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.