NEW GOATS! Oh Yeah, Real Estate stuff also

We got four new goats today. Yes pretty bizarre but true. The people who we got our first three goats from last year were looking for homes for the rest of their goats. I went over and picked them up this evening. What a surprise they are very cute. We have to work on names ad the ones they came with don't really appeal. They are all girls. One is a half sister to Stormy and one is a twin sister to Gurgle. They actually look smaller than our original ones. We figure they must be like goldfish, if they are kept in a small area they don't grow but if put in a larger environment they start getting bigger. We currently have them seperate from the others to make sure they don't have anything obviously contagious. We figure we'll worm them, clip hoofs, etc. once they get settled. Hopefully they get along with the current crowd. They all seem reasonably friendly, though a bit cautious. They were surprisingly good on the ride home. I had visions of having to scrape one or two off the road. Would have made for a difficult evening. The local paper probably would have had to report on it. Caroline figures this is probably enough goats now. We'll have to see.

On the business front Caroline got her trailer in Irasburg today and Hopefully is working on another contract. I had a building inspection for the property I have under contract at this point.

Here's a new flash, it rained today. We are running out of month but there is a possibility we could break the all time record for rainfall in June. That would be two months in a row with records. It is getting very depressing as far as getting outside chores done.

Down the river (with a paddle)

Saturday we spent some time at the "Lacing Up for Cancer" walk in Morrisville where they raise money for cancer patients. We didn't get to walk for very long since I needed to meet an agent to figure out some property lines. We also spent time putting the Foodshare building together a bit more.

Yesterday was beautiful. Actually seemed like summer, warm but not stifling. We decided it was time to do some recreating so we floated down the Lamoille river. We can put in just about 5 minutes from the house. We drop the kayaks at the start point, drive to Morrisville (another 10 minutes) and drop off the truck then back to the beginning and onto the water. The trip takes about 1.5 hours so it's good relaxation but not an all day endeavor.

I then went over and dug a bit more at Waterville while Caroline stayed home to write a contract on a property up in Eden.

We are talking about moving the location for the Waterville cabin. We've realized that it has become a large cabin and as such might be better off at another site, away from the property line and closer to the current pond. I staked out a proposed area yesterday. We really like the latest plans the architect came up with and suspect they will have to change if we move the building but better now then later.

I didn't get as much done as I had hoped since the neighbor came over to see what I was up to and he likes to talk. It's good to catch up on things and he is certainly an interesting individual. It's nice that he wants to have a good relationship. It's his son, and family, who have put the trailer on the property in front of ours and they don't seem that interested in talking with us.

Good Real Estate, And Goat, Day

Caroline showed property to a friend of ours yesterday and it looks like he might be going to make an offer on one of the houses. It also appears that we have come to an agreement on a property I showed to a couple from MA on Monday. Pretty exciting for old Red Door Real Estate. The other offer I had out is not going to work but that is not a big surprise.

The goats had a "what's it to you" look from a perch on their rocks. It was a good goat day with temps in the 70's and some sun. I think the rock feels good to them as the sun warms it up.

It's still really wet over in Waterville. So once again I couldn't work at leveling the shed site. So yesterday I spent some time cleaning up after the tree which came down in the last storm. Amazing how many branches, etc there are on a tree. You can understand why loggers just leave it where it falls since it would take all day to do a couple of trees if they didn't. Wouldn't make for a very good hourly wage. Our burn pile is really getting out of hand. Hopefully next weekend we can burn it.

I came home to find that we didn't have any water. Tried a number of things but finally had to call the local well people (Manosh, by Gosh) and have them come out. Turns out one of the wires down in the well had shorted out. So $128 later we had water again. Nice to be able to take a shower.

Gwen also felt that the sunshine was a big plus. After a long night out chasing critters you need a good place to lie around and soak in the rays. I have to feel she hit the jackpot when she found us. She still doesn't really get along with the other cats but they are at least standing up to her most of the time. It really aggravates her when they don't run away. Not nearly as much fun.

First Wood off the Mill

This morning we spent putting backs on the shelves down at foodshare. It's starting to come together. We then went over to the architect's to see the latest plans for the cabin. It seems to be getting close to what we envision. Still needs a couple of changes but this go-round is much better than last.

I then headed over to Waterville for a couple of hours. Got the first boards off of the mill. Wasted a bunch trying to get things right but was going much smoother by the end of the day. Where we have the sawmill set up gets a lot of sun. We'll have to try to mill either in the morning or late afternoon.

