Winter has come to the farm, and is making no apparent effort to leave anytime soon. It started snowing the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and hasn’t really let up except for a day or two of rain. While it is beautiful, outside of a couple of nights right at Thanksgiving, it’s been warm, so we’ve been able to get out and play.
Since you last checked in, the front sill beam of the barn has been replaced, and the guys are working on placing the cap stones and preparing the barn to be lowered onto its new foundation. Then they can back fill and finish off the grading in front so we can bring our old cars home and tuck them in for the winter (they’re in a friend’s barn currently). You can see that the sill beam under the barn door was rotted and partially missing in the first image below;
We were able to get the new permanent propane tank installed and buried. Running on fumes and not sure when they would be able to come fill it (with the Thanksgiving holiday coming up and single-digit temps expected), we tried to conserve as much as possible, so Jenny made breakfast on the coals of the hearth. Thankfully, they were able to come out and fill it the day before Thanksgiving, so we were able to breathe a sigh of relief. The final grade will cover all of the tank and riser, but for the very top cap for service and refilling. Hopefully, we can get through most of the winter on this one tank before needing a refill.
Jenny has been fully re-embracing the Yankee lifestyle she grew up in, and has been making furniture from scraps she’s found in the barn- her latest is a dog bed for Tennessee and a side table for the sitting area upstairs.
Allie came home for the long holiday weekend, so we enjoyed having her for a few days. We spent Thanksgiving with some friends, and had a lovely day. We also spent some time snow-hiking with the pup and watching Christmas movies, and we took in our first New England antique auction.
One of the things we’ve looked forward to is furnishing the house as Daniel and Abigail would have. As historically accurate as we can imagine anyway- resources are pretty thin in that regard. We drove over to Vermont for an auction this past Saturday that was offering the estate of a local man who started a company that had a lot of rock blasting contracts when the interstates were built in the area. He was an avid collector of many things, from Remington statues, pistol canes, geodes, and antique furniture. While there were maybe 80-100 people present, it appeared no one was there for the furniture, so bargains were to be had. We brought home a couple of pieces circa 1760- a tavern table and a four-drawer chest. Both are now in the hearth room- the tavern table will be used as a dining table, and the chest will hold linens and serving wares. While neither are in immaculate condition, or even likely with all their original parts (the drawer fronts of the chest were “pegged” where the original handles would have been), they are both with beautiful patina, and are appropriate to our home. We also picked up a lovely side table that looks to be a bit later- maybe early-to-mid 19th century, along with a later tavern table that we can have in front of the hearth, as we like to play cards in front of the fire in the evening.
That’s it for now. We hope that you all had a nice Thanksgiving holiday, and that you have a blessed Christmas season! Leave us a comment if you have any questions, or just want to say hi.
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