Old MacDonald's Got Nothin' On Me

I decided to grow potatoes in the garden this year.  I found this helpful thing at Gardner's Supply called a potato grow bag.  Apparently growing potatoes in the actual ground is quite a lot of work, involving hills and lots of dirt and god knows what else.  I prefer to plant things in my garden that I can forget about aside from the occasional watering and fertilizing.

This potato grow bag seemed right up my alley.  Put in some dirt, put in the "eyes"  (that's old potatoes with shoots growing out of them for the non-initiated) and pile some more dirt on top.  Then wait for them to grow a bit.  Throw more dirt on top then wait for them to grow a bit.  Then throw more dirt on top and wait for them to, well, grow.  The catalog said I could get up to 13 lbs. of potatoes!

I was not nearly so optimistic, but I decided to give it a go.  I chose to grow red potatoes.  I would like to point out that the picture in the catalog of the nice full, healthy-looking green leaves above the grow bag does not in any way represent what my green leaves looked like.  Mine were taller, scragglier, and ugglier.  But nevertheless, I had a successful harvest.

That's right.  Here is my harvest fresh out of the garden.  I washed most of the dirt off and as you can see most are a pretty decent size.  One or two cute ones are about the size of a marble, but for the most part I would be proud to find these in the produce section at the grocery store.  The final take?  A whopping 3 lbs. 12 oz.

Not too shabby, I say to myself.

The Amazing Trailer Transformation Part IV

Finally someone has shown up at the trailer lot.  It was the big digger operator and his job appears to be to backfill around the foundation.

Despite the astronomical amount of dirt that has been spread here, there is still a pretty good slope from the street to the foundation.  I'm going to assume that more dirt will be added, otherwise the rain is going to run directly from the street in to this cellar.

I wonder if all that plastic crap is buried under there...

The digger operator has been back every day this week doing his back-filling thing.  Unfortunately, I haven't made it home in time to take pictures of his progress, but I plan to as soon as I can.

The Amazing Trailer Transformation Part III

There's been no action over at the trailer lot for quite some time.  I'm not sure if the concrete foundation had to cure or what, but every day I anxiously awaited something to happen and was disappointed.  But I needed to get over there to take pictures before something did happen and I figured my time was running out.

I don't think it's going to be a terribly large house and the slope of the lot accounts for the odd shape of the foundation here.

One good thing about living on a slope is the liklihood of a walk out cellar.  To the right of the plank on the right side of the photo is where the door to the cellar will probably be.

Here we have some trash in the ditch around the foundation.  I expect that in a few hundred years when some students from Bridgewater State University begin an archaeological dig of this site, they will find the plastic bottles and plastic wrapping and speculate and theorize about how we used them.

The Amazing Trailer Transformation Part II

The lot was cleared without much fanfare.  I wish I was there to see it.  But the other day, when I was mowing the lawn I heard someone calling a greeting.  Turns out it was Joe from Heritage Homes Real Estate, the godsend behind the amazing trailer transformation.  He wanted to introduce himself to the neighbors.  I assured him that I was over the moon about everything he was doing.  He told me the foundation would be poured soon.

Luckily I made it home from work early enough to take some pictures.

This is what I found just a day or so before the foundation went in.  I'm not sure what its purpose is.  It was definitely poured concrete, but also definitely not the foundation.  I had to wait to see what would happen next.

 This is a view of the forms from my yard looking at what will become the side of the house.  The lot slopes quite a bit down from the street (as you can see in the left of the photo), so it will be very interesting to see how this all turns out.

This is a view from the back of the house from what I would guess will be the "walk out" cellar.  No need for bulkheads on High Street!

This is a view from the side of my yard diagonally toward the street.  The yellow digger at the top of the photo is basically at street level.  It's almost like the foundation is buried in the bowels of the earth, but it's really not.  I've got some pics to post of the foundation once it was completely poured, so I'll post them sometime soon.