For those of you blissfully unaware that we haven't been living in our house for the past two months you may be surprised to hear that we are BACK.  That's right!  Home sweet home...

Things have been steadily progressing in our kitchen.  Oh yes.  The KITCHEN.  Remember this beauty?

Loverly isn't she?  What could possibly make us want to change anything about this?  Well...lets just say it was a bit chilly in the winter and I'll leave it at that.

Kyle began demolition over his vacation about two months ago and, with the help of his step-brother, the room was rapidly stripped down to bare studs.  We were a little bummed that we weren't able to salvage the cabinets to use as storage in the workshop but they came down in pieces with one swift stroke of the hammer.  So into the pile of scrap wood they went.

Only a small amount of insulation was discovered behind the old drywall.  This was no surprise.  And after lots of hemming and hawing we decided to rip up the floor too and discovered that not only was there NO insulation, but no vapor barrier from the ground.  We were lucky that there was no rot, and the ground below was perfectly dry despite the rainy weather we had been having.  We breathed a sigh of relief (because when it comes to demo in a house as old as ours you almost always run into something unexpectedly unpleasant) and continued along our merry way.  I say 'we' in the very loose sense- Kyle did the grunt work.  I took care of the baby.  I say we're even, therefor I say 'we'.

The past few years we have lived in our house we have endured freezing cold floors in the kitchen every winter.  Not that it was that much of a big deal.  The kitchen was my least favorite room of the house, with its mint green cabinets and stickers of fruit (?).  So while I didn't spend much more time in there than I needed to for aesthetic reasons, I'd have to go in with my muck boots on just to avoid frost bite on my toes.  Therefor, only did we need to insulate the walls from drafts, but the floors as well.  Kyle laid down a vapor barrier and then filled the crawl space with insulation.  Here it is in progress:



In a single week the boys were able to get the subfloor back down over the joists as well as additional supports to keep the floor from flexing as it used to.  We were left with a skeleton of a room.  A blank slate.  Just the way I like it.  I drew up half a dozen floor plans for our future kitchen, some Kyle liked, some he hated, and vice versa.  We decided what we'd really like is an island to increase the work space, maybe one with the oven built in so you could cook and socialize with people at the same time.  But the reality that ovens take up a lot of space quickly beat down that plan.  Its amazing how something can feel so open and airy on paper but as soon as you draw out the layout on the floor its a totally different monster.  So I went back to the drawing board.



Over the next few weeks Kyle managed to not only install a new, bigger window over where the sink would be, he was able to run all the new wiring, install recessed lights, and after about a week of waiting we had a guy come in to do blown-in insulation.  It wasn't really in our budget (trust me that stuff isn't cheap) but we decided that since the room gets a lot of wind and is surrounded by uninsulated areas (the work shop next to it and above it) we couldn't afford to be cheap about it.



Over the past month there has been amazing progress made.  Enough so that we could move back into our house today, so that must mean something.  Unfortunately we're still washing dishes in our bathroom sink which isn't ideal, but hey, one thing at a time right?  Stick around folks, I'll have some great pictures to share next time!

After two unsuccessful years with my garden at the bottom of the hill I am FINALLY seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  Last year, for my birthday, my Mom built me a handful of raised beds next to the house on our south-facing lawn that previously went unused.  It is a lovely little spot of land in front of our picture window and overlooking the river and a farm across the road.  After a second year of disappointment in our garden, Kyle and I had decided to move it to its current home to make it easier to water.  At its previous location we would have to string along five or six hoses around the house and down the hill (the previous owner of our house, an elderly woman, would carry watering cans back and forth...amazing).

My dearest Mom is a very handy woman and she quickly built the raised beds along with a small, hinged platform to hide the access for our septic tank.  This spring, Kyle filled the beds starting with some empty grain bags to try to keep weeds at bay, followed by some goat and chicken manure and straw from the barn, and finally soil.  I began planting with just one bed for lettuce and broccoli and a bed for spinach.  The lettuce and broccoli were looking pretty sad the day I put them in the ground.  Even the kid across the street, a sweet boy who spends a lot of time over at our farm, commented that he thought they were going to die.

