End of the year 2010

We had a really nice Christmas this year, some of our new friends brought us some gifts and another plowed our driveway. Such a different experience from life in the city. Jay came over for the day on Christmas, he enjoyed all of his gifts and we had a really nice dinner. We stopped in town for dessert when we took Jay back to his house in Patten. Sarah and family were on a cruise and surprised us by calling in the morning when they were docked in Key West, Kevin also got a call from his son Frank. It was overall a really good, relaxing day.

The week has been good, Kevin and I finished up a few projects around the house. Most of the week has just been hanging out together. We received a bunch of seed catalogs in the mail and have been planning our Spring garden. After I return from visiting Sarah and family in Florida, we are going to draw a map of the garden area, and will figure out exactly what to plant. One of the gardens is going to be just a vegetable garden, the other will be a kitchen garden, mostly herbs.

It is just the two of us now, which is a little strange, since the beginning of our marriage, we have had children and or grandchildren living with us. The boys have had many issues even into their adult lives that have worried us. Now that there is a bit of distance between us, we can focus on our own happiness.

As usual, I will be setting goals for the new year, not making resolutions. This year I want to develop the skills I need to raise chickens and a couple of more farm animals by taking classes through the county extension. I also am going to grow and can most of our produce. I will also be spending more time sewing and doing the crafts that I haven't had time to do in the past. Most of all I would like to have more time to develop closer relationships with my friends and extended family.

What a month!

This has been a very busy month. Jason moved into his shared house a week ago. He has been enjoying a very busy and active lifestyle. His room is nice, freshly painted with a new floor and a Red Sox border. We spent time with him Monday getting his room set up, hanging his tv on the wall, and helping him figure out how to use the remote. We speak twice daily, and he seems really happy.

We  came home to a foot and a half of water in the basement on Monday. The pump was clogged and had failed. Kevin got it started again after cleaning it and reinstalling it in the sump. He had to walk through very icy water. Many of the local roads were washed out due to flooding and some of the men who work in the woods were unable to work for a few days. We are on the main road so we were pretty much unaffected except for the basement flooding.

We bought a Christmas tree at a local stand. great bargain at $22.00. It is really pretty set up and the whole house smells of pine. We bought a new washer and dryer as well as a deep freeze with Kevin's bonus money. We have decided for Christmas this year we were just doing stocking stuffers. We have of course bought presents for Jason and the grand kids. Sarah and family are on a cruise for the holidays so they opened their gifts last night. We talked to Tristen and Claudia on the phone. They seemed excited about the cruise and really liked their gifts. Jason will be home on Christmas day, so we will have a roast beef dinner and eggnog. He asked for bread pudding as dessert. I have never made it before but I found a good recipe.

It has been a year since we first bought the house here in Amity. We have both learned so much in that time. Kevin has learned to fix things when they break. It is amazing sometimes how resourceful he has become. He has repaired the pump, ran a new outlet for the dryer, we have unstopped drains, thawed frozen pipes, and a multitude of little and not so little things that come up. We have far less money than we did in St. Louis, but we have ample time, and really don't need a lot. I have learned to cook healthy and low cost meals. It will be much better when we are raising our own meat and produce. Kevin has been substitute teaching, which helps supplement Kevin's pension. Life is good overall, we have grown closer through this experience which is a really good thing.

Snow Day

Here is a photo of the house and outbuildings taken from the back looking over the slope. We took the dogs out to walk around the property this afternoon.  Herman, Lady Bug, and Scout loved being outside, running, burrowing, knee high in the snow. It was cute watching them. Heidi grudgingly walked along, but made a quick beeline to the house when I mentioned going in about a half hour later.

