Do you know what happened the day after my last post?

No?

Ok, well then I'll tell you.  I had a baby.  Yep.  Our little girl who wasn't due for another couple weeks decided to show her face early!  I had spent the entire day out and about with my Mom.  We did some fabric shopping, went out to lunch, and then I had a variety of doctors appointments over in Burlington.  By the time I got home my ankles had swollen a bit and I was so tired I decided to take a nice hot bath before going to bed.  Kyle and I hit the sack at 9 o'clock and not ten minutes later my water broke.  So, we rushed to the nearest hospital (our local place where we had originally planned on a natural birth with the midwives there) just in case I had a prolapsed umbilical cord since my little peanut was breech.  But, thank goodness, all was well with the baby when we arrived.  Because I was having contractions and things were progressing so fast they decided to keep me there for the c-section rather than sending us via ambulance to the hospital in Burlington.

Two hours after we had arrived at Copley hospital we had a baby.  She was born on 1/11/2011 at 11:27pm.  We spent four days in the hospital recovering before heading home on Saturday.  The past month has gone by in a flash and in just another couple weeks I'll be going back to working part-time which will be an adjustment.  But parenthood is wonderful.  Our baby girl is healthy, happy, and is growing like a weed.

So, without further ado, please meet the latest member of the family: Isabel.

My dear friends, there are so many home renovation projects I need to post about its not even funny.  Almost the entire second floor of our house is finished and I have neglected to say anything about it!  So, in my efforts to get caught up, here is the lowdown on our renovation of our nursery!

Back in February of 2009, when we bought our house, we were faced with a lovely old farmhouse with not-so-lovely rooms.  There was either floor to floor carpet (even indoor/outdoor carpet in the dining room), or congoleum throughout the house.  On all other surfaces (yes that includes the ceilings) there was layer upon layer of wallpaper, minus the dining room that has a lovely drop ceiling.  The night we closed on our house we began renovations- we ripped down wallpaper and pulled up congoleum flooring and we've been going ever since.

The room seemed dark due to the wall of wood paneling that we left up, so Kyle framed in the wall, added more insulation, and hung sheetrock to cover it.  The result was dramatic, it suddenly felt clean and airy. 
We picked out a light green paint for the walls and enlisted my Mom to help paint a mural on the lower portion of the walls. 

We hung a chair rail to divide the mural from the rest of the wall and put up the rest of the trim.  We were lucky to have been given a crib, as well as some other baby gear, from my cousin Jill and her husband, Tim.

The highchair is a handmade gift from my uncle, Jeff, when he came up for our wedding in June of 2009.

The only thing left to do is refinish the dresser which I will be turning into a changing table, install a new light, and generally get some additional pieces of furniture and art to flesh out the room.  I'll let you in on a little secret, I already refinished the dresser- I'll share that mini-makeover with you soon I promise!

I've said it before, our life is no picnic, we work hard at our jobs and we come home to work hard some more.  We have to work through disagreements and sometimes have our days where we just don't get along.  But things are always worked out.  We're two peas in a pod- two very stubborn peas.  The kind that keep coming back in your garden year after year despite how sure you are that you got them all out at harvest time.  Yeah, we're those peas.

Kyle and I have always shared our goals and our dreams with eachother- so even early on in our relationship we talked about our feelings about money, relationships, marriage, and even children.  We are lucky that we share the same views on all these things, it has made our relationship much smoother.  (As I said before: two peas.)  Instead of arguing about what to do with our money we get to focus on more important things, like how old Meryl Streep is or how long it takes to drive from our house to New York City.  You know, stuff like that.

After giving it lots of thought, we decided to take action on one of the previously mentioned topics of discussion.  We're having a baby.  This was one of the main culprits for our lack of anniversary-celebration this year, I admit, we had all these fun activities for the day planned but as my "morning sickness" lasted throughout the day it made it difficult to want to eat out or take the kayaks for a swim. 

SO!  Now that the cat is officially out of the bag I'm hoping to get back into my regularly scheduled blog posting as I've got tons to update you all on regarding the house and nursery.  Talk about renovation nation going on at casa Senesac- we're pushing to get the entire second floor finished by the end of the year!  Plus the dining room!  OH and getting our chimeny/woodstove installed next month!  Plenty of goings-on and I hope you'll stay tuned for all the long-overdue updates!

So folks, thats the big news that I've been holding on to.  My estimated due date is January 26 (which puts me at almost 5 months right now).  You can see in the picture below I've started "showing" as it is so lovingly called- note the elastic waistband pants and my prepregnancy t-shirt that just isn't long enough anymore.

