Rocket Stove Upgrade

Before we actually moved into an tigin, Martin had built a simple rocket stove.

He has spent a lot of the winter researching different rocket stove designs and, of course, he wasn't satisfied with the simple one that we had. 

He wanted to be able to cook more than one thing at a time with less smoke.

Here is the new one.

We tried it out for the first time recently and it worked well. The hamburgers cooked up nicely, the potatoes boiled, and our garlic scapes sauteed up quickly. We also didn't smell like campfire when we were done, which was a nice change.

carport

Martin added a carport for me to park in during the winter. No scraping frost or ice off of my windshield for me. No digging my car out of the snow.

For Oliver

My grandson Oliver was fascinated when I showed him the mother robin sitting on her nest. She found a handy spot to build her nest. Martin stores his 28 foot ladder hanging sideways just under the eaves of the low wall of his workshop. Momma robin thought the side along the bottom was a good spot. Once we discovered her and the nest, Martin and I only forgot a couple of times that she was there and walked by that side of the workshop, startling her off of her eggs. 

Oliver visited for a day and I showed him the Momma robin. He kept sneaking off to peek at her and give her a little wave. Once the eggs hatched, I snapped this photo for him.

Those babies certainly grew fast. This picture was taken about a month before the babies fledged.

Now we have an empty nest.

Our mother robin in on round 2 of family raising. Last time we had a chance to look in the nest, there were 3 eggs in there. (I have to admit, it was Martin that looked. I have to climb on something to see in the nest.)

Interior doors, door trim, and baseboard

I know I have neglected posting for quite some time and do apologize. A couple of things have happened. One: the house is nearly finished, so we don't have as many changes happening. Two: we purchased another fixer-upper (NO I AM NOT GOING TO BLOG THAT ONE) and we have been spending less time working on An Tigin.

We have had interior doors for a while, but the door trim and baseboard are a current project. Martin bought seconds from a local lumber mill. The pile of boards sat in the guest bedroom (a few family members can attest to that) while they dried out. Then Martin and I spent a couple of very long days squaring edges, cutting to width, and planing the boards.

Oh yeah, I talked Martin into hanging pictures too.