Amish Church This Morning

Last night about eight, Eli came over & asked if we could call the township supervisor. You see, the driveway is icy on the hill going up to their house & they are having church today. Steve & I both told him being a holiday and all and a Sunday the next day, chances were slim that they would come out and put sand down. (plus we really didn't want to interrupt the man's evening, especially on a holiday.) But he was pretty insistent, so we called. Well, the supervisor was a little miffed at first, but he was understanding by the end of the call. He said no one would be able to come out, but there were piles of sand and salt at the township office that Eli was welcome to use. The township will plow the driveway if there is a lot of snow, but sanding & salting might be a bit over the top to ask for on a private driveway :-)
Eli decided that he would use a pick early the next morning (today) and see if he could at least make it easier for the horses to get up the drive. Steve offered to help him, so that's what they were doing at 8am this morning with a temperature of 2 degrees and  -11 windchill.

Steve & Eli chopping up ice.

 All the buggies made it up the driveway this morning with only one stumbling. Whew! I hate to see the horses or the people get hurt.

We lost count at thirteen buggies this morning.

Eli & Lizzie's.

One of the things we wanted to get done, but ran out of time this fall was to install a new door to the outside workshop entrance. This is why...

Frost on the inside of the workshop door.

The workshop area is the only area that doesn't have heat on the main floor. Our new area has radiant floor heat & the wood stove. The "cabin" room has a wood stove. We walk through the unheated part in the middle to get back & forth. Brrrr. When Steve gets the workshop set up, we will be insulating the floor. We will also eventually opening up the wall more between the "cabin" room & the work shop to let in the heat.

We have been working on the bathroom this weekend. The new medicine cabinet & mirror are in and Steve is working on the lights right now. The walls are painted a pretty, minty green. We are going to leave the floor "rustic" for now. I painted it some time ago as a temporary thing, but we kinda like it that way. It is a tan milk paint and I am thinking about adding a border around it and some decorative touches. At home, I'll be making some curtain rod holders on the band saw and I will probably make a rod from a stick from one of our trees. We brought some white trim for around the ceiling that was left over from a job Steve did and we'll put that up this weekend too. We won't be going back until Monday afternoon. We will order some beadboard that we'll put on the bottom part of the walls, make some trim for the door, window & base, paint the inside of the door white to match the trim and I think we'll be done. :-).

Last night we video chatted with Kristin & Jaelyn. It was so fun to see them while talking. We ended up downloading Skype & it worked much better than Windows Live Messenger. We look forward to doing more of that.

I started reading "The Resilient Gardener. Food Production & Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times" by Carol Deppe this weekend. I recommend it. If everyone with a yard would take the steps in this book, it would increase their security in hard times. The way things are going in the world now days, I think everyone should do something to become self-reliant, especially where food is concerned.