Demolition!

Demolition of the 1800's section of the house is underway and there are lots of surprises. 

This was the main bathroom and a bedroom.

 It's difficult to see but many of the timbers used in this section were from an old barn and you can see notches and old tennon locations. Almost all the wood had been salvaged as evidenced by multiple layers of paint and old nails!

This room was a living room. To the left is the old fireplace and chimney. We had until recently used this room for storage.

What you see in this picture is remnants of many mice nests! Nice.

Giant Chimney

Our chimney is finally starting to take shape.  It sure does look big from this angle.

The footing is ready for concrete

Already at the first floor

Ye Old Farmhouse

So back in the day before mechanized earth moving equipment construction was done by hand with small tools and shovels. While excavating for our new basement/crawl space we revealed the fine construction of the 1800's!

There is no mortar to speak of between these rocks, it is all dirt. Pretty scary considering we need a 4' opening into this wall to access the current basement and install mechanicals.

It has been standing for close to 200 years!

Instant foundation

We decided to use a Superior Foundation which is a precast foundation. It is poured off site and then trucked to your site and lowered into your hole with a crane all in one day. Talk about instant gratification! The only drawback is the measurements have to be exact as there is no "fiddling" in the field. These two pictures are from the same day. We had a Go-Pro mounted to the end of the crane boom and got some amazing video, to be posted forthcoming, of the sections going in. The crew doing the  installation was amazing looking like they could do it in their sleep. Everything lined right up, no mistakes.

 Before

After

Lake Stony Brook

In true construction fashion we commenced to dig our foundation, we had three beautiful days of weather, and then the rain came. Approximately 4" in one day!

That big thing in the middle is a wrecking ball that Tony would drop from the excavator to break up the stone! It was effective but quite messy. By the end of the rain it was almost completely covered by the water.

The dirt is flying! Finally

After  2 1/2 years of planning and much waiting we've finally broken ground. 

They're removing all the miscellaneous concrete that was on the property prior to digging.

The exposed foundation of the 18 Th. century part of the house. This does not make me feel comfortable!

They don't call it Stony Brook Rd. for nothing! The majority of the excavation has been rock.

A house comes into view

As April comes to a close we're are getting ready to break ground. Anthony was out this weekend staking out the corners of the house.

An exciting day at the farm!

In my zest to "clean up" I decided to light a burn pile and do some mowing as it's been dry for a few days. While the pile of brush did not light the grass did! Unable to put it out with my shoe I had to call Hopewell Township's finest to extinguish it.  It was an  impressive turnout especially Pennington FD who arrived first!

Ready for spring!

Donut is on her perch and ready for spring.

Finally some sunlight and progress

Today we had some slight demolition in preparation for starting our foundation next week. Our old front porch roof came down as it's in the way. I believe it was about 6 feet high and it was like walking into a cave before you entered the equally cave-like and dark front room! Looks better already.

Before

After

After a 2 1/2 year wait, Finally!

This sign at the end of our driveway must mean we're ready to start digging!!

Ground breaking scheduled for April 21, 2014.

Things are happening!

The snow has finally melted and the sun is coming out. We just finished drilling for our geo-thermal wells that will provide ground cooled/heated water to heat and cool our house. It was quite a mess as there's a lot of stone dust and front which pretty much turns into cement when you leave it exposed to the elements. Donut loves it as it's quite messy!

Deadly Snow

This is what happens when you have a metal roof and no snow guards. These blocks were mostly ice and amazingly heavy as I tried to help them on their way without breaking the windows!

Obviously no construction has started yet!

Narnia!

I haven't posted in a while because the moment we got our building permit (yeah!), it's been either snowing or freezing rain. Here are a few pics from the most recent weather!

Shagbars!

Fruit of Richard's labors. Hickory nut bars with our nuts and honey.

These were amazingly delicious!

Loads of hickory nuts!

We have lots of Shagbark Hickory trees on the property and realized this year that they produce tons of amazing nuts…….however getting the nuts is a long hard process. They start out like a small tennis ball like the top pic, you remove the green husk before the squirrels get them, dry them for at least two weeks, then figure out how to get the nuts out without losing your mind! We've found that a hammer and the right size of flat rock works better than a traditional nut cracker. Well worth it!

Carrot Crop

So I've finally harvested my second carrot crop, the first one didn't turn out too well. The bugs seemed to love them and they were a bit crowded. These "atomic reds" are beautiful albeit a bit orange to me but who cares, they taste great and will be perfect for Thanksgiving dinner along with the crop of parsnips!

The first honey crop!

So we had a very productive year with our three hives. I'm not sure how we will fill all the orders for our artisan honey. We had a whopping 5 pounds of honey produced this year! Actually that's quite good considering this is the first year for these hives. If all goes well over the winter we should have approximately 100 pounds of honey next year! Now that's production.

The awesome label designed by Richard!

Finally..............flush.

After waiting for weather and money we're finally installing out new septic "Hoot" system. It looks as if we're building a hotel!

Thanks Septic Mgmt. Group. Great job!

The Dump

Back in the day there was no such thing as garbage pick-up so every good farmer had a "dump". It was usually not too far from the house but not too close as to be unsightly or smelly. Ours was located behind the barn and much of the garbage was in a creek/drainage ditch! Just knowing it was there bugged me so in preparation of our new septic system that will be installed nearby we cleaned it out. 

Heavy machinery required. Here are some of our finds.

bucket-o-nails!

A little bit of demolition!

I was getting impatient for the construction to start so I helped move things along by "removing" this old pump house that was really just full of garbage. It came down amazingly easy considering that it was old cinder block. There were, however, at least three roofs on it. Ugh!

Bye Bye Chicken Coop!

This has been a long time coming! This was a chicken coop from the previous owner and it was filled with an even 4" layer of chicken manure. We estimate it to have been built in the 1940's sometime as we found a Kayo chocolate drink bottle underneath along with other unwanted garbage as is the tradition here at Lucky Dog Farm.

Honey A' comin!

Springtime is time for bees. Richard is an experienced bee keeper going back to his youth in Princeton, NJ. We started with these two hives and recently added another that was  already building its honeycomb. With any luck we'll have honey this fall!