Lady, Scout and Heidi

Herman

Thanksgiving was good, we had dinner at the home of our friends and neighbors Larry, Deb and Amanda. Good food and good company! Kevin had most of the week off from school, and besides the daily work, we have kind of been relaxing and spending time together. Thanksgiving night, we spoke with Sarah and each of the grand kids, also heard from Marcus in South Korea, Jay and Adam were here with us. Kevin was a little disappointed that neither of his biological kids called, but we have come to accept that some are more family orientated than others. I wonder what will be left of the traditional holidays when this generation of non committed young people grow up. If you don't aspire to have a family is there really a point to family holidays. Kind of sad in a way, but enough on that topic.

We still haven't banked the house, and we are suffering with drafts on the floors. I crabbily face mornings running to the bathroom with bare feet. I really need to pay more attention to the placement of my slippers. Kevin hopes to get the plastic on the foundation tomorrow. We are also going to get the rest of the upstairs windows tomorrow too. The snow is really pretty and Adam went out hunting in it yesterday. Today is the last day of deer season, but no deers have even been spotted and the guys never made it to Solon. It's probably a good thing since we don't have a deep freeze yet, maybe next year. Adam is still hoping to get a snowshoe hare.

We finally got a dryer yesterday and I was very excited until we plugged it in only to realize that the 220 outlet wasn't wired into the box. We had originally planned to get a gas dryer, but Larry had this one for sale cheap. Kevin made a call to our electrician John and he will be out next week. It is a little disappointing, also we got a washer with the dryer, but the pump appears not to be working so I will have to deal with our old, ugly but functional machine for awhile longer. Oh well, I guess I wouldn't appreciate the good things if everything worked smoothly.

Jay is starting to get stressed about Christmas, Thanksgiving annoyed him a bit. We usually just eat at home and I guess he was expecting leftovers and was pretty annoyed when we didn't cook. The problem is that Jay can't express his expectations and if we don't anticipate them in advance he usually tantrums to some extent. It wasn't bad, but he is still kind of annoyed, I also fell short for his Black Friday plans. I will definitely cook on Christmas, fill the stockings, bake cookies, he'll get it all!

I went to town today, didn't shop much, got a couple of small things for Tristen. I am getting Elliott a Hallmark recordable book, and since we have no Hallmark stores locally, I will have to order it online. Christmas isn't going to be full of material things, but then again, we don't ever really go overboard. This year we plan to go even less so. I checked into knitting classes while in town, Carol at the yarn shop charges five dollars for three hours of lessons. I begin this week and my first project is going to be a hat. I also found a great new designer retail shop bought a really nice pair of jeans and another sweater for eleven dollars. It was nice getting out of the house for a couple of hours.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This has been an amazing year! Just a year ago, Kevin and I made the decision to buy this house. We were both working full time jobs, opposite shifts but we had Sundays off together. It's crazy looking at our life now, and thinking of how far we have come in just one year. A year ago, I never really thought about money, when I went grocery shopping, I tossed in just about everything. I never made it through a whole week without having to buy something else to make a simple meal. Truthfully, I rarely cooked. I purchased easy to prepare foods for Kevin and Jay, ate the worst junk during my half hour lunches at work, and came home at one A.M. exhausted but far too wired to sleep. I would slip into bed around four A.M falling asleep right before my husband got up to start his day. My life was shopping, Starbucks, my job, and eating out most nights that we were home together. We disliked Jay's program, but we accepted that there wasn't much else that would work. Our house was full of stuff, but it wasn't really a home.

When we first bought this house, we figured it would be several years before we would actually move here. I will admit that when Kevin flew out in December to close on the house, I was secretly, or maybe not too secretly jealous of him. He took a video, which was actually dubbed a cross between the Blair Witch Project and a National Geographic special.

We visited Sarah and family over Christmas, used all my vacation days, then I went to Florida again in March. Finally in May, I had enough days left to make it a week in Maine. We came out here in Mid May, no water, no electric, thankfully the weather was good.

