a new coat

A new coat of snow that is. The rain turned to ice and then snow and this morning nice white layer over everything. I snapped a few shots while I stepped out briefly this morning.

Northish.

Southish.

Tonite, winds gusting to 40mph, lows around zero. Stay tuned, they're predicting a New Year's storm of 'historical significance'. Someone on the radio said something about 48 inches of snow in the mountains. We're talking about the right state here, Maine, not northern California, right? No I heard them right. I just hope we can make it Boston and back for New Year's Eve.

Next post, the Vehicular year in Review, a must read for the numerically inclined.

The Occasional Moose

Sometimes you're driving down a lonely dirt road in central Maine in the Winter and you spy a moose. Even more rare is that you're going slow enough and happen to have the camera in the truck, so you take a few terrible photos of said moose. This happened to me last week.




This was a particularly young gangly moose (not unlike myself) just hangin around looking for things too eat. My truck scared it just enough to make it amble away with a moose-like gait. The other guys I'm working with said they saw the moose again a few days later in the same area.

We're getting a small respite from the bitter cold of last week. For a few days it was right around zero during the day and very windy. Not good days to be working outside, but outside we worked anyway. I've learned an important lesson, that if the torso stays warm so do the hands and feet.

Three more days of work, then Christmas weekend, four days of glorious celebrating, sleeping and eating.

Another thing.

Another thing is that I love Fedex tracking. Love it. When I buy a tool online I can see exactly where it is and when it will get here.........perfect for the obsessive online tool purchaser.

The different thing I get to do today is demolish moldy sheetrock and install new. 20 inches of Blown-in fiberglass insulation = FUN for days of itching.

One thing.

One thing that I like about my vocation (house carpenter), is that I do something different just about every day, or at least every week.

Today I hung new wooden gutters with wrought iron brackets on a 150+ year old house. Yesterday I stripped old clapboards and did some roof framing. Tomorrow I'll watch the snow fall (5-8 inches followed by 1/4 inch of rain), plow some of it, and give an estimate on removing a leaky skylight. Always something different to do; always something new to learn.

We're headed toward the blue-print drafting stage of the house planning. More decisions to make.

And, tomorrow is my birthday.....I've passed all the childhood milestones into the obscurity of 'adulthood'.

First Snow

Well its not technically the first snow for us here on the Country Estate, but its the first snow to stick. Amidst all the busy-ness I had time to take stroll in the woods on the land on the Egypt Road this afternoon after church:

View looking Southish along Egypt Road towards Ben Brook

A spot near the northwest corner of the property.

a stream about 300' in from the road near the northeasterly property line

Wags, himself walking amongst the trees.

Largish rocks.

Can you see the photographer's shadow?

Well, I've been all alone here at the Country Estate (boo hoo :( whilst KT is in Dallas for a conference relating to home visiting and parenting education. It was a consolation to know that it was cold there too. No sunny warm vacation for her!

Closed!

Ah yes, the perfect convergence of cash, attorneys, real estate agents, signatures and paperwork. A property closing. My dad has closed on a 27-28 acre parcel right here in Alna Maine. On the banks of Ben Brook and the Streaming Stream. As its steward, I am now soliciting the greater public for names for the new estate. What is an estate without a name?

What would Churchill have been without Chartwell? Bilbo Baggins without Bag-End? Elrond without Rivendell? Andrew Jackson without the Hermitage? Jefferson without Monticello? Washington without Mount Vernon?

and Wagner without .........?

The land has undulating terrain with exposed granite in some spots. Trees include Eastern White Pine, Eastern Hemlock, White Oak, Red Oak, Silver Maple, Sugar Maple, Red Maple, Apple, Cherry, Birch and many others. There are several small and medium streams and a big babbling brook. We'll be building in the Spring a 24x36 two story colonial and later on, a good size barn.

looking good

Here are few shots of the job looking good:

Stain-glass window in custom casing. I went to the trouble of getting brass screws to install it, so they could take it out to clean it, and they asked me to counter sink them and fill the holes with putty!

Long skinny bedroom with vaulted V-match ceiling, pine trim, and goofy track lighting and sconces.

We created this loft for them over the closet and the hallway.

-Boarded two sides of a timberframe today. I like to keep my connection to timberframing alive, even if I'm doing mostly restoration and remodeling these days.