The blue you see on the end of the boards is called "end sealer". It slows down the drying of the ends, which dry quicker than the rest of the board due to the fibers being open. Think of wood as a straw with two open ends, the moisture can run out the ends quicker than the sides. When the ends dry quicker you are more likely to get splits, called checking, and warping of the wood.

It's going to take a lot more wood for the shed but at least we have a start. This is from a tree we weren't figuring on taking down so that's a plus. I would say we probably have twice this much more wood in the part of the tree which is still standing. Of course that is a pretty big trunk so it should be interesting getting it onto the mill. The log I did today was a handful moving around. Don't know how I would have done it without the tractor. Hopefully once we get our ramps set up in the shed it will be easier to roll the logs around. It's still going to take brute strength, and our cant hooks, to get them turned once they are on the mill. The biceps are already complaining, as is every other muscle in my body. I figure what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. It certainly should help my upper body strength.

Tree In The Road

After a bit of real estate work (a couple of offers in the works) we got back over to Waterville today. We were hoping to get more of the Sawmill Shed site leveled but it was too wet after the deluge of last night. I think we are going to be declared a rain forest area soon. Anyway we had another tree come down across the road up to the field so we had more than enough to do. It was a good sized one which snapped off about 25 feet above the ground by my estimate. So we had no choice but to start cutting. Caroline moved the branches out of the way while I did the chainsaw thing. Actually took a surprisingly short time to get the branches off and cut it into 12 foot segments. We are going to need a dozen 12 foot 6 x 6's for the shed so we figured we might as well start cutting them. Also 12 feet is the longest the sawmill can handle without adding it's extension. So it seemed like a good length.

Unfortunately we realized that we didn't have all the tools we needed to set up the sawmill, and since I needed to talk to a client, I went back home and did some quick real estate work before heading back with all the tools I thought we would need. Caroline stayed and stained the 3rd side of the shed. Next step on that will be to get a longer ladder than we currently own and start on the top. It also appears to be safe to do the front since the baby birds have not been in evidence. They are probably off having their own babies by now.

We wheeled out the sawmill and set it up at the other side of the driveway. Leveling took a bit of time but we found that all in all it was better to set it up in the Summer than in February when it's really cold. We had a couple of little problems with setup but we were ready to go relatively quickly. We managed to get the first log on and started squaring it up. After awhile we realized that working in the sun was really beating us down so we gave up when we discovered that the cant we were forming is a bit out of square. We'll pick up where we left off tomorrow with any luck.

Cute Animal Pictures

How about a couple of cute animal pictures?

It's tough to go wrong with goats on the rocks. This was taken shortly after we got the goats last summer. Before they got bad and started eating things they shouldn't. We use to let them out so they could roam around the property. They would often hang out on the front porch, which can throw off clients who are not animal people. Surprisingly they didn't leave the yard. They seemed to think the woods were dangerous. Also I think they didn't want to get too far away from their dinner time grain. The lilaics were first to go which we could deal with. Then they started working on the apple tree trunks which was not acceptable so they've been locked up ever since.

Then there is the classic winter time picture of goats with coats. They did NOT like their coats but they sure were cute in them. We went down to the local "Second chance" clothing store and bought some used vests for $2-$3 a piece. Some minor adjustments by Caroline made them wearable and the rest is history. One thing I did forget is Stormy (the male), needed an extra hole so he could pee. Oops. We got the straightened out and they seemed to adjust to them without too much difficulty. They use to shake when it was really cold so we figured the coats could only help. No comments from the goats on the color choices.


The last picture, for now, is of Gwendolyn's kittens from last fall. They were very cute and Gwen was the best mom. Fortunately we found homes for all of them. Haven't gotten any reports back on them. Hopefully they are doing well.

Hot but Level

Today was the first really hot day of the year, temps up in the 90's. I cut part of the upper field here in Hyde Park while I waited for Caroline to get back from her class reunion. She got back just before lunch and reported that she had a good time visiting with friends and classmates. We then worked on the screens up in the screen house which had torn out during a storm a couple of weeks ago. The mosquitos are coming out in full force at this point so screens seem like a good idea.

We also practiced with the builder's level here and then went over to Waterville to check elevations on the sawmill shed site. Looks like I'll be moving a bunch more dirt. It is a big help to have some sort of quantification of what needs doing. Up in the field we ran into a bunch of turkeys. They are such silly critters. Okay, I'm cheating and using an old turkey picture but seriously can anyone tell one turkey from another?

