A Thursday Farm Update

Well, this past couple of weeks has been a major break from the type of blogging that I have been doing since I started this blog nearly two years ago. But, on the other hand this is just what I had in mind when I started the blog. My idea was to be able to chronicle my journey from a guy living in town towards my goal of becoming a full time farmer. Well, I'm no where near being a full time farmer yet, but I do feel like we are making progress towards the dream and that the steps that we are taking now are huge jumps towards our desire as a family.

So, here is what has happened on Tuesday and Wednesday along with my plans for the weekend. As you can see in the picture at the very top they started putting in the boards that span between the posts on Tuesday. Those boards are what we are going to put our insulation between and what we will attach the sheetrock to. Then on Wednesday night when we went out (after the rain storm) we saw that they had finished all the framing of the walls, cut the posts down to size, and were ready for the rafters (which were in place on the ground). You can check out the slight difference on the second picture.

The house isn't the only thing that has progressed this week. While I have spent the evenings mowing the perimeter and along the woods in preparation for the fencing Becca and the kids have been putting in a small garden. Some transplanted tomatoes, peppers, and yams along with some beans and corn. We will see what comes up this year, but we haven't set our sights to high. One nice thing about the farm is that there is a natural garden out there also ... this week Becca has also picked some black raspberries and we will be overrun with black berries in the near future judging by what we see.

Thursday afternoon and Friday we will be gone to a wedding, but on Saturday we have a huge work day planned. We are going to rough in the plumbing (it goes under the concrete) and run water to the house. Also, while we are doing all that we are going to put in a hydrant near the garden. Hopefully by the end of the day we will have running water on the farm. If only the electricity would come quickly...

**As always you can click on the images for a bigger version**

Have You Ever Built a House?

One time in 9th Grade Shop Class I built a dog house sized house out of balsa wood and glue. Well, I guess I should say that my group and I built the house. I did get to take it home though ... where I'm pretty sure my friends and I smashed it! But, now we are inching ever closer to building our own house. I think if you would have asked Becca and me eight years ago if we would be building and house and starting a farm all at the same time we would have said you were crazy. We have always wanted to live in the country on a quiet road with some animals for fun, but back then something like this wasn't even on the radar.

We have been married for just over seven years now, and during that time we have lived church owned property for just of six of those years (we lived in an apartment for around 10 months). But, judging by the stack of wood and equipment that we saw at our farm on Wednesday night we are going to be living in our own place very soon.

This is pretty exciting stuff because we are carving our farm out of nothing. I often tell people that we are like the original homesteaders coming to Iowa and building their lives on bare piece of ground, because that is just about what we are doing. Except I think that maybe those early Iowa settlers had a little more building (and farming) experience that I have!

So, have you ever built a house ... or even more specifically have you ever built a house out of a pole barn? That is what we are going to be doing for the foreseeable future (with the help of family) and we would love to have any tips or hints that you have!
**A little update on our boar: After talking with our builder yesterday we found out that they were at the farm until a bit after five on Wednesday and he was still in his pen when they left. They did mention that he was panting heavily, but he had plenty of shade and water and even cool mud. We got out to the farm around seven that same evening so he couldn't have been out very long at all. Basically he was able to bend up the cattle panel between the fence posts (spaced 4 feet apart). I think there must have been something medically wrong with him, but we will never know for sure. Still hard to swallow...

One Week Away...

Well, yesterday our realtor called in order to set up a specific time for our closing! For the past three weeks it seems like we have just been waiting in limbo for this day to come, and now we are only seven days away. So, now after months and months of planning and preparing the rubber is about to hit the road. Once we take possession of the land there is still plenty of paperwork to do. Because of the type of building we are doing and because of the small amount of money we are planning on spending we are going to have to work with two lenders. In the next couple of weeks we need to get everything together so we can release land to the building lender and then put together a materials list for them. It makes my head spin just thinking about it!

As I have mentioned before we are planning on building a pole frame building to live in. This type of building will be less expensive to build and go a up a little more quickly. The ability to put the building up quickly is very important to us, because we want the church to be able to sell the parsonage we live in as soon as possible during the good selling season in the spring. So, once the plumbing is roughed in, the building is up, and the slab is down our first order of business will be the bathroom and a kitchen sink! Once we have those we can think about moving in and just camping out in the "house". It won't be ideal to live in it while we build it, but it is what we have to do. Of course if the parsonage takes a little longer to sell then we will have more time to build.

Initially we are planning on only building one permanent building on the farm followed by the possibility of a permanent three sided shed once the house is somewhat moving along. We want to see how the farm and the land work before we go planting buildings all over the place, but we do need a place to live and a place to store some hay. As long as it is possible to get water and electric to the building site we have now decided to build on top of the hill. As many people mentioned in other comments it is nice because it gives a view of the entire land and the surrounding area, along with giving a good flat spot to build the buildings and plant the garden.

The building we are planning on having built will be 36 x 45 x 10 (possibly longer depending on how the builder spaces the posts). Also it will most likely have a 6 foot porch running the length of the building. At this point we plan on finishing a portion 36 x 35 which will give us 1260 square feet and a small area for small equipment storage and "garage" type stuff. In the long run if we decide to continue living in this building then we will have an extra 360 square feet to "add on" with out much work.

But, the other plan behind this building (and the reason for the 10 foot ceilings) is to turn this "barn" type building into a on farm store in the future when we build a stick building. At that point we will not need 1260 square feet for the store so we can reclaim part of the building for barn and still have a high enough ceiling for storage. It would give us a neat sales building and a possible location for a certified kitchen if we wanted to go that value added direction.

I told my wife last night that I wish we could just be at the point of building now. I'd rather be deep in debt and working rather than trying to figure out how to get into debt! Oh well, in time ... in time ...