Progress Update

Selwyn was on vacation from the Thursday before Easter and all last week, so while we didn’t move quite as quickly as we do with a third person, we still got a lot done in the past week and a half.


The screen door is hung on the front room in the guest cabin, and that room is all finished, cleaned, made up and ready for guests. The back room is also finished, but only has one bed because Tom is still working on the second bed for that room. When he finishes this bed, we’ll have four very sturdy beds made by Tom and Selwyn, using the local hardwoods. The first bed they made was a mix of sapodilla and milady, and then they made another two beds using only one of those kinds of woods per bed. Sapodilla is a very red hardwood, and is Tom’s favorite. Milady is very pretty; it’s a pale almost creamy yellow wood with a pink grain.


The bed Tom is making now is jobio (pronounced ho-BE-oh), which is a light wood with a grain of a light and dark brown; it reminds me of chocolate and carmel on coffee ice cream. When the jobio bed is finished, Tom is going to make a bed for us out of purple heart, a very dramatic wood with very light stripes mixed with very dark purple. The grain is very fine, and the color changes, which are very distinct, don’t seem to really follow the grain so a 2x4 can start at the bottom being all purple, then mix through part of the board, and then be all light at the other end. I’ll post pictures when it’s done.


In preparation for guests, Tom and Ronald and Wilton, the boys next door who work here once a week, have been clearing trails. We can now walk around the bottom of the hump that holds our water tanks, and can climb from our back property line up the backside of that hump. They also cut a trail through the jungle and around the pasture from where our barn will be, and have cleared off a big part of the property line. The trails still need some work since they cover some pretty rough terrain, but I managed to walk them in my rubber boots and shorts, which is an improvement from the jeans and hiking boots outfit that was required to cover that ground before.

While Tom was working on the bed and on the final details in the guest cabin – things like putting siding boards around the bottom to hide the plumbing and floor joists – I’ve been working on our web page. I think I have most of the content down, and now I have to make it look pretty, which is very slow going. I’m leaving it out there at www.moonracerfarm.com if anybody wants to take a look, although you have to remember that IT ISN’T DONE AND IT WILL LOOK NICER. If anybody has any comments or if anything that’s there leaves questions in your minds, please drop me a line and let me know. I’m far enough away that it’s probably even safe for you to be critical. ;-)