-We'll be headed down to Connecticut for the Thanksgiving weekend. Hopefully my dad and I will close on the land by Wednesday and we can get serious about house planning/clearing/building.

-The weather continues to be perfect New England Autumn style.

News from the Country Estate November 13, 2009

Hihowahya,

-the days are still warmish (low 50's) but the nights are almost all in freezing territory.

-the aforementioned land which my father had made an offer on is now under contract. I am acting as his eyes and ears here in maine. checking on things like soil conditions and driveway permits. Closing will occur before thanksgiving. Yes, we are excited.

-I finally got the snow plow out of storage, only to have no snowplowing accounts lined up. I've got a couple of leads, but no signed contracts.

-A slightly used Stihl 066 chainsaw with a 24" bar (and a 36") is now in my possession-in anticipation of having to clear land for our house.

-I have been doing carpentry work for a company called Sustainable Structures for the last month and a half. We're just wrapping up a remodeling job on Westport Island, a few pics from the job:

Living room with vintage* maple flooring, insulation and drywall.

*this maple flooring was milled from hundred year old logs pulled up from the bottom of Moosehead Lake. I hear they used to do this in Wisconsin, but banned it because it stirred up too many toxins which had settled to the bottom of the lakes.

This Anderson 400 series 36" circular window will house a custom-mounted stained glass window which the home-owners provided.

This bedroom used to have a dropped ceiling below the transom window at right. We raised the ceiling and installed pine V-match to follow the roof pitch and created a loft space above the closet and hallway. We also added dense-pack cellulose and foamboard insulation as well as new trim, flooring, windows and drywall.

Today we laid the vintage* birch flooring in the bedroom. The birch seemed to be of much higher quality than the maple. It will really "pop" after it is sanded and oiled.

-We'll wrap this job up by Wednesday next week and jump onto another project on Thursday.

Dad

Well, Dad Wagner finally made it out to Maine to see what kind of shack we live in and was politely surprised to find out that we live the good life (with 9'6" ceilings).

We ate and drank, talked, played cribbage, went for drives, looked at land, went to church, read books and what not. I think he had a nice time.

For me, it was probably the best time I've ever spent with my dad. Honest.

I think a special thing happens if and when you can finally see your father as a regular person just trying to play the hand that life has dealt him (same as all of us). Another special thing happens when your father looks at the life you've built and says he's proud of you.

Thanks Dad.

In other news, the aforementioned Dad put in an offer on 27 acres of nicely wooded land here in Alna. He may be visiting more often!

Running Round

Here on the country estate, we often have to take a whole day to run around. Thats today.

It looks like a beautiful fall day out there, but the day will be full of going to and fro.

The truck is full of construction debris from a remodel job that I spent all day hanging sheetrock on yesterday. It'll be mudded and taped by Wednesday, then we'll install the Tongue and Groove V-match ceiling in the bed room and the hardwood floors. Then trim and then Finished! On to the next one.

We keep losing chickens to coyotes or foxes or maybe hawks. We let them free-range the yard, because who can keep them penned up? But that is how the local predators get them. We don't have a yard dog and the cats won't tangle with a coyote or a fox. But one by one they're getting picked off. We'll have to get another batch of hatchlings. Speaking of chickens, getting chicken feed and bedding is on the list for today.

We're still a long way from being ready for snow to fly (Although, it snowed the other night, the biggest snowflakes I've ever seen.) The snow plow is still buried in the shed, and I've still got piles of lumber and other debris to cleanup before then.

And the house needs cleaning before my dad's arrival tonight.

News from the Country Estate 10/18/09

Greetings from the Country Estate!

A cold rain falls outside, soaking everything. Its a good night to be inside in a warm dry house.

Autumn is in full swing here in Maine at the Country Estate. We've been spending a good bit of time walking among the leaves painted by the Great Artist. Our search for land on which to start our own country estate has yielded two front runners both around 25 acres, one in Alna and one in Dresden. So we've been following orange survey ribbons marking boundaries and looking at trees quite a bit.

On the work front, I've been subcontracting for a growing company called Sustainable Structures while I plan my next long term move in my building and woodworking career. So many aspects to it and such a short life to master all of them!