I am so thankful that we traded in our middle class, hectic, material focused life for this simple, people based lifestyle. I love that I now bake bread most every week. I have learned to make inexpensive but delicious and nutritious meals for my family. We have met some really great people who "get" why we love it here. After living in the same neighborhood in St. Peters for nearly twenty years, we never once did anything with our neighbors. Here we have made friends. We have both stepped way out of our comfort zones and I would say we have learned to do many things that in the past we would have paid someone else to do for us. Kevin repaired broken windows, hauled water from the spring when the pump failed, and has figured out how to improvise when he needed something to do a job. I have cleaned up and restored cast iron pans that a year ago, I would have tossed out or given away. We tiled a mantle, paneled a wall, wallpapered two rooms. I who used to scream if I saw a bug, have learned to use natural methods to get rid of flies and spiders.We have learned to compost, and build a fire warm enough to make us comfortable. We had mice, now we have two cats. When we walk our land, it is our land, we don't write a monthly mortgage check. We have to think before we buy something, but really, there aren't many stores here anyhow. By the time we locate what we were thinking that we need, we have figured out another solution. I am getting great at shopping in resale, and thrift shops. Kevin substitute teaches to subsidize our income. Jay is getting ready to move into a house with room mates that he actually has something in common with. He will have a day program that will teach him skills and provide him with recreation. We are all happy, and thriving. For that I am very thankful.

Quiet week

This hasn't been a very productive week because I had a cold. Adam and I cleaned up the area around the house putting the barbecue grill, lawn chairs, ladders and a bunch of odds and ends away for the Winter. Thanksgiving is next Thursday, we will be celebrating for the first time in our new home. This year it will just be Kevin, Adam, Jay and myself, but we plan to make all of  the traditional favorites, Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, butternut squash, green beans, and a couple of pies.

We celebrated Kevin's birthday last Saturday. I made his favorite, chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. Most of the kids called Kevin with greetings and the grandchildren sang Happy Birthday to him. We celebrated with some of the neighbors, good music and conversation.

We went to Presque Isle on Wednesday where we went out to lunch before taking Jay bowling and to dinner. Bowling was candle pin, which was fun. Jay is doing well, and seems happy to have a busy schedule.

Today, I have been baking bread, cookies and a pork pie for dinner. It was pretty sunny today, though kind of chilly. We have a nice fire so it is comfortable inside. The weather forecast is that tomorrow we are supposed to have snow showers. It is hunting season and the guys want snow so they can "track" the deer.

Winter is just around the corner, our first snow was on Halloween, and we have had a couple more days with flurries, but none on the ground yet. We have sealed a few of the windows, what we did is used weather stripping on the windows and then on the North side we have added clear plastic on the inside. Kevin has also fixed the doors that were askewed so we can now close them. There are a few gaps, but I am going to make some of those draft dodgers to seal out the draft. I sorted through and organized all of our magazines, we have many that will help us plan for livestock and gardens as well as pass the time during the Winter months.

Jason is now living in Presque Isle, soon to be in Patten or Houlton in a house with a couple other men with similar disabilities. He is happier in the city with a lot more stimulation, and will be also attending a day program. This has been a hard phase in all of our lives, but I think this is overall a good chance for Jason to learn the skills that he will need in his life. The staff so far has been very helpful and caring and finally after nearly 31 years of looking for a good situation for Jason we may finally be making some headway.

This year we will be buying all of the ingredients for Thanksgiving, our goal for next year is to raise everything here on the farm. I would love to be able to also put together a meal for another family  to donate next year.

Kevin is working on repairing the sagging floors. He put jacks in the basement to help raise the livingroom floor. We have one beam that is sagging quite a bit, but he put a jack in two areas on that beam, You adjust the screw over several weeks until the floor is raised, this process is best with our house because the beam will gradually straighten out and it will decrease the possibility of the beam cracking. Over the next couple of months we will work on the other floors. Already the floor is more stable, my knick knacks don't rattle when you walk around.

We have added two new family members, Sophie and Lilac. Sophie is a two year old calico cat, and Lilac is an eight month old kitten. The first week was horrible, the dogs barked non stop at the cats, Sophie went through the bathroom drawer and was in the wall behind the tub. She came out on her own, I am guessing she was cold, or curious. After a week, everyone is settling down, I won't say it's perfect, but the cats aren't afraid of the dogs, the dogs aren't obsessed by the cats, and the mice situation is very much improved.

