May 14, 2020

We went back to work last week.  It has definitely impacted our time to work on the house, but we are making progress. 

We built a temporary wall along the kitchen wall so we could take down the rotten wood.  We still don’t know how the roof has not fallen!  We laid down the sill. We had to use mortar to shore up the wall and level the sill.  It looks much cleaner now, and it’s more sturdy.  We have to drill 6” into the stem wall to secure the sill to the foundation.  We’ve mentioned before that the wall is from 1930 and is mortar and rocks found around the farm.  Drilling through rocks is not easy!  We actually broke a drill bit and burned out our drill. We can’t do anything else until all the sills are installed, so we are in a waiting pattern until we get another drill.

• 

• 

• 

It has rained an unusual amount this month.  It is quite depressing.  The gloomy, rainy weather is actually worse than the drill burning out – even though our grass is super green and we’ve been treated to some beautiful skies.  We try to find the silver lining in every cloud.

• 

• 

We are trying not to let the weather keep us from moving forward.  We’ve been tackling small projects in the loft and garage and we’ve worked more on the chicken coop.  During the breaks in the weather, John tilled our raised garden and we had some rabbit manure delivered to add nutrients to the soil.  We’ve decided to lay woven landscape fabric on the garden to keep weeds at bay.  Once we get a few dry days, we will transplant the seedlings to the garden and plant direct sow crops like carrots and green beans.  We had a few frosty nights this last week, so Katie was grateful we could still move the seedlings inside.

• 

• 

• 

Some great news – our grafted apple trees have taken!  We are thrilled to see small branches and leaves coming out of the scion!!  If we can successfully graft our own trees, we can save thousands of dollars!  We plan to add 300 trees to our orchard next year, and 1,500+ the following year.  The other trees we planted are growing wonderfully.  This is definitely great news!! 

• 

• 

Another rainy day project was making soap and magnesium lotion.  We’ve been making our own soap for a few years.  Joshua helped Katie make two different batches, about 12 bars.  It will take about 4-6 weeks for the soaps to get nice and hard.  We also made magnesium lotion with some soothing oils.  We use this lotion when we have aches and pains – which we’ve had a lot of lately.

• 

• 

• 

As life moves toward some kind of normal, well, sort of, we are adjusting to our full-time jobs and full-time farming, and full-time renovating.  It’s a lot.  It’s hard.  It’s rewarding.  We’re tired.  We’re sore.  We’re a little stressed.  But we’re Undaunted!