It's Feeling More Like Home

         Just three school days left, and today I don’t even have any classes.  I hope to get all of my exams graded.  The science department is also going to lunch together.  We are bidding one of our fellow teachers farewell and good luck. He was pink slipped and is "moving on".  So, there will be fun mixed in with sorrow.

        I still have a ton of unpacking to do here. Wednesday night I finally got all of the rest of the hanging clothes into my closet.  I ended up folding more shirts and stacking them on a shelf in the closet.  I also am giving more  to Good Will.  Next I have the bathroom stuff to get put away.  I am still trying
                                                                                    to buy two
medicine cabinets for two of the bathrooms.  I have been shopping around, but can’t find what I am wanting.  Then there’s the books and office stuff and photo albums followed by nick-nacks and wall hangings. Can’t wait to get it all done so I feel settled in, can find stuff I am looking for and can relax some.  

      Daniel is helping out a lot around here.  We give him all sorts of jobs, the big ones being mowing, trimming and painting.  He has also removed
fence posts and electric rope, helped move things around from building to building as we
sort through old farm junk and reorganize what we are keeping.  He cleans where it needs cleaning, picks up sticks, helps with the burn pile, etc.
       
      We plan to get 2 barn cats from the Second Chance Animal Rescue.  They have just been spayed and neutered and should be ready soon.  We have been instructed to “lock” them in the barn for 2 or 3 weeks until they adjust to and adopt our barn as their new home.  Keeping them in the barn is going to be easier said than done.  Joe put a screen where the north outside hay door is in our hay loft.  It gets way too hot up there when all closed up.  He also got boards to cover the hole at the top of the ladder inside the barn so the cats won’t jump down.  Now we are ready for our two new barn cats to arrive.

     I have been doing lots of odd jobs in and out side the house. If it is nice
                                                                                    out, I work
outside planting flowers, trimming, weeding, walking around and thinking about how I want to change/improve things.  We have had record breaking rains this spring, which has really hurt the local farmers, made it hard to get into our lower pasture, and prevented our fence man and tack room builder from being able to come because they are farmers and trying to get their fields planted.

     I worked on getting the gravel brine pit ready for the pond this week.  I started by digging a hole after having Daniel remove the gravel.  It was a mess. There were only 4 inches of gravel on top of OLD cracking plastic. Then we hit a dark black, wet clay type dirt under the plastic.  And I hit a  rather large rock.  Got all of that out and then put in sand to fill in around the pond after I finished digging the hole. The pond was set in and then we filled back in with the gravel we had removed.  The pond was filled with water.

      I am about 3" low on gravel so will buy more to finish it off.  After the water sat for a bit, I put in Mr T. (our painted turtle).  I need to wait for the water to age more before adding the goldfish.

     We people and animals are starting to feel at home, which means getting into a familiar routine, knowing where most things are, and being able to relax some.

Flooded By It All

      Flooded with rain, school work, unpacking, and out side yard work.

      With all the rain we have been getting, it has been flood conditions all over in these parts.  Our lower farm land is no exception.  It looks like we have a 2 acre pond right now.  Notice our broken fence as well.

Yesterday during the torrential down pour the
lower end of our driveway was under water also. 

      I am anxious for the rains to stop, the fields to dry, and to get our fencing all fixed so we can have this place ready to go for boarding a horse.

      We are getting six baby chicks tomorrow.  I am bringing them home from school after church.  One of our Biology teachers got them from a
friend so he could
use them in the classroom.  They are over 2 weeks old now.  Britney completely cleaned out the chicken coup when she was home last weekend and Dan has power washed it, given it a base coat of primer, and a top coat of white paint.  It looks really nice right now.  Joe has built some fencing to contain the chicks and replaced a window with a screen to get some air in there. So we are ready.

 
      Joe bought a new “tractor”.  It is more like a big riding mower actually.  But it has a larger mower deck, runs on diesel, goes much faster and is more powerful.  It has a front end loader and has already come in quite
                                                      handy.  Here it already looks a bit
worse for ware.  Not only does it make mowing go much faster, but we have moved sizable amounts of dirt around and even moved a big bolder from beside the corn crib. We bought a 300 gal. diesel fuel tank from a friend and used the tractor to get the stand we will put it on all situated on the west side of the corn crib.

     We cut down all the shrub from
by the drive, under the power line, which was a tangled mess of several different bushes and trees.  It looked disorderly and is going to block our view of pasture and interfere with additional fencing.

      I have continued to do some planting and transplanting and trimming of trees and shrubs between the rains.  We also moved the "wishing well" from the front pasture to the back yard and put it around the well head.  I stuck a fern in the well bucket to give it some eye appeal.  

     Below is a picture of the garden Joe put in earlier.  He rented a tiller to get the ground loose.  There were lots of rocks in part of it, but the soil is pretty good.  The photo on the right shows the Forsythia and Rose of Sharon cuttings (from old house) I am rooting next to our storm cellar shed.

As you know, I would much rather be outside working than in here.  The unpacking continues to move at a snails pace.  It is too big a task for me to tackle until school is out. Anyway, the urgent school work has taken precedence over all farm and house work.  It too is a daunting job.  I have to write my semester exam and review this weekend. 

