The farm has been keeping us busy!
Our land came with 4 outbuildings: a raised barn, a garden shed, an Amish shed, and a chicken coop. We decided to convert the little Amish barn into a cabin so that we have more space for friends and family when y’all come visit. Well, steps one & two – plumbing and electric – are now complete! The plumbers had a tough job because they had to dig a couple of long trenches for water and sewer lines. Both of these had to cross over our rocky driveway and, bless their hearts, they showed up with shovels and pick axes. They hacked away at our yard for a solid 4 days before the electricians showed up to cut their trench with a ditch witch and offered to help the plumbers finish theirs.
Plumbing took about a week. Electricity took a full day. Now it’s our turn to work on insulation, drywall, and flooring. We’ll be up and running before you know it!
One of the most exciting projects underway required us to put on our own tool belts to cut a dishwasher-sized hole in our cabinets to accommodate the new-to-us dishwasher! You never know how much you take a dishwasher for granted until you have to wash dishes 3x per day by hand. I understand that my first-world privilege is showing. Still…ugh. But, look at that fit! I’d say we did a pretty dang good job. (Don’t worry, we’re eventually going to paint the cabinets and replace the countertop.)
We’ve also been getting the garden ready for next spring. We have a few veggies in the raised beds that the previous owners built, but we plan to plant our spring garden in the ground. The garden plot is currently full of flattened cardboard boxes and hay in attempts to kill the grass and create beautiful compost for healthy soil. We recently found out that the chickens also love the hay! They’ve figured out how to fly (I use that term loosely) over the fence of their run and into the garden where they love scratching up the hay and getting all the little bugs that hang out in there. So far, they haven’t shown interest in my veggies, but we’ll eventually have to figure out how to keep them in their run so they don’t scratch up our little sprouts as we get them going.
This weekend my 3-year-old and almost-1-year-old nephews had their first sleepover at the farm! They arrived on Friday night and their dad stayed for dinner and helped with bedtime before he headed out for a guys’ weekend. The next day AC, Miles, Thomas, and I fed the chickens, played in the creek, collected eggs twice, went to the farmer’s market, raked some grass, colored, built a fort, rode in the side-by-side, planted some seeds, and by then it was…9am. Only joking, but AC and I did realize that we need a much larger roster of activities to keep the short attention span of a 3-year-old busy. Here’s a quick recap of our adventure:
We had a great time annnnnnd took a nice long nap after they went home this afternoon. We can’t wait to have them back!
Until next time,
Charli
Oh this is so fun!!!! What fun aunts!