Bonus Update

Weird phenomenon of a ladder standing in yard.

I forgot to mention in the last post the drama a couple of weeks age with our power line.  As I was walking back from feeding the chickens,  I noticed a ladder standing straight up in the yard.  I stared at it for a couple of seconds because I couldn't for the life of me figure out how it was doing that and our ladder was by the house about 100 feet away.  Then I realized it was holding up our power line.  Yikes, what idiot props up a power line with a metal ladder?  It turns out a dump truck driver drove under it with his bed up.  Then he propped it up and left.  Needless to say,  it knocked out the power, and the guy didn't even tell us.  We got the power fixed up and called our excavator to let him know what the driver did.

I think the power repair person summed it up quite well.  "What a dumb-ass"

Merry Christmas

I will begin by apologizing to our friends and family,  no Christmas card this year,  but we will attempt to get a New Years card out.

It has been a very hectic few weeks.  I have spent every waking moment tiling the boys bathrooms and the mud room.  I got the floor of our bathroom finished, but we are going to hire out the surround as I am sick and tired of tile.  It is a difficult and messy job.  The tile we did get done looks great!

With flooring and heat in the house we decided to have our stuff delivered from storage.  While we didn't plan to move in just yet,  we just had to start sleeping in the house.  Once you see your bed all set up there is just no going back to the RV bed.  On our first morning sleeping here,  we sure surprised the plumber when he let himself in at 7am!

One of our kitchen cabinets came in the wrong size so that has been a real hold up,  but 3inches makes a big difference.  Without the cabinets we can not install the kitchen sink, dishwasher or the cook top,  so meals are still mostly eaten out.  The waitress at our favorite Tuesday spot had to let us know they will be closed for Christmas.  Guess she didn't want to have to worry that we'd be standing there in the cold waiting for our dinner.

The gas and water are not hooked up just yet,  but they set most of the bathroom fixtures this week and  will hopefully turn on the gas and water soon.  Right now it is like camping we sleep in the house but have to go to the trailer for the bathroom and shower.

One of the first items we found when opening the storage pods was the Christmas tree.  So with some coaxing,  we set it up.  It is a little sad since we don't know where the ornaments are and only some of the lights work,  but at least we have a place to put our gifts.  I think as far as the kids are concerned,  it is the best tree ever since we can celebrate our first Christmas in the new house.

Harder than Nails

 We had a great Thanksgiving.  We had a full dinner from Bob Evans.  Our only challenge was heating it in our very small microwave.  Getting things to luke warm took a long time.  Everything was tasty and it left lots of time to work on other things.

Kitchen from the family room.

Chris and Jackson installed the three garage door openers.  They look great, if only the power to them was hooked up.  We painted for 5 days straight and we got about 90% of the house painted.  It is starting to look like we could live there.

Early last week our bamboo flooring arrived,  all 9000lb of it.  Unfortunately it was dropped off in the garage and we had to move it box by box into the house to acclimate.  Our muscles are getting a work out and I think we would make a great husband and wife arm wrestling team.

We let the flooring installers work for an hour or so,  then our curiosity got the best of us and we had to go check on the progress.  "It is not going well sir.  The nails don't go in and the saw is smoking.  This wood is like steel."  So another truck of guys showed up with some stronger flooring nailers and the business owner came with a new saw blade.  Then 8 guys stood around to see if it would work.  Once they got the right tools,  the flooring went in like a dream and looks marvelous.

today the electrician is working on the outlets, switches and fixtures.  Hopefully we can get the tile done in the next week or two so the plumber can get his work done as well.  It looks like January we could have a place to live!

As things get completed it gets harder and harder to stay in the RV especially as we are expecting our first snow tonight.  Brrrrrrr.

No Chicken Little, the sky is not falling

The past two weeks have brought a lot of progress.  The house is completely insulated and the guys have just finished up the drywall.  We have been busy making some final purchases.  We finally bought some material to put a ceiling on the porch,  tile for the master bathroom and vanities for the kids bathrooms.  All big items to check off our list.

Looking into foyer from kitchen

The insulators were here on Monday blowing cellulose into the ceiling, when one of the guys came to tell me there was a big problem.  One guy was up in the ceiling and the other feeding hose up.  He said he heard a noise so he asked the guy if he was ok.  When the guy responded that he was ok,  he was on the ground.  He had fallen thru the drywall in the ceiling.  Luckily the drywallers were still here and I was able to explain in broken Spanish that a guy fell from the sky.  They figured it out a patched things right up.