Sorry I've been a little sporatic in my blog posts lately, things have just been super hectic at home the past few weeks and my laptop has officially kicked the bucket.  Kyle and I had to finish up our guest room (YES, it really is finished!!) before my father and step-mom came up for the holiday weekend.  We also had to clean up the house (which ended up taking way more time than I really thought it would) and semi-finish the upstairs bathroom.  On top of all this we, of course, have been working on barn stuff.  Kyle made me a milking stand a week ago which I took out for a test run with Chutney a couple days. 

I was planning on starting the bottle-feeding this past weekend, my hope had been that I'd milk a little bit every day up until then just for us to get the hang of it before we really got serious.  But unfortunately, I haven't been feeling well and trudging out to the barn twice a day to fight with a goat and her teats wasn't high on my priority list.  So I'm hoping to give it another go soon because the kids are getting pretty skittish.

Our pigs are growing fast.  Bricktop is definitely still the biggest out of the four boys but the other three really aren't that far behind.  Kyle and I are pretty sure we'll be able to have them all processed before fall, which would be great.  They haven't eaten any other chickens, as far as I have been able to tell, and I hope that our barracade that we created around the dividing gate will continue to be successful.

Speaking of chickens, our second experience of the Cornish crosses is nearing its end.  Our fifty (or so) meat birds are amazing.  Last year when we raised these birds it was too late to put them outside because the weather had turned too cold.  This year they've had free range of the pasture and all the tall grasses.  We started only feeding them for a short time in the morning, forcing them to forage for the rest of the day.  I am always amazed about how healthy they seem compared to our first batch.  These birds are active.  The most common thing you hear about this kind of bird is that they have heart and leg problems, they really can only walk from the feed dish to the water dish, and the rest of the time they have to sit down because of their massive weight.  We experienced exactly this last year and it caused us to think we'd never raise these birds again.  But what a difference a diet can make.  I'll be posting some pictures when I get a chance.

I really do have a bunch to catch you up on- I really would love to show you some before and afters of our guest room and bathroom.  Oh, and we started our garden a few weeks ago, still have a lot to plant, but we've got a beginning at least.  May is due in a few weeks, she started making her udder a week ago.  So much has been going on I can barely remember it all!  Please bear with me, friends, life has really been getting in the way of my blogging but I hope to make a full comeback soon.

Thanks for stopping by!!
Melissa

So yesterday I mentioned that I was getting 'itchy' about the garden.  Well, today I'd like to talk about a different kind of itchy-ness. 

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but I am very sensitive to poison ivy.  Unfortunately for me, I love kayaking and bringing our dogs down to the river across the road from our house and (as I'm sure you are aware) poison ivy just loves river banks.  It is way too early for poison ivy to be growing right now so Kyle and I happily paraded the pups down for an afternoon swim last weekend. So, on Sunday, when I found an itchy red bump on my ankle my first thought was that it was a bug bite.  Monday I awoke to more of the little red blisters on my neck, Tuesday I had a small patch next to my nose, and by Wednesday the bumps on my neck were spreading up onto my chin.  Lets just say that by Thursday I was throwing everything in the wash from my pillowcase to my jacket.

It may suprise you to know (it sure suprised the heck out of me) that you can get the irritating oil from this plant from more than just the leaves.  Thats right, you can even get it from the roots!  So, word of warning: if you are working in an area where poison ivy resides, even if you don't see any, wear gloves.  The oil can last for a long time on just about anything so you can keep reinfecting yourself through your shoes, your clothing, even your dog if he came in contact with any.  So always wash off anything and everything as soon as you can after coming in contact with this plant.  I've inserted a photo of what poison ivy looks like.  (Photo of Poison Ivy from Missouri River Institute's Online Field)

I'm not the only one suffering from a bit of discomfort lately.  The girls in the barn have some unwelcome guests.  A couple nights ago, while we were all down at the garden, I was checking Chutney to see if she was starting to shed yet and found lice.  The poor girl is bursting at the seams with her baby bump and come to find she's been itchy as heck from these darn parasites.  And of course, if one goat has something the other just has to have it, too.  May has been so itchy that she's taken to rolling on the ground, which I thought was just humorous goat behavior, but now I know better.  So I stopped by Johnson Farm and Garden last night and pick up a bag of diatomaceous earth.  A little sprinkle here, a little sprinkle there, and a big sprinkle throughout the barn (just in case) and hopefully these suckers will be gone in a few days. (Enlarged photo of lice by the University of Kentucky)

FYI!  If you have the same problem please do not use the diatomaceous earth that you got for your swimming pool, ok?  That stuff has been tampered with and not only will it not kill any bugs, it's also very dangerous to inhale.  Not that you want to inhale any DE, but this stuff is laced with chemicals so its worse.  Only get food or garden grade DE for treating external parasites.

