path until a cooler day and I have an axe on me.

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A Sinking Ship and a Lazy Day

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

I was away from the cabin for a few days, while I helped some friends lay tile in their basement. It is not as good a job as I would have wished, but it is nearly done at least. I came back last night and went right to sleep after unpacking and checking the garden with a flashlight. All is well, and it was nice to spend so much time with the family.

Today, I fixed my wheelbarrow, and then hauled a heavy rock up to the fire pit. I want to get the fire pit done before I leave for the fall, although I’m not sure how I will seal the joins. Other than that simple task, I did very little, perhaps because I woke up so late. I listened to a radio show about the Lusitania sinking in 1915 and did some garden and greenhouse work.

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A Wet Hole in the Ground

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

I was up late reading so it was ten before I even woke up. When I did, I did a tour of the grounds and took the temper of the bugs and then worked inside on cedar cladding in the new part and in covering a wall I made in the early days of construction in the main cabin when I had quite crappy wood. I finished the wall in the main part of the cabin and installed a new receptacle as well. I’ll have to bring some more cedar from the pallet shed, for now I only have one piece left. The half log planter dries out quickly. I’ll have to add some more dirt to it. I found that out this evening when I checked on the garden and pond.

The pond is still not holding water but much of that is likely about supply as well as the porous bottom. I am hoping that as leaves coat it in the fall, and the rains come over the fall and winter, that it will seal on its own. Otherwise it is a sometimes wet hole in the ground.

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The Bugs are Coming

Posted on June 6, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

It rained through the night and when I woke it was still raining. I stayed in bed and let it do what it must. Even after I was up and about, I worked inside until the sun was out for a while. I worked on the cedar cladding again and probably only have another few days work to go until the new part is done. I’ll need more insulation though.

Then I went to the road and fetched my alphasmart cable so I could get some use out of the computer and then worked on peeling, limbing, and cutting off the roots of the tree that fell in the winter and I am thinking of turning into a bridge. I also winched it off the white ash it crushed as it fell but they look a little too bent to spring back. They will live, but be bent as they grow.

The bugs were quite vicious as I left the creek, which makes me wonder anew about the bridge. There is no rush during bug season. No one is going to visit me this time of year. Instead, anyone who is going to come arrives in a big flurry at the end of the year, usually arriving all together.

I got my computer working well this evening and then did some editing on the station story. It is around eight thousand words long and I think once I fix it up and do some research to bolster some of the guessing, it should be a decent story.

Slugs were moving in the cool of evening when I went to check on the garden, so I dunked three of them. I need to isolate that garden soon, for they killed a zucchini today, and now there are one zucchini and two potatoes plants in that plot. They’d love to get their foot on a potato plant.

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Multiple Tasks

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

I was tired from being up late for two nights and then up early, so I went to sleep before eleven. This meant I woke by six and after trying to get more sleep, I got up and took advantage of the coolness of the morning, perhaps eight degrees, by going to the car and processing the pallets I left in the back.

I also limbed and somewhat peeled the tree that came down in the winter and I am thinking of using it for a bridge. It fell on a few white ash and that was my inspiration for working on it, but it was a bigger tree than I thought so I am now thinking of other uses.

Once I came back to the cabin for breakfast, I was tired. I ate, worked on some more cedar cladding and then took a nap. Once I was up again, I planted some more seeds, zucchini, beans, more peas, cucumber, and carrots. We’ll see how they do over the next while.

I also worked on the new outdoor stove, which I mean to make from the pieces of cookstove Darius and I found in the woods. I want to make a raised platform with a stovepipe and cooking platters. It will mean a bunch of rock work, so I began to work on that by loading my wheelbarrow with the rock from the pond. Then I pulled it up the hill but when I put a second one in the wheelbarrow I broke the axel. It is easy to overload. Maybe a stone boat is better for such heavy loads. A trolley would be nice too.

I worked on more cladding this evening before dinner. I am getting near finishing and now I am planning for some insulation in the floor and then covering it with the pallet materials I have been collecting.

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The Yard

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Barry Pomeroy

I spent most of today working inside, although I read a bit in the morning as well. It was chilly out, although that didn’t slow down the bugs much. I hauled a bucket of muck for the garden as a slug barrier and then fired up the whippersnapper and took out the ferns and raspberry bushes in the yard.

My yard is quite large now, so that is more of a task than one might think. The whipper went through the last of its line when I was working so I searched the workshop and finally found the electrical cable from the inside of the electric blanket Lisa had given me years ago. I use the blanket all the time, for after I cut a hole and fished out all the cable it is perfectly serviceable. I kept the cable and used it to lash together wood for the workshop and as a temporary structure for building supplies. Then I carefully rolled up the cable and now it is coming of use again, although it will likely have no more use after this.

Inside I finished the shelf I’d started a few days ago and then IMG_8082_smallmade a large window box out of slabs rescued from the log I’d cut back in the woods. Now I have that hanging from two trees in front with a bean sprouting in it and some basil. I am determined to get some vegetables growing this year, and I certainly have been devoting some attention to it.

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