KB Ranch

Timber!

Written by karen on February 3rd, 2012

On the adobe walls in the new house, we are going to have large timbers above the windows and doors to carry the weight of the adobe over them. And when I say large, I mean large.

Yesterday, we went to Silver City to pick up the timbers. It took an elaborate configuration of two forklifts to get them into the truck bed. Then because of the weight, the truck kind of tipped over on its back axle, and I think I heard it moaning a potentially dying cry, and we knew that wasn’t going to work. (We’d estimated the weight ahead, but you never really know what the moisture content of the wood will be.) So we arranged to have the timbers delivered by truck next week instead. (For a whopping fee of $20. Yeah. OK.)

The longest beam had already been put on the truck’s rack, so we went ahead and drove that one home. This morning we unloaded it. Man, was that thing heavy! We moved it in our normal heavily brain-assisted way with lots of leverage and small moves. Not exactly sure how we’re going to boost these things 8-12 feet in the air, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out. :)

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Tags: construction

Spring can’t be far away now

Written by karen on January 28th, 2012

Maybe 6 weeks? Stay tuned for lots of tomatoes.

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Tags: garden

Everyone ♥s Bisbee

Written by karen on January 27th, 2012

So if you’re planning a visit and want to time it around one of the fun annual events in Bisbee, I thought I’d post info and some dates.

credit: Stephen Romero

The Bisbee Blues Festival is September 17, 2012.

And the Bisbee 1000 Great Stair Climb is October 12, 2012. (Let me know if you’re thinking about this one so I can train.)

These both seem a ways out, but summer and then fall (a nicer time to visit, really) will be here before we know it!

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Tags: bisbee

Progress report

Written by karen on January 25th, 2012

So some of you are probably wondering what’s going on with the new house, and more to the point, when will the guest house be freed up to be a solitary sanctuary for visitors? :) Well, we have paper and lath done on the exterior now and are just waiting for a warm week to start on stucco. It’s been rather cold. The new scaffolding has been absolutely fantastic.

In the meantime, we are starting on electrical.

Also, gas lines have been in the new house for awhile now. Not sure if I mentioned that before or not.

Still lots, lots, lots to do, but it’s good to see visible progress.

The greenhouse has had four kinds of greens growing all winter, despite very cold temperatures. Amazing. Nice to know that we can grow all year round. I just got my new seeds for spring in and am getting ready to do some planting inside in the next week or so. I’m going to try several new kinds of tomatoes, as well as the lovely ones we grew last year.

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Housing and a playground

Written by karen on January 4th, 2012

The wildlife around here seem to love all the things we are building. It’s housing (temporary, we keep reminding them), as well as a place to play. We have flickers constantly trying to nest in the new house, and a colony of rabbits have taken up quarters under the adobe bricks. Every morning we lie in bed and watch them come out and play on what will someday be the patio.

The other day we were working in the afternoon, and I asked if he thought the bunnies stayed under the adobe during the day. “Probably,” he said, and so I bent down and stuck my face in one of the dark passageways between two skids of bricks. Imagine my surprise to see two big glowing eyes looking back out at me. I backed up quickly.

When I told Brad that I wished he’d seen those eyes, he said, “It was much more fun to see your reaction.”

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Tags: wildlife

Glass block

Written by karen on December 29th, 2011

This week, it’s finally warmed up a bit so it’s back to work. We’ve begun wrapping and putting lath on the walls in anticipation of doing stucco. It’s good to see the house becoming more waterproof.

We also put the glass block in the exterior wall for the bathroom. When Brad did the glass block in the guest house, I was traveling so this was a new experience for me.

It starts out very messy…lots of gloppy mud.

Gradually starting to look like something from the outside.

These pretty light patterns are just what I was hoping for.

And here’s the finished product, from the outside…

and the inside.

