When Anja and Duff moved to Boston, they took their ancient “college car” (which had preciously been Samantha’s “college car”) with them, but quickly realized that it would be nearly impossible, or at least not economically feasible, to get it inspected to meet Massachusetts standards. They also realized that with a brand new baby – and future trips to Pennsylvania and Mississippi – it was finally time to buy a new car. So they did – but parking regulations in their new home would not allow for more than one car. And Sammy kind of wanted her old car back. Which meant we had to get it before the temporary parking pass ran out in Boston.
So Tina took the night train, from Harrisburg to Philadelphia and then another train to Boston. (Which was not so bad – however, the train was surprisingly full and only aisle seats were available.)
We had a great weekend together in Boston and Tina got to babysit Leif for nearly 4 hours on Sunday. This was a rather easy task, as Leif seemed to think that everything Tina said was just funny.
We went for long walks each day, the weather was absolutely gorgeous and we even got to visit Duff’s new office at MIT. Leif was just the happiest baby the entire time.
In the evenings we watched Episode 3 of the first season of Sherlock Holmes and Episode 1 of the second season, which gave Tina enough time to knit a happy red winder hat for Leif:
On Monday, Anja tried for the first time to feed Leif some rice cereal and he did surprisingly well!
We have been planning what to do with our “shed” across the street since the day we moved to the Long Shot Farm. This building has a great cemented foundation, relatively decent windows and the entire building was at one time insulated. However, the roof had been home to a significant holiday display each winter, including Santa, a sleigh and reindeer – permanent metal railings had even been installed on the roof to anchor this contraption. Sadly, these decorations caused the roof to sag in the middle – which meant that fixing up the shed is a much more complex project that first hoped…so we had to put if off a while.
Jeff and Tina started on Friday afternoon
Luckily, earlier this year we were able to purchase a very nice standing seam metal roofing system from a contractor friend at a very reasonable price. But with the fruit and garden, we just had very little time to devote to the project. We worked on it off and on – emptying the shed, tearing out all the inside boards and removing the old insulation. We also reinforced to roof from below, by first using metal chains to “pull” the building together, and then installing additional joists.
Progress by Friday evening
For the last week or so, Jeff has been cutting the pieces of roofing panels to the correct size – we need 22 pieces of each side of the roof. This weekend we finally got to install some of it. Tina and Jeff started on Friday evening, tearing down the bottom row of the old asphalt shingles, and reinforcing the edge by attaching 2×4’s below the roof. We then installed the drip edge, which is part of the roofing system on both sides of the roof. The next step involved attaching sheets of house wrap on top of the old shingles, to protect the new metal roof from scratching – we did this with simple roofing nails. We actually attached only about 2 ft of the plastic sheeting, and kept the rest rolled up – since this sheeting is very slippery, and the asphalt shingles provided a lot of traction while working on the roof. Then we finally got to attached the first panel with the appropriate brackets, and then snapped the next panel onto it. We managed to get the first three panels up before it got too dark.
Jens and Zach were both around to lend a hand on Saturday, which speeded up the process a lot. Of course with the 3 boys around, there was also some goofing off….especially when it came to teasing Tina (who does not like to work on roofs)
We finished the first half of the roof by Saturday evening.
Finished first side by Saturday
Sunday was spent mostly playing with Toben and Fiona, and visiting with their parents, as well as with Grammy and Ruth from Bedford county.
This evening we transferred our newly fermented Chambourcin wine into carboys. We added wood chips to one of the “batches” – we’ll see how this turns out.
The juice has amazing color and smelled delicious. Can’t wait to find out what this will taste like once it is aged enough.
Even though the downstairs of the barn is basically done, the entire upstairs as well as much of the outside of the barn still needs to be fixed over the next couple of years. But we made some more progress with the outside of the barn this weekend:
On Saturday, we got the barn and tractor shed roofs painted – by a team of South Carolina barn painters that travels up and down the east coast. They had huge sprayers, special roof paint and they managed to get the entire roof done in less than an hour. It looks so much better!!!
On Sunday, we tore down the rickety old connection between the barn and the silo. This must have been built to keep the silage dry in bad weather (and the person getting it). It was a real eye-sore and we have not need for it. We won’t use the silo for feed – not quite sure yet what we will do with it at this point. It could be used for storage, we could even build ceilings and stairs. Actually saw some pretty neat silo to house conversions on the internet . Here is one example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmrF3er7zus
But maybe we will use our silo as a water tank to use gravity to irrigate the grapes an blueberries. We’ll have all winter to think about it. But the painting crew is planning to come back later in the fall and they will paint our silo as well.
