Boy, sometimes the shortbread is dry, but I just think you were born on the wrong side of the double wide.

The air of cool September.

The house as it is now. Actually, I can breath a little. I am very far behind, but grandpa helped push boards for the subfloor through the the planer the other day. The Joists are now straight and nailed down. So actually I can start throwing those boards uptop, and start nailing them in. It'll be nice to actually tie the house together, and start to winterize it. The rafters will cost $530 altogether. It was less than I expected. I ordered 100 2x6's to frame in between the post and beam downstairs. It hybridizes the style of the building, but will make the finish work quicker and the insulation easier.
Not bad for joists. Grandpa and I cut them out, he milled them. I notched and threw them up. M.J came over to help one day too. It'll look nice with the second floor decking on. Hip wall and rafters soon too I hope, but that is still a couple weeks out. Haven't worked on the house much this week. Busy, chicken gutting, picked up cord wood, etc. and getting out of work around nine has been painful. But it is going well. Friday will be a big day.
In need of shave....at least there's half a smile there..


Well the meat birds are slowly coming to an end. I will have a lot more time when they are all finaly gone. The one benefit right now is that they are fertilizing a lot of field. Still have 250- so five weeks of slaughtering if I don't double up on a week or two. Still hauling water. Once the meaties are gone then the hauling won't be so bad, twice a week instead of 5 days a week.
( and just to throw a sales pitch in there, they are delicious. Believe me if it isn't pasture raised then it isn't chicken. Heck, if you order enough you might even get a date with a half shaven, slightly grumpy farmer guy. Or I can throw a grandpa/gramma or wife in if needed to seal the deal!)

Crappy shade shelter in front, but a hell of a nice picture of the field. These end of summer/fallish days make me dislike going to work. $igh.

To be the strut joining the roof and floor of the truss

Got a couple students over to give me a hand today. They didn't like the idea of blocking up the carrying timber unless if more people came, so Kat and Dave came over, but by the time they got their my grandfather had showed up and pretty much said- put the fing thing up. God he's great.
Yesterday went to Durgin and Crowell for subfloor- not what I really wanted but the price was right. Then grandpa and I worked on the mill. He had cut out most of the joists- we loaded them, then cut 2x4's and 6's- reloaded onto my truck that night, unfortunately everyone left by the time I needed to unload the truck onto the house, but hey- all the joists are there, the timber is in place- one bathroom wall framed in, and straightened one wall. So straighten the other, joists go up. But I am going to bed.

Good walk spoil

Took Advantage of rainy day. Went and visited my brother up in Vermont. *sigh* I want to move to VT. Anyone want to buy a small farm in NH?

Played a couple rounds of golf at his course. He's the superintendent. Keeps his course nice. Greens are gorgeous. If you want to throw off his golf game, scuff your feet on his greens. See what happens...

Kosher Meal Fatigue

I have wanted to try a Kosher meal all summer. If you don't know what a Kosher meal is then imagine a microwaveable tv dinner without any cartoons or iconic marketing smeared across the cover. Remove any semblences of sugar or desert and your main entrees become Roast Chicken with Rice, Salisbury Steak or Filet of Sole. The meals are fully cooked in 5 minutes in a microwave, and then brought out with a sealed package of plastic utensils and a plastic wrapped napkin to our guests who are "Kosher". I decided upon the Roast Chicken and Rice- mostly because it was the gluten free option. Curiousity in the summer led me to read the ingredients. There wasn't any wheat. For the summer one of those frozen packs laid in our freezer for me till I opened one tonight. I placed it in the microwave, and read for the five minutes as our Orthodox meal quickly thawed and bubbled its way from a Frigidaire hibernation to a hot, perky meal. I instantly didn't like the Kosher. I burned my finger when taking it from the microwave. The plastic felt like the plastic that you would peal away from a morgue or an old church that no one visits anymore if morgues and churches with abandoned choirs came plastic wrapped and frozen. It was exactly that type of plastic. I used a metal fork. I forgoed the full Kosher experience by using one of our forks. Honestly, I like a metal fork; plastic ones just don't have any backbone.

And then I started to get sad. I am not sure how to say how I felt, but I think loneliness is sitting in a dining hall after work by yourself eating a microwaved Kosher meal. I wondered if maybe somehow I could reKosher the little glorified TV dinner. Rewrap it in its odd plastic wrap, and place it back in the freezer. If I was a Kosher meal I would want someone to give me a second chance and wrap me back up like that morgue that sits next to the abandoned church that no one uses. Or maybe I am plastic wrapped already. It could be that I am at a stage in my Kosher meal lifeline where I am plastic wrapped and frozen. Or maybe I am thawed out, and have been thawed out for a while. I wonder how many people look at me and stick their tiny Kosher forks at my side dishes and pick apart the entree? I think I'll ask to go back into the freezer- morgue and church wrap and all; to take the time to see it over. To watch everyone go by and slowly grow old. I think frozen or thawed we still grow old, and whiny. We grow old and whiny sitting late after work eating an antiquity of orthodox culinary law that has been reduced to a three bay piece of microwaeable plastic, and whose contents quite honestly taste a lot like the dining hall food. (I don't think any of the cooks read this, and honestly by this point they would have stopped reading)

Elysium of the roofless. Hence my happiness at last.-S.B.

There's a cold November for the Heart

I remember it rained so much one day my baby sister hopped out of the old Volkswagen rabbit and landed both her feet in a mud puddle, which wouldn't have been bad cept she had forgotten that she had taken her shoes off in the car. She started crying so loud. I just slid over on the seat and got out the other side, and ran to the house. She must have stood there in the middle of the drive way screamin' her head off for most of the cartoons that morning. I don't think she ever saw those episodes.

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons

I told my grandfather about the perfect farm I found in VT (I could have afforded it, and it is a 70+ acre field). Anyways, he then mentioned that he walked my great grandmother's field the other day. The property was 250 acres, Colonial and barn. It was sold as an estate a few years ago after my ggmothers passing. It was of course logged, and plans were made for a 20+ lot subdivision. And I have been wondering to what purpose?

The property is supposed to be auctioned off in the not too distant future. After being completely logged- the economy tanked and the subdivision never happened. So now the current owner is in foreclosure- the back field was used as a landing. My grandfather said it was gravelled, and torn up. Imagine running your hands through the soil of a field that took thousands of years to slowly grow and instantly its gone. There is a wide gravel road running down the center of the main field, and every mature tree has been cut. The beautiful 18th century colonial is in disrepair and unfortunately degraded from neglect over the last few years, and for what? So that someone could strip cut all the trees and still end up in foreclosure? So those trees grew for the last 80-150 years so that someone could be broke after cutting them all down? So a trucker could have work for a winter driving back and forth to Canada hauling logs just to take advantage of an exchange rate difference? So that another farm can disappear in a withering landscape? So many times I am wondering who is left the winner as we scramble around in our hurried dashes; driving up route 11 to be late for washing dishes or for someone else to get up each day for work because they are telling themselves they only have 8 more years before retirement.

Retire now. Its just another suburb- a driveway for the missing trees.

Have measured out my life in coffee spoons