Speaking of insulation...we had a guy here who featured our house on his blog.  He was very impressed at the level of insulation in the house and took lots of photos.  If you are interested, you can read it here:: http://jaymarkanich.activerain.com/post/3516669/best-practices-with-insulation-installation

We had been using our little trailer as sort of a mini dumpster.  They workers would fill it up,  then we would take it to the dump and empty it.  In this process I learned that unsecured drywall can stand straight up at 40MPH.  We also learned that to heap drywall over the walls of the trailer will cause the fenders to rub on the tires and burning rubber stinks!

In the Living Room Looking to the kitchen

The chickens have slowed down their egg production.  We did get some solar powered holiday lights for inside the coop and the number of eggs is increasing daily.  We are getting more and more regular egg customers calling for several dozen at a time.  We rarely have eggs to sell at the farm stand anymore.  We also had some calls for honey this week.  One woman had previously purchased some for her son with allergies and said it really helped him.  How could we not sell to her?  It was so nice to hear that someone was benefiting from our honey.

This past weekend we had drywallers here both days and Chris was having some back issues so we opted for a down weekend.  It was nice to not work on the house for a change.  We are looking forward to the Thanksgiving holiday and all that we can get done.  Hopefully some tile and some painting.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Everything happens at once

It seems like everyone is ready to work at the same time.  After a rather slow couple of weeks,  this week has been packed full!

Dominion hooked up the power to the house.  This is huge as the crews are scarce with many being sent up to NJ to help with hurricane Sandy.  The drywall is hung on the ceiling and some interior room.  The insulation for the main floor walls is complete.  The propane tank is in the ground and they are supposed to run the line today.  Our flooring is supposed to arrive next week and be installed the week of Thanksgiving.  That same week our cabinets and appliances are scheduled to arrive as well.  Whew,  it is enough to make your head spin.

Or drywall was delivered and stacked on a wall the insulators needed access to.  So....all by myself,  I restacked 50 4x8 sheets of drywall.  Unfortunately, I don't think my boss is going to give me a raise or even a bonus.  Whenever I as for a raise,  he says "Sure, 10% of nothing is nothing."  I guess I just have to be happy with room and board.

Siding Siding Siding

Yes,  all we have been doing is siding. It seems like the never ending job.  We did take a break and do structured wiring one day,  but then we were back to siding.

We have passed all of our mechanical inspections and our framing inspection.  All on the first try....we must have a really good general contractor!  We are in process to schedule the insulation, drywall and flooring.  Hopefully we will be ready for the cabinet delivery that is coming on Thanksgiving!

The house weathered hurricane Sandy just fine.  We had a little water in the basement but we believe that it will be corrected once final grading is complete.  We only had a few trees across the driveway to clean up after the storm,  unfortunately one of the had poison ivy on it and Julie is a little sensitive to PI. 

Side of house.  You can see the front porch on the left side of photo.

A couple of weeks ago,  I tried to move a rock pile.  Apparently,  when your lawn mower is trying to haul a really heavy trailer in wet grass, it is easy to get stuck.  It turns out it is also easy to slide backwards down hill.  If you are lucky a big pile of tree stumps will stop you before you roll over the hill.  If you are more lucky no one will ask you what happened,  they will just help you haul the rocks back up the hill.

As the weather gets colder it is hard to not get anxious about getting in the house.  We are all missing our stuff.  I am sure any clothing we stored will no longer fit the boys.  I was thinking, if we can work out the timeing, so that our stuff arrives from storage around the holidays,  maybe we can wrap it up for Christmas gifts and the kids won't recognize it. 

Happy Fall Y'all

As fall arrives,  we are all getting anxious to get into the house. The electrician is finishing up and we have an insulator and drywaller at the ready.  We continue to spend every weekend hanging siding and still have to do the structured wiring.

The old John Deere riding mower gets harder and harder to use.  The belt on the blades comes off about every 20 minutes and two weeks ago, the whole front cover just fell off.  So we ended up with a fantastic deal on a commercial zero turn mower.Now what used to take 5 hours to mow takes 1 hour. WooHoo!

We are constantly yelling at the kids when they let the dog out and the chickens happen to be out.  Little Yoda thinks the chickens are playmates.  Yesterday I was the one who let the dog out and didn't realize what I had done until it was too late.  Yoda pounced on chicken after chicken when they wouldn't pounce back he'd move onto the next one.  Until he got to the roosters.  One rooster just fled into the forest.  What a chicken!  Gonzo the rooster stood his ground,  made lots of noise puffed up his feathers and flapped his wings at the dog.  Yoda,  rolled over and gave him his belly.

