the latest

Well friends, you wouldn't believe the weather here!! It rains a couple times a week, it's very cool, sometimes even chilly in the early morning, and other than for a bizzare 3 day "heat wave" 2 weeks ago (it got up to 96 for a few minutes! almost felt like home), it hasn't really snuck up past 80 yet this year.  It is really, really beautiful. we feel really lucky.

The yurt is moving along. We have the water heater up and are working on the plumbing, I converted the natural gas stove to run on propane. not too hard. tomorrow justin and I will finish (fingeres crossed) all the plumbing, which means its time to scrub the very cool but very disgusting stainless sink from the neighbors old dairy bottling room. the dairy's been out of use for a decade.
We did run into a pretty big glitch with the water catchment system which is supposed to be our source of bathing and dishwashing water.  She ordered the yurt with the catchment system built in to the roof and Justin and I have been simply baffled trying to figure out how to set it up, figuring out what we're working with. none of the diagrams from the manufacturer looked anything like what we had here.  Turns out they sent Julie the wrong yurt 3 years ago and she never realized it to call the company and get the correct yurt sent.  Someone at Cornell University had julie's green yurt with a water catchment system, and we have their red yurt without a water catchment system.  awesome. funny at least, but quite an inconvenience.

so yurt progress-  we're actually been asked to make sure we're out of the house by thursday.  we wont have a bathroom or kitchen ready by that time so we'll have to hike down to the for the basic ammenities.  you might remember from a post a month ago that this is exactly what i wanted to avoid but we dont really think there's much better option. we'll see how it goes!

We had our very first farm stand last weekend!  4 people stopped over the 4 hours we were open and we made very little money, but we sold EVERY vegetable we harvested!! That felt good as we had low expectations for the first day.  We plan on setting it up to be self-serve, just leave your payment in a jar, so that we dont have to sit for several hours when we could be weeding or planting or changing sheets, checking out guests, and cleaning the kitchen.  I forgot to take a picture, and it was so beautiful! I'll make sure to take on this weekend.  Oh! my MOM and AUNT will be here helping, so it will be super fun.


Oh! An explanation for the delay in postings:  our computer really, very seriously and irritatingly, refuses to work for more than 2-5 minutes. After over two months of working with the Apple company to fix it under warranty, they finally agreed to let us mail it in for them to fix it rather than instucting me over the phone in countless diagnostic tests, disk upgrades, and futile bizzare key stroke combinations. So i hope hope hope they send it back in excellent working condition.


Soooo until the next post, here's some photos for you to enjoy.

These are the very first eggs our chickens layed!! check out the size of that one in the middle.  Justin ate that one- it had two yolks, which isn't all that uncommon, but for the very FIRST egg the lady layed! OUCH!

two of our boss' dogs. they are sweet, but goofy :)

Some baby St. John's Wort, which I started from seed. I am very proud! most of my herbs are doing great!

check out our toilet!! not quite finished

putting on the door

little olga!!