This is the "before" picture of the basement. The "after" picture is not much different. Sometime we are going to put concrete over the dirt floor. So far we haven't found anyone buried down there.
My cozy chair, bubbly water, and work gloves. It was fun to get to spend the day outside.
The first thing the dog wants to do when we get to the farm is jump in the car and go home.
Wooster is underwater this week. This is a shot of the fairgrounds and soccer fields just west of town on route 30. We are getting more snow today. I wonder if it will be dried out in time for the Farm & Home show in April.
This is a shot of the old grape vine before pruning. I still have NO IDEA what I am doing.
Last week an Amish crew came out and worked on strengthening the foundation of the house. They are the same guys who repaired our barn wall last spring. This job was much simpler. They jacked up the house and laid down some new ibeams and support posts. One of the load bearing walls contained a window that had a missing lintel. The crew replaced that and did a few other structural improvements and then set the house back down on it's new support system. The crew knew how to adjust the poles so the walls and doorways looked straighter. They said they could make the walls perfectly straight, but Ralph said to adjust everything so the doors and windows all operated smoothly. It does look a lot better, some of the doorways in the house resembled a Tim Burton movie set.
It is good to know the house is stronger but I can think of a bunch of more fun uses for the amount we paid. The good thing is that now that the foundation is secured we can get to work on interior renovations.
So, the work on the basement left a bunch of old wooden boards that needed to be disposed of. We also had an old shed that was in disrepair. If one could make money raising yellow jackets, we would have kept it. Since that is not the case, we broke it up into pieces ( should have had the video camera for that btw- seems crazy, but I wasn't completely sure Ralph knew how to knock a shed over safely. In fact I was so freaked out at how he went about it that I forgot to take pictures.)
The weather on Tuesday gave us the opportunity to burn this stuff up. Getting the fire started was challenging, things were really damp. So I got to spend the day outside and watch the fire. At the end of the day some curious deer and turkeys came out of the woods. They were probably wondering what on earth we were doing.
Ohio has gotten a lot of snow this winter. We had a huge snowstorm last week followed by a deluge of rain and warm temperatures. Half of the town is under water. Above is a picture of the west side of town. The lake in the photo normally isn't there- that is usually a soccer field, a cornfield and the fairgrounds.
The last photo is a shot of the old grape vine before pruning. I will post more on the entire orchard later.