Laboring on Labor Day

Labor Day weekend gave us three full days to work.  We hung lots of siding and did some exterior trim work.  We lost one day to rain, but overall we were pretty productive.

Jackson got the farm stand up and running after school one day and he has had sales each day.  He has been selling eggs and lots of honey.  He even is perfecting his sign flipping.  You know those guys who stand on the sign of the road twirling their signs?  Well,  Jackson is getting good at twirling his honey sign!

We added a couple more chickens to our flock to keep up with the farm stand demand as well as add some more color to the flock. We got barred rock and orpingtons as poullets.  There were a couple of hen squabbles,  but mostly they are all getting along.

The photo is of our front door.  The step, stone and door all look so nice,  we can't wait until we have the siding on to complete the picture.  Notice we wasted no time in moving our cushy chairs to the porch.  It is an amazing spot to watch the storms and the occasional deer that wanders by.

Overdue

This post is long overdue,  but it seems the days fill up so fast with contractor calls and inspections.  We did pass plumbing, HVAC, drain tile, and our porch inspections this week.  Chris made a big step this week deciding to hire out the electrical.  Work is just too busy and vacation time too precious that he realized doing the electrical ourselves would push our finish date too far.

The brickwork on the house is all laid and they are starting the stone work.  That lays the foundation so we can begin hanging siding this week.  The roof shingles are being installed as I type so no more drips and we will truly be weather tight.  The coolest progress made this week was the porch steps were poured.  They came out so nice,  I think they look just like a wedding cake!

Have been busy interviewing electricians, insulators garage door installers and cabinet makers.  With all the work going on,  it is hard to make sure the boys have a fun summer as well.  We did purchase a used golf cart and they have been having lots of fun getting the mail and taking out the trash.  Their definition of fun has changed a little since we moved to the country.  Cooper told me "Mom,  you know you're a redneck when your golf cart has an air horn and a gun rack."  We did get a trip to Dave and buster and another to Hershey in, as well as several trips to the library and pool.

Last weekend we harvested the honey we had in the freezer.  Our new extractor made light works and we got 58 1lb bottles of honey.  We were surprised at how easy the cleanup was as we just put all the dirty dishes outside and the bees cleaned them up in a day!

After months of no new tools,  we got to buy a new paint sprayer to paint the white bricks.  Once we figured it out it worked great.  There was one brief body painting session,  that was not pleasant, but in the process we learned that hoses really do need to be tight.

One last note.  I finally did it.  Yes,  I finally ate the beets, and I made Chris eat them too.  After about 900 suggestions of how to eat the beets,  I diced them and put them on salad. They were lovely and yes I would try them again.  I must admit,  they taste just like pickles so why not just eat a pickle?  Then you wouldn't have to deal with the interesting output side effect of beets.  You beet eaters know what I am talking about!

Bountiful Harvest

We are getting 3-4 cantaloupe each day from the garden.  I think my skin has a slight orange tinge.  Our tomatos are really starting to produce as well.  We have had some great bruschetta and this week and we are going to have to can some sauce very soon.  The watermelon is still ripening and the chickens are eating about 6 cukecumbers a day.  They are laying 7.5 to 8.5 eggs a day.  The .5 is usually a soft shell egg.  Maybe I need to feed her some milk!

The house is coming along so quickly right now.  Plumbing and HVAC are all roughed in for inspections next week.  The stone has been delivered and the stone mason has begun laying the brick on the back side of the house.

We had our first trauma when we noticed the versatex facia boards were not being installed according to the manufacturers directions.  The guys were about 1/2 done and it all had to be ripped out.  Sad as it was to loose all that material,  it allowed us to change our mind on the sofit boards they had installed so we will be happier in the long run.

So much work has happened in the last two weeks that we are optimistic the we might be able to move on around the New Year.  It is going to take a lot of work and consume every weekend,  but hopefully we can make it happen.  We all know nothing happens according to plan,  but we will do our best,  because this RV is getting smaller each week,  and We all really miss our stuff!



House 2 days ago.
I wasn't going out in the rain for a current photo.

The house is now weather tight.  All wrapped up with tyvek and roof paper.  The windows are in as well. We had walkthrus with the
tradesmen earlier this week and they will all be starting work
shortly.  After the walkthru I realized we needed to have on hand
several of the fixtures and the tub.  Unfortunately Chris has been out of town so I got to make those decisions all by myself.  I sure hope he likes what I picked!  If not it does not matter because it is done and well,  I like all the fixtures I chose.

