Chicken Feed and New Roofs

It's been an exciting week. 

There's the grain bin's continual progress.

Above was shot on Tuesday. 

I elected to hoe some beds instead of helping with the grain bin construction!

Below on Wednesday. 

Look closely you'll see Josh's hand sticking out of the center!

This grain bin will save us from driving two hours twice monthly to pick up feed for our poultry - the layers, the broilers and, eventually, the turkeys. 

It holds over four tons of grain, which is delivered to us, saving us on gas money and time wasted in the car! 

It's a pretty big deal and was almost single-handedly constructed by Josh. He would argue and say that the other boys helped out, but he was the one who knew the instruction manual frontwards and backwards. 

Also this week we had our very first trip to the Portland Farmers' Market!

I was the lucky dog that got to accompany Daniel on his inaugural run to the Wednesday market on Monument Square. Although we don't have anything growing yet to be harvested, we did scrounge up some overwintered parsnips, some celeriac from the root cellar, plus tons of fresh eggs and meat. 

Daniel and I woke up before 5am in order to reach Portland and set up by the market's start at 7am. It was the first time I had actually seen the sun rise over the cedar trees on the farm. 

In the midst of all this we have still managed to accomplish lots of transplanting this week. Above you'll see Will toiling over our first bed of spinach. 

The greenhouse is not as cram-packed as it was last week. And today I got some tomatillos seeded, summer is definitely on the way. 

The most noticeable event at the house the past few weeks has been a sizable carpentry/timber-framing project to reinforce the roof. A local timber framer, Robbie, has led an amazing effort to make the apprentice's part of the house more sturdy and today, we started on the roof itself! 

Will and I (but mostly Will) worked to pry off the shingles from a roof whose angle is a bit more steep than would appear at first glance. 

Robbie and Will then pried off the old, rotted boards and replaced them. 

Although at the moment (6:42pm on Thursday) about half of our roof is still gone! 

We definitely have a much airier house today and thankfully there's no rain in the forecast for the weekend!

Enjoy the roofs over your head folks and send us some good wishes that we'll get ours back soon!