Bi-yearly blog update!

Starting a blog is easy but maintaining it regularly is not!  With the last blog occurring in November 2016 I have fallen woefully behind with keeping progress reports coming.  Quick summary of things that have taken place with the home build then some pictures.

Hickory joists for cabin loft

December - tree felling, chipping and hickory milling
January - construction home loan closing
February - stump clearing and basement foundation hole excavation
March - Superior Walls installation / plumbing for septic tank roughed in
April - basement floor / barn floor concrete poured
May - Framing starts and continues

MF 240 moving chipped tree limbs

Shooting practice (target: paper plate nailed to a dead log)

Hickory joists and oak plank loft boards in cabin

Winter cabin setting

Mr. Buddy Heater - bad news...almost burned the cabin down after running it for 10 minutes in 27 F temps.  The propane evidently had leaked at the connection and caught fire.  I turned it off quickly and took it back to Field and Stream for refund.  Don't buy this product!

Hickory and oak logs waiting to be milled into beams for the big house

Tick embedded (March).  Insidious little creatures.  This got infected and required doxycycline prescription to clear it up.  RMSF II ? Doctor said I tested positive but were they antibodies from episode I?

Kenneth the excavator pulled the stumps then leveled the site and dug the basement hole

Basement tailings and topsoil set aside for backfilling later

Cabin Camping Easter weekend

Ready for foundation

Superior Walls installation

Buried cable for 400 amp service to house

Basement floor complete

End of first week of framing beginning of May

Back of house 

End of second week of framing

End of third week of framing - this is looking out the living room.  Fireplace will be located in section between windows.

As of May 19 they had started the shed dormer in front.

Home site clearing

The last several weeks we've been hard at it to clear the home site of the last few trees before the builder starts excavation of the foundation and starts the home building.

We have created about another three cords of wood from the crooked hardwoods we cut and bucked.  The larger straight trees we want to keep for future projects (beams and other decorative features we'd like to have in the home) are to be cut down.  The good ones are oak and hickory.

A decent sized oak being felled:
Then skidded out to the landing with a Farmi 351P winch and MF 240 tractor where we buck it and split it (unless we keep it for later milling)

Logging with the Farmi

With cold, but dry weather over the weekend it made for ideal conditions to do some tree clearing for the homesite.  This will take a number of weekends to complete and we are hoping to have this done before the trees bud.  Fortunately we have some labor saving machinery to help make this adventure more productive and quite a bit safer than when we cleared the driveway.  Any trees that get hung up in a fall we can put the winch on it and pull it down with relative ease from a distance.  When we did the driveway we had to hook up a come-along winch (hand powered) with a rope.  The tractor powered winch will easily pull 3-4 logs at a time from the forest up to the skid plate of the winch where I can then latch them and drag them up to the wood shed area where we limb, buck and split them into firewood.

Farmi Winch Trial

We got around to finally testing the Farmi 351P logging winch Saturday.  With autumn around the corner and the impending house clearing that we have planned this winter it was time to set it up, learn its operation and do a test.  The first thing we had to do was read the manual!  With the various forces involved with operating this sort of machinery there is really is no second chance for an operator that does not follow recommended procedures for its safe operations.  In order to run on our Massey tractor we had to size the PTO shaft length to fit our tractor and this required some measurements and cutting of the shaft according to the manufacturer's instructions.  It was a rather finicky task trying to connect the PTO onto the Farmi's splined shaft due to the lack of space around Farmi's PTO guard.  However with a bit of patience, disassembly of the PTO guard (and then reassembly once installed!) we managed to get it done properly and working safely with all guards correctly in place.

With 34 acres of forest around us, a small scale logging winch/skidder seemed justified since our plan is to selectively harvest timber in the years to come for fuel wood to heat our home and perhaps to sell on spot basis if the economics are right.  We had considered the Wallenstein model of winch but instead decided on the Farmi brand (Finnish company) due the ideal mix of performance (log pulling capacity =7,720 lbs), price, reliability and reputation.  It is really a solidly built piece of equipment and I imagine that it will far outlast us!

