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.