Pulling up carpet

We pulled up carpet yesterday and set off some odor bombs called Room Shocker. I had read about it online and it got pretty good reviews. Plus, it has a money back guarantee, so we went for it. I think it's pretty much just a gaseous form of bleach, which I normally don't mess with, but sometime you gotta do when you gotta do. They say for strong odors to let it work for 24 hours, so well see how well it worked this afternoon. The house will probably reek of bleach, but thats better than the smell that's there! We talked to a neighbor, and he said they had chickens living IN the house. We're not talking about little chicks in a box here. They didnt have an adequate chicken coop, so the chickens were in the house. So you can imagine the smell in the house. And the desperate need to replace floor coverings!

Today DH is out at the house with a neighbor digging a french drain. The house has water damage and we heard it was from water coming off the hill, so we're trying to divert the water run-off. We think a lot of the water problem is also just from the gutter not being connected. Where the worst damage is, is where the gutters end and it all spills out there.

So that's where we are. Reconstruction has begun.

We have the keys!

The keys to the farm are ours! A little unexpected fee came up. Turns out the previous owners haven't had the electricity turned on since '05. The electric company requires an electric inspection on anything that hasn't had the electric on in over a year. Of course we have to pay for it. Doh. Weren't expecting that. The inspector guy is out ot lunch right now, so we won't know until this afternoon what it's actually going to run us. But that's okay, because we own a farm!

Pics of our new house and farm!

Here it is! The house is 1700sf, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath. This could only have happened through God's miracles, so praise the Lord with me! We hope to move in before June. Here's some highlights.

The pics are (I think I got this in order):
The front of the house, The hill right behind the house, Our fruit trees, The back of the acreage from the top of the hill, All the ways back is ours, The view walking back

Next post:
Master bedroom, Family room, Kitchen (don't hate me!) and The living room fireplace.

TWO daddies!

The other night my BIL stayed over and slept on the living room floor. When Genesis got up with the boys, she came to our bed and fell back asleep with me. I got up a short time later, but she stayed sleeping. Eventually she came out and half awake, saw her uncle laying on the floor. She was at his feet, so she couldn't see his face, and he was sleeping in a position that DH sleeps in often. Her eyes got so big, and she exclaimed with the most wonderful voice "TWO daddies!" She was completely awe-struck. Unfortunately I had to break her heart and tell her that one was Uncle Amos. She was very disappointed. Can you tell she's a Daddy's girl?

Well, darnit

We may not be closing on the house on the 15th. The bank is having issues getting all their paperwork in order. But that's okay, it gives us more time to get firm numbers on things we need to fix up the house. In the meantime, we just wait patiently, I suppose. And try and remember to take the camara next time we head out there...

Planning the farm

So we've spent the last week or two planning our farm. We eventually hope to go off the grid and maybe even self-sustaining. By off the grid we don't just mean to have alternative sources of electricity, but rather to go without. So a lot of plans are working towards that goal. First thing, of course, is getting the house livable. We can start work after the 15th. I still don't have any pictures, but promise to get some as soon as possible. I should probably start packing, since we move in less than two months, if everything goes to plan. But alas, the baby hasn't been feeling well so I'm barely keeping up with laundry and dishes. Right now we're having discussions about where to put the wood stove. There's already a place where one was, though we would have to protect the walls and such, but it's in the middle of the master bedroom and clearance would take up a lot of our room and DH is worried it'll be too hot in there to sleep. So he talked about moving it to a corner of the bedroom, but I"m thinking, if he's going to move it, he should just move it to the family room if he's that worried about the heat at night. We also have been discussing about the whole summer cooking thing when we go off grid and what we want to do about that. Here's our plan so far, though subject to change as we learn more. We have a fireplace to heat the front of the house and we'll be getting a wood stove big enough to heat the back of house. Then we'll build a cook/wash house off of the kitchen to put a cook stove in. That porch area will have fold-down walls and screens so in the summer we can open it up and not heat up the whole house while cooking, but in the winter I can close it up (so I won't freeze!) and can hang laundry up in there as well. Right now we'll just get the wood stove to heat the back of the house, but in the future will buy the cook stove. DH wants to go all out and get one that has a water tank on the back for hot water. Less work for me!

We've also been planning the garden and chicken area. My dad grew up on a farm and told me this great idea that I only found mentioned in one place so far online. What you do is fence in two garden plots, and put the chicken coop between them. The first year, you let the chickens out on one side and put your garden on the other side. Then the next year, you switch them. So the chickens are eating up all your left over garden stuff and composting it, completely weeding the area and fertilizing it. So every year you have a great garden plot to plant in. Awesome! We're going to go ahead and raise layers and meat birds. Hopefully, every 2 months or so we'll get a chicken to raise a brood of chicks to slaughter. Which means we'll need a rooster. I think we said if we start out with 18 or so chicks that should be plenty to get us through until we get some good layers to raise up some more for meat. I'm so excited. Not so much at the thought of slaughtering chickens, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

Speaking of slaughtering, DH is also planning on learning how to slaughter deer (shot on our own land!), and eventually cows that we'll raise too. We're not sure yet exactly how many cows we'll be able to pasture on our land, so that will have a big impact on how we do that, of course. We know for sure we want a dairy cow, and we'll have to freshen her every year or two so we might as well raise the calf for meat, but we don't know what we're going to do about mating her. I don't think we want a bull just for one, at most, two dairy cows, but I don't want to pay to get them inseminated either. Maybe we can find someone to trade use of their bull for something...

