The woodstove is in!

Among the many chores completed today (cleaning chimneys, clipping chicken wings, trimming goat hooves, getting road base delivered, stacking firewood, digging the greenhouse foundation, hitting the hardware store, marking out new planting beds) only one is the least bit exciting or photo-worthy: the final installation of the refurbished wood stove into the shop. Now to move all the flammable junk - er, I mean valuable objects - out of harm's way.

Planting garlic

After clearing the beds a few weeks ago, I bought a yard of compost and turned it in. Today, I finally started planting the garlic. Wow, 5 pounds is a lot of seed garlic! I planted 237 cloves... and that's probably only about 2/3 of the amount we have. I'll need to turn in the compost on the old potato beds (in the top picture, the ones still covered with straw and compost) to have more room for the rest. Then on to starting a bunch more rows for next year's spring/summer crops...

If we don't start selling produce in the spring - everyone can look forward to getting garlic wreaths and braids for Christmas next year!

Woodstove for the shop

Matt is refurbishing a salvaged woodstove to put in the shop, so we can keep working on stuff all winter long...

The trouble with old farmhouses

A couple of weeks ago, Matt discovered that the faucet had started leaking cold water underneath. Late last week, he replaced the fixture.
That evening, a friend visiting asked, "is it normal for the toilet to flush so slowly?" Uh oh.
To skip the details, we had the septic tank pumped, a porta-potty delivered (for the party and for us), and we have been learning more than we ever wanted to know about the county's permitting process, competition between local septic-related companies, and the like. Luckily, Matt knows enough about the subject to save us lots of money in terms of troubleshooting... but we've agreed to leave the dirtiest work to the experts!

Halloween at Driftwood Farm

All I can really do is add a bunch of photos! Neely's account of the Halloween festivities pretty much says it all... read it and see her pictures here. We were so happy to have friends from out of town make it to the party! (Ok, well, maybe that's why we had the party...)




Laura and her vampire girl-o-lantern bare their grins for the camera.
Pumpkin carving is serious business for Don!



Creating the pumpkin-head-man:



Unfortunately, most of the pictures taken indoors ended up blurry... including those of the happy baker, Neely, creating something like 70 delicious, spookily decorated gingerbread cookies.

Oh, and Don came to the rescue with a few more pictures...

Andrew looking very scary...

Matt in full pirate regalia standing out in the drizzle.

And the gang admiring the newly-carved jack-o-lanterns.