Rowe

Flashback Friday – Our first renovation project

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I thought I would share a few old posts over the next few weeks.  It will help give me a little perspective.  These posts were migrated from another blog spot so I apologize for how wonky they look in WordPress.

We are about to begin one of the biggest restoration projects to date (and our first in Rowe). By big I’m referring to area. Without measuring we figured this room is about 28′ x 15′ – I think that may be a conservative guess.

The barnboard on the end wall is going to stay – Dad told me it was put up originally because the plaster was falling off the wall. This kind of repair seems to be the way it’s been done in sooo many of the old houses we’ve worked on (or visited).


As you can see the ceiling is coming down in the far corner – it’s been like this for a couple of years but there are other points in the ceiling that are really beginning to sag so we’ve decided to gut the room, insulate and drywall. If it was a true restoration we’d be mixing up the plaster but it seems to be a lost art (and we don’t have the time or knowledge to do it). The window that is closest on the left actually has a deep ledge, almost a window seat. That whole window is being removed and replaced to bring it back flush with the wall. It overhangs the patio with a small roof and the whole structure is rotten and looks like its ready to fall off.

Of course this is the kind of help Bill will have for the week – they look better earlier in the day. God help him is all I have to say.


I’ll post next week on the progress – I will at least have shots of the demo – 200 years of dirt. Everyone will be in respirators, fun is.
We began the living room project in June of 2008.  It took us 3 years to finally finish it (these kinds of projects seem to stretch out when you are only working on them on weekends).  We had a lot of help along the way from people that know what they are doing.  It’s good to have friends like that.  Here’s a shot of what it looked like after the floor was finished.
Amazing
We are thinking about another room restoration and I have to keep reminding myself what a long, tedious thing it is to do.  But with every room you learn.  You gain skills that make the next job easier.  We’ve done 2 bathrooms and many bedrooms, halls, etc.  The next project will be a room upstairs, a rather large one.  It was once a bedroom but the plan is for it to house my looms, sewing machines, fabric and fiber.  It’s been in boxes too long and having it have a place of its own will only free me up to be creative rather than looking for what I might want to do next (or shopping because its too tedious to search).  I wonder how many duplicate tools I will find when the unpacking begins?

2013 – Year of the Great Fruit Fly Infestation

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Fruit FliesEvery year we have fruit flies as summer turns into fall.  They are a little annoying but if you pick up any food or things that are damp you can usually control the situation.  For the past month we have had an infestation like I have never seen before.  They were everywhere.

I went through everything, cleaning, washing, sanitizing.  We would leave on Sunday night and I would come back on Wednesday, turn up the heat and they would be everywhere.  They weren’t confined to one room either.  Every room downstairs had fruit flies.  The past couple of weeks have been pretty cold so I figured that would do them in – not so.  It felt like black fly season in my living room.

I put out an APB to all of my cyber friends and family.  Some replied with great advice.  I googled how to rid yourself of fruit flies and tried many things suggested.  Two weeks in a row I set out bowls of cider vinegar with a couple of drops of detergent.  It worked quite well, except for the pesky buggers that would hang out on the rim of the bowl like birds on a birdbath.  The bowls were in every room and it seemed like the population grew from week to week.

One morning I was at my wits end with a swarm around my head.  I sat down to think about this – what was keeping them going?  There had to be a food source of some kind for them to continue to multiply like this.  Then it dawned on me – there were potatoes gone bad in a wooden bin in the kitchen.  It hadn’t even crossed my mind.  I had Bill remove their life source and waited another few days.

I am happy to say when I arrived last night I was pleasantly relieved to see they were gone.  Not a one anywhere.

I must admit I took a perverse pleasure in sucking up their dead little carcasses with the vacuum cleaner.

 

Helping Hands

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131102 Wood (1)It must look as though all we do is cut, split and stack wood by the numerous posts about it here.  This time of year that does seem to be the case.  I have to tell you though that this is one chore that I kind of like doing.  It is the one thing we do as a little community for the most part.  This weekend we went to sister Sue’s to move some of a huge locust tree that came down at the end of the summer.  The tree guys cut it up in place and hauled away the sticks and branches (the worst part of the job).  They cut the wood to length but it needed to be moved and split.  The morning began with the tractor ride to her house, Bill followed with the splitter.  A friend arrived shortly after we did and then Sue’s daughter and her husband.