The power company finally ran power to the barn.  Next week they will
energize the line.  It sure will be nice not to have to move all those
extension cords when I mow or to have to explain to Chris why I mowed
over another extension cord.
When we got home from vacation we had 250lbs of food to throw out due
to 7 days without power.  The beets were fine as they are canned and
do not need refrigeration.  I have to call the excavator, Ron, to do
some work so I am going to have to try them soon.

Chris pulled two full supers off the bee hives.   Think there is about
75 pounds of honey just waiting to be extracted.  Now we need to get
the equipment to extract the honey so we can get the honey boxed out
of the freezer.

The eggs continue to come.  We have 1 chicken laying green eggs, 4
laying blue eggs, 3 light brown, and one laying dark brown eggs with
double yolks!  I get 5-6 eggs a day and with the boys gone,  the egg
cartons are beginning to fill the fridge.

In the garden the weeds have not completely taken over, but the
watermelon have.  I thought I bought the baby watermelon seeds, but
these babies are full size.  In about a week I think we are going to
be delivering watermelons to all our friends.  If you live close and a
watermelon mysteriously arrives on your front porch it may be from us.
I am starting to get cantaloupe as well.  The yellow squash has quit
and the zucchini is really slowing down. Last week the boys and I
ripped out the beans and planted mini pumpkins and gourds.  It was
really nice to have the boys working in the garden.

On a dark and Stormy Night.....

 The house is coming along. The roof is sheathed and the interior basic framing is done. We are exploring contracts for roofing and soffits. We are trying really hard not to get too excited as we know there is still a long road ahead. Not an easy feat when I walk around the ginormous pantry and even bigger mud room! Oh to have laundry facilities again....sorry got off on a fantasy there.

Asparagus beans

We had a setback with one of the bee hives. We have two 10 frame hives which a thriving, we even think we will get 80 + pounds of honey this year. The one 8 frame hive had an invasion of wax moths. Chris spent a couple of hours identifying hives with the pests and quarantining them to the freezer. Yes, it is a strange site to open the freezer and see a bee hive! When he opened the hive a week later they seem to have rebounded but he still found a wax moth or two under the cover.

Little blue egg

The biggest excitement has been eggs. We are getting one egg a day from one of the Americana hens. She lays the cutest blue eggs. The taste SO good. Now we just need to get the rest of the girls laying. We have seen several hens practicing sitting in the nesting boxes, warming the fake trainer eggs.

We recently took a trip to visit family and on the eve of leaving, we had a big storm. No power. No water. So at 3:30 am we were collecting rain buckets of water to set out for the chickens. Hopefully the power and auto waterer will be back on soon. We thought we would have enough water in the pressure tank to shower, so I jumped in first and in an effort to conserve the wet stuff I pre-soaped thank goodness I did only face only as nothing came out when I turned the spigot! As we left We had lots of branches down, but luckily no trees fell on the drive as  chainsawing in the dark is not an option. So we got our 4 un-showered selves out the door at 4:15 am to catch our flight.

Garden with trailer in Background

Raising the roof

The guys have been busy all week putting up trusses and the roof sheath. Things are certainly progressing. Chris put the last bits of trim work on the barn this past weekend.

We are still waiting for the septic to be put into the barn. Once that happens we can move our tin can to a shadier spot. Meanwhile we try to make lots of trips to the pool and plan lots of vacations.

This week in the garden we took out the spent pea plants and replaced with loofah gourds. That should be a fun one to watch grow. The loofah seeds were black...I hope that is normal. We also put up trellises for the loofah and cantaloupe. I am still deciding what to put where the lettuce and rhubarb was. Our corn is waist high, and it is not even the Fourth of July! The zucchini and squash are producing more than we can handle. I am giving the stuff away by the grocery bag. I am getting some caraflex cabbage which are really cool cone shaped cabbages, they took a beating from the cabbage moths, but we still have a nice harvest coming in. The asparagus beans are about 8 inches. I can't wait to see if they really do reach 2 feet like the package promised. As for the weeds, the tables are starting to turn and with the high temperatures I can't keep up, time to employ the kids for weed pulling, but that could be more expensive than a bottle of Round Up.

No,  I have not tried the beets yet.

Putting up Walls

We finally found a "constructive" use for some cylinders.  We used them as fill in the garage and part of the basement.  The garage floor had to be brought up about 5 feet and the cylinders were good solid fill.  (We still have lots and lots.) Then it was covered with dirt and gravel and it is currently ready for the cement slab to be poured. 

