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Winter marches on.... today was extremely windy and cold, with blowing snow in parts of the area. Most of the schools in Western NY were closed, and many businesses. Not mine, of course, so I had to go to work. The winds were gusting up to 60mph and there are still many people without power due to downed power lines, blown transformers, and the like. It's supposed to get quite cold tonight and with the wind chill will feel like 10 or 20 below, and the Red Cross has opened a few shelters for people without power.

There were two appointments scheduled for today for people to look at the house, but I'm pretty sure the last appointment didn't show up, or they would have still been here when I got home from work. I wouldn't be surprised if the first appointment cancelled as well, due to the weather. I hope they will reschedule.

I was able to spend Christmas week in NH with Ken, which was very nice. This was our first Christmas all by ourselves, so that was nice in itself. We received some very nice gifts from our parents and one aunt, and Ken's brother and his wife, and enjoyed opening them. We added to our extensive collection of tape measures with two from Aunt Betty - sort of his 'n her's. But no matter how many tape measures you own (we must have 10 or so now of varying sizes and colors), you can never seem to find one when you need it. Ken's brother Steve and his wife Neva gave us a charming and whimsical print of a painting featuring sheep. We love it!

Here's a picture I took during Christmas week of the house. The "in-law apartment" is to the left, and the main house to the right:

Just last weekend I went up to NH again. The current project is installing a new kerosene heater in the main house. There's one in the apartment and it heats the entire space upstairs and down with no problem. The boiler in the main house is pretty old, and pretty inefficient, and we're not really fans of forced hot water heat, so we finally decided to get rid of the boiler system entirely and go with another stove. They are made by a Japanese company called Toyotomi, and the model we bought will heat 900-1100 sq ft (the main house is between 1000-1100 sq ft). However, this will function eventually as a back-up system to the main heating source which will be a woodstove. So Saturday we spent running the copper tubing from the tank down in the basement up to the room where the stove will be and then installing the vent and the stove itself. Ken had already prepared the room by removing the old grungy carpet and the even grungier carpet padding which was adhered to the grungy 9 inch floor tiles underneath (did I mention how grungy the situation was?):

Here's the cleaned up subfloor:

And this is me (picture taken by a sneaky husband) vacuuming up the bits of blown-in insulation that had fallen out of the wall when we installed the vent:

Here is the stove completely installed:

The unit on the wall above the stove is the fuel lifter. It's a pump that will pull the K-1 out of the tank in the basement so it can gravity feed down to the stove. These stoves are 93% efficient and K-1 is cleaner than #2 heating oil. They direct vent through the wall so once this is up and running and we shut off the boiler, our chimney will be freed up for the exclusive use of the eventual woodstove.

If you have dogs, have ever adopted a dog from a rescue or shelter, or are thinking about doing so, click on the title link and read the article. This is possibly the best dog/shelter/rescue-related piece I've ever read.

Tamworth got its first big snowstorm and here are the results. Thank God for the tractor!

The driveway looking out to the road:

The yard in front of the in-law apartment. You can just see the unfinished chicken coop in the background:

And the path to the front door:

This past weekend Ken did some more winterizing for both the humans and the sheep. In the apartment side of our house it turned out the windows were not installed exactly weathertight, and the wind was blowing directly into the house through the cracks. Ken spent part of the day shimming and caulking to defeat the drafts.

He also put up a windbreak at the back of the hoophouse:

And he was able to wash out the big tank I brought from NY and get the floating de-icer installed, so no more breaking ice out of small water tubs twice a day. Hurrah!

One of our cats, Zilla, has found her own way to stay warm. She's decided that the top of the Toyostove is the snuggliest spot.

All of this was pretty much just in time, because last night and today Tamworth got about a foot of snow. Here in NY we got just a dusting, but the wind was blowing pretty good most of the day. My amazing parents, who helped me take ALL of the fencing down on Saturday (except for the ram's paddock), this morning came back while I was at work and pulled ALL of the t-posts out and put them in our carport for me. The fencing was the biggest job left to do (well, besides the eventual packing up of the rest of the house and the actual move, whenever it happens) so I'm grateful it's done.

Anybody want to buy a cute little house with a barn on 3.8 acres? Anybody?

We made more progress on the new chicken coop this past weekend. Saturday we got the back and one side sheathed, and then started on the roof. One of the sheathing panels on the roof had to come off and be re-positioned, and then we put on the drip edge, tarpaper, and got most of it shingled. We used shingles that were left over from our house and barn in NY being re-roofed, and when we ran out of those, we used some that were leftover at the NH house, but there weren't that many. So the chicken coop is about three-quarters shingled, and we put another piece of tarpaper on as a temporary measure to keep rain from getting under the top row of shingles. It got dark before we finished so Ken set up the work light and we finished at about 6:30pm. I think I was up there for about 3 hours, and now I know why professional roofers have those neat roofing nail guns. Every single nail was pounded in by hand. Oof!

Here is a view from the front:

And one from the side showing the roof:

So we'll have to buy a bundle of shingles - maybe Home Despot will have a partial bundle or something we can get for a discount.

Ken got more siding done on Sunday while I was on my way back to NY. He got the side with the window opening framed almost done, but ran out of plywood. So the rest of that side and the front will have to wait until we can get more.