The tree was at the back side of her house so Bill, Rob and Chuck all loaded the bucket of the tractor and the bed of a pick up with multiple loads and brought it to the door of the barn where we had set up the splitter.  Sue has a door in the floor of the barn and we split and tossed it through the door into the lower level.  This is really an excellent set up.  It keeps the wood out of the weather and is attached to the house so in those howling snow storms she just has to walk down the stairs to get her wood.  Not ideal going up and down the stairs but much better than keeping it under a tarp in a field somewhere.

Sue and I split the smaller pieces but a lot of it was huge.  The splitter can be used horizontally or vertically.  The vertical position allows you the ability to split any size diameter wood (you just have to be able to move it around).  One large chunk was split into 30 plus pieces – Sue counted. Moving and splitting went on for four hours or so – 3 tanks of gas is how we measure.  The wall of wood was a little intimidating initially, they were bringing it up faster than we were ever going to split it. Bill figures they will get 5 cord or more from that one tree.

This kind of work is fun, especially when you have a group of people working towards that common goal.  It’s nice to work with people that have experience, a lot can be done without a lot of instruction.  Time can be spent working and laughing.  And if you’re with my sister you can bet you will be taking stock of what kinds of mosses are growing on any given piece of wood – I did see her set a piece or two aside for closer inspection later.

131102 Wood (2)

Waste Not, Want Not

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131102 StockI’ve been buying or roasting a chicken a week for the past 3 weeks.  What started out as an easy meal actually turned into 3 plus meals, each meal probably costing about $1.00 per person or less.

The first meal is roast chicken with sides, I usually eat squash, carrots or green beans with it.  Maybe a mashed potato as well.  The second meal might be black beans and rice with chicken added.  The third meal this week was a lunch of chicken salad.  The fourth iteration is my favorite- I make and can stock.  All of these meals are for two, not a family of 5 but the reality is if you know how to cook you can stretch your food dollar quite a ways.

At this point in time I throw very little food away and chicken stock has the potential to be any number of wonderful meals.  My Saturday morning routine of late has been to throw the bird carcass in a pot with an onion, a couple of carrots and a few stalks of celery.  I cover it with 3 to 4 quarts of water, add some salt, pepper and thyme (or poultry seasoning) and let is simmer for a few hours.  I strain the broth through a colander and can it in my pressure canner – 35 minutes at 10 lbs.  It amounts to 5 or 6 pint jars when all is said and done.

Have a friend or relative with a cold or flu?  Pull out a jar and make a little soup – a delicious soup.

With the weather getting downright frigid what could be more comforting?

Waste not Want not

 

Gold in the Back Forty

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131027 Mushrooms This was an amazing sight to me the other day when I walked into the back forty.  It has been COLD for the past week and it was more than unexpected to see mushrooms growing.  The photograph doesn’t really do justice to how beautiful they are.  They are iridescent, like a pot of gold by a stump. They glowed on a cold, overcast day.

These mushrooms are called Honey Mushrooms (Armillaria mellea). I had to ask my sister for a direction in identification and after a little research found a great description on The 3 Foragers.

As beautiful as they are the thought of cooking and eating them never crossed my mind.  The extent of my foraging is stumbling upon mushrooms of some sort, looking them up to see what they are and moving on.  “Mushrooms are poisonous” was drilled into my childhood brain.  Even mushroom foragers have a saying –  there are bold mushroom hunters, and there are old mushroom hunters — there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.

Words to live by.

Dogs, Dogs, Dogs

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131027 DogsYou should all be happy this is a still and not video.  This is the kind of attention you get when you pick up the squeaker that has recently been removed from a toy and use it for your own entertainment.  Even the dog that HATES squeakers was in for the game.  It was more powerful than food.  No one got it in the end – it was for my entertainment only. No dogs were harmed in the making of this photograph.

The Party’s Over, but the Sheep Don’t Seem to Notice

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131027 SheepMy neighbor has four sheep.  They are curious creatures, staring at me the entire time I am outdoors within earshot (they always move into viewing range when they hear any of us outside).