I've decided that I want to raise some oxen. An Ox is simply a steer (a neutered bull bovine) which has attained the age of four years and, presumably, is trained to work. Oxen require a lot of work to care for them, but can work in situations a tractor couldn't dream of (yes, tractors do dream. they even have psychoanalysts to interpret their dreams). Some of the land we've looked at presents challenges as to how best to harvest timber, and a team of oxen would meet some of those challenges. Don't get me wrong, I still want a tractor. KT says I will NEED a tractor, but Oxen will help too.

Milk Crisis

Coming from Wisconsin, milk has always been part of my life in one way or another. Whether I'm having a four-serving bowl of Cheerios with a quart of milk in it, or a quart of vanilla yogurt, there has always got to be a large quantity of bovine lactose based food in the house.

A friend recently pointed out to me that the roots of milk consumption among the lower classes go back to the days of medieval feudalism in which the lord of the manor owned the meat of the livestock, but the peasants could take the milk. In those days, milk was the primary source of proteins and fats for those who could not afford to eat meat. That legacy lives on as we continue to pour skim on our wheaties every morning and add half and half to our French Roast.

This article refers to a so-called milk crisis of boom and bust cycles that hurt both customer and farmer. Just a few years ago, I would be sent to the Super America station with a five dollar bill to get TWO gallons of milk (1 skim, 1 2% if you were wondering). Our household drank those two gallons in about a day and a half, and subsequently would run to get more. By the time I moved to Maine the days of cheap milk were over, and we had gained a taste for Organic whole milk (especially the widely available Organic Valley milk, approx. $4 per half gallon), the price of milk had risen to over $3/gallon and higher. After drinking organic whole milk in glass bottles from somewhat local farms, we've found our own solution to the milk crisis: buying farm direct, raw/unpasteurized, fresh, whole, non-homogenized milk right from the bulk tank @ $4/gallon. Its pretty much the best milk you've ever tasted. The farm is located not 10 minutes from here on a corner in the road named after the excretion of the bovine (a picture of the sign is here)

Come to visit and we'll pour you a tall glass of this pristine bovine secretion!

Up with the Sun, 41 degrees fahrenheit.

Everyone needs a little holstein steer mooing at them when they come in the drive way.

And chickens to lay fresh eggs (that black rooster attacked me not two minutes after this photo. I was ready for him though, as I had a stick. Gotta show him whose boss.)


Recent porch restoration job. New Framing, post feet, decking and a couple steps.


The time comes every year to pull the boat out of the water. The back end of my truck is almost in the water, while there is a trailer underneath that boat strung out on 3o some feet of chain.


If you look close on the left, you'll see my friend Paul in a little dinghy leaning under the boat adjusting the jack-stands that stabilize the boat on the trailer.

After a couple hours we had her on the hard and the mast dropped (no easy task, but this time pretty painless) and all the rigging tied up and ready to roll. I dragged her to my house first because I had to go to work.



Today a new job starts on Westport Island.

In the soup.

We're in the soup tonight. After a bunch of great fall days, we're getting up to 1 1/4" of rain all at once. A dreary day in general in the Midcoast, but for us a very typical Sunday:

up at 7ish (which is sleeping-in for us)
cereal and milk
drive 40 miles while looking at 4 different properties for sale like this one
get coffees and a sticky bun at North Cottage Coffee
we've been to this church twice and will probably continue going
have lunch at the Big Top Deli in Brunswick
KT decides not to play soccer game (raining, tired etc)
Drive home
Sit in chairs
Decide to make soup from whatever vegetables and what not are in the kitchen
(Potato, turnip, fennel, carrot, green onion, garlic creamy-style soup)
eat soup.
Search for more properties, finding 30 more to look at.
walk all over house and laundry room trying to find wireless internet signal.
Shower
Blog
In bed by 8:15pm

A day in the life.

Went to the Common Ground Country Fair. It was a hoot, but we are all peopled out.

ok gtg

News from the Country Estate 9/18/2009

Working, dawn till dusk, six days a week as much as I can. Winter's comin' who knows what it will bring?

The chickens have been laying eggs out in the yard somewhere's. Bad chickens, Bad.

I scraped ice off my truck window yesterday morning.

That's it.

Laborious Day

A happy labor day weekend to you all.

I'll be celebrating by working most of the weekend.

Especially monday, laborious day.

Mist

A mist rises over the field to the north over freshly cut hay. The birds sing. And I can faintly hear the chickens clucking.

