A lovely spring day

It has been a kinda cold spring so far, but today was sunny and warmish. So I planted some kale and silverbeet.
In the afternoon Kjartan and I went to a folk music gathering at the home of a friend, who lives in a beautiful old farm house on the Lule River. Perfect weather to sit outside, admire the pretty view, work on a sewing project, and listen to beautiful music, followed by moose soup, fire oven baked bread, and blueberry cobblar for desert :-)

earth cellar progress again, at long last

Today marks the start of our fourth summer of earth cellar work. When we had to stop working on the project last autumn, we had a very large stone that we had dragged near to the earth cellar with the tractor, and then managed to get it even closer with the pulley system we had, but it was only rated for 1 ton, and couldn't really handle getting it upright and into its final destination.

This week Kjartan managed to find a bigger, better pulley system for sale on blocket which can take 1.5 tons. Today was beautiful weather, so while I went to the Frostheim 25th anniversary party and fighter practice in the morning, I came home early so that we could test it out. It worked beautifully! With this tool I can lift the stone myself (leaving him free to hold the big steel rod that he uses to adjust the position of the stone as it gradually rotates and slides towards upright. Here is the "before" photo:



And after we got it into place:



On Tuesday (weather permitting) we will raise it just enough to put lots of concrete under it, and then settle it back into its permanent home. It feels so good to return to this project--and if we can manage a couple more of these huge rocks then the walls will be ready in no time and we can start on the roof.