Measure twice, measure right

On Easter weekend Claire and I drove south to Lincoln Nebraska to visit my Aunt and Uncle.  When we arrived we were greeted with good food, games, conversation, and a shower!  On top of this there were eight dogs, including my aunt and uncles new puppy, Buca.  For two day we played, ate, and visited with family.  The following week honestly consisted of only two things:  A tree planting workshop with a tour of the Big Sioux Nursery, and digging.  The workshop was for our upcoming job with the conservation district and we learned many things about how and when to plant different species of trees.  We also learned that we would be planting primarily windbreaks and shelterbelts.  The tour of the nursery was equally fascinating.  Here we saw the large refrigerators where seedlings were stored, rows of workers packing dozens of seedlings in special waxed boxes, and a tractor and crew digging up two year old lilac.  The other four days of the week we spent inside the pole shed extending our hole for the storm shelter.    

 

The Smith family and their dogs!!

Last weekend my friend Tessa drove out to Clark to visit Connor and me, bringing with her good food, company, and an exterior door! We are thrilled, and want to extend a hearty thank you to Tessa and her mom for giving it to us. Tessa helped us outline and dig up our first spring garden bed, a 3’ wide by 15’ long raised bed next to the pole shed. We chopped through the grass and tilled the topsoil with shovels, then piled on more topsoil to raise the bed a few inches off the ground. Theoretically, the raised bed will ensure minimal compaction on the plant roots and provide plenty of air pockets for water. We brought out our bucket of seed packets and went to town sowing rows of spinach, kale, garlic, red lettuce, and arugula. With consistent high winds and sunny days, the soil dries out freakishly fast, despite watering 2-3 times a day. We are considering temporary grass mulches to help keep the moisture high. Days to germination are stressful.

We gave Tessa a tour of the pole shed and our projects, then jumped right in to cutting and screwing together the concrete forms for our storm shelter. We finished two before realizing we’d need more 2x4s and screws for the rest. You’d think we’d have learned to over-purchase supplies by now.

We finally convinced the chickens to eat food from our hands, and they waddled to and from each of us to peck into our cupped fingers. Thank you for visiting us, Tessa! We hope to see you again. 

Digging the hole for the storm shelter has not been easy or enjoyable.  In order to fit our cement forms we needed to dig a 5X9X5 foot hole.  To our dismay, much of the dirt was rock or clay.  We realized early on that when both of us were in the hole digging we were more likely to shower each other with dirt than throw it out of the hole. Thus, I dug and piled dirt on the floor of the pole shed while Claire wheel-barrowed it outside. At long last we completed our hole and were ready to start assembling our forms.  Our end goal is to have a concrete shelter that is four feet wide, six feet long, and four feet tall, with six inch concrete walls. After several days of work and preparation, all eight of our forms were built, sixteen 100 pound bags of Portland cement sat in our pole shed, 200 feet of rebar lay on the ground, and large piles of rock and sand were mounded outside the door.  We were enthusiastic and ready to set the forms and pour the concrete when disaster struck.  As we finished screwing the outside forms together in the hole we realized that our numbers were off and with the current forms the walls would only be one and a half inches thick. Nooo! Not only do we have to lengthen two forms by 16 inches but we also need to extend the hole to fit the new dimensions.  Thus, even though we expected to have the shelter completed by the end of the upcoming weekend, we will most likely not finish until the following weekend. We hope that by our next post we can have pictures of the forms, rebar, walls, and even the roof, so cross your fingers!       

           

Our too small outside wall forms:(

Much to our alarm and confusion, our four chickens just stopped laying eggs one day. The next day there were feathers all over the coop and run, and the chickies seemed to enjoy sitting around more than foraging. Odd. This went on for a week before we thumbed through our chicken book, finding all of the horrible illnesses and injuries that chickens can pick up and trying to match our chickens’ symptoms to the ones listed. Then we read about molting. As far as we knew chickens usually molted in the fall, but for some reason ours were in the spring. It meant feathers in the coop, feathers in the water fount, feathers mixed with poop, and no eggs for up to two months. It's a natural process, but all the same we were almost embarrassed to have to go to the store to buy eggs.

On a very bright note, one of our indoor pea plants produced a pea!!! One glorious, beautiful, green, pea!!