I Can See Russia from My Field Shed

The weather report said we were going to hit 104 degrees on Sunday at the farm.  We still had to finish the roofing.  Dan had the brilliant idea, “Let’s do it at night.”

Much better.  While we have zero interest in staggering around on a slant 15 feet above the ground in weather that hot, doing so in darkness is quite alright with us.  We rigged some florescent shop lights to run off a portable battery and congratulated ourselves on Dan’s genius in the merely warm evening breeze.  We worked from 6:00 pm until 10:30 when our urbanite genes told us someone would call the cops on us for banging hammers.  Actually, we needn’t have worried.  We get on well with our neighbors, so we probably would have gotten a warning shot.

I like our farm at night, even those funny little lights in the sky.  The field, quiet during the day, becomes a rave party of insects and whatnot executing their biological imperatives.  Some of these guys came up on the roof, too.

“Dude, look out.”

“Whoah!  I thought you were my hammer, but you’re a…”

“Yeah, a Big Freakin’ Bug.  I get that a lot.”

“You are really, um…”

“Disgusting, right?  Wanna know something else that will creep you out?  I can fly into your hair.  BZZZZZ!”

“Gaaah!”

We got up at 5:30 this morning, ate a quick breakfast of granola and yogurt we picked up the day before from Starbucks on the way in (But it was Fair Trade yogurt!), and got back to work.  I estimate we had 50 courses total to put in.  We had most of the felt in and all the shingles up on the roof.  All that was left to do at the end of today was 9 more shingle courses, trimming, and some roof edge.

The straw bales will arrive on Friday, 5/22.  Then it’s bale and lathe.  Oh, what a party!