September 16, 2006

he 'Down to the Roots' magazine website has been down for about 9 days now. It is acting like a Yo-Yo.. it is there and then it isn't and then it looked like it was all there and none of the forums nor by blog was there. When it appeared for a glimpse for a second, I hurriedly cut and pasted all my blog to save it. There is a week or so of September which is missing and gone forever.

I am working on a new website and hopefully soon it will be up.

 I got very little sleep last night from having this stupid cold and trying to see what could be done with the DTTR website. Woke up at 6 am and started to dig 2 rows of potatoes. We need to move our weather station a bit as I got up at 4 am and 5 am and it never got below 2.2C and I know there was a killing frost last night. The last 2 nights we have been lighting the woodstove in the greenhouse and it is staying above freezing in there. Brought pumpkins  and onions in the night before last working out there with a windup flashlight.

I got 'Kid' moving at 9 am and got him to help me dig the remaining 5 rows of potatoes. We got more than I expected due to the lack of water to them this year and was surprised at how large and uniform they were. “'Teenager' broke a bone in his hand 9 days ago-ish and so he was banned to the house while the rest of us were working outside. He volunteered to fold all the clothes and did a couple more loads since we got 2 more loads of water hauled in this morning.

My bf fired up the tractor and put several more loads of dirt over the top of the root cellar. There is now a noticeable temperature and humidity difference even if the door is not on yet. We have many many more loads of dirt to go on the cellar yet to go, but we are at a standstill for a couple minutes until we make some sort of barrier to hold some of the dirt back on the right side of the cellar.

Now thinking on the door, I started measuring the door frame interior 57X36 wide and started cutting planks for it. One plank needs to be ripped 3-something inches shorter, but we will not cut it until the door is made. I fired up my forge for the first time in 5 years and found out that I missed the smell of the coal (unless it was REALLY heading my way) and the TING of the anvil.  "Kid", since he was messing around and not doing what he was supposed to be doing in the time he was supposed to be doing it, was pressed into becoming a blacksmith's apprentice.  His job was to turn the handle on my bellows. I was still feeling icky and today was probably not the best day to actually start blacksmithing again after 5 years. I just played around to get the feel of it again.. it felt great. Tomorrow I will play with making the hinges.