Garage Move-In

This past weekend, we acclimated ourselves to the new sounds and new smells of a new structure as we moved into the garage apartment. Bathroom and foyer tile have been laid and floated but still need to be sealed. Some spots on the wall are uneven and need to be repainted. The kitchen cabinets and microwave need to be lowered a few inches. The stairs need to be sanded and stained. While there's still much to be done, the loft-style garage apartment is now complete enough for the whole family (including the dogs) to actually live at the site. Sunday was spent relocating our egg-laying friends. We picked up 150 feet of chicken wire to create a large open run behind the garage.

Fortunately, our original coop design was portable enough to bring to the new property (with the help of our landlord's Ford pickup truck). At dusk, we boxed up the first batch of chickens and brought them to their new home. Despite the low four-foot-tall fence, we'll try to hold off on free-ranging until they are familiar with the new location and/or we get our new super-portable hotwire fencing solution set up (more on that later). The upshot of the move is that we can now bring our Rose Cottage lease to an end and start applying that monthly payment toward something else, like the new car.

License and Registration, Please

The commute from Columbus to Charlotte is brutal. Google Maps says 105 miles...each way. That's almost four hours of "me" time in the car five days a week, and about 54,600 miles per year. I know, ridiculous. Factor in fuel (even though prices have dropped to about $1.60 per gallon) and it's ludicrous. Can you tell how committed I am to farm and family? So, I woke up a bit later than usual this morning and was trying to make up some time on the Highway 74 near Mill Spring when I saw the flashing lights in the rearview mirror of my rental 2008 Mazda 6. I switched lanes, but when the State Trooper mimicked my maneuver I knew I'd been busted. The trooper said he clocked me doing 80 in a 65, and seemed rightfully surprised when he found out I was commuting to Charlotte. My punishment was a $151 speeding ticket, and I can't wait to see how this might affect my insurance, which has quadrupled already due to the longer daily commute. Yea!

"Geeeeetttt Ouuuuuutttttttt...."

After three days of no water at Rose Cottage, the landlord had the well pump replaced. Not only was the initial service man a bit slow getting out to respond, but it turns out he was not really a well specialist. The result? Water came back on, but was so terribly discolored that we didn't dare use it anyway. It began to clear up a little bit, but then the water stopped once again on the following Friday. Something wasn't installed correctly and the new pump burnt out. So, we suffered another few days without water and ended up bathing at our new garage apartment despite not actually having a certificate of occupancy. It was weird. We felt like squatters in our own house! We recommended Pittman Well Boring to our landlord; this was the company we used for our own well at the construction site and were pleased with their work. They came to our rescue pretty quickly and installed another new pump (same model we went with actually) but, because it was an old well, we ended up having more discolored water due to the rust and corroded metals (so they say).

Seeing such dirty water coming from the pipes is a disturbing image...as if this possessed old cottage was trying to get us to move out faster. Believe us, we're trying!

Let There Be Light

Electric is all hooked up at this point on the garage, but there are still some wiring issues that are causing breakers to flip when certain switches are turned on. This should be addressed prior to our move-in, which we are hoping is within a week at this point. We picked out barn-style lamps for the front of the garage with a single metal halide lamp at the top in case we ever need to be working out front after dark or the kids want to practice their 3-pointers with our non-existent basketball hoop. We've also got dusk 'til dawn motion-activated security flood lights at the back corners of the house, although the angles need some adjusting at this point.

Circle Drive

The days of contractors getting mired in the slick red mud are finally over. The circular driveway was graded and crush and run was laid down to create a more definitive driveway. The circle has a 70-foot-diameter, the exact distance required by delivery trucks to ease with co-op or feed drop-offs. We'd like to widen it just a bit more on the side nearest the garage, and eventually we'll get higher-grade gravel put down. We're thinking about what to put in the center of the circle...a small garden? Decorative vegetation? A large rock? Here's a couple of progress shots:





We also had them grade and lay down some gravel on the west side of the garage to create a parking pad. The garage is full of our stuff from the ongoing move so it will be a while before a car actually gets parked in there!

Remembering Sasha

Last night, Sasha the chihuahua passed away from congestive heart failure. Sasha was a surprise gift from us to Danna (Dionne's mom) in 1996. I remember the look of shock on Danna's face when we first told her we had a "Mother's Day surprise" for her---she thought we were going to say we were pregnant! And like a new child, Sasha always received royal treatment; she wore sweaters in the wintertime, ate her share of hamburgers, had her feet wiped after walking in wet grass and was granted the right to sleep on the bed inside her very own pillowcase. I used to carry Sasha around in my pocket when she was little (granted I wore some pretty baggy shorts in '96), but Sasha never let the big dogs boss her around, despite being the runt of her litter. She is pictured here in a photo from Thanksgiving 2007. Good dog.

The Importance of Water

Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface and yet it remains a precious resource, especially when you're not on the city water system. When I returned home to Rose Cottage last night, Dionne sent me right back out into the cold night to find out why we had no water pressure. We thought we heard a "running water" sound, which might have meant a broken pipe, but it turned out to be the water boiling in the water heater because it wasn't refilling. Armed with flashlights, FRS radios, and our winter coats, we determined that the well pump had quit working causing water pressure to drop at both our cottage and the neighboring rental house. After resetting the electrical breakers and finding no apparent leaky pipes, we went ahead and alerted our landlord who called his plumber (personally, I think it's a mechanical well pump issue vs. a "plumbing" problem). It's only a matter of time before the clothes in the washing machine sour, the unflushed toilet stench overwhelms us, the dirty dishes fill the sink and my coworkers take notice of an unusual amount of mousse in my unwashed hair. Fortunately, the kids were just bathed and we had enough bottled drinking water to make it through the night (we don't trust well water from the tap). On a side note, the first thing I did when I got to work this morning was wash my hands in the company bathroom and it felt wonderful.

Flurries

Dionne e-mailed me this afternoon to report some flurries of snow. Can you tell we're excited for winter? That is all.