The glorious colors of this autumn are a distant memory. There are a few trees with some leaves hanging on, the blackberry bushes still are beautiful.

The leaves this fall were spectacular, better than I’ve seen in years.  The traffic on Route 2 was worse than I can recall in recent memory.  I take a certain satisfaction is knowing that I can avoid driving that route by taking back roads with the bonus being better views of the foliage.  I have always looked at the “leaf peepers” with a small measure of disdain.  How dare they cause these crazy traffic problems on an otherwise lightly travelled road?  What are they thinking driving 20 mph and stopping suddenly to take a photograph of particularly colorful maple.  These are my trees.  I have watched their entire cycle and October is the reward.

I then realize how blessed I am to be living in such beauty.  How wonderful it is to have family and friends locally that take advantage of all of it with their cameras and how amazing it is that we can all share our imagery so readily via the internet.  With all of the complaints an old film photographer can have this is one time when I think digital is amazing.

 

Living in Two Places

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130502 Back Forty Pond

I’ve lived in a few places. Work, family, friends, lovers have all taken me all over but I always have come back to Rowe.  A person I grew up with told me that this town was part of his soul, he hasn’t lived here since 1975.  I know that feeling, where you drive into a place over a familiar road not seen in a while and something happens, you feel it in your gut, that little flutter.  You know you are home.

I live in two worlds, fortunately they are close enough in distance so I can escape one for the other. Rowe

Just for my own comparison I snipped out the vital info about Rowe and Enfield.  Rowe with its 24 square miles and 393 people compared to Enfield with its 34 square miles and 44,654 people at last count. That means there is .49 acres per person in Enfield and 39.09 per person in Rowe.  No wonder I feel like I’m suffocating while I’m in CT.  That’s probably not a fair assessment but it does speak to the rural vs. urban/suburban situation I find myself in.

Enfield, CT

You will also notice the difference in temperature and dew point.  In the summer it’s a difference you notice, in the winter it’s night and day.  The growing season is at least 2 weeks ahead in Enfield.  The last frost is something we see at the end of April.  In Rowe there is nothing that goes into my garden earlier than Memorial Day – ever.

The one difference I truly notice is the quiet (and solitude).  In Enfield there is air traffic over our house close to 24 hours a day – we are on the landing path to Bradley in CT.  I think at night I can see the people sitting in their seats as they fly in for a landing.  The street we live on is very busy and we are within hearing distance of the railroad tracks where Amtrak runs during the day.  Yes, planes, trains and automobiles – the noise never ends.  Everyone is always in a hurry to get nowhere as well.  You have to be a fairly aggressive driver in this harried place.  In our spare time in Enfield we can work on the house (with our neighbors chatting us up over the fence), shop or eat at a chain restaurant.  I used to have very large perennial gardens around the house but it’s not the quiet, meditative project that it is in Rowe.  Now I look at what I can dig up and move, turning the yard back into something that can just be mowed.

When I get home to Rowe everything slows down.  The driving, the breathing, the thinking – once I arrive there is nowhere I need to be but there.  There is enough to keep me occupied for days on end without ever leaving the property.  I breathe the clean air, listen to the birds, contemplate life.  My bedroom window is open at least three seasons so I can hear the owls at night and the birds wake me up in the morning.  I can drink my cup of coffee watching the sun rise over the back forty and the mist dissipate in its heat.

I think everyone needs to find a place of peace if they are not living in it.  I think that’s why people appear to be so crazy right now or they have such health problems.  They are so far removed from the natural world that they are never grounded – at all.  The sad thing is so many never know what it’s like to be grounded in nature, they don’t understand how healing it can be.  I know people I see often that I just want to shake and say “Take an afternoon and go to a state forest and walk, breathe, listen!  Hug a tree, absorb the energy around you.”  And they would look at me with those eyes that say “You are nuts.”

Slow and Steady

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131016 Moonrise

I arrived late to Rowe on Wednesday to see that the shed was being worked on.  Most of the paint was removed and there was a window in the west wall.  The opening has always been there – there was a screen in that spot in need of repair.  A hinged shutter, a door of sorts, covered the hole year round and has been there as long as I can remember.  It’s always interesting to walk into an interior space where there is light that has never been there before, you feel like you’ve been missing something.

