Night Moves

 

Last night everyone stayed up past 2 am to help us finish our concrete slab in the workshop.

Beginning at about 8 pm, it took five hours, 260 gallons of water, and innumerable shovelfuls of aggregate.

Mike and Loree are headed back East soon, and we'll be sad to see them go. Mike's muscle, Loree's pot-roast dinners, and most of all their company will be greatly missed.

Thunderstorms have skirted around us for the past few days, coming close enough to spit on us, but they haven't dropped any real rain since the hailstorm that battered Terlingua on the 14th.

Temps today will be in the triple digits, so we tried out our new fan mister.  Feels great and dropped the room temp by twenty degrees.

Ferro-concrete wall and Case loader reclamation

Our first real ferro-concrete wall, for the chicken fortress:

Tim Dean's 1970s era Case loader is a beast of a machine! Supercharger worked amazingly well, but there were no brakes going down Yellow Hill.

Send in the Clouds...

This is great weather for the day after a big concrete pour!  

Aggregate Studies

Polished off the second segment of garage floor today.  

So rewarding.

Floor Pour Photos

First shop floor pour

This weekend we (Sara, Arick, Dan, Jessica, and myself) poured one third of the concrete floor for the shop: an area of ten feet by 23.5 feet, with an average thickness of about four and a half inches. I will post lots of photographs tomorrow. It took 50 loads with our little mixer to lay down three and one quarter cubic yards of homemade concrete.

An Excellent October

At the beginning of this month my good friend Arick arrived for a few months' stay on the Terlingua Ranch. Arick originally guided us to this place and he also has a lot of input on the micro-windpower technology.

We have been working on a few projects, and one of the more fun ones was building adobe nesting "caves" for the chickens. This was Sara's design that we had been wanting to try.  We managed to pour a footing with 8% Portland in the adobe mix, and also lots of old bottles and cans.
The wall is 18" thick. We used a bucket for the form and we plan on making a slightly thicker mixture so that we can shape the rest of the wall by hand into some interesting curves.

My parents Kathie and Robert arrived on the 13th and stayed for a very busy and exciting seven days. We started their trip off by visiting the Cottonwood Spring and exploring Smugglers' Notch.
My parents also looked at some property on the Ranch, and one of the more notable pieces is picture below.
My father, Arick, and I were lucky enough be taken to the Agua Fria Ranch by TR GM Frank. It was an amazing tour! This place has a rich history, mainly due to the spring which feeds the area. The ride took us through beautiful pasture, but the highlight was the spring and its surroundings. Simply amazing.

Spring's source

Ancient petroglyphs

 

Some of the friendly locals

Dad and I hacked out a new, circular driveway, and in doing so we pulled out a ton of the invasive greasewood (aka creosote bush). Using Dennis' patent-pending greasewood popper:
We finished off my parents visit with a trip to the underground bar and grill La Kiva

(L to R): me, Arick, Dad and Mom

To finish off our evening we made a trip down to the Rio Grande at Lajitas to watch the sunset.