New Roof Week has Started! - Day 1

31 years on a 25 year roof, it's about time for a new one!  The north side  of the garage acutal was covered in moss and has little trees growing on it.

moss covered garage

The material arrived on Friday, Work began today.  These guys are wearing hoodies in the 95 degree heat.  It keeps them cool, by keeping the body moisture inside, like air conditioning.

Moving right along. Starting with putting on the weatherproofing & new shingles.

After the shingles were removed I went up into the attic.  It was sort of magical with the sun shing through the nail holes

By 4:30, the main front roof was complete and the Laundry-Mudroom area was strippped and started to be shingled.  Fast workers in this awful heat of 95 degrees.

This years Garlic Harvest

Decided to harvest our garlic crop.  We ended up with about 300 bulbs mostly soft neck and 1 variety of hard-neck.  Soft-neck lasts longer and has smaller cloves, the hard neck has the garlic scapes, doesn't last as long but is great for baked garlic because it has only 4-5 large cloves.  Drying them inside on the fireplace mantle.

This was a test pull a week ago to see if they were ready. This is a hard neck variety

300 bulbs drying on the fireplace mantle.

Can't wait to start eating them, Friend & family will a get a package in the mail!

Eastern Phoebe Birds in the Garage - 3rd Straight Year

For three years in a row, these birds have built their nest and hatched a family in our garage. Each year they add on to the nest making it bigger. I can't go fishing any more!  I had though they were barn Swallows, but after extensive research Elly found out that they are Easter Phoebes

Eastern Phoebes learning to fly. Mom shows baby how to fly and then the baby tries it for herself. Really Cool! This is in my garage and has gone on for 3 years now. I think they may be leaving us soon!

 

 Some close-up pictures.

 A few weeks after this family moved out of the nest, another family moved in after adding to the nest again.  At fist we thought that this family had "sub-let" the nest to another couple.  But our research showed that it was the same couple that came back to raise a second family.  It seems that the Eastern Phoebe has two broods each year. Cool!
 

Posting Again after a long Hiatus

Haven't posted here in a while, over a year ago.  Time to start posting again. I got wrapped up in Facebook, but would like to continue this blog.

We survived the winter and made it to the Spring

 
During the winter Our backyard seemed to become the feeding ground for lots of wild turkeys.

Now they are all gone except two lonely males. The large male and the females are probably tending to the babies now.  Maybe they will show up with the babies in tow soon.

 Our garlic garden is doing quite well with 6 different varieties of garlic (1 hard-neck and 5 soft neck).  They were planted in October and should be ready for harvesting in the next few weeks.

Valentines Day Storm

Looking down the driveway

Driveway before I cleared it

Clearing the Driveway

Clearing the front walk.  At least 4 feet of snow on the ground

Driveway after I cleared it.

House from the bend in the road

End of my driveway

Looking up the right of way. hasn't been cleared yet

Driveway all cleared

Front walks.

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Blizzard 2015 - Round 3

The forecast for this pas weekend was 14-18" of new snow.  It was supposed to snow from Saurday through Monday afternoon.  Guess what, that's what it did.

Elly & the snow blower clearing off thr rear patio

Looking down the driveway after it was cleared

Mountain of snow at end of driveway

The back walk

The chicken coop & greenhouse

Blizzard 2015 - Round II

3 days after the "Blizzard 2015", we had another storm that dropped 81"-20" of new snow on top of what we already had on the ground.

 Took me 3 clearings to get all of the snow out of the way.

Driveway from the road

Driveway looking towards the road

Driveway looking at the house

This is what Bean Road & our right of way looks like Today Tuesday, 2/3/2015.

The curve at the top

Looking up the road from our driveway

Looking up the right of way

Looking down Bean Rd.

The right of way from Bean Rd.

Looking down Bean Rd.