News from the Country Estate August 31

Greetings

Instead of flying, next time I'll just ship myself home in a big box. Now that would be a fun package to open on the porch!



Despite the so-called economic crisis, we've been keeping busy. Here are some pictures from a shed now dubbed the "studio". Note the custom plexi-glass gable windows.


I had the pleasure of trimming out a room for our friends over at Tandem Glass Studio and Gallery.
And the hens are finally laying eggs in earnest. A size comparison from biggest to average size egg.
I went out to find ELEVEN eggs in the coop this morning. I couldn't even hold them all, I had to put three in my pocket.

Well, we've got about 10 days of nice weather ahead, so if you need us, we'll be outside.

w

Flying while bearded.

A little belated grousing about flying and the attendant security rig-a-ma-role.

So I'm flying home from Milwaukee, with a couple of smallish oil lamps with no oil in them, just glass, in my carry on baggage. Of course I get my bag searched at the security check, I was expecting that....

Then I'm waiting to board the flight, still looking a little sleepy eyed (6:40am flight), and this TSA minion keeps eyeing me up, then, right when I stand up to join the boarding line, he comes over and asks to search my bag again. Since he has the power to summarily detain me with meaningless questions and make me miss my flight, I assent. I tell him this is the second time I've had my bag gone through. He gives me some speech about if I've had the propaganda, I mean, training that he's had I would understand the tactics of OUR enemies. All the while, he's not even searching my bag. He barely even opens it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been profiled. Currently I wear a beard, some would call it an Amish style beard, that is no mustache, about three quarters of an inch long. Other than that, I'm wearing a plaid shirt and a hat that looks like a John Deere hat (it actually says John Moose and has a jumping moose). Other than the beard, I basically look like a farmer on holiday......

blah blah blah. people wonder why I don't like to fly. The total loss of the rights of personal privacy and free speech. And the right to wear a beard.

That is all.

W

Heartland

Greetings,

I find myself in the land of corn and beans and big trucks and flat land. I'm in the Land of Lincoln with my kin, some of them anyway. Seeing pictures I haven't seen or have forgotten, hearing old stories for the first time. Its good to be here.

A long day of travel brought me hence. Despite my continuing grudge against flying ( mostly due to the ridiculousness of the security measures and the ever present TSA (Thousands Standing Around)), my last two jaunts out to Milwaukee have been nothing but pleasant. Part of it is due to my willingness to splurge on creature comforts like the New York Times, hot coffee, hot breakfast, and a shoe-shine I think, but in both cases the flights have been genuinely pleasant and easy experiences. I still prefer to drive out in the Mercedes if I have the time, but who has the time? I've been crazy busy with work for the last six weeks or so! What recession?

Also, the feeling of still being on the boat is gone.

w

After two days.

After two days and sixty miles of sailing, I am getting seasick sitting here on land. Everytime I close my eyes, the room starts swaying back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth......

A friend and I cruised on up to Butter Island for lunch then down to Carver Cove on Vinalhaven to meet some friends at their cabin. A beautiful clear night spent rocking back and forth in the cove. Tasty breakfast and then a jaunt out to Isle au Haut and back to Carver Cove to drop off a passenger. A tight squeeze motoring through the Fox Island Thorofare and a gale coming out into Penobscot Bay. 3 to 5' seas. A calm ride back into Rockland Harbor. Home.

A day back home and off to Milwaukee.

W

News from the Country Estate July 26

Greetings from the Country Estate:

Summer made a cameo appearance this week with temps in the 80's and high humidity. The gloomy skies of clouds, fog, and rain more typical of this year's summer returned however, with today barely reaching 70 degrees and intermittent rain showers. On Friday we received more than an inch of rain in five hours during a 'nor'easter'. KT and I did some rainy day shopping and saw the latest Harry Potter movie for a matinee price. An ok film. Just ok.

During a break in the rain last week I was finally able to install some relatively hard to find shock absorbers on my sailboat trailer. They are actually snowmobile shocks, but they're just the right size for minimizing radial oscillation due to cornering. They were about $20/a piece and non-returnable, so I was pretty glad when they did the trick.

After strapping the boat down, I was ready to bring the vessel home. The drive was relatively uneventful and boat, truck and driver arrived in good spirits.

