Building the office

We have been working hard every hour we can to get Richard's office built on the land. It seems to be slow going. Will we get it done in time? We lost a lot of hours driving around and walking around, looking for our wandering Pot Belly pig, Harley, but now that he is safely back home, we are pretty dedicated to getting moved out of the rented farm house and onto our land full time. 

Office framing and straw bales

We have picked up a total of 60 bales of straw for the walls. I think we need 12 more.

We used up the load of gravel on two of the trenches, so we will need about 3 more loads to finish the trench and first course of Earthbags. Yesterday I think we moved 2 tons of sand and gravel by the shovel full.

Gravel trench with Mt Blanca in the background

The kids found a couple of treasures on the land. This beauty...

Big Ol' Gopher snake

Can you see him looking at the camera?

And, a wonderful old, worn out, hand forged horse shoe from years gone by. I should've taken a picture of it. It's pretty cool looking, and magical, considering what significance horses are coming to have, especially associated with this land.

We also saw another one of those military Ospreys flying overhead. Very odd looking, but I think I'm getting used to the interesting planes flying around the San Luis Valley. No UFO's though. At least not of the extraterrestrial variety.

Eggs and Ospreys

We have eggs!

The temperature has reached 42 F today, although with the wind, it sure doesn't feel like it.

We found two eggs yesterday, when we were out milking the goats. Not much, but we felt so lucky to have them. Every time I opened the fridge and saw those two eggs, I wondered what we could utilize them for. Two egg omelette....french toast.....chocolate chip cookies.....brownies....one egg each for Richard and I for breakfast? I never decided. Richard decided to make zucchini bread with one of the eggs and egg re-placer, mixed with chia seed "eggs." The kids can't really have eggs, but they love zucchini bread.

And today....two more eggs!! Now we have a surplus of three. What could I do with three eggs, I wonder?

And on another note:

The SLV, or San Luis Valley is an interesting place, supposedly well known for UFO sightings. I have not seen any alien craft, but I have seen many aircraft of a military nature. We have helicopters (haven't seen any black ones out here), the C-130's that buzz our house, sometimes at night, waking everyone up in fear, and we have that other long, weird looking jet thing,  kind of like an SR-71, but not, and today there was this crazy looking plane thing, that may be an Osprey. Here's a link to what we just saw flying over our farm house. Here's another. Very odd. I'm learning all about military aircraft out here in the SLV--a true plane watchers paradise.