Luckily they pulled through and even flourished!  I've been up to my ears in romaine and have resorted to feeding it to the goats.  Note to self: no two people need thirty heads of romaine.  Although, I never pull them out of the ground, I just keep cutting them any time I want some salad so they keep growing back.

Unfortunately my spinach didn't do as well.  I think the problem was that I was using seed left over from last year and the packet might have gotten a bit wet before sitting through the winter in our workshop.  So I bought some new seed and replanted, so far that is the least successful plant in the garden which really is frustrating because I love spinach and we eat a lot of it.  I'm still working on it.

Finally a few months ago I got the rest of the garden in.  Acorn squash, summer squash, peas, beans, carrots, mustard greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, and celery all went into the ground and have been flourishing ever since.  I had a small problem with some cucumber beetles (not sure why my chickens weren't more on top of that) which ate a few of my acorn squash plants.  But luckily I had planted too many in the raised bed anyway so they really did me a favor, as much as I hate to admit it.

I think one of the main reasons the garden is doing so well this year is that I can look out the windows and see  whats going on.  I can walk around the gardens after or before work and see that things need to be weeded- so I take ten minutes and weed.  Water is easily available; it doesn't even take one hose to reach every bed.  I just can't get over the positive results.  Of course, I still have some maintenance to do: the peas and tomatoes desperately need better supports before much longer, but I think this year really will be the year of successful gardening which just snowballs from here.

Here are some pictures!

This is a photo of our raised beds back in the end of April before any planting began.  The photo was actually to show how high the river was during the big flood we had on the 27th, but the raised beds had a cameo appearance.

So anyone who knows about raising goats is probably laughing right now because it is a LITTLE bit late in the season for kidding.  But hey, you do what you can, right?  We bred our goats late because I wanted some adjustment time after bringing our daughter into the world before I wanted to think about milking goats.  So here we are.

Jokers Wild certainly threw some good kids our way and we couldn't be more pleased thus far.  A week ago we had a major heat wave and I was holed up in the house with Isabel working away.  Kyle got home around 4:30 and announces that we have baby goats!  I knew a few of our does were close, their tail ligaments were getting softer by the day, but I was surprised to hear that one of them kidded without me noticing.  We hopped outside, which was a shock to my system because it was almost twenty degrees hotter that the house, and found Juniper in the shade of a few trees with two tiny babies by her side.  They were already dry and wobbling around.  They are two little bucklings, both tri-colored and I think we're going to be keeping one for breeding.  My husband has already named them Rootbeer and Moxie.

Not two days later my darling May graced us with the arrival of a doeling as well!  I saw her udder was getting bigger and her ligaments were almost gone but she fooled me last year so I wasn't holding my breath on her.  Well, apparently good things DO come to those who wait.  Not only did May produce a beautiful and friendly little girl but she also has a GREAT big udder and fairly large teats.  Pretty impressive for a first freshener I think.  I made my first attempt at milking her just this morning and while I wouldn't say it was easy it certainly went much smoother than any of my attempts last year at milking Chutney.  So I'm excited and hopeful.



Poppy was the third so far to kid this year.  Two days after May's doeling was born, Poppy produced a doeling of her own.  She looks just like Joker and is just a tiny little thing.  Poppy is our smallest goat so I'm not sure how successfully I will be able to milk her, but I'm hoping to do a bit with her and Juniper this year so they'll have an easier time of it next year.  If we could just get enough milk to avoid buying any for Kyle's coffee or my goat cheese addiction then it will be worth the effort.


Still left to kid are Chutney and Willow.  Chutney is looking just as big as last year and her ligaments are hard as rock so I'm thinking she'll give us at least three kids again this year.  Time will tell.  So as it stands we're up to four kids.  The little bucklings were disbudded last night and the doelings will be done before the end of the week.  I'm still waiting for their little nubs to come up.

Things are moving along in other areas of the farm as well.  Our pigs and chicks are growing fast over the pasture, the garden is doing well, the bees (I am very sorry to report) didn't make it through the winter so we're going to wait and try again next year.  I will be trying to blog more often now that we have so very much going on.  I would hate to get too far behind when there is stuff to report on!  Thanks for sticking around, folks!