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