Our satellite internet has proved to be expensive and ineffective. It goes down whenever it rains, or snows. We cancelled the service, so now are using dialup, maybe a good thing less distractions. Dialup is pretty slow, but rumor has it that broadband is coming in the near future.

We attended a Halloween party here in the neighborhood, it was great fun. We didn't wear costumes, though a few people did. It was fun, we love the neighbors, a very nice group of people.

On Thursday, another of our neighbors whom we had not yet met dropped by with a warm apple pie. This was pretty much unheard of  in St. Louis. This is why we moved away from the city. In twenty years in the same neighborhood, we really never friendly with our neighbors. As one of the people said on Halloween, "out here, we are not just neighbors, we are family." Perfect.

Frozen water

The temperature went down to below 30 two nights in a row. We have spring fed water, and have not completed the trench to bury the pipe below the frost line, so we woke up to a frozen water line. The line defrosted once the sun was up and the water came back on. It drove home the need to get the hose buried so Kevin contacted a neighbor with a backhoe to see if he could dig the trench. His backhoe didn't have a small shovel so he referred us to someone else. The backhoe appeared on our property the following day, a call was placed to the owner who said someone would be here at 6:30 A.M. It was 7:45 when the person showed up. He looked at the dig site and said he'd talk to his boss because they couldn't get past the trees. It is 10:37 and still no word from the backhoe guy, although the backhoe is still in the driveway.

I still have no clothes dryer, so Adam is hanging a line on the porch for me. The problem now is it rains about every other day so I have to take the wet clothes to the laundry to dry them.

Kevin has been substitute teaching in the local school department, so he has a little extra cash coming in to subsidize his pension. Adam went for an interview at the Humane Society yesterday and has one at Subway today. Jay is still in Acadia, I am working on trying to get services for him, it is not the easiest process. I have been doing the usual housework, laundry, and cleaning. I made chicken pot pie yesterday, it was pretty good. I tried a new sandwich bread recipe, it was good sandwich bread, looked like a store bought loaf, with about as much flavor. I think I will go back to the honey wheat. I have been embroidering my jean jacket, just for something to do. It is coming along pretty nice, I have added vintage cotton lace to the pockets and my farm girl patch. I have an embroidery book that I am going to use to attempt some more stitches.

The Amish building

Wednesday, October 13,2010

Fall is definitely here, mornings are very cold in the 30's and 40's. Usually, Kevin has a nice fire going in the morning when I wake up. This morning he is working and decided it wasn't cold enough to start a fire. It's going to be 54 degrees today, so with warm clothes and doing some chores around here, it will be warm enough.

Kevin's Amish building is here, and a great help in organizing the house. He chose it unfinished inside, so it is 380 square feet of storage. The attachments for the tractor are stored in there as well as Kevin's books and some of his hobby stuff. It still has plenty of room for his tools. The building has a wide door for the tractor, and two smaller doors for the future radio room and the workshop. It has a small window and a skylight too. The walls are pine and the floor hickory. It was a good purchase and with time, we will be able to clear out the two small out buildings, making a pig pen and a chicken coop.

Yesterday, I painted the outside door going into the side yard, and also the front door. Adam painted the trim above and around the front door. The paint is a heritage green. It is about the color of pea soup, not really pretty right now with the white house. We will be painting the house a light yellow next Spring, so hopefully it looks better with the yellow, if not I will choose a different door color. The previous doors were black and were pretty dried out from the heat built up with the storm doors. The doors are probably original at least the front door with it's brass fixtures complete with old locks. I am going to clean the brass in the Spring and try to locate keys to fit the door.

