Truckin' - got my chips cashed in, we're truckin'...

"...You're sick of hangin around and you'd like to travel;
Get tired of travelin and you want to settle down.
I guess they cant revoke your soul for tryin,
Get out of the door and light out and look all around.

Sometimes the lights all shinin on me;
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me,
what a long, strange trip its been."

Grateful Dead lyrics from an album long past. Friday nights on WJFF, our local independent hydro-powered cool ass radio station has the 'Dead Hour' every Friday night around summer sundown (it's actually an hour and a half). They also have a once a year 24 hour Dylan bash on his birthday. www.wjffradio.org.

Here's cottage 8, moving right along. The outside is just ready to pick up some steam - I wanted to try a new siding crew, and that meant waiting a bit. The inside is nearly done - pictures forthcoming.

Cottage 7 has passed some serious milestones - the inside is trimmed and painted, and within a week we will be doing the floors. Had a site meeting with Pablo and Ana yesterday to discuss some details, but for the most part it's smooth sailing from here. The paint colors are incredibly perfect for the interior of this house. They will be living in the house by the end of August.

Hate to say - but this is about the 6 straight house we brought in on-budget, and ahead of schedule. What's unheard of (on time, on budget) is commonplace for us and our clients at this point. So when people wonder how Catskill Farms is doing it (www.thecatskillfarms.com), it's very easily explained - my team is a bunch of honest overachievers - from the surveyors and engineers to the carpenters, painters and tile men. They take our mission seriously - our mission being, simply, 'to make the country transition easy - to raise the bar of what is possible for those itching to build/live a getaway..' Not 'kinda easy', or 'kinda painless', but really, actually, easy. The Big Easy.

And Cottage 5 looks better and better, with a great paint color, a great columned aesthetic, landscaping and sod growing quickly, and most importantly, a homeowner's caring touch.

Once Catskill Farms is done, the fun has really just begun - making a house a home. Some families do it overnight, some do it over a few months, and some take even more.