Happy spring!

Hey folks!

I apologize for my prolonged absence.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was off on a business trip to Texas/Mexico for the week.  But, happily, I am back home and seriously happy that I missed out on the snow that stopped by our house while I was away.  We are getting a head-start on the 'April showers' here and I'm just hoping that our spring flowers, that really got going over the past month, are going to tolerate the weather alright.  Here's a quick update on the farm happenings:

I got an email from our hatchery last week that our order of chicks will be shipping out on the 31st, this Wednesday.  So we'll have eighty chicks peeping away come the end of the week.  I'm definitely looking forward to their arrival but its always a little difficult when we work full-time jobs as well.  I work from 7-3:30 so we get the call from the post office right as I'm getting to work- so Kyle will, most likely, have to deal with them himself.  This isn't usually too bad, but when there are so many and you have to dip all their beaks in water to teach them to drink, it takes some time.

Our bees will be ready for pick up in two weeks- April 12th.  I'm excited to get that new aspect of the farm going.  I'm hoping that they'll thrive and not have any health problems like we've been seeing all over.  Nothing to do but wait and see I suppose.

I swear the pigs have doubled in size since we bought them.  Brick Top is still the biggest and the BOSS over the other boys, Freddy has become quite friendly and I think Kyle and I are going to have an extra-difficult time sending him off to the butcher when his time comes.  We're really excited about the landscaping they've been doing in their pasture and we're looking forward to sectioning it off so we can plant some quick-growing vegetables for them for later this spring/summer.  Their tilling speed and power have really got us planning away at future gardening endeavors on the rest of our land.  Eventually we're going to start fencing off the rest of the land so we can do rotational grazing/gardening a little easier in the future.

Finally, the goats are still working away at growing their babies.  May is finally starting to look a little rounder in the mid-section, so I'm feeling fairly confident that her 'date' was successful.  Chutney is so big I can't even pick her up anymore without fear of throwing out my back.  And she's actually started making her udder.  It is measly right now, but I suppose that is to be expected as she doesn't need it for another month and a half.  I'm sure in the weeks to come she'll really kick it into high gear.  Her mother is still milking after giving birth to Chutney, so I'm confident about her dairy genes.

Exciting stuff.

But she's not going to be happy about it.

Yes, thats right, folks I'm headed away for a week on my yearly trip down to Texas/Mexico.  Business, not pleasure.  That means I'll be leaving the farm in my hubby's capable hands, the poor guy.  On the up side, I'll be missing out on a week of cool, rainy weather that is the norm for Vermont in early spring.  But I'll miss being home none the less.  I'm a homebody, not a traveler.

Anyways, so we ordered our chickens a couple nights ago.  We'll be getting fify meat birds and twenty-five pullets for eggs.  Six of the pullets we'll be selling to Kyle's brother, Sean, who has a lovely forested piece of land where the chickens will have a field day eating all their ticks and whatnot.  Fifty broilers is definitely a little more than we need for the year, but we've got some friends and family who will be taking some off our hands once they make the transition from the barn to the freezer.

So, hopefully shortly after I return from my trip we'll be getting our chickens and our bees (which I am picking up April 12th).  Until then we'll just keep plugging away with our seed starting and garden planning.

Well folks, as tonight is my last night home until Friday, I'm off to enjoy some quiet time with my husband and our 'family'.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to check in while I'm away.  Happy spring!!

As I'm sure you've noticed, I've been ready for Spring for over a month now.  We started some seeds, which are doing remakably well compared to previous attempts at seed-starting (don't get too excited, mostly just herbs, some hot peppers, and some tomatos to grow in the house).  The little snow we had was melting fast and I would say that half of our land was grass or spotty snow.  Just last week I saw the first of the spring flowers popping up through the ground.  I was getting excited for the girls who must be really looking forward to some nice fresh grass after all these months of hay and grain.

But, alas, we suffered a major set-back in this department yesterday when I awoke to a foot of wet snow on the ground and plenty more falling.  We donned our winter gear and headed out to see if we could get the snowblower going.  After ten minutes of frustration in the realization that the auger wouldn't be able to handle the heavy, wet snow, we gave in and I called in to work.