The living room and kitchen are papered now, I am trying to come up with a display of family pictures, but that is not my strong point. I need to print out some pictures that my Uncle Robert sent to me of my great grandparents. It will come together with time. I saved the two old boards from the original front trim, I will repurpose these as sign boards for the walls, I will print lettering on them and will hang them around the house. Most of my craft things are unpacked, I plan to work on the craft room a little today. It was fun unpacking all of my boxes, looking again at all the old buttons and fabricthat have been packed away for so long. I found all of my scissors, many that I replaced when I couldn't find the old ones, so  now I have several pairs.

The leaves are coming down, the colors are still pretty but not as brilliant as they were a couple of weeks ago. Some of the leaves have made their way into the mulch bin, making some good organic material for the garden next Spring. We have defined the area where the garden will be, the Fall/Winter seed catalogs are here and we will spend time in a couple of months going through them while we plan out our garden plots. We have plenty of gardening books to give us advice on how to set things up.

Thomas and Rose were out the end of September for a couple of days. It was nice to finally meet Rose and to see Thomas again. We went to Amish country, Kevin took them out shooting, and we did some things around the house, tractor rides, and a bonfire.

Friday, September 17, 2010

When we first came out here it was barely Summer, now Fall is definitely in the air. Mornings are chilly enough to warrant a small fire in the wood stove. We have harvested apples from some of our trees, and I made a large pot of applesauce last week. Most of the apple trees on our property are in bad need of pruning, a job we will do this Winter when they are dormant. We may attempt to harvest the rest of the  apples anyhow and take them to a business that has a cider press. We would like to attempt to make some hard cider.

We bought 50 lbs of potatoes from a local stand on the way to Presque Isle earlier in the week and enjoyed a few of them baked last night topped off with local fresh churned butter. At the same stand we bought some Maine produced pepper jack cheese, and more apples. I canned 13 quarts of apple pie filling this week.We made a pie with the one jar that didn't seal today and it was delicious.

Kevin completed the hearth wall that he built and tiled. It looks beautiful. Kevin has really become well skilled in home repairs. Last night Jay accidentally broke his window forcing it shut. Kevin measured the windows this morning and with a brief look at our rehab book figured out how to fix it. He also repaired the two storm windows that were broken.

Tomorrow, as a family we are going to the agricultural museum , it is open for tours and there is a roast pork supper in the evening. We have been told by several people that the museum is a worthy destination if we got a chance to tour it.

I finally got set up on Skype and talked to Sarah, Ben and the grandchildren on it. I didn't have a camera on the computer but it was cute seeing them. I purchased a web cam and hooked it up so next time we will all see each other. 

Plans for the oncoming week include painting our bedroom and the staircase. I bought Glowz paint for the stairs. I figured it would be cool to see the stairs glow in the dark. Adam wants to paint the attic door that opens into his room with the paint too. Kind of a ghost buster effect. I also need to reorganize the bathroom, whenever the boys get towels, they mess up the stack and clean towels end up on the floor. I am going to solve the problem by emptying the drawers and putting the clean towels in them. I guess the things from the drawers can go into bins in the closet. I have plenty of bins.

Thomas and Rose will be out next weekend and it is also our anniversary. We haven't seen Thomas for about two years so we are very excited to have him here and to get a chance to finally meet Rose.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Kevin made an apple picker today with a coat hanger, garden rake and a pole. He picked enough apples for me to make a couple quarts of apple sauce. I haven't tried it yet, but the guys had some and said it was really good.   It's like the apple pies I used to make but without a crust. I also made two loaves of zucchini bread from an over sized zucchini that a neighbor gave me.  We have been eating a lot of local produce, next year hopefully we will have our own produce.


Tonight we are making Irish chips and beer battered haddock. Kevin is doing the chips with local potatoes, we will have some cucumbers from a local farm with dinner, as well as my applesauce.