The Nicklemen guys have been going like gangbusters.  They have the floor framed and sheathed and 75% of the walls are up and sheathed.  We keep walking around and testing out the views and the room sizes.  It is tempting to throw a sleeping bag on the floor and spend a night in the house :)  We are so happy to see progress and things are taking shape nicely.

This week I canned 13 jars of peas and later in the week I froze another 4 packages.  We are going to test which version we like better.  The squash and zucchini is coming in and tasting so great grilled.  We got some freshly canned beets from Ron, our excavator.  I tried to explain that we don't like beet balls,  but he told me that we WILL taste them and next time he is here we WILL tell him how good they are.  I am not even sure how to eat them?  Heat them up,  put them on a salad, add them to a sandwich,  put them over pasta....????  I just remember very vividly tasting some from my mother's fork and I was NOT happy.

The bees are really working hard as well.  Chris inspected hives today and one has a full honey super  for us(40lbs of honey).  The other two hives are working hard to make honey but we won't get as much from them.  Now we are going to need to order extraction equipment soon.  Fresh, organic local honey anyone?

No eggs yet,  but we are checking every day.  The roosters have started crowing....all the time.

Some Assembly Requred

Which box contains the instructions?

5/14 we had three truckloads of materials delivered.  While the house is now on site it will be take some doing before it actually looks like a house.  Nickelmen Construction has been charged with the huge task of making it work.  So far they are working on flooring framing and they have not had an easy go of it.  Marrying up an un-level cement block foundation with a new poured foundation had given them a few reasons to scratch their heads.  We are so fortunate to have such accomplished guys working on this project. 

As framing continues this week,  our excavator is readying the foundation for the concrete slabs to be poured.  Chris and Ron Frye came up with the creative idea to use the cement cylinders as fill for the garage.  The building inspector and engineer ok'd the idea and we will save some $ and use up some of those pesky cylinders.

The grape vines have lots of baby bunches of grapes. 
You can see the bee hives in the upper right.

The garden is growing like crazy!  I have canned several pints of strawberries and this week I hope to can peas.    Everything is up and growing.  My June bearing berries are almost done and the summer squashes will be ready to be harvested this weekend.

The warmer than usual weather has had many effects.  This morning I discovered a caterpillar nesting ground on the broccoli.  I harvested what I could and cut out any crawlies I could find.  While I was mourning the loss of broccoli,  the chickens had a feast! The flea beetles have my eggplant leaves looking like lace.  I sprayed them off with the hose then treated the leaves with some hort oil.  Fortunately the three eggplants that are hanging look fine.

I am a bit disappointed in the rhubarb and I think I am going to rip it up and try a new variety.  The problem is that I have a variety that does not turn red.  In my mind, rhubarb should be red and I really don't like eating green rhubarb. 

The End of the Alley, Junk Yard Alley

The area formerly known as junk yard alley is no more.  Last weekend we hauled the last of the trash into the dumpster.  We still have to pinch ourselves to believe the trash is gone.  Some highlights of what we found.....

• 100's of shower door 
• toilets in many colors
• sinks in many colors
• formica laminate
• corian countertops
• whirlpool tub
• shower
• steel girders
• dishwashers
• ovens
• stoves
• cabinet doors
• 6 wheel barrows
• corrugated metal roofing
• culvert pieces
• pvc pipe
• many many tires
• ride on lawn mower
• tile attached to subfloor
• pink and purple big wheel
• hundreds of 5 gallon plastic buckets
• cutouts from bathroom sink holes
• an international truck with 1988 plates
• fire escape ladder

Turkey Nest,  notice the poision ivy.

Now that the tough stuff is done we were able to take on a fun project.  The four of us blazed a trail about 1/2 mile thru the woods.  Jackson is anxiously awaiting his new mountain bike so he can attack the trails.  About two dys after the trail was finished,  we came across a turkey nest with a dozen eggs.  I guess we will have to avoid that part of the trail for now.  Yesterday while making breakfast,  I only had one egg and was very tempted to grab one of these and see if anyone would notice.  I think the eggs should hatch around June 1st.  I am very tempted to go out on May 31, grab a few eggs, and raise Thanksgiving dinner.

The garden looks so nice,  this time before the weeds take over things always look so promising.  We have been getting strawberries daily and if we have the warm days promised by the weatherman tomorrow should be a bumper crop.  The potato experiment is going well.  Both the grow bags and the bed of straw have potatos growing.  We have also been fortunate to have many fresh lettuce salads.

