© 2009 Borealis Fermentery

 

9/9/2009 TIME TO REFLECT AND FINISH THIS BEAST UP!

 

Yeah!  Now just a few more minor things to do and this place will be finished.  Sorry I havn’t been real good about keeping this site up.  Jen and I are both learning how to be normal people again.  CRAZY ASS ADVENTURE...  A little behind schedule, but... whatever.  I would suggest whittling a strawbale timberframe home in northern Minnesota to anyone- and I bet Jen would too!  I can’t speak for Jen, but this has definitely been the hardest thing I’ve ever done.   There have been so many layers of insanity to this project.  Emotional, physical, mental, blah blah blah.  It was hard.  But now there’s a really interesting thing going on right now.... I’m starting to feel this weird feeling lately... I feel like... Laid back and... Happy... again for the first time in several years?.  I’m a little biased, but this place is flat out the coolest place I’ve ever seen in my life save for some whacked out castles in Europe.  No more freezing, staying awake at night listening to storms ravage outside, thinking of how the hell to make certain things work.  If you’ve never built a house before from scratch, you just have no idea of what the hell you go through.  These days we just look around and shake our heads.  We did it.

 

This summer has been spent finishing up the small stuff outside, laying woodflooring upstairs and working on the island in the kitchen area.  Landscaping was definitely a priority this spring, with white pines being fenced in, an acre being cleared out behind us for a backyard and garden area, and apple trees being planted and fenced in to start the orchard.  Everything is doing well, and it’s good to be getting some fresh garden goods on the table.  Trim painting and soffets were finished up recently outside.

 

Our cat Moon was run over on Memorial Day weekend.  So the pet sematary has been started out behind the garden.  We replaced her with a $25 cat named Hazel who is much more of a homebody, so she should be a safer bet.    

 

The last I typed I think that I was concerned about the left foot.  Well, it turns out that the Two Harbors emergency drastically misdiagnosed the damage my left foot took after that fall.  A few months into this Spring, I went to a specialist in Duluth and yes, they missed two torn ligaments that hold your arches up on the left foot.  I should have had surgery, but ended up getting my feet molded for orthotic inserts as a last resort.  The doc said I would never run again, but I am happy to say that they worked so well, I am almost pain free now and recently bought some new running shoes.  USE CLIMBING GEAR WHEN ON A ROOF.  I am lucky that I am not drinking from a straw.  BUT... Everything is good, and I lucked out.

 

Jen continues to work at EMR as a consultant through the building.  She kicks complete butt and actually loves her job despite the crammed summer schedule that consultants deal with.  This has allowed me to build past the time where I thought I would be getting paid again.  This thing is definitely harder than any job I’ve ever had though.  I do make way more for us as a contractor than I could ever make as an Engineer.  We have both worked ourselves in ways we never dreamed of and I can’t wait to start crunching numbers to get things off of the ground now for the business end of things.  Kind of time to start shifting gears and moving forward with the initial dream.  Or maybe we’ll just sell tie dye T-shirts and bootleg liquor from the end of our driveway.  Who can say.  Onward ho.

 

A shout out to Dave Falls, renown bassist for carp, vanilla thunder, and zod.  We have visitors now, but not the kind that still come and go, “Dude, I’m here to work, so we can go fishing next time I come.”  Yep, Dave was the sole individual who came to help work on the place this summer.  He demanded that he help and help he did.  Dave helped get the remainder of the high-up work done.  We did soffets for five days, and then he rumbled, terminator style, out of the driveway on his motorcycle.  Having extensive knowledge from working at a mill, Dave gets the top helper of the entire project award for busting it out on the saw while I screwed stuff in up high.  Ghotied and metal concert shirted, he worked efficiently as hell, and only sawed one sawhorse in half the whole time he was here.  It was great to see him and feel that ESP-like connection of mindwave intensity flowing yet again.  Dave Falls and me is geniouses, and he helped more better than anything did here.  God bless Dave Falls, and God bless the United States of America.  Tee shirts available next month on this very site.

 

Aside from all that It’s been cool to get compound Thiemann one step closer to self sustainablility.  It’s about time.  Phew, I’m sore.  We have a sweet structure.  We also have a civil war muzzle loader now too.  As well, we have a field for horseshoes and apples, and the four story beer tower...  but that my friends, is the next chapter....

 

K&J September 2009