Though I wasn't exactly psyched to get such a significant snowfall, I have to admit, it was truly beautiful.  After giving up on the snowblower and its deafening noise as it choked through the snow back to its parking spot, we headed to the barn to feed everyone an early breakfast.  The sun hadn't yet come up and we enjoyed some quiet time before the world awoke. 

The girls happily munched away at their breakfast of grain and some nice second-cut hay that we found at Guys Farm and Yard over in Morrisville a few days ago.  The chickens scratched away at the ground, finding grain and bits of stuff we unearthed after cleaning out half of the old straw this past weekend.  The pigs, in their own shed, grunted and squeeked through their mix of grain and food scraps.

There is something just so pleasant about the sound of contently eating farm animals.  I think it is partially due to the frantic moments before everyone is fed, while everyone is demanding their breakfast, that we come to really appreciate the quiet afterwards.  We rush to feed the pigs before their squealing could bother the neighbors, and we quickly feed the goats before we're covered in hoof prints, then finally cast out grain for the chickens before they start trying to steal from the pigs and the goats.  Once its all said and done, and everyone has fresh, clean water, we can sit back and enjoy the peace.

Our life doesn't seem to lend itself to too many moments of peace.  There is always laundry to do, dishes to wash, dogs to exercise, animals to feed, pigs to move from the barn to their shed, water buckets to fill, eggs to collect, reading/studying to do, goats to check on, home renovations to tackle, not to mention our full-time jobs.  So, during these quiet moments before the sun comes up and the sense of urgency to get to work (in one sense or another)arises, we find a second to stand still, hold hands, and breathe deep.

Whew.  Can I get a 'woo hoo' for three-day weekends?  Thank ya.  Wow, what a weekend.  We were fully booked on Saturday when Guy (my father-in-law) came over to help Kyle fix the truck.  After a few hours they successfully replaced the timing belt, changed the oil and the radiator fluid (upon inspection it was relatively black).  I was happy to know I would no longer have to wait patiently (read: somewhat IMpatiently) at work for my darling hubby to pick me up.

After working outside in the frigid temps, not to mention the wind that is ever-prevaling at our house, they were finished and Guy headed out to do some last-minute shopping for our neice's birthday party that night.  Kyle and I had a quick lunch of sausage/lentil soup with some cornbread muffins before settling in to take a quick nap before heading to Georgia for the party.  Its amazing how hot soup will knock you out after spending the day outside in the cold.  Luckily, my groggy head quickly dissapated after a few minutes of visiting with excited children (my neices and nephews are the sweetest kids ever).

On our way back home we stopped by Kyle's brother's house where we scored some venison, maple syrup (Sean makes it every year), and a basket of acorns Sean had saved for us to feed our pigs.  Yeah, I have some great in-laws.  After a long week it was great to get home and know we still had two more days off that we would spend just the two of us.

After having a relaxing day on Sunday we decided to get some work done.  After filling in holes left by the pigs in the floor of our barn twice we figured that since it was such a beautiful day (and would continue to be mild for the rest of the week at least) we might as well get the pigs into their new shed.  Problem being: the shed wasn't finished.  We headed to the local building supply where we picked up a few sheets of plywood and got to work.

We fastened two sheets across the roof to help support the metal roofing, then covered the front.  As Kyle was cutting out the openings for the windows on the front of the shed we began to notice that there was something not quite right.  We knew we still needed to level the base- so perhaps that is why the openings for the windows looked so crooked.  After leveling everything (I definitely recommending doing this BEFORE weighing it down too much) we took another look.  Sure enough, the corners of the windows were not really on the diagonals so much as they were going vertically and horizontally.  I couldn't stop laughing at the sight despite my frustration- I sincerely wish I had taken a picture because it almost looked intentional- .  But, it was not, and we immediately started taking down the front of the shed to repair it.

Somewhere along the line we had put up a header that was too short, resulting in the entire shed being squeezed in at the top of the front.  So, as we were making everything square on one side, it was getting more and more UNsquare on the other side.  A word of advice: always be sure you actually draw up plans to scale before building something like this.  We've been flying by the seats of our proverbial pants and look where it has gotten us.