Caroline was a good wife and told me what a wonderful job I was doing with everything as she was jumping around swatting at bugs . I think she got bit 15 times and I don't have any evidence of any bites. Always remember to stay close enough to Caroline for the bugs to latch on to her but not so close that they locate you.

The cats haven't moved much all day. They think its F------ hot. Surprisingly the goats were out most of the day. Yesterday there was another deer/goat encounter. They stared at each other for awhile with the deer stamping it's foot repeatedly then the deer wandered off. The goats pretty much just chewed their cuds throughout the encounter.

Starting to Clear for the Cabin

Since I was being nice to the neighbors, and didn't want them to have to listen to me all day today, I went up the hill from the sawmill shed to start working on the cabin site. It needs some clearing out both to see the site better and to be able to work on laying things out when we get a plan. There are a lot of dead trees lying around and we need to be able to get a path open for one large pine that the top broke off of. We are hoping to get the pine down as soon as we get the mill set up. The proposed site is set back above a rock in the corner of the field. It has a sheltered feel being up above the field and in the trees. It allows you to see most of the field as well as Laraway mountain. There are a number of large trees around the house site which should give it a nice feel. You are basically looking east towards Laraway. The property line is about 50 feet from the site but there is a lot of woods between the cabin and the neighbor's field so we don't expect it to be a problem.

The first thing that needs doing is a path up to the site. We need to be able to get equipment up there and trees etc. down. There are a number of decent sized hemlock on the site which will probably go into the sawmill shed construction. I tried to dig out stumps as I went so I wasn't running over them constantly. Fortunately there weren't any big trees that needed to be taken down. The picture to the left shows the start of the path from the field up the hill to the site. It won't be bad getting the tractor up there but I wouldn't want to be taking a car up in the winter time. After establishing some sort of path I worked on clearing up the down trees. There is still a couple of days work to get them out. After they are on the burn pile we'll start taking out the trees that we can make use of. The hemlocks as previously mentioned and there are also some small maples which we'll cut up to get started on next year's wood supply. I actually started a new burn pile in the corner of the field since it is too wet to be constantly crossing the field to the other one.
This picture is taken from the cabin site. That's Laraway you are looking at. I spent some time trimming branches to enhance the view. We'd like to keep as many of the trees as possible but want to be able to see out.

Slow Progress in Waterville

The excavation for the sawmill shed is proceeding though slower than I would hope. I've run in to a layer of primarily clay and with it still being wet it is very slippery and "sucky" makes me worry about getting stuck. We also realized a couple of days ago that since we change the orientation of the shed it no longer had to be at grade with the driveway. This has helped since we don't have to cart as much soil away. I've been dividing my time between moving dirt, pulling stumps, carting away trash wood to the burn pile, and starting work on the cabin location (see cabin post from today).

Some of the stumps are a pretty good size and take an hour, or more to get out. Unfortunately there are a couple left which are larger than any I've attempted thus far. I've been spending time up at the cabin site since it is the weekend and the neighbors are home. I don't want to bother them too much. Of course if they hadn't put their doublewide right on the property line it wouldn't be that much of a problem for them. I must admit that if I was building on their property I probably would have put the house in the same place. Of course I wouldn't have hauled in a doublewide. Also, if I'm worrying about noise at this point I can't wait until the sawmill is running. Don't know which sounds worse the mill or the tractor.

Don't know if you can make it out in the picture to the left but I would say we are about 1/2 the way back in the excavation. there are still a couple of trees which need to come down. One of them quite tall. Hopefully we can have it fall where we want it. We've been waiting to take it down since it should be a good tree to mill and we don't want it lying around while we finish up the excavating and set up the mill.

I got a "builder's level" yesterday from Amazon which is basically a cheaper version of a transit. Hopefully we can get it set up and see how we are actually doing as far as grade. The site has just gotten too big to have a good clue by just looking at it.

Flowers In Bloom

With all the rain the flowers are looking great. Caroline got the window boxes planted this week. It looks like they should do well this year.

The pine window boxes we bought before we moved up. They have done remarkably well over the years. We also planted some begonias over in Waterville (in a flower pot) to brighten up the shed area over there. The other "garden" thing which Caroline did this week is to plant the rest of her vegetable garden. She had previously planted lettuce and zucini but she added the infamous tomato plants this week.

The irises are also in bloom. These things are taking over the world, or at least our lawn. We have both purple and white ones and are running out of places to put them. We've transplanted some to around the pond in Waterville where they also seem to be thriving.

