Wednesday, September 24, 2008

it's a ....



House!!! The truck arrived bright and early this morning with all the timbers for the house. Since the drive was too tight of a turn, it was just as easy to bring the "lull" out and grab the bundle of timbers and bring them into the house site.







Ed couldn't help himself and had to open one of the bundles and take a peek. They are beautiful and smell so good!!!

The "builders" got the cellar walk out wall framed up yesterday. Today was a lot of "fuss work".. just getting everything measured and plumbed... when I left this afternoon, they were beginning to get the "deck" put on the foundation.






Course you always have to have a little "playtime" on the farm. Ed's little John Deere tractor has been acting up. He's pretty sure that it's just a matter of old gas, but still the ol' gal wouldn't start. Being a "crank start"... it would have been alot of work to get her going... so, brother Bill brought up his old tractor.. and with a bit of pulling and some fresher gas....








he got her running again!!!

say cheeze!!!



Doesn't this guy just make you smile???

This is Beau, he belongs to Dan (one of the site crew) "poor" Beau was sent to the truck, because he thought that the 6 inch pipe that the men were laying on the ground for the septic system.. would be fun to "retrieve"!!! I wish I had taken a picture of this big goofy guy running around with a length of pipe!!!! He only thought he was helping!!!!





And this handsome guy is Oden... Tony's dog. Oden is being trained as a "blood scenting dog".... here in Maine, you can get special permits to train your dog to track wounded game (like deer).... at the moment there are only a handful of dogs that have their certificates to do this work.... Oden is just a year old... and I'm not sure when he can get his certificate... but Tony is working on his training right now...
I do have some views on the whole hunting thing... but the idea of knowing that some poor deer won't be left to die for no reason.. sits well with me. If Oden can track it down, so that it is not "wasted".... I think that is a pretty good thing. I didn't realize that the "blood scent" thing existed.. I dare say Tony will be called out on a number of cases. But in the meantime... Oden is happy to be with Tony.. doing "digger work".....

chuggin along

Now that the "site crew" has the foundation all back filled and ready for the builders.... they move their attention to the septic system. And again, Tony amazes me with his abilities to run that big "digger" and put everything just so!!!!

The other thing that is great fun, is the number of dogs that come along with the men. All of them had asked me if it was ok to bring their dogs to the work site... course, you don't have to check with me about dogs!!! And from a "trainers" point of view, I have had great fun watching all of them. I wish more dogs could have this sort of thing in their lives..... because they are so busy all day long, there is no doubt in my mind that they "crash" when they get home at night. Because the men have their minds on other things, these dogs have to "stay around" and have good recalls.... they all do!!! And because they do get to travel about, they have learn to be very social and good.... as of yesterday, there were four dogs on site.... two were "intact" males, and there wasn't one bit of trouble anywhere. Expect they do get under foot once on twice!!!!!

Before they leave the job, Tony assures me that my "back yard" will be "pretty"!!! They will cover everything over, bring in the loam... and seed it to boot!!! Might be that I will have a little grass growing before cold weather!!!!






Speaking of grass, the "boys" have done quite a job with the grazing area that we set up. As you know I was a little worried about getting them back on grass, and had a pretty small area for them to start out on.


Well, they made pretty quick work of it, to the point where we had to bump the paddock area out.








Pretty easy to see where the "old paddock" ends and the new one begins!!! Needless to say they were very happy to move into the new area....guess that "formula" of one acre per horse seems pretty realistic.....