Wednesday, September 8th

I haven't written lately, because besides all the usual day to day activities, we have been having a lot of problems with Jason acting out. Jason is thirty six, but has autism. He can go for quite awhile without any incidents, but when he acts out, it makes life very difficult for everyone except maybe him. He started out last Thursday just making bad comments to everyone. He kept tattling on Adam, then started on Kevin and even the dogs. The more we attempted to ignore his behavior the worse it became. He threatened to hurt himself, so I wouldn't let him go to his bedroom because he had his fishing knife up there. He had to be restrained, not easy as he is about 6'1 and 300 lbs. He punched Kevin in the eye, and hit Adam as well. I talked him into getting into the car, and drove him to the hospital. After three hours, he calmed down and agreed to go home with prescriptions, take his medication and behave. Once home, he pretty much kept up the behaviors, although he no longer physically assaulted anyone. His behavior every day since has been pretty disruptive if only verbally. Not an easy way to live. I have an appointment tomorrow to get him signed up for Maine-care, our only hope for having any services to handle his behavioral needs. There are day programs that he can take part in, so hopefully the appointment goes well.

We have finished wallpapering the living room. It came out pretty good, we chose a off white wallpaper with little pine trees. One wall has a green checked pattern, it will also have the tiled wall for the hearth once we get the wood stove set up. I hung some pictures and put out a few knickknacks so it looks pretty nice.

We called the Amish and asked them to make Kevin's workshop before they do my barn. I won't even be using the barn until next Spring anyhow, so it made sense. He can put his tools, the tractor, and some of his books in his shop, as well as his ham radio equipment freeing up a bunch of space in the house. I will put my craft stuff in the front room, and we will both have some room to do our own thing.

Today, we stripped the wallpaper from the bedroom wall. It was pretty easy since most of it was falling down anyhow. I unpacked four boxes and we put all of our clothes away. We will probably just prime the walls and then paint them with some of the blue paint we already had. I found the light fixture in the closet, also the hardware, so we don't have the bare bulb showing anymore.

The moose came back the night I had Jason at the hospital, the female and her calf walked straight through the yard along side the tractor, then moved to the edge of the woods before crossing the highway. Kevin said the cow stopped in the middle of the road for about 30 seconds before she continued to the state garage where the road salt is stored.

We had a Labor Day barbecue with some of our neighbors. Everyone brought something to share and we provided the meat. I also made my first batch of baked beans. It was a nice gathering and now we know a few more people here in town.

Rain today

We finished papering the kitchen, it looks pretty good. I bought a brighter wallpaper than I normally would have. The kitchen, although it has four windows is pretty dark. Two of the windows open onto the porch, the other two are in the alcove so the main part of the room doesn't get too bright from them. I also got new counter tops, choosing a brownish red ceramic tile. It really warms the place up. All that is left is curtains, I chose a lime green gingham check and will make curtains for all of the windows as soon as it arrives. I will post pictures once I finish setting everything up. Kevin also finished the kitchen wardrobe, although I got the red milk paint I haven't started painting it yet. I chose the milk paint because the cabinet is a reproduction and during that period that was the paint people used. The paint comes dry and you mix it will water. I am going to try it out on some scraps of wood today.

It is raining today, the rain started last evening, knocking out the satellite internet, not a good sign for winter use. We didn't have a storm or anything, just a medium rain. The puppies are stir crazy and are running around pouncing on each other. It's kind of funny because Sleepy is about three times the size of Lady now, but Lady is the one who starts the rough play. She makes this little ninja sound and pounces at Sleepy. It can get pretty wild and normally we put them out in the yard, neither is staying out long in this rain.

Jay has a doctor's appointment today. I lost my appointment book so I can't remember what time it is. I am waiting for the medical center to open at 8:30 so I can call to check the time. I think it is either at 9:30 or 10. I bought a white board to log our appointments so this doesn't happen again.

The guys have been working on the pad for my barn. It should be here sometime in September. i have decided to wait until next Spring to get my milk cow. Waiting will give us time to set up the barn, get the pasture seeded, and the fences up.

Grandkids, future farmers?

