Wrapping up for winter

Sadly, trip # 33 was the last building trip of the season - the weather isn't going to hold much longer.  Even this time, the wind on the drive up was consistently over 30mph and gusting at over 50mph at times.  Gas mileage was abysmal.  (Lucky us - we had a tail wind on the way home - used less than a half tank!)

All told, we spent about 4 hours finishing up a few concreting projects and making sure the whole domestead was secure for winter. 

• We reinforced the top of the bern and kitchen walls.  We didn't want to leave exposed cans for months on end - we've had a few blow away over just a few weeks.  

• We also straightened up the interior of the courtyard, stacking and moving a lot of stuff out of the "flood zone" that will become the garden area in the future.

• With the last of the concrete mix, we made a handful of new hexagonal and rectangular bricks - they're so much heavier than the papercrete bricks we've been working with! 

 

• In preparation for next year's shoring-up work on the culvert, we reloaded the penta-corral with larger sized bottles and containers. (Many thanks to the lady on FreeCycle who gave us her huge supply of empty wine bottles!)

• Boxed up and corralled the beer bottles for the bathroom - I think there's enough to finish it next year!  (And Jeff's already got the roof staged at home :)



Before we headed home, the wife shot a set of comparison photos and a video so that we can really show how much we got done this building season.  Then we went home, showered, had a snack and went to bed!

(We couldn't figure out at first why we woke up sore the next morning - until it dawned on us that we drove for 5 hours, did hard labor in heavy wind for 4 hours without breaks and then drove another 5 hours....)

 

 

 

Stay tuned for a 2011 to 2012 pictorial

and probably video progress report!