3-day weekend! Pretty much finished two websites that I’ve been doing on evenings-n-weekends, ahhhhhh.

In between bouts of coding I cleared several hundred square feet of old blackberry cane and continued to work on this gorgeous mansion:

I know, still looks like a ragged pile of garbage, but it’s a damn sturdy and shaping up nicely pile of garbage. Pretty much literally; everything here is repurposed/recycled/used.

These shipping pallets account for an astonishing percentage of the hardwood we cut in the U.S. – estimates from around Y2K ran to millions of board-feet every year; over 40% of our domestic hardwoods. Joined properly, they are a ready-made complex frame that can accept any type of sheathing, treatment, paint, etc., but gazillions (ish) end up in landfills.

Many of the screws used to be part of a gigantic loftbed-garden-closet-bookshelf thing that took up a whole room in Brooklyn for years. The nails came in a bucket of “building crap” from Craigslist Free.

And really, trust me – it’s gonna be cute when it’s done. I’m already plotting out a workshop for myself, based on a 6-pallet floor. That would enable us to use the current workshop/junk storage area as an aux living space, office, etc. It’s just too nice to be filled up with my sawdust and greasy tools.

OK, you come here for pretty pictures…here’s some of today’s programming from the wacky nature show that is our life here:

Beautiful! And here’s something even prettier – Teri visiting the goat house construction site:

Gods I love the weather out here.

Found this little beauty behind the house today:

Spent a little time brainstorming about the goat stable…the primary construction material will be shipping pallets, plus a few stout, rough-split poles I originally collected for firewood. Here’s about half of what I figure I’ll need (more scrounging to do!):

The fencing is mostly in good shape, but about 100′ of it droops beneath a thick mat of blackberry. I’ve already spent hours clearing it, but there’s a full day of work just getting the rest of it off the fence:

Finally, to cap off this random little post, a backlit photo of one of last year’s hot peppers: