Cutting up the old maple tree is a long-term project that will pay warm benefits in some future winter.

And at last work has started in earnest on the tower!

That’s Gene’s crew doing foundation forms in the freezing fog today in the photo above; below is Joe’s sketch of what the completed tower will look like next to the existing house.

Shot, of course, by Noah.

After a long, cold, wet spring — and a sudden hot late summer — our tomato plants finally started producing salad yesterday.

While sweeping the floor the other day after taking down the rest of the structure of the old — 1880s-vintage — house, I looked down and saw a penny in the pile of dirt, insulation scraps and rusty nails I’d swept up. A penny: I almost ignored it. But I reached down and got it instead and took a closer look, and found a 1906 Indian head that must have been buried in a wall or between the floor boards upstairs.

“Kind of makes it all worth it,” my wife said. (She was kidding.)

But it is pretty cool. People have lived here a long time by Oregon standards. Makes me wonder who lost it, and what it might have been able to buy in 1906.

Meanwhile, the old house is all but gone, just a few floor joists and foundation blocks left to remove. It’s been interesting, if labor-intensive, disassembling a house instead of demolishing it.