We’ve been having a bit of a knees up around here, British slang for ‘party’. After all My Loving Spouse’s corn is up.
My breakfast is ‘Pinterest’ perfect. Greek yogurt, granola and straight off the cane raspberry’s.
…the work we’ve got planned on this hot August day requires I dress for the weather. I know, I know, one must have no shame to post these kind of photos…white legs, white socks, black sneakers….
Not everyone can carry this look off, but I am pretty sure I rock it. We (My Loving Spouse and I) have construction knees to put up today.
All four knees were hand cut by My Loving Spouse and I get to work slathering on the paint.
The spindles for the new porch railing arrived, so construction begins in earnest.
As I am in charge of painting, I am super glad the spindles came primed.
My Loving Spouse screws the knees to the corners and pronounces those fateful words, “we’ll caulk it.”
The porch railing is installed, the knees are up, we’ve stair railings to build, and a few hundred bricks to lay, but believe me, we’re loving the items we check off the list.
Benny and Jett are doing great. They’ve only gotten out once, (rookie mistake), and they really do only poop in one spot. They provide a fair amount of amusement daily.
Summer water is always important, especially for our cows. The more the grass grows, the more they have to eat or shall I say, the more we don’t have to feed them. Irrigation water comes to you when you neighbor is done with it. Making the most of our irrigation is important, so I began some research.
Keyline Design is a serious approach to water and compacted soil. Unfortunately, I do not have this cool tractor implement. I do however, have my fabulous old school edger.
I take to our pastures and let me tell you, this baby cuts through cow poop like a warm knife through butter.
Will it work? It can’t hurt. I am hopeful to make the most of all of our irrigation water.
My Loving Spouse misses the water or the ocean or sailing or adventure, adventure that is not fencing. So he took care of that…
The plan was to sail it on the Colombian river. This was a great plan because the river is only about 40 minutes away and I get sea sick, so we’re hopeful that I will be an excellent first mate, not puking my guts out.
Apparently, ‘she will sail’….if we can launch her.
Lola’s trial one… There is not a prayer of getting her in the water.
We come back at it with a loooonger extension and plans to get Lola in the water.
A lot more of Lola got wet, but not enough to sail her. My Loving Spouse is sad, but savy and he has Lola up for sale before you can say “Jack Robinson”. Lola is sold, the alpacas are happy and the irrigation is flowing…stay tuned, the summer is young.
Two young male alpacas, Benny (2) with the mutton chops and Jett (3) with the awesome hair-do. My Loving Spouse had his play list all ready and hit Elton John’s ‘Bennie and the Jets’ as we left the farm to pick them up. As Elton’s lyrics say, ‘our weird and wonderful’ new animals.
We had just recently discovered all the positives of alpacas.
Comedy
Hypo-allergenic fleece
Non-aggressive
Easy on fences (huge plus)
Eats almost any grass and weed and doesn’t need much
Weighs only about 150 pounds
The herd picks a spot and poops in it. Everyone, seriously!
Our dear old boys (horses) are really getting on in years and cannot be ridden. We are also getting on in years and have decided that our horse riding days are over. A sad decision, but there is so much we’d still like to do, that getting thrown off of a horse would mess up, that it was the right decision for us. As our horses age, we’ll still need someone to help the cows eat the grass. Everyone was interested to meet the new additions.
The cats and the alpacas did not know what to make of each other. Sundance, My Loving Spouse’s horse took one look at them and took off. He wanted nothing to do with them. My Loving Spouse is researching how to build a loom out of old sewing machine parts. Our Sweet Neighbor Sue hits it off with Benny.
Our animals bring us such joy and sorrow. The next morning, my horse Beau was standing in the far corner of the North Four. We’re not sure how long he stood there, but he wouldn’t leave Sundance who was down and had died. The bossy red horse enjoying grass one day to gone the next.
Sundance and Pat
The humans and Beau are sad, as is right. We worry about Beau, a herd animal. Surprisingly, of all things, he finds comfort being near Benny and Jett….
Corrugated gray poly-carbonate sheets cut by My Loving Spouse with a metal cutting blade in his grinder became the roof for our Greenhouse. The gray ‘roofing’ material also became our gable ends.
I’d like to tell you that putting on the roof was a piece of cake, but there was a bit of a learning curve to our keeping it straight. It could possibly be ‘user error’.
The old windows we used open on one side. There are enough gaps in how we built it to let in our friendly bee polinators.
We’ve got our tomatoes in half barrels as raised beds. We’re using strings attached to the roof to help support the vines.