Farm progress and "farmer problems"

The wood shed is finally done!  We ended up going the easy route and used wire fence to be the walls which was easy, cheap and quick to install.  The added benefit of this material is that it allows complete air circulation from all directions.  Additionally we had reasoned that no one would be able to see the sides and rear wall anyway.  So the next thing is to get a few more pallets to stack the wood on, rent a splitter and make an all day event out getting the wood split and stacked.

It was a busy two days as we also took advantage of the dry conditions and had 36 more tons of crusher run delivered to finish up the barn floor leveling.  We ran in too a mechanical problem with the hydrostatic steering on the tractor causing us to shut down for awhile to fix the problem (sort of).  The steering ram cylinder came loose from vibration (all four bolts were still in place but the cap screws were not engaged!).  We managed to get them realigned and properly tightened without cross threading the screws.  This fix allowed me to continue using it but now I think there is either a problem with the steering pump pressure or the cylinders are bad.  At about the same time this happened Elizabeth had declared that the well pump had quit working or the well was dry!  After taking a short break and thinking about the issue I walked over and pressed the circuit breaker button on the generator and it reset.  Well pump not broken and well not dry. :)

Ramp nearly level with bottom of door now

Moving and leveling with FEL.  The Farmi was only along for the ride to counter weight the front end.  I should have put the rear blade on the for additional leveling capability.

Elizabeth was very busy planting tomatoes, zuchini, watermelon and ochra in the hugelkultur beds which we amended with topsoil removed from the wood shed.  The farm is coming along nicely!

The cute and adorable little fellow was found in the wood shed when we were excavating the topsoil

Really coming together !

We headed up to Pelham for a 'short' day of work today.  Elizabeth was tied up in the morning at the "Y" doing a group fitness spin class so when she finished up we decided to pack "light" and take only the chainsaws and drill gear with us (no dogs to distract with walks and such) and aim to install the wood shed roof supports.  Last week we picked a nice straight 25 foot tall, ~16 year old Virginia pine tree with a diameter of about 5" from our nearby woodlot and dragged it with the MF 240 to our homestead to use as the rear roof header on the wood shed.  For the front we had a nice straight log from last year's road clearing already peeled and ready to go.

Even more exciting for us was that Moon Creek Construction Co got the metal roofing on the barn and the south attic window installed during the week.  

Here is some of the handiwork completed on the wood shed.  It has character to say the least.  Our plan is to tie the red barn/shop theme somehow into the wood shed...ideas ?

Clearing for the home site

We hired some youngsters to help paint and do some clearing work.  Alex, Matthew's friend was out again to assist Elizabeth with painting the barn siding while Matthew helped me clear some trees on the area we plan to build the house.

Matthew

Alex

Matthew cut the roots with a pick axe and then I pushed the stumps out with the MF 240 loader - worked great.

Tow bar hooked to 3PH to pull the trailer holding the wood chips

Alex and Scott unloading chips to the trail down to future house site

Wood Chip Manufacturing

On December 20 out at the farm we were confronted with light flurries on and off in the morning so instead of getting down to all the painting we chose to set up the chipper on the MF240 and knock out a few hundred pounds of wood chips.  We decided to use our little trailer to catch the chips so that we could move them to wherever we needed them later on.

Positioning the tractor to hook up the chipper.

A great country that makes great things!  Thanks Wallenstein for building such a robust and reliable wood chipper.

Blogger maneuvering tractor after scraping some mud with loader to see if it could do some basic grading on the south gable end of barn where the 8' lean-to is going to be installed.

MF 240 to the Shop

May 31 was another interesting day where we loaded up the tractor for being transported to the local shop in Reidsville for repair.  The tractor had to be winched up onto the flatbed.

Tractor electrics on the fritz

We received the replacement hardware and installed the other half of the gate.  However as you can see we still need to add the bracing on right side gate.  Eventually we'll finish it but for a good part of the day we spent tinkering and learning how to operate our tractor. 

Scott is presently researching an electrical issue with the tractor starting system.  Sometimes it starts sometimes it doesn't. The battery seems to be holding a charge so next thing he says we need to look at are starter solenoid, battery cable connections and the (neutral) starting switch.  Good thing the operator and shop manuals arrived last week.  Nonetheless we were able to practice driving up and down the road a few times and put it to "work" by carrying bales of straw down the hill to where we re-seeded.  I also installed some grass seed blankets in the ditch and pegged them with sticks to prevent seed wash-out in future rain storms.