the market has begun

Today was the first of many farmer's markets. Paul and I started baking at 1am this morning, and actually got to the market with lots of time to spare. After baking for most of the night, the market is a very satisfying way to end the work day. So many people so eager to take home a bit (or a lot) of what we worked so hard on. Not that it all makes it all the way home. Even the sun came out for our first market. Back to cleaning up posts tomorrow. I wonder what the neighbours would say if I got up at 1am and fired up the chainsaw?

check out our beams

They are long, smooth, and have gorgeous grain.

We spent today sanding beams, moving beams, and sanding beams. Our posts are all milled now, so the crew can start prepping them for installation as well.

Not much else to report. We're planning to mix and pour the slab on Tuesday. Stay tuned.

First Farmer's Market of the season this Saturday. I'm not sure that I feel like getting up at 1am to start baking, but there are only about 22 markets, so we better make the best of them.

sawdust, sawdust, everywhere

We might not be able to work on the oven right now, but the building site was a busy place today (even if its not obvious from the photo). Our logs were being milled into lumber, posts, and beams. Our beams were being sanded and prepped for installation once the posts and purlins are in place. Okay, when I summarize that way, it doesn't sound like that busy of a day, but it was, with lots of people working.

All in all, it was another lovely day on Gabriola. The only problem is that it is way past beer time.

ready for cement slab (almost)

The oven is ready for the slab to be poured, but we aren't. We need more "needles". For each bag of cement we use for the slab, we need to add 1 pound of 1" long stainless steel needles to give it added strength to span the 3 foot gaps on each side of the oven. Hopefully the back ordered needles will arrive soon.

The top photo is the completed layer of insulating bricks. The middle picture is of the completed plywood forms supported underneath by short 2x4 posts (check the Picasa web album to see these). There is a ring of 1x4" strips around the top to hold the 4 inch thick slab.

The bottom picture is of one of our many 6x10 beams being sanded. The fir is beautiful after a bit of sanding. We only have about 38 more hours of sanding to go!

back to work

After a slow Saturday and slower Sunday, I went into Nanaimo today to pick up our much needed zonolite. When I got back, our contractor's crew were busy preparing for the next building stage. They had peeled the bark off most of the logs, and were setting up an Alaskan chainsaw mill to start getting the posts ready.

Paul and I topped up the zonolite, then added a bunch more insulating bricks to the left side of the oven. We got most of the center support wall covered with insulating bricks as well. There are still some bricks to lay, but we should be ready to start building forms for the slab tomorrow.