Now in storage under a tarp next to another in progress boat project, she waits for some more time and money to tackle a few projects before she is seaworthy once more.

The end is in sight for the building project that never seems to end. Here we see the 34'x51' timber frame home after two days of raising work. There are only about 8 lifts left, just four dormer assemblies, four rafters and a dormer truss on the far side of the building. The second floor has 19 feet of headroom at the peak of the roof. That's a great height if you are going to house the raptor exhibit at the zoo....We'll build whatever they want.

A hen left a peace offering of a single egg on our deck after both roosters spent the afternoon digging up my tomato patch and fouling our deck. I immediately fried the peace offering to over-easy and partook of it with salt and pepper.

Probably the freshest egg I have ever eaten.

Inspired by my fresh egg experience, I went out to the garden and harvested a bunch of lettuce, some scallions, and a turnip for a mid-afternoon feast. I chopped and fried the turnip and scallions, adding two fresh eggs to make a country scramble.

I regret not planting four times as much in the garden, but who knew the weather would be this wet?

I spent the afternoon studying poultry slaughter techniques in preparation for the next time the roosters decide that its a good idea to hang out and crow by our window at five in the morning or dig up the tomatoes again.

Tomorrow its off to work again thankfully and hopefully all week.

On, Finally.

The day finally came to get my boat off its keel-blocking and stands and onto the bright blue boat trailer. With lots of help from my friend Paul (the boat's previous owner), especially with the welding part, the trailer sits ready to receive the load. A fixed-keel sailboat trailer has to do two things: support the weight of the boat on the keel (the pressure-treated keel-rest in the middle) and keep the boat from tipping over while standing and driving (the steel tubes braced in two directions; the tubes are from old staging sections. We're always recycling). On the steel tubes will go big threaded screws with a plywood pad on them. When I have the time I'm going to paint the support stands.

The trick is to get a tippy boat on to a trailer without tipping it over.

First, you have to jack the boat up so it is at roughly the same height as the trailer, then pull the trailer as close and as straight up to the boat as possibly. Next, more jacking, and lifting by the boat stands, pulling the trailer back etc. When the keel is resting partially on the trailer, its time to put the truck in neutral, rig up some beefy come-a-longs and actually drag the trailer under the boat. This is possibly until most of the boat's weight actually rests on the trailer, then the come-a-longs actually drag the boat onto the trailer.

With some sweat, patience, and proverbial and actual elbow grease, a 19.5 ' 3000 lb boat can be safely deposited on a custom trailer. Bought retail, a custom trailer like this would cost in excess of $3500. Not including time for labor, I have roughly$500 into this one. Including labor, its probably more like $1500, still a pretty good value

It almost looks like its sitting too far back, but the center of weight is almost exactly between the two axles, right where it should be. Its actually sitting a little heavy on the front. And from the front.

Despite appearances, she's not quite ready to take a dip. First, the trailer needs some kind of stabilizing shock absorbers to counter the oscillating bounciness of the coil springs (its a 1960's era chassis). Second, I have a new hitch coupling. Third, as you can see there is no tongue jack. Fourth, like in the previous post about sailboat launching, It needs a little wheel on the tongue to let it down into the water far enough for floating. All that is just for the trailer to be safe and functional. The to do list on the boat is a mile long, but not all of it is necessary for a few day-sails.

This afternoon we're going sailing again on Paul's boat. We'll probably just bop around Rockland, Rockport, Camden area.

News from the Country Estate July 7

greetings,

Forgive my clumvsy typeing as I had the geatr fortune of satisfyiung my curiosity about how stapling my finger to a roof feels...it only throbs most of the time.

It rains again, no surprise.

The shed project progresses nicely:


Wall and roof framing in progress. The big openings are for yet to be determined door/windows.

Door and windows bought, roof sheathed.

Tarpapering the roof.

Windows purchased 1/2 price at the Building Materials Exchange.

Gable overhang.

What my sailboat will look like when its done. This is a Bristol 19/Corinthian

KT takes a photo at the end of the dock at Owl's Head as we prepare to head out sailing on Sunday. We sailed with our friend Paul to Islesboro and back. It was a gorgeous day.

Before that we spent a few days down on Cape Cod celebrating KT's aunt's wedding. The weather was mostly great. Then we headed up to Boston to watch the fireworks from a roof top.....

well the rain continues.....