March 30, 2022 – I believe we got more accomplished this past month than we have in a long time! The sun has returned, and the depressing winter is over! Thanks be to God!  We still have so much to do on the house, but we spent quite a bit of time outside this month.

Because we ended last year’s growing season abruptly, we had to start this garden year by cleaning out the garden beds, The egg chickens helped us spread out the compost as they were looking for bugs.  We added a few more raised beds and amended the ones we already had.  We started seedlings in February, and we planted some outside this month. We even remembered to plan potatoes on March 17th! Judging by the rigor of the seedlings, we have high hopes for this year’s harvest.  At the end of the month, our new trees came in. We ordered more apple trees, and we also purchased several different trees from the Missouri Conservation department. Many of these we are going to plant in buckets to let them get bigger before we plant them in the ground. We may also sell some of them next year with our seedling sale.

We also received our first order of meat chickens. Since we sold out last year, we decided to start with 75 big red broiler meat chickens. These will grow a little slower than the white Cornish Crosses that we usually get, but they are supposed to be able to get more of their food from foraging. They will spend 3 or 4 weeks in the garage until the night-time temperature is warm enough, then we will move them to the green pasture.

Inside, we got all the kitchen cabinets, countertops, and the sinks installed in the kitchen and mudroom.  It is really starting to feel like a house.  Joshua came home for the weekend and refinished the master bedroom floor. This is the only floor in the entire house that we are keeping and we’re thrilled that it turned out so nice!

Joshua was also helping us replace our front door when he had another huge surprise.  The wood that supports the front wall (and therefore the door) was completely rotted! This piece of wood is called a skirt.  Fortunately, only about 5’ of it was rotted. Joshua and Katie were able to remove the bad wood and replace it with new wood. They were able to get the new door hung, just a day later than planned.

We had so many people tell us that it was a shame that we painted the mahogany dressers for our bathroom vanity and kitchen island. We don’t go out of our way to offend people, but the originals just did not fit in our farmhouse.  The same can be said about the ugly stone fireplace wall.  Katie really did not like it, and the stones were difficult to clean.  So, we painted it! And we love the way it looks.  We don’t have a wood stove yet (the old one rotted), but the chimney wall is ready when it gets here.

With all the major work done, we turned our attention to the floors.  Nicholas came in for a week to help us with the house and he called is friends over to help lay the floor. Once we got it figured out, it went quite smoothly, and it looks beautiful! We still have to finish the transition pieces for a few of the doorways.

When we first purchased this property, we also bought a second-hand gas stove. When we went to install it, we realized it was not set up for propane and the conversion kit was no longer available.  We decided to go ahead and buy a brand new range! We’ve NEVER purchased a new range before. And since we will probably have this one for a decade or longer, we made sure to get one that will meet our needs.  You can see that it is a different size than what we had planned, so we will have to adjust the shiplap on the back wall. Easy fix. This stove is big enough that we can run all four of my canners at the same time! Believe it or not, the oven is wifi compatible. We can’t use that feature since we don’t have wifi right now, but it is kind of neat to know that’s available. We have not had an oven or full stove since September 2019. I’m so excited to cook something!