saturday’s amazingly successful work party, in photos

first, the awwww that started the weekend off— and Tattersall, the pineapple-upside-down-cat.

Saturday’s work party was extremely successful. We were lucky enough to have the help of two students from the Sustainability Studies program at UNM, who were starting on their community involvement hours for their SUST 134 class. Both were wonderful people and helped quite a lot. The primary project on the day was to move the kitchen shed, for the third and final time, to its resting place beside the barn. Rev & Jaime masterminded the proces of wrangling this large and heavy object onto the trailer, and we then drove it into the barnyard and backed it up as close as possible to the target location. Alas, it still had to be rotated 180 degrees so the door would face the correct direction (it was not possible to rotate it before putting it on the trailer, as the narrow space it previously occupied prevented that). So we had to get it off the trailer, perform a 3-point turn –with a SHED, mind you, we’re driving a shed here, which does not exactly have power steering– and get it as close to the barn wall as possible.

we moved it Egyptian-log-rolling style. Or rather, these guys did, and i stood around taking photographs.

Amber, watching the final adjustments to the relocated shed:

The shed looks great in its new home, which for some reason I did not photograph, so you’ll have to either wait to see that or come visit.

Then we adjusted the yurt roof, scootching it over a little bit so the gutters would drain properly. that was frustrating and not particularly successful. we did move the roof, and the gutters do drain *slightly* better than before–it moves most of the way around before stopping (due to water not flowing uphill even slightly) now–but it doesn’t do what i want, and we made a small tear in the seam while we were doing it. i gave up in frustration and put the chimney back on—at least now we are ready and able to have fires for winter, even if i still have to negotiate with my rainwater catchment about its general misbehavior.

meanwhile, had spent the entire day supervising assorted pots of boiling water, resulting in another counter-full of jars of canned apples, and much applesauce. We got all the apples out of both freezers, thereby freeing to fill the Caer Aisling freezer up with newly processed apples again. Meanwhile, corn got picked and hung out to dry:

and the coyote fence is as finished as it can be until we get some more latillas.

and

we will probably wire some of the sticks that are too thin to be good latillas onto the back, crossways, so that they form a stronger visual barrier. also, Rev and Kit are going to make sunflowers out of cottonwood sticks, and wire them onto the front of the two panels that flank the opening there where the gate will go. that is going to look good!

many thanks to everybody who came out to make the day work!