Farm and life updates.
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.
The new ‘hood.
This morning was foggy and beautiful, so I drove down a couple of back roads before starting work on the farm house. There was a lovely layer of frost over the ground and the crisp air was invigorating. I need to take advantage of these special mornings as often as I can.
Last weekend in Monteagle.
I was able to go up to Monteagle last weekend, and it was great. The leaves were pretty much at their peak and the temperature finally felt fall-like. I did a bit of reading, hiking, and photographing. I also loaded up my new trailer with wood from the shed I tore down in the back yard. Highlights of the trip included “sunrise” at Stone Door, Foster Falls lit by the full moon, and just a general feeling of relaxation. Not sure if I will be able to return before our Thanksgiving trip, but I sure hope to.
Below is a gallery with some cell phone pictures. I need to mess with the ones I took with the Rebel. I actually have a lot to post from this fall, not to mention building out my maps and galleries. I need to be less lazy or just do it while watching football.
Time flies when you are working on a dilapidated old farmhouse.
Wow, I can’t believe it has been a month since my last post. Fortunately I have been pretty busy. Below are a few pictures of the progress on the farm. I am pretty much done with the interior demolition. The foundation repair company is coming in three days to tell me just how much of a mess things are underneath. Once I get a quote from them and their time frame on doing the work it will hopefully be full speed ahead. The one other bottleneck is waiting for the soil scientist to give me the results of my perk test so that I can get septic and building permits. I pretty much have the plans for the renovation/addition and garage/apartment finalized. Am in the process of finding reputable subcontractors. I am also searching hard for a good deal on a used tractor with front end loader. That will really help me be productive.
This autumn has been pretty warm and a little disappointing on the foliage front. I did manage to visit Monteagle a couple of weekends ago (will try to post some pictures soon), and the leaves looked pretty good up there, but the Nashville area has been pretty underwhelming. It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. That should be a nice time.
More Farm Photos.
So we took possession today. I went there this morning and dropped off a bunch of tools. They left a bunch of stuff, some of it worthwhile, some headed straight to the dump. All of these pictures were taken with a super wide angle lens and make rooms appear larger than they actually are. Didn’t mess with a tripod or HDR on the interior – these are just quick and dirty “before” shots.
Coming Soon – a Grand Adventure!
Big news, we are about to buy an old farmhouse on six acres in Columbia. As in tomorrow. This has happened very quickly. The property went on the market about ten days ago and we close tomorrow. This is incredibly exciting and a bit nerve wracking. The basics are six acres and a 1600 square foot house about ten minutes northeast of Downtown Columbia. It is 30 minutes from Liz’s work in Franklin and 43 minutes from my parents’ place in Nashville. I would like more than six acres but this is a lovely piece of land that is very well laid out and the price was excellent. It will be large enough to do everything we want – goats, orchard, huge garden, and bonfires. The house needs a ton of work, including adding two bathrooms, but should be incredibly cool by the time we are finished. I am beyond excited and still processing the whole thing. I will write a lot more soon about our plans and goals for the property. But some serious work is about to start – I would like the house to be ready for us to move in by February 28th. Baby comes March 26th, so time is of the essence.
A couple of days ago I took a few pictures of the outside. On Tuesday I’ll try to take a lot more of both the house and land.
Mountain Mayhem.
I just returned from a nice, long weekend in Monteagle. I hiked, took a lot of photographs, read a bit, and enjoyed the cooler temperatures. It is starting to feel a lot like autumn, especially with a tinge of color on the trees. Can’t wait to start having some campfires! Below are a few quick pictures from my cell phone. I’m still messing about with the photos from my “real camera”, but will try to post them before too long.
This is a lot like work.
Well I spent some time messing with this site today. Added a few plugins, most noticeably the Instagram sidebar. I saw that it’s been about ten months since I posted anything on there. That will be rectified soon. I added a bit to the “about” page and started on the “maps” page. The latter will take a ton of time to both build the maps then link each marker to a gallery. Speaking of the galleries, I have not even begun them. Part of that is because I have so many photos to sort through that I am a bit overwhelmed. The other holdup is that I haven’t figured out how to format the page to my liking. Squarespace was much easier in that regard. I’m also unsure of what to do with the home page. I might just add one big image. I have considered running the blog from the home page, but for some reason that is less appealing. Oh well! The nice thing about the internet as an artistic medium if the flexibility. We aren’t carving chunks of marble here.
Genesis.
This is the beginning. Of what, I do not know. Only the who is concrete. The when, where, why, and how are also ambiguous.
Learn all about me and Tennescenic.
I hope to blog regularly. I hope those posts are of value.
The galleries will take a bit of time to curate. I have over fifty thousand photographs to sort through.
The maps should be a fun feature if I can figure them out.
The contact page should be self explanatory.