April 4, 2020
It has been over a month since our last post and our world has turned upside down! Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, our youngest son moved home from college, John was laid off from his job, and Katie is now working from home. Fortunately, we are all healthy and since we’re all home, we have lots more time to work on the many projects.
First some fun! Joshua came home for Spring Break before the shutdown and we were able to celebrate his birthday in true Irish fashion! He even got to sing with our favorite band, Keltic Knot at a local pub!
We finished removing the slats and mortar on ceiling in the house and had a great discovery. With some additional supports, which seem quite easy, we can have a vaulted ceiling in our kitchen and living room! The structural engineer came out to confirm that and gave us detailed information about what we need to do to create the house of our dreams. With the engineer’s drawings, we applied and received our renovation permit. While waiting on the permit, we went ahead and purchased all the wood for the ceiling and kitchen walls.
Meanwhile, spring is here and we had to turn our attention to bees! In addition to the 5 hives we have at our property, John helps a group of nuns and two other people with their bees, 10 hives, total. John’s brother came for a weekend visit (before the official stay at home order) and we put him to work. We assembled lots of frames, swarm boxes and other woodenware. The bee stuff took over the stone building and we are so grateful we have a dedicated space to do all this work.
Spring also means chicks! We picked up 19 fertilized chick eggs and put them in the incubator. They are not supposed to hatch until tomorrow, but they have been peeping all day and one of them is breaking through their shell tonight!! We are only going to keep 6 of these chickens and return the rest to the farmer who gave us the eggs.
Since Joshua is now home until fall, we did some quick renovating of the garage to turn it into a usable space for his apartment – he wasn’t too keen on sharing 540 square feet with his parents.
With our extra time, we were able to get back to another hobby – beer making! We brewed 5 gallons of Sir Fig’s American Red Ale. We’ve brewed this recipe before and it is one of our favorites.
It was finally dry enough to get a dump truck load of top soil delivered. That was supposed to be a quick 15 minute delivery, but it turned into an all day affair that ended with a tow truck pulling the dump truck out of the muddy yard. Apparently our yard wasn’t as dry as we thought!
To get ready for our apples, we did a control burn of our pasture. Everything in the yard is starting to bloom; the redbud has exploded in a beautiful purple color. We’ve found Japanese Quince and several other perennials all around the house. We spent some time cleaning the yard. We finally planted a Goji Berry bush we purchased in Houston when we were visiting in January.
Then, there’s the mower. We got our riding mower out of storage so we could cut the grass. It has been in storage for 2 years and it did not start! We cleaned the carburetor, replaced the ignition coil, the air filter, the spark plug and the fuel filter. It starts, but it sounds awful. We are going to have to spend more $$ and bring it in for repair.
And, our apple trees were delivered and have been planted. We received 31 trees and 6 root stocks. The trees are about as big as John’s index finger. We are officially the owners of an apple orchard! Our farm name is Newtown Farm and Orchard.
Undaunted Farming 