It was still light out as I unloaded my car but fairly clouded over.  I started cooking a little supper on the stove and walked into the living room where the light coming into the east windows was this amazing color, and bright for sunset.  I looked out, grabbed a camera and this is what I saw.  The light reflecting off of the clouds from the west with the moon rising in the east.  It was stunning and there for less that 10 minutes.  Of course Mr. Photobomb was in every shot.

I woke up out of a half sleep Thursday morning to Chester growling – softly (he’s kind of chicken).  I got up to see Mike , my brother-in-law and Jim, his work partner working on the shed wall.  The dogs went out to happily greet them and we took a walk to the back forty.  When I returned Mike and I talked about the condition of the clapboards and where we were going to go with this.  He also told me Jim had found the window at the dump.  Jim works at the dump part-time which gives him access to the good stuff.  He’s always thinking ahead to where he might recycle something.  A bonus for both of us.  I left them to their work and assume that it will look wonderful in the next week or so.  They do really good work.

131017 Paint

Exterior painting is not something Bill and I are interested in doing.  We have done it at the house in Enfield but the house in Rowe is just too tall.  Mike has been painting for years.  When he paints you know he will do whatever he can to get the paint to stay on for years to come.  He repairs, replaces and caulks where needed then primes and paints.  He is meticulous.

We haven’t been able to do more than a side a year because of the size of the job and the expense.  It will be another two years probably before the house it completely painted so for the time being I just photograph the good sides.  They finished the front a few weeks ago and I have to say the house is looking quite beautiful. I am hoping to build a new storm door before winter.  The strap hinges and thumb latch were made at Williamsburg Blacksmith quite some time ago and that aluminum door really needs to go.

131013 Front of House

Of course when you look at the photographs there are more things to add to the to do list.  Antennas and dishes have to be removed, lightning rods reattached.  Every once in a while I look at a photograph like this and in my head just pretend it’s all done.

Days of Grace

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131013 Wood (4)We are into what many people refer to as “days of grace”.  This, for us, is after the gardens are done, the canning is finished (for the most part) and we are seriously thinking about winter.  It’s the time between the leaves falling and the snow flying.

With that in mind we brought wood in over the weekend with the help of Amanda and Yusuf.  We had to move most of what was left from last year out of the way because it is very dry and bring in what we have been cutting and splitting over the past few months.  This is when the tractor really comes in handy.  The bucket can be loaded and driven right into the shed.  The wood is unloaded and stacked at waist height, it cuts down on the bending over which can really save your back.

131013 Wood (3)

The project lasted through the weekend, we figure we put in about 4 and a half cord with a little over a cord left from last season.  I can’t tell you what a relief it is when that project is over.  It’s one of those never-ending things.  The seasons are dictated by cutting, splitting and stacking wood.  Trees will come down this winter with the brush stacked for burning.  The burn season starts in January and runs until May.  We usually cut and split throughout the year when the weather permits – it’s not something you want to do in summer heat.  With any luck it spends the summer drying out a bit.  In the fall it comes in.  It will continue to dry until it gets burned.

Other projects on our list are re-glazing windows.  Tightening things up in the house.  We are considering a small wood stove for the kitchen in the ell but we will have to see what the next few weeks bring.  A little more insulation in the attic over the kitchen would probably go a long way toward keeping it warmer.

131013 Wood (2)The one other vital thing to do is put the electric blankets on the beds upstairs.  There has never been any heat up there (except the bathroom) so if we don’t want to sleep under 10 pounds of quilts electricity must be used.  There is nothing better than getting into a nice warm bed in the dead of winter.

This time of year always has an anticipatory air to it.  There’s pressure put on whatever time you have.  Once the temperature plummets, the snow is on the ground and the wind is blowing the mood changes.  We are doing things indoors.  We spend more down time.  This is when my time is spent on handwork.  There are so many crafts that I do in cooler weather because they are just too hot to do any other time of the year.  I will be finishing up a couple of hooking projects and I will be weaving.  Yes . . . lots and lots of weaving.