It has been a pretty busy couple of months since I last wrote. The two main happenings have been continued work on the farm house and a trip to Michigan for a week and a half at Christmas. Also the Tide won the national championship. Despite, or maybe because of, all that is happening now, I have determined (I would say resolved, but that ship seems to have sailed already) to post much more frequently. Daily, to be exact. I might fall behind at times, but I will endeavor to catch up so that there will be at least one post a day, even if it wasn’t posted that day. I will write about and share pictures of the farm, my (hopefully myriad) adventures, and other happenings.

Michigan was freezing cold, but at least we got a bit of snow. I went out to take pictures most mornings and many afternoons. We went over to the lake one day and into Grand Rapids another, but other than that we pretty much just hung out on the farm, ate, and watched football. The graphic on the right is a screen shot from one of my early morning ramblings. It was pretty brutal going out some days, but the beautiful scenery helped ease the pain. I also saw bald eagles, but wasn’t able to get photographs. Mt father-in-law and I set a dead dear in the middle of the back field and it attracted all manner of birds. I didn’t know that eagles and hawks scavenged like that, but I guess you do what you gotta do when it is that cold.

The farmhouse is progressing. Not as quickly as I would like, but this weather is a real issue. We are waiting on warmer, drier days in order to get the ball rolling on the foundation work. Once that is done we will be much less weather dependent. The house is now completely prepped for the excavators to grade for the addition. The back has been taken off and everything is out of the way. Lots of design and layout decisions have been made, and I will begin to stockpile materials. I have found a great deal on windows and doors down in Alabama. I plan on picking them up later this week.

I have been trying to do a bit of reading recently. I am finishing up a book about “The Farm” down in Summertown. Lots of other farming related books are on the shelf, just waiting.

Insane amounts of time have been devoted to my tractor search. I have missed out on some fantastic deals, but feeli like I’m close to finding the right one. That will really help me get a lot more done out at the farm. A lot of things have moved pretty slowly because I’ve been working by hand. There a a number of helpful implements that I would like to purchase as well. I will do a special post dedicated to the tractor as soon as I purchase one. The ideal machine has a front end loader, four wheel drive, 40-50 horsepower, and is well priced. Unfortunately there just aren’t many used bargains out there. I’m also looking for a heavy duty truck to tow the tractor with.

I’m sure there is plenty of other stuff going on that eludes me right now. The great thing about a blog is that I can go with the flow and continuously update it. Again, I will try to update daily depending upon my workload.