Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

Big ole bear somewhere between Bethel and Highland. This one hung out a while while James and I fumbled with the camera - "Where's the camera? Shit, how do you turn it on? Where's the zoom? there it goes!!" - type of thing. This was a big bear, and they say bears don't show up on photos but this one did for some reason - or am I getting my old wise tales backwards?

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More progress - More progress - More progress. And that's the name of this home-building game. Any time you are not making progress, it's definitely not good on the wallet. Here is the beginning of the McInnes Cottage.

And the kitchen at 67 Crawford. Country shelves, plywood countertop, and a dash of red lighting.

Here's the bathroom, which we left nearly completely intact with the original 6'6" tin ceiling and old school wallpaper.

And the exterior. Maybe some shutters?

Simple white shale fireplace at Cottage 8, complimented by a hand hewn beam and some local bluestone.

The cedar shake siding and stone chimney looks pretty good to me.

And then onto Cottage 7. This dining room has a flash of red on the wainscotting, contrasting the off white walls and stained floors and doors. Pretty bold but I love it - it really works.

And we bring the inside in with some beveled cedar siding under the staircase. This is a sharp look - clean staircase, cedar siding, and the red wainscotting in the background.

And the hulking fireplace catching one's attention upon entering the room.

And the little brook.

Cottage 7, Cottage 8 and the old farm on Crawford Road all commenced construction in March, and all will be tied up tightly in August. It's not easy to keep things rolling like this, but it is our primary focus and we do do a pretty good job considering what we have to work with (now, I'm sure you all noticed I wrote 'do do' in that last sentence.).

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Like the show Flipping Out, I'm moving again to my new international headquarters, pictured below, probably leaving me without phones, internet, computer and whatever else we need to function anymore.

Here she is - don't judge the book by the cover - soon to be a happening artists' and professional hangout and gallery, anchored by Catskill Farms. Catch you on the back side of the 4th of July Holiday. I'm going to Lancaster Pa, where my 130 first cousins live. My dad had 8 brothers and sisters, and my mom 11, and each of them had a half dozen kids. During the reunions, we could field entire baseball leagues.

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We heard the faint meowing off in the woods, did a quick check in the house to see which cat was there, and then set off to follow the noise. Seeming this was my only day off and seeming like I have been through plenty of animal injury issues with Lisa, I was immediately hoping this was not going to entail the 50 minute drive to the Middletown Emergency animal hospital.

Well, there was no injury, but there was a cat stuck up the tree about 40' high - very far up there with no way down - lots of pathetic crying, I mean, whose fault is it, really? Anyway, I ran to get my camera and heard Lisa screaming in the background 'not everything is a blog post!" That really cracked me up -although in the end I disagree with her.

Here's good old Ruby of prior post fame stuck way on up in a tree.

That's a crazy picture above with super leaf green eyes. The camera zoom makes it appear like the cat is not so high, but that's very deceptive. So what does a builder do in this situation? You probably say 'get a ladder', and that would be totally correct except I don't own a ladder.

Poor Ruby, balancing on a small branch. Best yet, it started to rain. So I don't have a ladder, my main man Juan is in Connecticut, and so Lisa calls up a friend Darryl who owns a small gentleman's farm in Cochecton, and he very kindly came over with his 24' ladder. Problem is, Ruby was 40' in the air.

So Darryl, against my better judgment and wishes, climbed to the top of the ladder and then scaled up another 10' up the tree on branches only 2" thick. So he makes it up there, grabs the cat, I scurry up the ladder, he hands the pine-tree sticky cat off to me, I do the -behind-the-neck cat paralysis move and descend quickly with Darryl right behind me.

Here's our hero in the tree, waving to the breathless crowd (me and Lisa).

This is a true country pic, - with pregnant lisa fighting back tears, our Hero of the story Darryl and the ladder that is twice as big as his truck.

The embarrassing part of the tale is everytime Dr. Darryl asked for something I didn't have it - rope, bag, screw-driver, chainsaw.

Since half my life is about insurance, I immediately ran a few scenarios through my head - whose responsibility and liability would it have been if Darryl wasn't as skilled in tree climbing as he lead us to believe? I don't own the house so it's not my homeowners policy, it wasn't at work so it's the not MY CRAZY EXPENSIVE LIABILITY INSURANCE POLICY, so it must have been the leasor's ultimate responsibility. Who knows? No harm, no foul.

Played golf with my insurance broker over the weekend and he's a big blog follower and since he makes it a habit of separating me from my money, he says he regularly checks the blog with hesitant tepidation, wondering if he's been profiled. He hasn't been, but he should - especially after selling me a construction liability policy that forced me to make a decision between toning down the blog (no more calling bad companies out by name) or excluding the part of the policy that protects me against inadvertent libel with my advertising.

I chose to exclude the coverage - Long live the 1st amendment.

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