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Tags: bathroom, construction

First snow

Written by karen on December 24th, 2011

We got our first snow here this week. Not a big deal for those of you in the rest of the country, I know, but we don’t get much snow here. It flurried most of the day yesterday, but didn’t amount to much where we are. In the mountains, they got quite a bit though. Brad was in Portal yesterday and said they had several inches.

The weather has been cold and gray for several days. This morning was the first sun we’ve had in a couple days, and the temperature has been in the 20s at night and in the 40s during the day.

It’s good baking weather.

Happy holidays, everyone!

——————

UPDATE:

We took a quick drive into Cave Creek this morning to see the snow. Hard to believe this is just 20 minutes from us.

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What’s that smell?

Written by karen on December 9th, 2011

At about 3:30 this morning, I awoke groggily to a faintly nutty smell. I jumped out of bed shrieking, remembering that I’d left a pan of beans on the stove all night. Oops. Poor Brad must have thought it was something much worse. At any rate, it didn’t turn out too bad. There was no water left in the pan, but only the bottom layer of beans were a bit brown. They hadn’t burned, nor was the pan ruined. Apparently, I woke up just in time.

It’s been very cold here this week. In the 20s or lower at night and cool during the days as well. For visitors coming in December or January, bring something warm!

This week I finally harvested the last of the tomatoes and pulled out the old plants. Even in the greenhouse, this cold was just too much for them. We still have greens (lettuce, tatsoi, spinach) growing though.

The seed catalog for spring just arrived, so it must be time to start planning next spring’s crops. Hmmm….

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Tags: food, weather

We are both winners!

Written by karen on November 28th, 2011

Here is Karen’s novel writing log from this month:

Nov. 1 – Brad and I both hit our goals for today. And we didn’t drive each other crazy. Not that I thought we would, but we haven’t ever written together like this. Good day.
Nov. 3 – What are the odds that both my computers would die the first week of Nano? My laptop motherboard went first, and just after I’d gotten everything transferred over to my laptop, it refused to boot. I am now writing on a combination of old barely functional computers and paper, but persevering.
Nov. 5 – All day workshop today; no writing.
Nov. 6 – Today I assembled all the fragments and got it back together in yWriter (on an old laptop – very slow). Passed 20k words though so apparently my word count isn’t suffering from all this.
Nov. 7 – It’s Monday and the start of week 2. My new computer should be here mid-week. Can’t wait. In the meantime, I’m writing.
Nov. 8 – Snow on the mountains for the first time this year this morning.
Nov. 11- 11/11/11 – I hit 40,000 words today. Would like to get to 50k before I go on my trip next week, but have a lot of work things going on next week, so we’ll see. New laptop arrived.
Nov. 14 – Today was the first day work totally intruded on my writing. :(
Nov. 15 – Hit 50,000 today. And pretty much right at the end of my novel. That’s amazing. Looking forward to moving on to editing and some rewrite and then having it read.

I am very proud that Brad did so well, not only finishing, but finishing early. This was quite a bigger and newer task for him than for me (I’ve always been a big writer). Well done!

And here are some thoughts from Brad:

I found this adventure easier and harder than I’d imagined. Taking Karen’s p2pu prep class before we started was the only reason I finished. Even so I was unprepared, but without it… I hate to think what a mess that would have been.

The number of words I can write on a good day might be 3000. On bad days, it’s more like 1500. It would have been nice to know this before hand. A better outline would mean more good days.

The thing I liked the least was that my story deviated too much from my plan. That’s not really true. The really worst part was when scenes I imagined and loved turned out blah and boring. The best part was actually taking a story from my head and writing it down and feeling that it made sense. I feel proud about getting through it. It was a lot to write.

I’d like to write a bunch of short stories this next year to see if I can get a better handing on this whole storytelling business before trying anything like this again.

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Dramatic weather

Written by karen on November 25th, 2011

We had a lovely Thanksgiving yesterday. Just as guests were arriving for dinner, the thunder, lightning, and rain started! Here is the result of a long night of steady rain.