Catching up with projects

We spent some time today catching up with what is happening with a couple of projects.

First we headed down to the "new" FoodShare building to see how the shelf painting is going. They are getting pretty far and the color looks like it is a good choice. I'm hoping to put some stained trim pieces to tie it all together. They have decided to go with some shelves from Home Depot to supplement the ones we built so we might be done with that project except for odds and ends. I might try using some of the maple we milled for the trim. I'll have to check to see how dry it is. It is starting to look a bit more likely that they will be able to move by the end of the month but there is a still a long way to go. It would be nice to get the walls painted but that might not happed since the people they are renting from don't seem interestd in doing it. There is also sheetrock which should be put on but that doesn't seem likely to happen either.

After checking that out we found a couple of properties which I'm going to show on Monday. I always figure it's best to know where you are going. Not good form to get lost trying to get to a property. Doesn't inspire confidence. After finding the properties we were close to where we had put up the frame for my Timber Frame class last month. So we stopped by to see how it looked and get more pictures. They have most of the roof on with the one side shingled. According to the nuns they are having their straw bale building class in 2 weeks where they will put up the walls. I'll have to get back up once it is finished. Looks great at this point. Hard to believe we managed to cut that whole frame in less than 5 days.

Caroline is off to her 30th Dartmouth class reunion tomorrow. Hopes to see some old friends and see what is happening around Hanover. I gather it has changed quite a bit, not a surprise given the timeframe. I'm hoping to get a bunch of work done over in Waterville.

Waterville Saga continues

We got over to Waterville for awhile yesterday. Caroline continued to work on staining the "original" shed while I dug some more for the Sawmill Shed. I also worked at clearing out some of the undergrowth in the proposed cabin location. It is so wet up in the field that we can't get the tractor up to the cabin location for the forseeable future.

The shed is looking much better with the staining the wood looks happier and hopefully will last longer. Caroline has now done the back and the bottom half of one of the sides. She was waiting until the three baby birds in the nest over the front window (which you can see in right of the picture) left. I inadvertantly took care of that when I went to take their picture. I obviously spooked them and they all flew off in baby bird fashion. Now mom and dad will have to flit from tree to tree to feed them. Hopefully they will be okay. It looks like a new ladder is in order for the upper part of the shed since our present ladders won't make it. When we built the shed we had the use of our friend Rick Rouleau's high ladder. We have enough uses for a longer ladder coming up in the future to make the investment worthwhile.

As I said I kept digging for the sawmill shed. Caroline took over in the afternoon while I did chain saw work up at the cabin. We had a discussion on placement and such and decided to rotate the shed 90 degrees from the original plan. A major reason for this was that as we dug into the area we noticed that the grade was more than we anticipated and as a result it appeared that we would need to come down 4-5 feet to reach our grade by the time we got to the back side. That is quite a bit so we decided to leave the back half of the shed a couple of feet higher so that we can drive the tractor in and drop logs above the lower floor and hopefully roll them directly onto the sawmill. We'll have to see how that all works out. In any case we should have a lot less digging to do. We are going to need a transit soon as it is rather difficult, with our inexperience, to judge how we are doing with grade.

The Weather is Improving

The weather is suppose to improve for this coming week. We are hoping to spend time over in Waterville working on getting the area for the sawmill shed level. I've gotten a price on hardware for the building so I can hopefully get that ordered also. We will be ordering from Socket Systems which makes hardware to connect 6x6's into a frame allowing for wide spans. I would like to think that by the end of the week we could have the posts in the ground for the foundation.

I also have some Real Estate broker work for the week and Caroline is hoping to hear on a closing date for the trailer and 10 acres she has had under contract for awhile. The trailer has been a slow process with many setbacks. Caroline is also talking to some prospects who are looking for a large piece of land. Hopefully they are serious and will work with us. Most things have been falling through for us after spending too much time with the clients. That's the way it goes sometimes.

Helping the Food Share Move

The Lamoille Community Food Share which Caroline has been working with since we first moved up here (4 years now) is in the process of moving to a new site. They have been in the basement of a church in the center of Morrisville for many years but are now moving across town to a rental space on the ground floor. This is a big to do. It will be a vast improvement for moving food and other supplies. They have had to carry them down into the basement. It also will be a big plus for their clients since many are elderly, or have health problems and they should be able to get into the new space much more easily.