We ran back to the building supply store to get another couple sheets of plywood (the previous ones becoming useless for this particular project since we already had cut them to fit in the incorrect shapes).  As soon as we put in the longer header we were golden.  After another hour we were fastening in the two windows on the front of our south-facing pig shelter.  We grabbed a few wheelbarrow loads of their old bed in the barn and tossed it in there to help it feel more like home.  Along with a full, clean bale of straw, the place was feeling pretty darned cozy so we decided it was now or never: time to move the boys.

It took a good ten minutes before I was able to successfully lure them over to their new house.  They wanted their food and they didn't want to take a walk to get it.  But, I won, and they've been spending the nights in their new shed ever since.  We've been blocking the doorway to keep them in there at night, just until they start to realize that its their home.  During the day they've been going back in the barn to sleep, which is fine for now.  We'll be finishing up gates eventually so they can't go in and harrass the goats.

The only thing we have left to do is fasten on our scrap metal roofing that we salvaged from the big demolition from last year, which shouldn't take too long.  Oh, and hope our neighbors don't hate us forever...these little guys can make quite a bit of noise when they're ready to eat...yikes.

Ok, I just can't stand it anymore.  I mean, I love winter, the snow is gorgeous, it helps keep the house warmer, and it's fun.  But seriously, I can't stand the cold anymore.  Kyle's truck has died and we've spent too much time freezing in the sub-zero wind gusts trying to figure out why (more than likely something related to the cold).  We've lost too many eggs to the frigid temperatures and I'm sick of having to supplement feed with so much grain.  Our kids need grass.  I am ready for Spring!!!!!! 

I know today is Groundhog Day...and Phil has officially proclaimed six more weeks of winter...but I've got a news flash: I DON'T CARE!!  Mwah ha haaa (maniacal laugh inserted here)!   Spring never comes early up here so even if he had forecast an early spring, it wouldn't apply to us folks up here in Northern VT anyways.  Best case scenario: we won't really see Spring until May, we need get through mud-season first.  Regardless, I'm determined to hurry this season along.  It was a welcomed guest, but its time to show it the door.

This past weekend, Kyle and I made a run to Gardener's Supply Company, an awesome, employee-owned, local gardening supply store.  We thought we'd grab some house plants (they're having a sale: buy two, get one free) and while we were there we picked up a handful of seed packets to start inside the house.  I was planning on just doing one big order on High Mowing Seeds website, but I just couldn't wait any longer.  I'll order the rest of our seeds online, probably later this month, but I wanted something in-hand to start right off.  We came home with paste tomatoes, Ring-of-Fire hot peppers, basil, parsley, rosemary, and lavender.  We also grabbed some Provider bush beans, Chamomile and Echinacea that we'll start later next month.

I'm planning the garden alot more than I did last year.  I'm reading more about companion planting and non-tilling, non-weeding options.  The garden was the biggest disappointment of last year.  I make no claims that I am a good gardener- I'm actually pretty terrible at it.  I'm more interested in animal husbandry and I think it shows: my livestock is thriving.  But it also shows in the garden: it's always overrun by weeds and I don't harvest what little there is to harvest in time so some things end up going to seed (which I don't realize until things start sprouting after we've turned everything under for the year).

We've also spent quite a bit of time working on our pig shelter.  Its relatively large, too big really for the size the pigs will be when we buy them.  So unless we really pack it with mulch hay these little piggies will probably spend the first month or two in the barn where it will be a little warmer.  We're planning on picking up the new additions to the farm this Saturday.  I'm pretty excited about it.  I know they're going to be meat for our table, but until then they can till our garden and enjoy the dappled sunshine in the little grove behind our house.  They will be happy, which makes me happy.

This is going to be a big, busy year.  It will be the first time keeping bees and raising turkeys and pigs.  It will be the first time our goats will kid, so it will be the first time bottle-feeding babies and milking goats.  I've worked at a dairy before, so I've done the twice-a-day milking, but never in conjunction with raising so many other animals, gardening, and beekeeping.  And of course, on top of that we're still renovating our house and working full time jobs.

Do I feel overwelmed?  Nope.  Well, not yet, give it some time.  Spring is rejuvenating after waking up from a long winter slumber.  I'm ready to wake up.  How about you?

I used to be extremely obessive about keeping my car clean.  Minus the head-on collision it had been in, it was practically brand new when I bought it a few years ago.  After a few months and about a thousand bucks in parts, my little red Scion XA was as good as new thanks to my husband and father-in-law.  It was the newest car I've ever owned (only a year old) and it wasn't teal green, unlike my previous two cars.  I had a 'no food or drink' rule for the longest time for fear of spoiling the spotless interior.  I even put down blankets when we would lay down the back seat for the dogs to ride in the back.  Those days are no more.  (Note: this image was snagged off Motor Trend as I don't have a photo of my car- it looks exactly like this minus the hubcaps which were lost during an unfortunate encounter with a Melissa-sized pothole.)