My Loving Spouse built a slated counter height bench for starting plants and right now we are working on tomatillos. We’re behind on everything, but seriously, what else is new. I’m planning on being really ahead on next year’s growing!
What great fun we will have experimenting with our Greenhouse. If we stink at growing stuff, at least it is cute. We make a ‘Dutch door’ with a re-salvaged door and another re-salvaged window. I roll the barrel I’ve been saving/hording out of the field, setting it next to the Greenhouse, for nothing other than its charm.
We didn’t plant a thing this last weekend, as we were working on fences. Re-doing the field fence, that to quote someone around here, “the bloody cows made a mess of”. I am counting the hours until ‘my’ summer begins and our school year is over.
So what are your plans this summer, where odd times reign supreme?
We’ve plans for another animal addition to the farm. Can you guess what it or they are?
Week 9 or so of our COVID Stay-at-home/what happened to our life order, we started building a green house. One of us has a cache of old windows, because old stuff is cool, especially windows.
My Loving Spouse informed me that the windows had to sort of match or otherwise the Green House would look like a Bad British Word. The size of the Green house was dictated by the windows we chose. Luckily, I had plenty to pick from and was still able to make sure the Green house turned out ‘cute’, which is as important as growing stuff.
We set all the posts in concrete, because we want the Green House to stay here at the farm and not get blown across the valley. If you don’t believe me about our wind, you’ve never been here in the spring.
I was going to say something clever, like during times of stress we ‘over build’, while other people may ‘over eat’ or ‘over drink’, but the truth is, we’re doing that too.
I am one of the few from my school who works everyday from school. An elementary school without the children is pretty quiet and sad. I cannot help, but be very concerned about ‘our’ kids.
Building our Green house is a creative way to control something, while so much is out of our control. We build and then make an adjustment or two along the way.
Three feet high trusses are determined too steep. We revamp the design and I become (if I do say so myself), quite the truss builder. My Loving Spouse and I have no truss issues.
Our growing season is short. We are both looking forward to having the Green house to start plants, extend the growing season and enjoy the simple pleasure of gardening. Our little house is not done, but we’re pleased with how much we’ve accomplished.
Honestly, right now, I struggle more with frustrations than I do fear, but I want to focus more on ‘hope’….
Cluckingham Palace was not built in a day. It actually took two weekends and a small bit of work during the week. Why, you ask would we need a new chicken house/yard?
Free Range Chickens are not all they are cracked up to be.
Free Range?
Pooping wherever they want? They also eat flowers and dust in flower beds. The biggest problem however, is that in the summer, they go to bed really, really late, sometimes later than we do and this has caused us to loose a few ‘girls’.
This situation is not new and I’ve been trying to give the chickens more space since last summer. I ordered additional fencing from, (can you believe it) a company called ‘Omlet’, which has every item for chickens they could ever need and a few items they don’t, including clothes. (Folks, I cannot make this stuff up!)
2. The old chicken yard was not only small, but it was…a tad ugly.
The girls needed better, so we begin the ‘demo’.
I had a ‘plan’ and My Loving Spouse goes along with it…although, he did put his foot down when it came to adding dormer patio roof extensions for the girls. Seriously!
We lay out the new yard.
We work on Cluckingham Palace’s yard, while the flock enjoys their last few days of pooping on the porches.
We dig the grass up all around the palace to ensure no skunks or other vermin dig below the fence to accost our hens.
With the grass back in place the palace looks great and threat free.
We add a second door made out of an old screen door I’ve been hording.
The roosting structure is made from two of the old porch railings we’d replaced.
The chickens checkout the new maple tree we’ll plant in their yard. Cluck House has lovely grounds and we’ve hopes for more hens. A dozen eggs are ‘brewing’ in the incubator, due next week…and if they don’t hatch…well, we’ve a backup of chicks coming from ‘The Chicken Outfitter’ . (The stuff you can buy on the internet!)
We are blessed and so are the chickens, except they don’t actually know it.
Whoa Nelly’s return to the road couldn’t have come at a better time.
Whoa Nelly
Our 1952 International L110 caused My Loving Spouse to wring his hands and gnash his teeth over transmission, gas tank, carburetor and wasps, but he won in the end. She runs, stops and even has seats with seat belts. No more bucket seats for us.
True Bucket Seats
Whoa Nelly has brought us some fun when we needed it most. Driving across town in her, people wave, smile and give us a thumbs up. We’ve driven her with jelly jars full of flowers to leave on friend’s porches and our spirits were lifted.
