Phase I

Quick run-down of the work going on right now:

• Geothermal heat (more accurately called geoexchange or earth energy)
  Progress: hundreds of feet of coiled flexible piping has been buried roughly 4 feet below ground in the west pasture, and the terminals have been inserted through the house walls of the cellar, waiting to be connected to the heat pump.  I think the heat pump goes in once the duct-work is retrofitted and the boiler removed.
• Crawl space insulation
  The foundation of our house is basically monster-ass wood joists sitting atop stone.  There is a uniform 16 inches of space beneath our floors and the earth, and nothing between us and the cold air other than the tongue in groove hardwood floors.  The sub-flooring insulation will keep cold out in the winter and in during the summer.
• Stall Mucking
  Mmmmmm, this was tasty.  We borrowed a friend's Bobcat and dug out several years' (if not decades') worth of compressed dirt, straw/hay, and manure.  The main animal courtyard was burried in roughly five (5) inches of this stuff, three (3) of those inches hard as wood.  It was all that Bobcat could do to break that stuff up into plates and load it into the pick-up...which I then drove to the field and dumped into 5 big piles that resemble the dinosaur poop from Jurrasic Park.

On the horizon:  new garage, barn restoration; kitchen/master bath remodel; perimeter fencing