Thursday afternoon

This week has flown past. Adam has been busy scraping the old paint off the outside of the house. He has made pretty good progress on the front. Ran into some wood bees on the second floor. We will attack them this evening. Apparently, you spray them, soak a cotton ball with nail polish remover and shove it in their hole. Sounds kind of mean. I guess after living here unmolested for four to five years they probably think the house is theirs.

Kevin has been working on my kitchen wardrobe, when Restoration Hardware says "assembly required", you better listen. It looks awesome though. I ordered Salem Red milk paint to paint it with. We covered one wall with the new paper. It looks good, except the wall still looks a little lumpy. I guess I am going to prime over the paper for the rest of the walls. I like the paper it's bright, but looks really great with my orange mixing bowls, and red stand mixer! I'll post pictures soon.

We took the Herman, Scout and Sleepy to the vet today.  The boys needed rabies shots and Sleepy her second set of puppy shots. My old much loved vet in Saint Peters had a dachshund, and my new one does too. Dr. P , the new vet, admired Herman's Puppia harness, since I recently found the three harnesses I misplaced on the move, so I gifted her Herman's orange one. One thing I have found is that locally there aren't the number of pet boutiques that we had in my old town. I bet Kevin is glad, my dogs have just about everything.Speaking of dogs, Sleepy figured out how to escape from the fenced in yard. We thought she jumped the fence until we caught her crawling back under it.

We ordered wood today. There is a family up the road from us who deliver wood, so we ordered three cords from them. This time we are getting them split and cut since it is late in the season. Adam and Kevin are hoping to harvest another cord from our property. Hopefully the downed trees aren't rotten although we can always order more if they are. I have learned that not everything I am concerned about is worth mentioning to the guys. Keeps the arguments down and things generally work out anyhow.

My Uncle Robert and his family are visiting next week. They live in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Robert is five years younger than me, my grandfather's youngest child. I guess they have never been this far north since Robert told me he thought they could make it up here in five hours. We live seven hours and some minutes from them.

I am roasting a chicken, making some of that great acorn squash I bought from a neighboring farm, and baking potatoes also local. It's kind of great knowing where your food comes from.

Saturday 8/14/10

Woke up to another beautiful Maine day, blue skies, fluffy white clouds, and temperatures around eighty degrees. Went to Bangor with Kevin to return the trailer that he rented to pick up the "cub". We drove to Bangor on Route 169 out of Danforth, and then Route 6. It was a nice change from driving Route 95. We stopped at a sale in Lee on the way back. Spent seventy dollars and came out with two pair of Mickey Mouse boots, four old school webbed lawn chairs, a wrench for the cub, and a garden fork. Got our sample boxes for the soil samples today in the mail and our dreaded electric bill. The electric bill was only $48 and some change. Our utilities came in a little over one hundred dollars for the month. Now we are sitting on said lawn chairs watching Adam drive the cub around the property. The dogs are digging and relaxing around us. It's just a really nice day ... life is good!

Living the dream....

We have been in the house for three weeks today! I am over the feeling like I am doing something wrong by not being at work phase. So far, we have unpacked and or moved half of the boxes from the front room. We have a rather large attic, so I will admit,  many of Kevin's books are up there. We have plans for built in bookcases, we have hundreds of books, but right now, I need to figure out how to find the items that would be really useful at this time.