Foundation

This is taken standing on the front porch.  The boys are leaning on what will be the mudroom and behind them are the forms for the garage foundation walls.  looking into the basement you can see the door to the vault room.

The concrete boys did lots of work last week as they set and poured the foundation walls.  It realy gave us a look at the size of the new garage and add-ons.  Chris had a busy weekend moving the water pressure tank to prepare for the concrete floors to be poured. 

The bees have survived their move to their new hives and it looks like all three colonies are thriving. They all released their own queen from her cage and have begun making honey and pollen stores.  Yoda had a run in with the bees in their first days here.  All of a sudden he came bolting around the corner at full speed rolling and rubbing in the grass to try knocking them off.  I guess that will teach him to not play with the hives.

Yoda has been the constant source of entertainment.  Last week while talking to Chris on the phone,  I decided to feed the chickens.  Yoda seized the opportunity to enter the coop and exit via the chicken door into the chicken run.  He had a grand time pouncing on chickens.  They were not amused by his antics.  I had dropped the phone to chase the dog and apparently did a lot of shrieking.  When I found the phone I had dropped in my panic,  Chris was still on the line.  His only comment was that it sounded like a 911 call.

Jackson and I made a planting bed this weekend.  He worked really hard to dig, separate and plant some bulbs.  We also planted some flowering quince and lamium.  We (I really mean me) are having a hard time not buying all the plants that are out at the stores right now.  We did buy some cool things ... pink forsythias, hollyhocks, corkscrew grass and landulum. Since I will have to try to keep some of them alive until the house is ready for landscaping,  I decided to try my hand at propagation.  I've divided and replanted several plants.  Hopefully come fall they will be alive and have a spot by the new house in which to grow.

Progress

Chickens using the "Chicken Jungle Gym"
as well as shading themselves under Jim's chicken pergola.

We have had lots of progress this week. The footers are dug and poured and the basement is entirely cleaned out. The mason has finished his fixes and tuck pointing. We narrowed down our stone choices to one color and the brick color is down to two choices. We made some changes to the garage layout which have necessitated a new building permit so we are waiting on that to come through. We ordered exterior doors and windows this week as well. With all the progress it is hard to not get overly excited. The boys are talking about how to decorate their rooms and I even got a paint chip deck from the paint store.

Hard to read but the bright orange sign says
"Grandma and Grandpa's place."

We also had a nice visit from Julie's parents. Boy did they accomplish lots while they were here. Jim cut vines and trees along the driveway, the property front and in the woods. We are lucky he can wield a chainsaw. Jim and Marie cleaned the future movie room in the house, that was a chore we have been avoiding for weeks. The chickens needed a spot for shade so Jim and Marie also repurposed a pallet into a chicken pergola. Those are just some of the highlights. The chores they helped us with are just too numerous to mention. We tried to get them to stay longer in the lush accommodations of the barn, but the call of a hot bath and actual beds won out over the port-a-potty and camping cots.

Chris installed 3 new bee colonies this week. They seem to be doing fine and settling in to their new homes nicely. Julie had to pick up the bee packages in her car (not the open bed truck). Ask Jim and Marie about their ride with 10,000 bees, some of whom were not in their nice bee packages. I am sure you will get a good story out of them!

The garden is just waiting for life. While the asparagus had several spears it is lacking the quantity to feed the family. So we will wait another year and hopefully next year will be a bumper crop. The blossoms on the strawberries look so promising, they are both large and numerous. The broccoli is looking good, and the parsnips, fennel, squash, lettuce and cabbage have all germinated. This weekend I hope to put in lots more to really get things going.

I give this week 5 shovels

shovels and some other things we found

That is how many shovels we found this week.  We worked on cleaning out the basement and we finished cleaning out the little shed.  We still have not found the box of money that must be here somewhere,  but we keep trying.  We all found some treasures this weekend. Chris plans to salvage the little shed to repurpose as a wood shed and I have been saving some random wood to make some sort of a wall hanging.  Jackson found a whole box of switches to which he said "These are exactly what I need!"  He also salvaged several spools of wire which he plans to put to good use.  Cooper would have found treasure as well,  but every time we came across a dead snake, snake skin or animal skull, we swiftly tossed them out of sight.

