The dining room floors are at a standstill and have been since the prior post about applying the Tung Oil finish. We loved the idea of using a natural oil, because it was the dead of winter and there were no toxic VOC fumes. Unfortunately, the oils didn't dry or soak in smoothly and the floor looks ... not so good. So we've just been waiting for the weather to warm up, to get back in there and start over. We're likely going to need to sand down the oil, in order to finish with good old polyurethane. Eventually we'll get there. This was a disheartening situation, but now that spring is finally here and we can start working outside again, it feels less disappointing. We will eventually finish that room, it's just going to take a bit longer than we had thought. But in the end, we want it to turn out nice, so we must push through this dip and not cut corners. The floors have come a long way, and we have a long way until that room is finished in it's entirety. And that's ok. Such a First World problem.
THE Hundred Acre Wood Bee HIVE- In other news, we finally set the Top Bar Hive up on a stand last week. We decided to use a saw horse kit to stand the Hive up- and so far it seems to be working well and withstanding the strong winds it's been up against. We chose this location in order to expose it to as many hours of sun in the day, and also to have protection from the North Eastern winds.
Now we're just waiting for some bees. Originally we had intended to order a 3# package of bees from Georgia. But the Laird's boss and friend also happens to have a happening homestead, and offered to give us a swarm. We weren't sure we wanted to take the risk of the possibility of not getting a swarm, but he has 3 hives and is quite sure he will get one. This fine friend is also going to be getting us started with an incubator and fertilized eggs from his Copper Maran flock. What a nice friend and resource!
THE CHICKEN-INN: A few weeks ago, we broke ground on the long awaited 'Chick-Inn" here at Redwoodshire. We've read lots of books, studied different designs and finally settled on what we want in our chicken coop. After drawing up and estimating the potential cost of our coop ($600!!), I decided that we needed to do better than that- we're trying to live by a budget and be resourceful. We found a free source of pallet wood (8ft. long pieces), and picked up a few loads to build the structure out of. We decided to build our coop near the barn, on the walk to the garden. We started by digging a trench, and filling it with rocks from the rock pile near the barn. The rocks will give the foundation added strength. We are currently collecting and buying the other materials we need to build our coop- plywood, chicken wire, windows...etc. Thanks to my dad- we inherited all of his old chicken feeders, waters, heat lamps... We are doing amazing at keeping the costs of our chicken/ egg venture to a minimum. The Laird informed me tonight that his friend's eggs would be hatching this week, which means that the incubator will be available for us by the end of the week!! The Laird is taking a few days off from his day job to build as much of the coop as he can- and hopefully he will have good weather to do it!
 |
| The Chick-Inn will be located a little to the right of the pile of pallet wood |
 |
| Free 8ft. pallet wood!! |
Pallets are a wonderful free resource for building. The wood is hard and very strong because they are used to hold/ move freight and heavy items. And this is what makes them wonderful for so many projects. Though they are great in theory, we will see how well they work for building our coop.
 |
| The beginning- the foundation covered with dirt/ 4 corners exposed |
And that's the update from Redwoodshire! Getting our hands dirty and started on the many projects that we've been researching all winter. Thrilled to finally start putting the book knowledge to use.
No comments:
Post a Comment