Cleaning up the ditch

The ditch in front of our land has gotten over grown, and there was a lot of dead wood in the grass. I wanted to get it cleaned up so that we could push the field back toward the road another 20 feet or so and also improve the looks. We started the process by sending a grass fire through the ditch to clean up the tall grass, allowing me to see what was lying on the ground.

I ended up with two big brush piles and about a half cord of firewood.

This picture is after the fire, but before the clean up.

Thing #1 (Madelyn)

Thing #2 (Caleb)

Brush pile fires are a family favorite.

First shot at S.B.C. (Surface bonding cement)

Once we had dry stacked all the 12" blocks that made up the front frost footings I needed to surface bond them together. The surface bonding process is not a new technique and studies have shown that it is stronger than a mortared wall. I was mostly attracted to the fact that I did not need to be a brick layer to dry stack cement blocks, and with the use of SBC I could make a wall that was stronger than mortar with no prior experience.

The process is started by mixing a product called surface bonding cement and water. I used Quickbond (a Quickcrete product) and it worked well. Be sure you do not get it on your hands. I got big time chemical burns from it in a real short time. After mixing the batch to my desired consistency I would fill a pail and trawl the SBC to the wall. It was fast and was not to difficult. Since the coating is only about an 1/8 - 1/4" thick you need to presoak the wall, and also keep the SBC wet down for as long as practical to let it dry slower. The SBC needs to be applied to both sides of the wall to be effective. I should also mention that it is water proof once it is set.

This is how you get running water with no electricity to the build site.

The SBC is applied to full thickness in one coat.

Hear you can see that I presoaked the wall ahead of applying the SBC.

See how the SBC is drying. I tryed to keep it damp for 4 hours or so after application.

Fun in the Mud

This spring our friend Ben tilled up a portion of his back yard to make a new garden. Add to that some good heavy rain and you have.....MUD! Throw in some kids that are not afraid to get dirty and you have some real fun times.

This is what pure joy looks like.

Ethan?

Rinsing off in the puddle.

From the mouth of a three year old.

In the past week Cole has had some funny things to say, and I think you will enjoy them.

Background: Cole is learning to use the toilet.

Cole was headed to the laundry room to use the toilet when Nathaniel asked him, "Cole, did you go poop on the toilet today?" Cole replied, "No, I went in the toilet."

I am so glad that he got that one right.

One night he came running into the kitchen and yelled, "I'm a turd!"

Tonight at the dinner table we were eating and Cole asked "Can I have some rotten carrots?" Caleb answered back "Cole, you mean raw carrots." Cole just smiled.

You just can't make this stuff up. It's little moments like these that really lighten up the day and make you laugh.

Our family garden (2012).

We were originally planning to focus on working on the house this last summer and we were going to forgo a garden to save some time. However, the gardening bug bit me and I had to plant something. So, I decided a 25'x25' was small enough to fit in to the schedual. I also planted some planters up by the house.

I planted cucumbers, sweet corn, radishes, carrots, green onions, onions, tomatos, cherry tomatos, spinch, leaf lettuce, peppers, peas, beans, musk mellon, pumpkins, asparagus and rhubarb.

I used a pallet for a gate and some extra cement from the cloths line poles under it to keep animals from digging under the gate. It most have worked. I had no animal issues.

This is what I love about radishes. They are the first thing to come up.

This planter is by the front door. I planted onions, rhubarb and carrots.

This planter is on the other side of the front door. Here we planted peas and onions.

Pizza on the grill?

We bought a new Weber grill this summer due to some recommendations from friends and have had a lot of fun trying new things. Since we do not have an oven here yet, we decided to try cooking some pizza on the grill. The ones we cooked in these photos are homemade (not frozen) and they turned out great. Frozen pizza we tried at a later date did not go so well. They curled up like a taco.

Noticed we used an indirect method of cooking (coals are piled to the sides) the pizza to prevent burning.

The crust got done perfect. We did not use the baking stone that is shown here.

The cheese didn't brown like i like it, but it was still really good.

Sneak peek exterior shot

After going about a year without blogging I figured that I needed to get you all up to speed with our progress so here are some shots of the extirior as it is now. These photos are from last fall (2011) some are from March 2012. Don't worry I will fill in the blanks of the construction process as I get time.

The house will be burmed higher in the future. However I do not have the interior walls built that are designed to support the back wall. So this is as high as we are going to go for now.

We have an abundance of two things here clay and rock. I will be using both as much as I can in the future.

All the retaining walls will be built from rocks and I also want to berm the house with them as you can see in this photo.

Still to date this is one of my favorite shots.