Monday, it’s a new week. Progress on the homestead, Autumn 2013

Around the homestead, we are making progress!

We fell in love with our property over two years ago. To be more precise, my husband fell in love with it. He was already moved out here for work, and had gone to see this place. It was within our price range, had a large enough home, plus had a barn (which I’ve ALWAYS wanted), a huge heated shop (which dh and our son love of course) and as an added bonus, it also had a quonset (a large metal building) to store any equipment we may need and acquire on the homestead over the years. We had put in an offer, but since our home in BC did not sell in time, the offer came to an end and we decided to wait on putting in any more offers until our place sold. Well, as some of you know, that took an awful long time and a whole lot of twists and turns.

The house itself is a fine house, but nothing special. All my life I’ve loved old homes, homes with lots of character. This house does not have that character that I love but I know over time, we will give it that character. We have plans. Lots of plans…
My parents commented when we were in BC that I hadn’t posted many photos of this home, as I had the previous home we were renting, and had hoped to buy. Well, there’s just not a whole lot to show. The home is much smaller, so photographing it on the inside is just not easy. To be honest, we’ve also still not totally moved into this home. I have yet to hang things on the walls, every one of the walls, except for one wall in the main bathroom and a couple of walls in the kitchen, are still totally void of our family’s ‘touch’. At the moment, the house is plain, and we haven’t really worried too much about it because in the warmer weather, it’s time to concentrate on everything outside! The inside stuff will come. 

We knew before we ever moved onto this property, what we’d do with it if the opportunity ever came up to actually buy it. Well, now we have bought it and we are FINALLY able to put those ideas into motion. At fast forward speed!

When we first moved in, a garden needed to be created, right away, if we were to fill up our cold cellar with our own home grown organic fruits and veggies.

Animal pens needed to be made, right away, if we were to raise our own home grown eggs and meats. Why put any of it off yet another year, when we had been living in ‘limbo’ for SO long already?

*above, one of the many old buildings that will unfortunately need to come down. The make shift outdoor daytime pig pen in the background, and one of our sheep free ranging in the further distance. 

The barn needed to be completely cleaned out, right away, so that those pens could be made. We’re still not totally finished in the barn, and there’s still a ton of work to do on the outside. We cleaned it out, Graydon (dh) and our sons patched holes in the roof (we hope to put on a new roof next year) and Graydon made pens for the pigs and sheep immediately. Next on the list is creating stalls for our five horses before the snow flies. Snow is in the forecast later this week. Yikes!

Winter waits for no one.

On the property there are many smaller outbuildings like the one shown above, and old graineries (one we are using as a chicken coop, and the other we will use for turkeys or meat chickens in the future), an old house is here on the property in the trees (yes, an entire house, full of junk also), tons of old run down fences, junk, junk, and more junk. Oh, and did I mention the junk? This provides lots of great antique treasures to find here, there, and everywhere, but more often then not, it also provides lots of ‘make work projects’. This past week during my husband’s time off between his shift changes, we went to work dealing with a lot of that junk and pounding posts for new fences.

Friends were kind enough to lend us their tractor, which helped tremendously with the work, and our backs! Hubby pulled tons (literally) of old tires, scrap metal, and junk, out of the woods and around our horse paddock, and everywhere he could find it. He was also able to condense our ever growing compost/manure piles into one big pile to get it ready for future use in the garden (don’t use compost too early! You’ll do more harm then good!)

Old posts were pulled and moved out of our way. Hubby did most of this on his own while the kids helped some and I worked at the sewing machine for most of the day. It was Thanksgiving Monday, so no school that day.

*above you can see some evidence of the old fences that have seen much much better days. This paddock was originally used for cattle and had not been used for animals in the past 13 years or more, from what we’ve heard.

Elsa was not feeling well Monday, or most of the week for that matter. Any time she’s hit with a stomach bug, she’s hit hard. Once hubby was done working with just the tractor, Shaylah, Julia, and Pieter helped us pull up all the old fence posts and set up a new Hotwire to keep the horses in one small part until we can restring the new posts.

The work took us quite a few hours. It was dusk by the time dh was able to drive the tractor the hour back to our friends farm. Julia went along to keep him company and Alesia drove behind them in her car, just in case. Driving the grid roads that length of time, in a tractor, on the grid roads, is a slow process.

While they were gone the other kids rested and I shipped orders the girls had helped to package the night before. I also did a bit more sewing. By the time Graydon and Julia got home it was time for bed! Long day! Tuesday proved to be even longer. It was post pounding day!