The space can also be laid out the way they want it instead of being in several rooms with various types of shelves. Our contribution at this point has been designing and building some shelving to hold the food. We've been working on this for the last several weeks after Caroline could not get anyone else to come up with reasonable plans. In the picture to the left you can get some idea of the layout of the space with their new freezers on the left wall and you can see the door to the future bathroom beyond them. On the floor you can see the makings of a number of our shelves. Caroline is getting set to put together the next unit.

The next picture is of some of the units up against the wall. The hope is to have four units on each side and possibly more units for what they call "Commodities" which is bulk food

they get from the government. The top, more narrow shelves, are where their clients will pick food. The bottom shelves are going to be used for storage to restock the top. They are going to put curtains in front of the bottom shelves to hide the reserves. As you can see there is still quite a ways to go. They are hoping to move by the end of the month. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

More and More Rain

After a record setting May (the most rain ever recorded in the month) we are continuing the same into June. It is currently raining fairly hard and the forecast is for it to continue through the night. Everything is super green and it is darn near impossible to be working outside. Caroline typically cuts the grass (she likes her battery operated mower) and has not been able to keep up with it.

The goats are not happy. They hate it when anything falls out of the sky be it rain or snow. They have been keeping to their shed and going through a lot of hay.

Gwendolyn the cat who typically likes spending as much time as we will allow outside has been sleeping her days away. She thinks this is really boring. She, of course, has to torment the other two cats, Isabelle and Maude, who have never liked her anyway.

The only critter who has not been bothered by the weather is Roady the Guinea Pig. The weather is always the same in his cage.

I spent a bit of time at Waterville yesterday digging out a bit more for the Sawmill shed then the rain started again. At least I can't complain that the ground is rock hard.

The weather is suppose to clear up a bit by Monday. Hopefully we can get outside. It has really not been tempting to think about hiking or boating. The best that can be said is at least we are getting work done on the shelves for the Food Share. We cut the rest of the MDF and vertical supports this afternoon for the "Standard" shelves we designed. We still need to get the materials for the "commodity" shelves.

The Goats and their new "Summer" home

We've got three pygmy goats which we've had since last August. They are a hoot. Constantly entertaining. Their names are Gurgle, Georgia, and Stormy (aka Little Bit). Gurgle and Georgia are about five years old and Stormy is now about one.

They are constantly butting each other, talking, and running around kicking up their heals.

We built them a new "Summer" shed down at the bottom of the field, below the house. We built it entirely out of wood which we milled on our portable sawmill. The wood is mostly aspen (called popple locally), spruce, and pine. Caroline did most of the roofing while I got to use my new nail gun. They seem to like the field but the flies are bothering them a bit so they spend most of their time in the shed.

These guys are very much herd animals. If one is by itself it is not happy and lets the world know. One good thing is that people can be part of the herd as far as they are concerned. So they will follow you around and be reasonably happy spending time with you. Both Stormy and Gurgle are very social and like to be pet and combed. Georgia is more standoffish and won't let you touch her unless you get her in a corner, or if you are feeding her.

Starting the Sawmill Shed

Yesterday we started preparing the area for the sawmill shed in earnest. Though the sawmill is "portable" it isn't something that you move constantly and since we are planning on milling lumber for the cabin and other structures over in Waterville it would seem to make sense to build a semipermanent base of operation which would keep us and the mill out of the weather. The plan is a 28x30 building with the 28 ft. sides open with no posts. The mill can cut logs up to 18 feet in length and we need space to move on either end. The hope is to have the mill about 5 feet in on one end. Drop the logs off outside on to a ramp, mill them and take the boards off on the other side which could then be stacked and removed via tractor from the other end. We hoping to set it up so that we can extend the sides out in the future for more wood stacking, either lumber or firewood.

Hopefully the shed will also give us a place to split wood, cut timber frame joints, etc. out of the weather.

Caroline worked on staining the back side of the shed which you can see in the background of the pictures while I did some tractor and chain saw work.



The idea is to flatten out the area next to the driveway so we have easy access to the sawmill shed. Unfortunately one of my backhoe hoses developed a leak so I was digging mostly with my bucket. Not a very efficient method.

I'm hoping to document our lives in Northern Vermont. Caroline and I are part time real estate agents with interests in the outdoors and building. We are currently starting work on a property we have in Waterville hoping to build a cabin with lumber taken from the land.

In February we purchased a Timberking sawmill to help us in this project. We are working at clearing a spot for the cabin and a bit of an approach road.