Progress Report: A+

I didn’t end up going to the farm at all this weekend because I had to go to a friend’s bachelorette party in the Hamptons. "Had to", I just said. Ha! It was ridiculously fun. We stayed in a giant mansion in Wainscott and did some vineyard tours. Ridiculous. What can I say? I’m lucky. The only thing better than having great friends is having great friends who know extremely rich people.

The long and short of that story is not to brag about my awesome friends but to tell you that when I sat down with Tim last night for dinner, he told me I was way overdue for a blog post. I was like well what the eff am I supposed to blog about? I haven’t been to the farm in two weeks and I really doubt that people want to hear about my weekend of leisure in a 20 million dollar mansion spent laying by the pool(s) and drinking gallons of wine and vodka. And even if they do, I’m not going to go into it because all of my mom’s friends now read this blog and while they drink more than I do on any given celebratory weekend and certainly will not judge, I will lose the ability to call my mom a lush. And that is really important to me.

So we came to the idea of doing a broad stroke progress report. It has been almost a year since we closed on the farm and we thought it would be nice to do a recap of what we’ve accomplished in that time.

Or, if in our findings, it turned out to be disappointing rather than “nice”, we figured it would encourage us to work harder and spend less time in the Hamptons next summer.

We started looking at the gazillions of farm photos on my laptop and realized that our accomplishments actually transcended our expectations. And while we are behind the arbitrary schedule that Tim had set forth last year- he thought we would be done with the first building by September- ha!!!! – it’s not for lack of trying. I think the goal was a tad unrealistic, considering that we went from a pile of mud and trash to an impressive steel structure in 11 months. As a reminder, in said 11 months, we were only working weekends, and with a core crew consisting of weak ol’ me, Tim, and Tim’s parents. So I think we’re doing okay.

On with the show, which I thought would be easiest to demonstrate best in pictures...

This was the beginning. I give us props for being visionaries who were able to see beyond the piles of slop and nastiness. There's a very fine line between being a visionary and being crazy, I realized along the way but I prefer to stick with the latter.

This phase I call the Holy Shit, Whatdidwegetourselvesinto Phase. I’ll never forget one of my father’s first comments as he furrowed his brow and said “I really hope you guys didn’t get yourselves a money pit.” Silly Dad. Money Pit? Ha! Never.

After the building was torn down, we experienced that which I recall most fondly as The Mud Phase. We even had to sweep the mud as you can see here. You may also notice how much Zelda truly despises brooms. (It's one of the many unique features that they didn't mention when we got her.)

Post-Mud Phase came the Draining the 20-Billion Gallons of Mud Phase. I’m not sure that any photo can clearly capture what a pain in the ass it was to dig those drainage holes and put those annoying tubes in them and then cover them with gravel. So I’ll just tell you: it fucking sucked. And I only partook in like ¼ of it.

(Please try to keep the obvious comments about Tim holding a giant dong-like tube between his legs to a minimum. I know it’s not easy.)

Somewhere in the winter, things began to put us all to the mental test. Perhaps for the health of our marriage, we split up zones for a little while when Tim and his father did their own thing down in the mud and I tackled many projects of my own that all turned out to be useless but kept me busy in the freezing cold winter where your options were to either a) do work or b) freeze to death. I call this phase Annie Got Weird with Herself WhileTim Ignored Her. Some of the things that I did that are now either covered with more overgrowth or completely destroyed: weeding, cleaning up the front yard, and moving rocks that may or not be actually classified as boulders.

**Just a friendly reminder that we had no heat, water or electricity during the winter. Just a reminder.

Once winter finally passed, we had a nice pile of rubble to show for all our hard work in the bitter cold. We’ll call it Phase Rubble. Btw, melted snow makes more mud so you may notice that Phase Rubble was framed by the Mud Phase Redux.

And somewhere in the midst of Phase Rubble, we noticed that Tim had a really bad haircut going on. And why was he wearing a XXXXL t-shirt? Good God.

I was laughing really hard at him until I found this picture of myself. Nice dress but what the hell is that thick yellow mop doing on my head? And where is my face? We like to call this phase the Bad Looking Phase. Hopefully we will not revisit it any time soon, but it’s one of those things you don’t realize at the time and then one day you look at an old photo and are like, oh. My. God. Did I even look in the mirror?

If you were somehow able to overlook that mop on my head, you may have noticed the floor. This was the era of the Floor that Changed Everything. The day that floor was finally poured was a momentous one. The floor was white and smooth and gorgeous and it finally felt like, yeah, there could be a building here. I think I even shed a tear.

And then the biggest step of all; the phase I endearingly refer to as The Steel Erection. The first day of erecting steel was the most exciting day of progress on the farm by far. It wasn’t just because there were cranes and half-naked men running around, it was because by the end of the day, we had a structure for a building. Since that day, Tim and I have secretly enjoyed playing House and we walk around it and say here is the kitchen, here is your office, here is the bathroom, etc like total nerds. We also run around and give each other cooties.

And while it’s true that we have been stuck for what seems like months in the Ol’ Filler-In Phase in which we fill in all the cross bars and girders and beams and crap, Tim finally came to his senses and brought his crew down last Friday. They accomplished a great deal of work, including adding on the entire front section as you can see here.

Let’s just say when you bring young, strong men who are accustomed to working with steel and big machines to the site, the process moves a little bit faster than it does when you have the Old Man and the Wife on the job. Shocking, I know.

As I stop and look back at all that we have done, I’m impressed again and again by the fact that Tim even knew how to do all this stuff. I mean, I definitely wouldn’t have known about all that stuff like drainage and pouring concrete and crap. True that while it’s within the realm of what he does for work, this is his first time doing an actual building on his own. Even though I bust on him all the time, I do so with love because my husband is quite something. He really is.

Mad props also to Tim’s father who we nicknamed The Bull because he just works and works and works and doesn’t stop, sometimes with a tad too much tunnel vision. Like a bull in a china shop, he doesn’t notice the fragile stuff around him and totally destroys it quite frequently. Sure, he’s set us back a day or two but he’s set us forward like 20,000 so we just have to zip it and let The Bull be The Bull.

But perhaps most impressive of all, please note how nicely my biceps have come along. That definition is a direct result of lifting steel and digging holes and moving boulders. Coming soon: The Farmgirl Workout

I’m just kidding. No, I'm not.

While my arms do look nice and all, the real hero here is Tim. He didn’t just say he was going to do something, he is doing it and he is doing it not just for himself but for us and for our future. If we weren’t already married, I’d ask him to marry me. I’d be the luckiest girl in the world if he said yes.