We have heat!

The woodstoves are installed! This is the only work, besides the excavating for the foundation, that we have hired out. The installers from Rocky's (really---would I make that up?) did, in four hours, what would probably have taken us about three days, given our usual learning curve. Plus, their installation meets state fire codes, and if the roof leaks, we have people to blame it on. They were nice guys, even though they chipped our new tile. The markup on parts seemed a tad exhorbitant (but this is from the perspective of people who almost never hire out home improvement/construction work).

Joe had picked up a wood cookstove a year or so ago through an ad in Uncle Henry's. It was manufactured by Magee Furnace Company, which operated in Boston in the late 1800s. We sanded off some rust, applied furnace cement here and there, replaced a few stove bolts, and painted it. We fired it up today. The oven stays warm for a long time after the fire dies out.

Our big purchase, though, was a brand new Jotul woodstove. I have heated with wood for more than 20 years, but never with a new stove. We opted for a Black Bear 118, which looks small, but has an 8-hour burn and is rated for 1800 sq ft: more than double our area. It may well chase us out, but we were reluctant to go with the parlor-sized stove, as this is our only heat source.

So let's see: our windows are in, and we have heat. A temporary wall and a couple of doors are all that's standing in the way of getting out of our rented trailer. And interior walls.

After last night's HARD frost, we decided that it was time to disconnect the Bison hand pump from its outdoor setup and keep it safe and warm till we can install it next to our kitchen sink. Which will require the construction of counters. And plumbing. Pesky details.

30 batches of mortar later

We had our two days of summer, and it's raining again. We have managed to make a bit of progress, though.

Splooty mortar, and the cordwood learning curve

You can read all you want about something---and trust me, we have---and you can try to learn from the example of others---we took Rob Roy's cordwood course---but nothing can prepare you for actually doing something, other than . . . DOING it.

We have opted to use lime-putty mortar rather than a Portland cement mix. It is time-tested (the Romans used it) and doesn't have the embodied energy of Portland (cement manufacture produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide). So last week we cracked open some of the 100 bags of Type S builders lime we'd purchased, and hydrated it to make a lime putty, using a recipe from New York cordwood builders extraordinaire Bruce and Nancy: 13.5 gallons of water, 3 50-lb bags of lime, and 1/2 cup of dish soap. This mixture is WORK to mix, even with a paddle mixer attached to a power drill. We covered the putty with a film of water and plastic, and let it sit for a bit more than the required 3 days.

Yesterday we tried our first mortar mix: 2 1/2 parts sand to one part lime putty. However, here in Maine we have had a freakishly wet spring---we had five inches of rain just between June 19 and 21, and it's been raining all month---and our sand, despite our best efforts, is pretty moist.

The resulting mortar was overly moist. Cordwood guru Rob Roy says that a ball of mortar, when tossed three feet in the air, should NOT go "sploot" when it lands. All I can say is that ours was pretty splooty.

We tried laying up our first bit of cordwood with our too-wet mortar, rolling up one of our tarp "walls," but the rain and wind began again as soon as the tarp was up. We were forced to give up after half a batch of mortar, which is probably just as well. We were in a hurry to lay our first cordwood after all of the preparation, and forgot everything we'd read about technique and "mortar, insulation, wood" cadence. Looks like we'll need to wait out the weather, settle down, and try again.

"Pretty splooty"

Everything but cordwood

While we haven't started on the cordwood walls yet, we have been busy getting everything in place so that we can. This has involved going to Houlton to research and buy our Bison hand water pump, taking delivery of and storing fifty 50-pound bags of hydrated lime for our lime putty mortar (once again our son Isaac has provided invaluable help), having a truckload of sand brought in, and trying to locate a supply of dry sawdust, which will be the insulation between the exterior and interior mortar joints in our cordwood wall (see photo of cordwood wall in progress from our Earthwood Building School workshop). How could we know that dry sawdust is dear as gold in this part of the state, prized by dairy farms as bedding?

We have also taken the time to plant some fruit and nut trees, as well as pine trees for wind breaks/privacy, spread hay and wood chips on the bare dirt of our much-loved berm, and lay down loam, cow manure, compost, and wood chips as the foundation for next year's vegetable garden. The truckload of cow manure was a mothers day gift from Molly and Ian: one of the best ever! (The gift that keeps on giving, as I said.) Actually Joe has been doing most of the hard labor, while I sit in my cell---whoops!, office---every day and think up annoying questions to ask and things to remind him of.

I take the liberty of sharing this recent Facebook post of Joe's:

"You work sixteen tons, and whaddaya get? Another day older, and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don't you call me, my life's too hard. I owe my soul to the credit card... Yup, Kyle and I hand shoveled 10 tons of loam, a ton of manure and five tons of mulch. Sixteen tons, and whaddaya get? A garden that's 750 square feet, compared to a house that's going to be only 660 square feet!!"

He's not kidding: we kept expanding our vegetable garden plot, worrying that it wasn't big enough, until we realized that it had exceeded the square footage of the non-shop portion of our house! It's all about priorities . . .