Deconstruction happens!

Progress on the demo of the outfitting building has been in spurts. This week, it took on a faster pace. Mark hired a great guy Toby who helped speed things up along with our faithful crew of David, Ann, Raif and Cora who were joined by their Uncle Jake for a day!

The flooring of the top floor has been salvaged, as well as the interior walls and ceilings of the ground floor. The piles of material are accumulating around the back lot. Next, the metal roof was removed in long sheets to be used as cover for some of the wood piles. Then, the exciting but dirty work of knocking off the roof boards and tarpaper to expose the rafters underneath. Now the building looks very different from the side. Next, more smashing and bashing will take place until the walls are down and more salvaging of material can be done.

Recently, the forklift stopped working, so that slowed the construction side of things quite a bit. Finally, today a superhero neighbor came and fixed the beast. It was a great day! We also got the heavy equipment moved out of the Outfitting building where they had been stored and into one of the log barns on the property we are renting. So at this point, the demo can continue without worry of harming that equipment.

In other news, we did start school at Ely on Sept. 8th. It has been an exciting and busy two weeks! Cross country meets, a school dance, dance class, and school board meetings all took place and kept us moving! Mark has been busy with new job opportunities as well as all the work here at home. I recently became a board member of the Ely Folk School, and that has been very exciting. Mark and I both worked at the Folk School booth during the recent Harvest Festival and had a blast meeting lots of people. Mark was a demonstrator of birch bark basketry, and I helped out giving general information. Being a part of something great like the Ely Folk School has been a very special addition to our lives here. Check out their website to see what types of wonderful opportunities there are and plan your visit to come and see us!

We try to take some time just to enjoy where we are too. Lately we have enjoyed eating sweet wild plums from the side of the road or on the edge of the yard, and listening to the loons while enjoying a campfire by the lake.  As Fiona says, "Pretty lake."

Raif and Fifi came to see the progress.

Toby shows off the large pole he used to knock the roof boards loose. He is a hard worker with a great attitude who made this building come down faster than we could have imagined!

The very handy diesel mechanic who quickly welded his own tool to fix the forklift. Lifesaver!

Coco recreated the ladder climbing that she did as a 2 year-old on our Vance Creek home.

Notice all the salvaged boards leaning agains the building - about 4000 board feet so far!!

Mark has adopted suspenders as his uniform of choice - they keep the pants up!

Our nail pulling crew!!! Ann and David are the best kind of help - workers with smiles:)

Look at the layers of dirt on the floor after the top boards were pulled up. This door was on the interior of the top floor of the building.

My latest obsession is the delicious wild plums that grow on the edges of the yard and in the ditches of the local roads.

A birthday gift piece from our friend Cyrus Swann with some plums. Cora took this photo with the flower using her artistic eye!