Covid-19 makes it harder to bring simple joy to one another. I miss giving hugs, smiles and a gentle touch, so when we were asked if we wanted to be in a parade for Mother Mary’s 85 birthday, we jumped at the chance. (Just for the record, Mother Mary will be having another 85th birthday next year, since she said with the Corona Virus, this one doesn’t count). The ‘nice’ thing about ‘sheltering in place’, everyone’s available. We decorated Whoa Nelly and joined about 35 other vehicles, that showed up to surprise this very fun gal….and surprised she was. We honked and waved and it filled us up.
(Amy asked for THE Kitchen pictures, so for those of you who are tired of seeing THE Kitchen, skip this post and check in next time. Amy is one of those people. We first met 24 years ago when she became My Girl’s speech therapist. Amy walked along side us for years with therapy, advice and friendship. We’ll never adequately repay her for all the ways she has helped My Girl have a better life, so if she wants pictures…good golly, she gets pictures.)
Dear Amy,
So great to hear from you and as you know, nothing ever goes perfectly. So you get all the pictures…the greats and ‘whoops’ how are you going to deal with that!
So the mud room… you ride horses, you understand about boots and jackets and stuff. This picture is the real deal…not cleaned up at all for you.
The cabinet on the bottom is a re-use from the old kitchen and the cabinet on the top is the one I measured wrong. The sink is so that My Loving Spouse can wash the weird stuff he brings inside (along with his greasy hands) here instead of our nice new farm house sink. The ‘stuff’ on the counter is usually stuff that needs to go back to the workshop…this is a never ending process.
Yes, all these coats belong to us and as it is spring, we still use them…boot trays and baskets for hats and gloves. Real life in action.
The laundry and the broom closet did not go as planned. The ‘plan’ was for a large broom closet..(no room)…and for plenty of baskets for folded laundry. I don’t mind doing laundry, but once I fold it, I need a place for it to ‘go’. We adapted to the situation and the shelf over the washer/dryer holds our baskets of clean laundry. As you can see, someone’s Laundry Blessings are overflowing.
Gunner, our beloved yellow lab, will someday have this as his dog den. A lovely long closet complete with dog door to the yard. We’ve yet to cross this off of the list. I think we’ll know when the remodel is really done, it will be the day we no longer have a shop vac in the house.
The broom closet conundrum has been solved! After all, who needs a shower in a powder room? The shower curtain is still coming in handy.
When people walk in the house now, they say, “Oh, I love your nice kitchen…wow, I lovethat butcher block”.
The butcher block is very old and has its origins from an old ship. This thing is heavy and how we got it in the house and upright is another story. My Loving Spouse, the chef, built a knife rack for it and if you’re wondering if we need all these knives, well the answer is obviously, ‘yes’.
We’re not the kind of people who manage to hang up kitchen towels nicely, so we wanted to get hooks. We found this wrought iron fireplace tool hanger in a hardware store in England and knew it would be perfect, plus it was only 10 pounds…(in money).
From the kitchen sink, a quick look to the right and this is what I see….oh, be still my heart.
My favorite pantry items are these hooks for the frying pans. Don’t you just hate storing and putting frying pans away? Not any longer…I think I should patent this idea….
My Loving Spouse’s favorite pantry item is the light switch he installed. When the door is open the switch turns the light on, door shut = light off…pretty sweet.
Because of the space confines, we ended up with two pull out spice drawers. One for The Chef….
The other was next to the sink and has ended up being an unusual space for kitchen wash clothes and towels. They need to be folded just right, but as we know who THE Folder is, this is not a problem. We love having our clean towels at hand, because, well…we’re messy people.
Okay, dear friend…hope you are well, imagine stepping in off of the porch and coming in for a long over due visit….this is what you’d see.
Come and see us soon, because with friends like you…
Technically speaking, we still have some items to finish in regards to our big remodel/new kitchen/where did the last year go. I am pretty sure we won’t get signed off on our Permit, while we don’t have any steps or handrail off of the back deck. However, we are calling the ‘kitchen’ done and want to look back and celebrate where we were one year ago today. We’re pleased as punch at where we are and what we (too old folks) have managed to do….
After living for most of my 50++ years in the suburbs of Southern California with pools and sidewalks, I am now living on a farm in the Pacific Northwest with animals and dirt…and having the time of my life! Change is good….and I am blessed.
Retirement brought the end of our time at Glory Farm and a move to Scotland, where we live in a historical small fishing village along the North Sea...To God Be The Glory
