Construction (and De-construction) Begins

Finally.  We didn't have to spent our whirlwind weekend picking up dirty diapers, used motor oil, rotting wood, rusty metal, beer bottles and cans and PLASTIC (so much!)...  So we got busy building and demolishing.  Some of this had begun a week earlier with Tim and a new local friend Ben.

Fortunately for us, our friends stepped up and we had 15 friends come and help us over the course of our 2-day work party.  The beauty of working with people we really know and trust is that we could explain jobs to them and then walk away.   Regina and I were able to focus on some really dirty projects and logistics, and before we knew it... BAM.  Serious progress.  Unfortunately we don't have a working camera, but we will soon take some pictures so we can show some before and after shots.

It is SO exciting to us to see this quiet, and pretty much wrecked farm space come alive and start to transform into the visions, plans, and drawings that Regina and I have been working on remotely for so many months as we have prepared to begin this project.  After one more weekend of Tim finishing up some projects ahead we will have a farm that is at least ready for our 6 goats, 2 pigs, 10 laying hens, and dozens of baby chicks and turkeys.  We will be camping on the land for the first few weeks while we finish preparing the place to be suitable for us.

We hope you will come and visit soon!

Slaying the trash pile

When we first saw the farm (and everyone we took to see it in the early times) we couldn't really find words to describe the mess it was left in.  A good friend came to help me but then just walked around, mouth open, too stunned to do anything.  Fortunately we have big imaginations and Tim has a lot of stubborn energy and a few amazing friends and family really stepped up in a big way to help us slay the beastly pile.  Thank you Rachel, Justin, Matt, Alex, Nick, Ryan, Cobb, Susan, Ben and others!



So, 200 hours of labor later, how much trash was there?

Not everyone is enough of a spatial thinker to easily conceptualize what 1 cubic yard of trash looks like.  So to help you visualize this, it is about one small pick-up load.  Hopefully that will help you to understand the amount of work required to remove:

• 60 cu. yards of landfill trash
• 3 cu. yards of beer bottles and cans
• 50+ cu. yards of scrap metal
• 50+ cu. yards of scrap wood
• 8 cu. yards of recyclable black irrigation tubing

You can also probably imagine our excitement that we have finally managed to remove all of this material from this piece of earth so that we can best grow healthy clean food, and maintain an organized farm!  We can't wait to bring people to see the beautiful farm-scape to be.

We also want to take from this experience strong lessons about how we choose to use materials and resources in the future.  It's not that we don't value saving useful things (we definitely salvaged some useful materials from the chaos)... we just want to close loop on farm inputs wherever possible.  Stay tuned to see how we do at accomplishing that (HUGE) goal.