3 tons of precast 5′ piers
Remote controlled crane
Hats off to Shane for trying to get closer to the site
House – Establishing the Site and Leveling for Piers
Level, like an Egyptian. This method is both cheap and very accurate. Note the use of windshield wiper fluid for color & anti-freeze.
Zeno’s paradox?
Unfortunately I couldn’t come up with a way of doing right angles I trusted, so I ended up getting a laser level; which is a pretty awesome toy and confirmed how accurate liquid leveling was on top of giving me a perfect 90°.
A perfect right angle if ever I’ve seen one.
End of the day, with every mason strings finely adjusted to a perfect & level square. It doesn’t look like much but it took 7 hours to get there.
Unlike the pricy electric laser level, the liquid one can sleep outside.
Here we go
Only a year after buying our chunk of land we are building a house. The dream we came to pursue in Vermont is finally happening, 4 years in (we had planned on 2). Vermont felt right going in, there simply could not have been a better place, better people, better circumstances to surrounds ourselves with to make it happen. These 4 years were more than necessary to make the adjustments needed for such a lifestyle change. We are extremely appreciative and in debt to everyone who helped a couple of flatlanders get acquainted with all the awesome skills we wanted to develop. To this list of skills that is so nicely summarized in the “categories” of this blog, we are adding “building”.
We spent all Winter learning how to build a house & designing it. It completely blows my mind that we live in a time where all this information is available online. I spent countless hours reading and watching videos on building techniques. Not only is information ubiquitous, so is stuff. Every specialized tool or object referenced in these videos is available to purchase online, with reviews, and unboxing videos…
Preparations in no particular order
- septic permit, the only paperwork/requirement
- Sketchup design
- extensive reviews by multiple trusted builders
- research & acquire needed tools
- skill saw
- clamps
- rip & plywood blades
- generator
- run generator and charge devices with it to avoid surprises
- create guides for sawing
- 2×6 with 22.5 angle
- plywood 4′ & 8′
- find cheap recovered windows & fix them up
- visit local lumber yards to get material pricing & delivery fees
- buy portable shower & potty
- emptying our current house of superfluous things we’ve accumulated to get ready for downsizing
- budgeting
- scheduling
5:30 alarm clock
Make sure to turn the volume up, gobble gobble.
Wood pile on the land
Nothing crazy I’ve been lazy. I’m still hoping to have most of the wood done before we being construction. Some of these logs are bears to handle.
Frozen marsh = easy access to dead trees
I’ll gladly help nature reclaim them.
Leveled & given its cap
It’s been attracting coyotes despite my cleaning it pretty well.
240lbs of Apples
I’ve learned about another great imperial measure: the bushel!
You know you’re having fun when you use a pan as a spoon
The house smells so good
Canning
Nothing is wasted, the chickens looooove the by-product which is still full of yum-yums.
Soap boxes & soap
Soapmaking is Nicole’s project but she doesn’t post anything about it. As this settles into an acquired skill, it’s time to build some proper boxes.
A few two-bys
Watch your fingers, arms; pretty much any protuberance
Assembly required
Reminiscent of Breaking Bad
Curing
8 weeks curing time, I’ll post the soaps when they are done. We’ve been using them for a while now and they are my absolute favorite. They are made with our wax & honey, tallow from friends’ animals and sometimes goat milk. They last forever unlike the shit you buy in stores. Nicole is experimenting with a recipe that does not include coconut oil or olive oil, this way we’ll be able to source all ingredients locally.
Fun fact: soap is thought to have originated on sacrificial altars when rain mixed with ashes and fat made a suspicious substance someone decided to take a shower with. Sacrifices & dumb luck created one of the biggest advancement in chemistry. Maybe we could sacrifice our way to Mars?
Hunting
And the unusual places & times it takes you to.
This is the main field of our land at dusk, a great reward after hiking through rough terrain. I still find many new and interesting places in the forest.
Honey
All in all this has been a pretty weird bee season. Between the swarms, the bear attacks, the drone baby-boom and the lack of reserves; I lamented that no sweetness would be gained from the hard work.
To my good surprise however, the bees finally adjusted to all this and got in a decent amount of honey. It probably helps that they already kicked out all these freeloader males.
Lot of activity but they remained super friendly throughout my extraction of a few frames
I only pulled 6 frames, I want to leave enough food behind for the cold days ahead
The cells are packed!
The frames gotten from the Top Bar Hive are all used, the wax is saved for soap & lip balm making.
Sticky business
While the frams of the Langstroth Hive are spun in an extractor in an effort to save the wax (saving bees the costly work of making more wax if you’re only interested in the honey).
As I said, not a great year but happy to have gotten some loot
Looks great, tastes great
Crazy Swarmy Week-End
I missed swarms so far because the hives are far from the house and so I only see them every few days. This week end was a trial by fire when it comes to swarming.
Finally, the neighbors spotted a swarm. It landed on a hemlock branch 40′ high. I tried everything to get to the branch including a 32′ extension ladder to no avail. So we put swarm catching box nearby and I kept a very close eye on them hoping to catch them on their take off to their new chosen home. Except one hour they’re on the branch doing nothing unusual and the next, gone! All gone, except for a couple of trailing bees seeming as lost as I was; the whole thing just vanished.
Up
Well that was a waste of time and efforts. Especially considering they took almost a 24h to figure out where to go. The next morning, the neighbors tell me that the buzzing is back… That can’t be, whether the swarm is confused or I have a new one on my hands.
Can you see them?
They are on a hop hornbeam this time, same height but an easy fell. And we proceed to do just that. We tie it to another tree to ease the sucker down with friction and it all works beautifully for the first 45 degrees but it all came crashing down for the remaining 45. The bees were not happy about that. They flew back to where the tree initially stood, I was afraid they would find another high branch nearby; but they eventually flew back to their branch of origin which was now very accessible to me.
Settling down after the ride (make sure to turn the volume up)
Definitely a foreign feeling to have your hand in there
I inspected the other 2 hives to see what they were up to and heard a piping queen in both! Meaning these were indeed 2 different swarms.
Piping queen, tried to find her but time ran short as the other bees were starting to dislike my intrusion
Lesson learned: tall trees are a bad idea around hives. I’m going to have to find a better spot for them.
All of this wouldn’t have been possible without awesome people like Nina who lent me a swarm catching box and good advice, and Peter who is always ready for an adventure. I wouldn’t have been able to catch my first swarm without their help.
The hives are getting full
The Langstroth is doing good but the top bar is raging.
Bees gorging in honey dripping from broken comb.
Acres
In what is probably the biggest step taken towards our dream, we just bought a chunk of land of ~50 acres.
We have little money left to do anything with it at the moment but we’ll throw a house on it in due time. We are cleaning it up in the mean time.
It is an invigorating feeling to stare at your life goal.
biodegradation – the chicken difference
Without chickens
With chickens
