The Mouse Slayers

Miss Priss is on the hunt!

Winks relaxing on the slab roller in the future studio space

While they may look like innocent kitties, the newest additions to our homestead are a fierce mousing duo! Well, we hope so, anyway. We got Winks and Priscella from a potter friend and his wife here in Mineral Point. They are about 14 weeks old, and quite the acrobats. Winks is very sweet--he purrs just at the sight of us. Priss is a little more shy, but now that she has gotten more comfortable here with us, she is really warming up. Charley is not sure what to make of them yet!

And More Bricks!

We worked again this week in What Cheer. Yesterday's project was taking down the old kiln's firebox. That salty old kiln is incredibly strong! As you can see here, we mined all of the brick underneath the firebox before taking it down. We walloped the (unmoving) firebox with a sledgehammer before finally just prying it apart chunk by chunk with a crowbar and hammer. The platform Joe is standing on is spanning a channel full of water that used to be the kiln's exit flue. Charley thought the stinky green water was wonderful for dipping!

The Kiln Shed at Sunset

We've gotten a couple more full loads of firebrick, Jere and Tony have helped us get more high quality brick and it looks like we should be able to get all of our brick from them. It's a really great situation for us as getting all of our kiln bricks used is really saving us a lot of money.
The rest of the post holes look like they've dried out, and with rain predicted this weekend we're hoping to get the last of our posts in before then. Luckily for me Christy has perfected her one woman post deliver and drop technique. Pretty impressive!
Joe

Rain, rain, rain, and a couple of posts.

Lots of rain, we had to cancel a trip to What Cheer Iowa as all the roads there were flooded over. It's been raining off and on ever since we put the post holes in. Leaving the post holes pretty well filled with water for almost two weeks. We finally got smart got the water out of the holes filled the bottom of the holes with cement so we had a hard surface to work off of, then covered them with plastic.


Unfortunately we managed to catch Christy's brothers dog in one of the holes.
Despite the canine trauma, we had good weather and managed to get five posts in today. Hopefully we can get all the poles in sometime this week, assuming the weather holds.
Joe

The New "Littles"

I can't believe I forgot to post pictures of our new chickens. These are the meat birds (so I only have a brief window of time in which to post their picture!) in the new tractor. It has stayed in place during some pretty intense winds. In all honesty, though, these are the dumbest batch of birds I have ever had. They piled up for two and a half days! after I moved them from the brooder outside. They are finally getting the hang of moving to a fresh patch of grass every morning, though. My layers are three weeks old now, and I'll get a picture of them on here sometime soon. I got 9 different kinds of hens this time!

Christy

More Bricks!

For my birthday, we spent the day with Kate and Jere in What Cheer mining more bricks. We worked in a different kiln this time and got some lovely bricks from the floor of the kiln, and from a less salt-blasted section. And again, we really enjoyed spending time with the What Cheer Potters. One thing that I really love discovering over and over again is the kindness and openness of midwesterners, and especially folks in the pottery community. Humbling.

Joe and Jere and the trusty crowbar and chisel



Unloading the bricks was a snap this time with a crew led by the mother duo of..

Pat and Patti!

Christy

The silver lining in the rain cloud.

It started raining the evening after we put the post holes in the ground, and has been raining off and on ever since. The post holes quickly filled up with rain. You can see from the picture that our firebox quickly filled up as well. The water in the firebox has now risen up even farther to cover a portion of the first chamber. This picture was taken as we were finishing up the last of the work that we could do on the roof. Charlie went for a swim in our firebox shortly after the picture was taken. So we have come to a halt on our kiln shed until things start to dry out. Maybe next week.



Things worked out for the best though as Christy used the free time to track down some used firebrick. We had gotten a name and number from our pottery instructor at Cornell College of a couple who had property with some old beehive kilns on it. Unfortunately, both the name and the number were incorrect. Christy did some fantastic sleuthing though and tracked them down. We left for their property as soon as we got off of the phone with them. Jere and Kate Huffman bought land in What Cheer, Iowa, setting up a pottery on what used to be an old sewer pipe factory that closed down in the 1960's. It's quite an incredible site to see. There are 19 behive kilns each on measuring somewhere are 25 feet in diameter. I don't recall all the exact details but I believe there were four or five kilns per chimney, and they were fired in succesion not allowing the chimney to cool down between firings. Jere said it took seven men to fire the kilns with coal and they were fired in seven days. It was all pretty fascinating. Anyway, here is a picture of the kiln we got our bricks from. The kilns were salted so it took a little hammering to get the bricks apart. The bricks are a little cruddy on the ends, but should be fine for a chimney. I've also included a picture of a kiln that has not been taken apart, and has been slightly renovated. There seem to be a limitless number of bricks here and we are trying to figure out the best way to transport them the seven hour round trip drive (we spent $200 dollars for gas to get the 400 bricks we got yesterday), and how many to get as they are not free, nor are they clean. Certainly though we have found ourselves bricks for the chimney. As well as enjoyed seeing how the factory worked, and enjoying Jere and Kate's incredible hospitality.

Money well spent

I've posted a picture of what is possibly the best spent $200 we've spent so far. Christy and I dug the first eight post holes by hand, 4' deep and around 18" wide. The soil is pretty rocky in places so it took quite a while (days). Now that we're starting the outside roof line we have fourteen more holes to dig. Luckly we got smart and rented a bobcat with a 18" auger. We dug all the holes in one morning! Best money I've spent in quite a while.

Purlins

The incredible construction team of Joe and Christy
pounding in the last of the purlins on a lovely day.