Sorting posts, building a platform, surveying

Once again it's been a long time between posts. That's because it's been a very busy summer so far.

I have been scraping and painting the last section of the eaves in the house in preparation for selling it. We held the last yard sale last weekend and got rid of a lot of stuff that we won't need in the future downsized house. We have rented a 10X20 storage room about 7 miles from Raccoon Creek and have moved about 2/3's of the home's contents to it or my daughter-in-law's garage. We still have bedroom, living room and dining room furniture in the house, but the dining room suite is for sale.

I have begun turning the front yard back into the standard, cookie cutter yard like every other one on the block by digging up all of the perennials in preparation for planting grass. Just the space between the sidewalk and the street has yielded about 60 large pots of plants. Many were sold at the yard sale, and more will be sold on the weekends we are at home, but most will go with us to Raccoon Creek. The rest of the front yard I estimate will yield about 200 more pots of perennials. I don't know how I'm going to deal with the hundred or so bulbs whose locations are only marked by their appearance in the spring.

Last week we finally put our most important agreements on how we will develop Raccoon Creek Community on one page. Most of the decisions had already been written in minutes of various meetings, but even we couldn't have found them all easily if we had to, so putting them on one page was a useful exercise. You can read them here.

Sunday we did the final survey for the property transfer. Approximately two acres have been added to place all of the planned east side pond within the community's boundaries. We were concerned that a future transfer of adjacent property to a land trust might cause some of the pond to become off limits to Raccoon Creek Community members due to "liability issues."

Today we began to sort through the barn parts that have been stored on the site since last fall. The plan is to lay out each bent (five posts, two post extensions and about 10 beams each) and decide which members have to be replaced. As each bent is inventoried it will be restacked as a set. When all six bents are catalogued, the process of making replacement parts will begin. We will then have to get really busy to get the 30 foundation piers built and the foundation walls between them before the new timber frame members are made aqnd the barn erection can go ahead.

If you are interested in the timber framing process, these next few weeks would be a great time to visit the site. We hope to use some trees from the pond site as replacement material for the old posts and beams we cannot use. These will be pulled from the woods using draft horses. Dates for that work will be set soon.

Finally today, using 15 discarded wooden pallets and eight @4X8 sheets of salvaged particle board, a platform was constructed to make tenting on the site for the next few months much more attractive. We will be able to leave a tent up without worrying about water seeping in when it rains, and without the usual lumps under our bedding. There is plenty of room for other tents from time to time.

If you'd like to come by to visit the site while we're there, send a note to the address in the column to the left of this entry.