But I'm rambling and really need to try and put the baby down so I can switch laundry and wash two days worth of dishes. Thanks for listening to my rambling!

Some people

After church today we stopped at McD's for lunch and while in there we overheard an interesting conversation between some partons and an employee. The patrons were black and complaining quite loudly that there was something wrong with this town because there wasnt a single black person working there. The employee responded that there was a black person, he was in the back, so then the patron started to go on about how unfair it was that the poor guy was washing dishes, etc etc and how he's from North Carolina and people there don't care about color. Then he asked the employee what he thought of Obama, to which the employee responded he didn't much care for him or his politics and so the patron went on and on about how hate is wrong and there's no reason to hate Obama, etc. Hello? The employee never said he hated Obama and the patron was making the whole town out to be racist throughout the conversation when there was no reason for it. There simply aren't a lot of black people, or any other minorities for that matter, around here. You can just tell that he came here to "redneck Kentucky" expecting us all to be a bunch of KKK members or some such nonsense. If it had gone on any longer I would have stepped in to defend the poor employee, but luckily the patrons left in disgust before things got too heated. People like that drive me crazy. Who's the real racist here?

We're getting a farm!!

God has given us the wonderful opportunity to buy a small piece of land with a house on it. It's 12 acres, mostly pasture but with a good amount of woods too, maybe 2 or more acres? The house is 1700sf (twice what we have now) and the main part is 150 years old! It has this beautiful old fireplace in it and the kitchen is huge with tons of cabinets and counter space. What else? 3 bedrooms, 1 bath and 2 living spaces. The bedrooms are big enough that we shouldn't have a problem fitting all our future children :) There's also a detached oversized garage that already has electricity run to it and everything. The laundry room is big enough to fit a good size deep-freeze, or maybe we'll jsut put another fridge in, lol. There's fruit trees behind the house. We know there's apple, and maybe pear? We're not sure yet. There's a smokehouse that's been used as a root cellar, we'll probably use it as both at different times, lol. It does need some work, but that's okay, we have some money to get the things done that have to be done. Oh and it'll be summer before we move in, so we don't have time to get a good garden in. Oh well, next year! That gives us this year to get the yard cleaned up and learn how to can all that fruit. Hopefully by next spring we'll be ready to put in a big garden and get some chickens! We're so excited. It was only maybe 6 months ago when I asked DH if he thought we would ever get our farm because I didn't see it happening without a miracle. Well, God is performing that miracle and I am so blessed to be the reciever of it. Praise God with me. (pictures hopefully to be coming soon)

Another tooth!

Asher lost his second tooth 2 days ago. It's been loose for a while, but he said it hurt to wiggle it, so he was leaving it alone. It finally got loose enough he thought he could wiggle it out, and sure enough, he did! His first permanent tooth is just starting to peak out of the hole left from his first lost tooth.

He also has a slightly loose top tooth already. He's getting so big!

Life with 4

If you can't tell from the lack of posting, we've been busy! Solomon is a wonderful baby. He sleeps well at night and usually when he's awake he's in a wonderful mood. He's starting to smile lots and cooing and all those cute things. He does like to be held while sleeping though, which makes for an interesting time. Some days he'll take good naps in his porta-crib, but other days I can't put him down for more than 5 minutes. So yeah, I've been busy! I'm either trying to get chores done, playing with a happy baby, or holding a sleeping one.

We're also trying to get our schedule going, but life has thrown us a few curve balls the last couple weeks, so we're not getting much school in. And Solomon almost always wants to be held in the evenings, which is my only chore time, so that makes it interesting. But we're getting there.

Today is Sunday, so it's my big cleaning day. I'm trying to tackle the kids closet, but seeing as how I'm holding a sleeping baby who won't be put down, I don't know how far I'll get. That closet is always in disaster mode. It's the length of the kids room, so probably 8ft or more, but it only has one regular sized doorway. So even when it get all pulled out, organized and put back in, as soon as I need to put something in it again, it just gets thrown in on top. And while I'm in there, I need to get stuff organized for the big clothes switch I'll have to do in another month or so. Oh and go through all the clothes I pulled out of the boys dressers to make more room and decide if I should keep it, donate it, toss it, etc. I've also been given a ton of clothes for Asher to grow into, nice clothes all the way up to size 10, so I need to go through those and get them organized. And I have to get it all done by bedtime tonight so Genesis's bed can be put back on the floor. Think I can do it? I don't know either, but we'll give a shot.

Looks like Solomon is pretty out of it and may let me put him down, so I need to get work. Wish me luck!