The joys and struggles of renovating an old farmhouse and creating the Newtown Orchard
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 …
May 2, 2020 So we removed some more of the floor. And then we removed some more. And then we removed some more. It looks like the original house built in 1931 was about 21x24 feet and was built on an interesting wall of rocks and mortar. The house was built on in 3 directions …
April 21, 2020 It was very strange celebrating Holy Week and Easter without actually going to church. One tradition we have, is at church on Holy Thursday, we remember when Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his apostles. After Mass, we visit 7 other Catholic churches in the area as we read the scripture stories …
April 8, 2020 It wasn’t enough for the 3 of us to live in a 540 square foot studio apartment, we had to add baby chicks! 15 of the 19 eggs we incubated hatched over the course of 2 days. They stayed in the incubator for a few days and then we transferred them into …
April 5, 2020 This post is going to be all about our plans for the apple orchard. Our goal is to have a commercial orchard with about 2,500 trees. In order to get this many trees on the 2½ acre pasture, we are using a technique called High Density, Trellis Trained trees. This is a …
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 …
March 3, 2020 We've spent the last 2 weeks taking down the sheetrock walls and some of the ceiling. We were dismayed to find that most of the walls and the ceiling were slats and mortar. That was so hard to take down, and it was a very dirty job. The ceiling is extremely messy …
February 13, 2020 We finally started on the main house. We've learned that it had been added on to at least 2 times, maybe 3. Some walls are sheetrock and others are lath and plaster. There is exterior siding on interior walls! We've not had too many “scary” surprises, but it is a MESSY job. …
January 22, 2020 We got the electricity in the studio apartment all figured out and we now have a warm tile bathroom floor, hot water, and non-flickering lights! We engineered a way to hang a shower curtain and have said good-bye to walking across the yard to take a shower in the house (thank God …
January 4, 2020 We took some time to celebrate Christmas, New Years (at an Irish pub), and John’s Birthday (his favorite gift was a wrist magnet to hold screws while working on the house), but then got right back to working on the farm. Needing hot water in the apartment really motivated us! After quite …
Undaunted Farming 