 The house is over one hundred and thirty years old, the last few years, it has been abandoned. We are trying to prioritize the things that need to be dealt with immediately. The first is the huge hole in the threshold of the front door. Kevin cut out all of the decayed wood, and bought pressure treated wood to rebuild it. Stairs for that door would be great too, but not a necessity since more than likely any visitors we may have will come in through the porch. I bought paint for the house, it is currently white, with black doors. The doors need to be stripped and repainted. I got a shade of green for the doors. The back of the woodshed has yellow siding, so we will paint the rest of the house yellow, the trim will stay white. There are a few clapboards that have to be replaced, and the rest will be patched and painted before Winter sets in. Other things that we don't necessarily agree with is my desire to tear down all of the dirty, peeling wallpaper. I would rather look at the plaster walls than the paper. The sloping floors would be a priority for me as well, but there are other things that need immediate attention. We have to bury the water pipe running from the Spring, prepare the pads for the two out buildings coming next month, bury the cable. We also have soil testing, I have ordered the kits, testing the water from the Spring, picking a cover crop once the garden is plowed, and planting pasture seed. We will probably consult the county extension on the cover crop and the pasture seed. I know that we have timothy, common vetch, purple clover and lots of wildflowers in the pasture. Next Spring, I will have a milk cow, probably a calf, and a steer in the pasture. The guys are picking up a tractor today, a 1954 Farmall cub, with a cultivator, a mow board plow, sickle bar mower, and a snow plow. This will definitely make the field work a whole lot easier. We need to purchase a wood stove and some wood for Winter heating.


So far, we have had our electric updated, phase one, we have electric, we don't have many outlets, but are learning to make do. I bought a bunch of adapters and power strips and the power has been updated from 60 amp to 100.  We have hot and cold running water. We got a new water heater, and Kevin finally ran a new water line from the spring and the pump problem has been fixed. We have a temporary fenced in yard for the dogs, it is made of chicken wire, definitely helpful with all the logging trucks running up and down Route One. We have also scraped and primed the storm windows, we broke the glass in two of them, so they will have to be replaced before Winter.

Kevin is building me a kitchen wardrobe from a kit from Restoration Hardware. Once that is built, I can begin organizing the kitchen. We made a compost bin near the garden area. We have trapped some mice using sticky traps. I have moved everything a mouse could possibly want to eat into plastic and glass containers. They will eat anything! I bought a bag of popcorn and found it completely empty four days later. They also ate confectioners sugar, a box of cereal, bag of marshmallows, and a few other things that escape my mind. It looks like they are giving up now that they can only "window shop" my vast array of glass and heavy plastic containers. Wallpaper has been purchased for the kitchen and living room, I have peeled up all of the paper in the living room and will plaster some cracks in the plaster today as well as cover the walls with wallpaper siding. I would like to get the wallpaper up by the beginning of next week, it would be good to actually have one finished room to relax in.   

The weather is nice, crisp in the morning and comfortably warm, but not hot in the afternoon. The area is still breathtakingly beautiful, and we are living the dream....

The countdown

So we spent almost a week at the farm in early May.  We drove from Missouri to Maine in the jeep with Jay and the four dogs. Jay was very well behaved, barely a complete. The dogs behaved perfectly. We were tired when we arrived Sunday evening. Took a quick tour by lantern light, since it was late, we pretty much went right to bed. The next morning was sunny and bright, we woke up at 7 am, no alarm or anything. Since we had no food or anything, we went out to breakfast. We picked up cleaning supplies, water (did I mention no water as well as no electric) . We straightened up a little, explored a lot. The place has so much promise.

February 2010

We are trying to get our Missouri house ready to sell. I have been packing pictures, bric-a-brac, and other personal items. We have been examining our possessions, many collected in the last couple of decades in this house. Some will come along with us, espresso machine, there are no real coffee shops within an hour of the farm. Kevin is stocking up on ammo, how to repair books, and I am learning to do crafts, both practical, (soap making, and canning), and entertaining scrap booking, embroidery, and card making. The goal is to list the house by mid March. We are hoping to be on the farm by Thanksgiving 2010.

The first night

Kevin went to closer on the house the beginning of December. It was the first snow of the year in Amity. He stayed in a hotel the first night there, drove to the house the first day there, and did a walk though since the place was unlocked.There were actually no keys to the house, in a town of less than two hundred people, I guess there isn't a real need. There was no working furnace in the house but Kevin stayed there for two nights cooking over an open fire outside. He had a kerosene heater in the house and an oil lantern, but no power and no heat, plus the isolation was pretty tough. I rented him a hotel room for his last night and pretty much insisted he stay there where he could have a shower and a warm comfy bed.