I installed the automatic solar chicken door this week and Chris is still working on the nesting box, otherwise the coop and run are looking good.  We moved the chickens into the coop yesterday.  I am sure it was a comical sight to see Cooper and I trying to catch them all,  transfer them to a pet carrier then walk them to the new coop.The chickens are very wary to leave the coop and explore their new surroundings so the chicken run remains unused as of yet.  We have clearly identified one rooster and possibly a second,  which means we will probably need to have fresh chicken for dinner soon.

This week we had enough material to write our own country song.  The bees are all dead,  the pipes froze, turkeys ate all our newly planted grass seed and the toilet overflowed.  However we are lucky enough to get on the list and we have 3 packages of bees arriving April 7th,  warmer weather is coming and I have 100 lbs of grass seed waiting to be planted.  As always,  life is good!

Bringing down the house

If you were to see Chris or I this week,  we have huge grins we can't get rid of.  They took down the old house this week,  it was a huge milestone for this project.  It took two days to get the house down and I think a lot simpler than anyone had anticipated. 

Telehandler getting ready to knock down the fireplace.

I have been keeping myself busy planting grass.  I hate planting and growing grass,  but it is a necessary evil and I only do so much each day.  Then I spend the rest of my day on more fun things like getting the chicken coop ready.  They are ready to move,  but we have no fence up for them.  I dug a trench to bury the fence and buried hardware mesh around the coop structure 4in deep and 12 inches out. Hopefully this will keep the digging predators out.  I dug two of four post holes for the fence,  we should be able to get the fence up lickety split this weekend.

I have also been trying to work in the garden sporadically.  I am doing an experiment with the potatoes this year.  I have some growing in grow pots (black bags)  in straw and some growing in a bed covered with straw.  I am curious to see which method produces the nicest and the most potatoes.  This week I got our "orchard" planted.  We have 6 trees including peach, apple, pear and cherries.  The pies will be wonderful!

Another monumental event happened today when the Steves (scrap metal guys) came to the door and said they were finished.  Hard to believe that that job ended as there was more metal here than Wrigley's has gum (thanks JT for that analogy).

Things are looking good these days.  We are giddy with the progress we have made and Chris is happy that I have stopped looking at finished houses for sale.

Busy, Busy Busy

Now we have tractor envy.

I has been a busy couple of weeks!  Our guy Ron,  has been busy clearing away junk from what we affectionately call Junk Yard Alley.  He also cleaned up the brush and little trees behind the house.  They worked about 3 days and it looks like a whole new place.  I will refrain from commenting on what we did with a lot of the cylinders,  but they will forever be close by. 

Ron also came by one evening and moved the shed.  I painted it red and have some minor modifications to make then we will have a bonafide chicken coop.  Not a moment to soon either,  the chickens are ready for their outdoor home this weekend.  We did loose one chicken so we have 11 now ready for the cozy new home.

Steve and Steve came back to collect scrap metal after almost a year long break.  Today they are going to take the copper wire out of the old house and a few misc scraps.  I am always amazed by the little scraps they will go to great pains to collect.

I have been selling bricks from the piles.  So far we have three different people taking bricks and you still can't tell where they took them from.  We have decided to use one pile ourselves to brick the house to grade in the back.  Something tells me that we will still have extra when the project is complete.

We are still working with the county to get our building permit.  Health, engineering and zoning have all signed off and tomorrow I meet with land development for the grading plan and final sign off...hopefully. 

We have had so many people stopping by this week.  Several people to look at bricks and cylinders,  one neighbor stopped by and took me to her house for advice on fruit trees and moving a Japanese maple,  another neighbor and his daughter hiked thru the woods just to say hi,  but the most interesting was the soils testing guy who stopped by.  He had done a soils test for us back in 2009 before we bought the property.  He happened to be in the area and wanted to see how we were fairing.  We chatted about the progress and he asked about our plans for the old doors and windows in the house.  Apparently he is building a log cabin and is going to take the old doors and windows for his own project.  It just caught us by surprise but we are so happy to reduce the amount of waste from this project.

It was just time.

I changed my ring tone to green acres today. I figured it was just time.

Chickens!

Chick on left is an austrolorp.  the one posing is an americana.

The chickens arrived!!  We are super excited to have them.  Our americana birds come in an array of colors.  we have yellow ones, brown ones and grey ones.  They are 9 days old now and have grown tremendously in the week we've had them.  They are starting to get their wing feathers and their tail feathers. Right now they are in the barn under the heat lamp and should be ready to move to their coop in early March.  I guess that means we should start building the coop?  Yesterday i staked out the chicken yard and I think I have Chris convinced that he does not have enough time to build the coop himself and we can have someone else build it for us.  Otherwise,  one of the boys may have to give up their room.