     With all the brush piles here when we moved in (the previous owner was a rabbit hunter who want to encourage their existence) and all the sticks and branches we picked up in the yard plus everything we cut down or trimmed....we have been doing a lot of burning.  It is nice to take a rest from work and tend the fire. 

    
          In the evenings when it
     isn't raining, we sit by a fire in
     the pit by the house and reflect
     on our day's accomplishments
     and ponder on what's to come.

Getting Settled In

     It has been busy around here.  Britney was home for the weekend. 
We worked hard out in the yard most of the day Saturday. 
                                                        
      Britney and I planted flowers, and did a lot of weeding.  We trimmed tons of small starters growing up from around several large trees and along the foundation.











    
     We all (Joe and Daniel included) also worked on two fields...cutting out small scrub trees from the fence line.  Here Britney looks quite formidable as the shrubs and trees were no match for her.



     I had Daniel transplant a few of the small, nice pines that were too close to the fence.  Here he is hauling one back to the yard to be planted in a more suitable place.

     Joe and Dan cut the grass around all fencing and checked fence posts.  One of our fields was very wet (as you can see in the picture with Dan).  It gets a lot of run off so we couldn't trim the fence line or work on it.  We are trying to get two pastures ready so a lady I am aquainted with can start boarding her 2 horses here if she wants.  Some fence posts need to be replaced and a lot of the braided wire electric rope needs to be re-strung. The sooner we get it "horse ready" the better.....less mowing once we have horses eating grass.  We still need to build a tack room in the barn and buy some gates. 
       It is just beautiful here this time of year and the farm is so wonderful.  Britney thinks the natural flowers (wild and weeds) are as beautiful as the ones we have planted.

Lilacs I agree are pretty                           Dandelions only when blooming

Wild mustard.                                        Columbine in a row of bushes.








     Things are "coming together" slower than hoped for. Every little job is bigger than expected, or has it's "problems" that slow the job down. And some things we just can't decide on how to do. The mowing is going to take LOTS of time....and that doesn't even count the 4 fields.

       I do not have any regrets, but am sometimes a bit overwhelmed with the enormity of the jobs and the "to do list".  I also take up a lot of time pondering on how I want something done or how to do it.  And then there is still lots to unpack as soon as I can figure out where to put it all.

       I stopped counting mice after 25.  There have been several more .... so it has to be in the mid 30's by now.  I am not sure how to count the little mouse the cat and dog had been "playing" with for 36 hours.  Dan said that Abbey chased it around the house for several hours Sat. night.  It ended up in the laundry room off the kitchen Sun morning.  I managed to uncover it's hiding spot and the chase was on again.  This time Abbey chased it onto the back porch where the dog stays.  Kaysha caught it and had it in her mouth....thinking the poor little thing was finally dead I told the dog to "drop it",  which she did, and as soon as the mouse hit the ground, it ran behind a
                                                      book shelf.  Sat. night we were moving
furniture around on the back porch to make room for the big wardrobe closet Dan put together for us.  And guess what....little mouse was off and running again.  Kaysha caught it again....and with it in her mouth I sent her out into the garage. 




     A little later when I went out to investigate....the dog was going nuts sniffing around some big tables leaning against the wall and the big card board box from the wardrobe packaging...I moved the cardboard and the mouse was sighted under the edge of a table and disappeared once again.  I left the dog and cat out in the garage awhile.  The next morning I found the little mouse dead on the floor.  I guess it had been injured during the chase.

       I had been incubating 10 chicken eggs Carol brought from her chickens.  These are Barred Plymouth Rock chickens....which are beautiful and quite hardy.  I wasn't expecting any success because her rooster is of questionable "abilities".  None of the eggs hatched after 23+ days of incubation, but they were a surprise and have me very curious.  Sun. night I opened all 10 of them.  5 of them were fertile (go rooster Dave).  But they
                                                       were all at different stages of

development.  One was about 2 days along or maybe a non-viable embryo.  2 were around 5 days (looked to be developing normally).  The 4th was maybe 8 or 9 days (also looked normal) and the 5th was over 18 days, but still had a lot of unused yolk.  It had all its feathers (which were very dark colored. I was expecting yellow down) and it looked "normal" in terms of legs, wings, beak + eyes.  None of the chicks were alive = no heart beat or movement.  So now I feel kind of bad, it was as much my fault as it was the rooster's.  I discovered lots of little problems with the incubator as the days progressed.  The problem was that I have never used this incubator before, I had two bad thermometers, I forgot to put the vent plugs in, I was going on memory for some things, and I hadn't taken the time (didn't have time) to figure it all out.  Not sure if I want to try again or just buy baby chicks. 
        I had a Rose-breasted Grosbeak on the feeder and drinking out of the bird bath Tuesday after school, and then a little bit later I saw a pair of Wood Thrushes eating seed off the ground under the feeder. They are both new for me so I had to look them up in my bird book.
     At the end of some days we enjoy relaxing by the fire as we burn the dead branches we have gathered.