Chris worked all weekend organizing the barn to get a space ready for the water to come in and a place for the pressure tank.  This kids an I mostly played with the chickens.  Yoda loves the chickens and will sit and watch them for ages.

We are enjoying mild weather,  upper 50's to 60's.  We sure hope that will eliminate typical spring backlog for the construction industry.  We have our fingers crossed that we will not have to spend another winter in the RV.  As fun as camping is,  we all will enjoy having a house again!

Cold, Hot, Cold, Hot

The past couple of weeks have been all about temperature. We had some really mild weather and the daffodils are up about 2 inches.
We took advantage of the warm weather and worked in the chilly barn and hung foam board on the ceiling and walls of the workshop area. Now we have a nice insulated spot we can heat and spend some time there.
Now that we finally have a heated space in the barn, our 12 volt system in the RV broke. That means no lights, and the electric starter on the hot water and furnace do not work. We spent four days using lanterns and space heaters, but Thursday the mobile rv repair man(our new best friend) came by and we are all fixed up.
We had a big win this week, in that we closed on our construction loan. It was pretty funny to see our names listed as general contractor for the project. Last week we got our initial building permit applied for and the health department gave us the go ahead. We are now on the list with our ccontractor to get the septic to the barn installed and initial grading started. The cement guy has us on his radar to do the foundation and we are accepting the final bids for frameing.

It is hard to believe that we are actually ready to start construction! 9 months after we moved out here. Yippeee!

The Chickens are Coming!

Paintball fun behind the barn

We have had a great week!  The weather has been fantastic 40's most of days and even 60's a couple of times.  Chris and Jackson got a lot of wiring done in the barn and they hope to schedule to have regular electrical service line installed soon.  We hung pegboard this weekend which is immensely helpful in organizing things.  We also applied for the permit to have septic run to the barn and our installer is ready to roll once the permit comes in.  I never thought I would be so excited about a barn bathroom.

Cooper and Yoda on our hike

Due to the nice weather we did slack off a little and have some fun with the paintball guns.  We found some junk bottles and an old tire in the woods to shoot at.  I actually thought to myself that it is so cool we found the junk to shootwhere normally I would be perturbed that I had to clean up someone else's trash.  We also took a good hike in the woods.  We came across a great camping spot on an island between two creeks.  Chris was able to show me where he wants his shooting range and of course I suggested a different spot.  The we settled on a completely different place. 

We ordered our chickens two weeks ago and they will arrive mid Feb.  Chris is not so excited as the rest of us, as he has the most chores to do to get the coop ready.  We ordered 6 Americanas(blue and green eggs) and 4 Austrolopes(black chickens) and 1 Americana Rooster.  I should close now so I can finish reading "Chickens for Dummies".

Oh Crap!!

Yes I really do mean crap or whatever you want to call it. This week when we went to empty the black holding tank of the RV nothing came out. For those of you who do not know what is in the black holding tank, see the title of this post.

Chris shined a flashlight into the outlet and saw an piece of pipe elbow. Ahhhh, easy fix right, just fish it out. Not so, the elbow was stuck within an elbow so it was tricky and at one point the elbow joint got pushed all the way back in. Oops. After extensive googling for ideas, he decided to stick the power washer into the outlet. Brave? Stupid? Genius? It flushed the little piece right out, but....nothing else came with it. That is good and bad because the expected stuff to come with it is not pleasant but since it didn't that means there is a dam built up. Known in the RV world as a case of the black hills.

I'd like to say we powered thru and unclogged on our own, but Don's Johns came to the rescue and pumped us out. However, while we were waiting for them to show up, we both showered (mistake). The guy arrived and Chris went out to help. They hollered in for me to open the toilet, as I did a geyser from the toilet drenched EVERYTHING, and it stunk! Long story but the suction was not set correctly, but we are de-clogged. They do NOT have our vote for #1 in the #2 business.

Other than dealing with crap, we have been organizing our stuff in the barn so that we can empty our stuff out of the house. When the contractors are ready we want to be prepared to begin construction.

Currently our holdup is the loan. It is such a long process. After being approved at the end of summer, we are still waiting and working out draw schedules and other details I never knew existed. To help keep us on budget Chris is considering giving up his mac-daddy movie room. This is a big step for him and we are giving him lots of support during this difficult decision. (big win for Julie!)

Keep your fingers crossed for a mild winter.