For about a month now I've had a tarp and a layer of gently-used straw in the back of my car.  We brought all 'the kids' up to my Mom's in Montgomery on January 1st for a late Christmas celebration and I never cleaned out the car after we returned home the next day.  At the time it was just from sheer laziness, then I reasoned that we'd have to bring May down to the breeder soon so we might as well leave it.  But now that she's been bred and I have no current plans to cart my girls around I have no excuse.

But I'm going to tell you a secret:
            I do have an excuse- I just like it there.

I got out of work Monday afternoon in a less than perfect mood.  It had been a long day and I was bummed about the rain which was spoiling my plans for the evening.  I trudged out to my car and as soon as I opened the door to escape the 'liquid sunshine' so intent on permeating my jacket, I was greeted by the smell wafting out of my car.  The hay and used straw had been steeping in the confined space of my small vehicle and the relative heat from the past few days had exponentially increased the aroma.  It's a sweet smell that strikes a chord in my heart.  That heavenly smell brings me back to childhood days in the horse barn with my Mom and reminds me of the beautiful things that I am a part of now.

It is so easy for me to get stressed and anxious (trust me, I do it all the time: I'm an expert) but when I think of the life we are bringing to our farm and the potential we are creating from our own hands, it brings me such peace and happiness.  Taking care of so many lives and running our home is no easy task.  We worry about sickness and disease.  Are our goats going to have healthy pregnancies and will their kidding be easy?  Will our garden be successful this year or will we continue to have to buy our produce?  We worry about things that would keep some people from venturing into a life like ours at all.

Things that used to seem so important are so trivial now; homesteading will do that to you.  It brings you back to earth and shows you in black and white what life is.  Its never easy and I can tell you for sure that we've still got a long way to go and a lot to learn, but I love it.  I love my life, and I love my dirty, straw-ridden car that smells like the barn.

Hey folks.  Kyle is up shoveling our roof so I thought it would be a good time to hop onto the blog and say 'Hi'. 

This weekend has been a lovely taste of the coming Spring.  I am so ready.  This morning we went out to the barn and I didn't even have to put on a jacket, it is well into the 40s I think.  After feeding the girls we walked around our land for a few minutes, planning where we'd be putting our pigs, and where we want to put the grape vines that have been taking up prime seats next to our picture window this Winter.  I can't wait to get started.

We've decided we're going to get four piglets as soon as we can build them a shelter and get an electric fence set up.  Hopefully in a couple months.

We started back up work on our guest bedroom yesterday.  Kyle has been working on the trim around the windows and I've been patching up old nail holes and other irregularities in the built-in that Kyle made.  It was all recycled wood from some old cabinets we scored from a house down the road.  I'm hoping to be able to get it primed with some BIN primer today- good stuff to keep the stain from seeping through later.

Mom and Anders are stopping over later this morning.  Anders hasn't seen the recent 'updates' to the house as he's been on his ship for the past few months.  After the tour we'll be heading over to the Bees Knees in Morrisville for some tasty local food and perhaps a beer.

Its been a crazy week followed by a relatively lazy weekend.  But the prospect for Spring has my spirits up.  I know we've just hit our January thaw and I'm sure we've got plenty of cold, snowy days ahead, but its nice to have a little taste of mild temperatures to come.

Oh and those grape vines I mentioned before- one has actually started growing its leaves.  I'm not sure if thats really a great thing, since grapes are supposed to be sleeping now, but the new growth is exciting.  Also, Kyle's Christmas Cactus that I almost killed, then nursed back to health, has finally decided to bloom!  We've got some bright pink flowers in the works and I'm pretty sure any day now they'll open.  I love Spring, even when its just in my head.

New years eve, Kyle and I had a lovely evening of bonfires, margeritas, hors d'oeuvres and Alfred Hitchcock movies.  Standing around the fire, being dusted by snowflakes, we played fetch with Ollie until he could no longer find the frisbee in the dark and the snow.  The girls were warm in their barn, watching the festivities from the comfort of their window seat.  The new year was rung in without bells or whistles.  No ball drop, party hats, crowds, or bar bills.  Just us kids down here on the farm, standing around a fire in our muck boots, drinking frozen drinks out of authentic German steins in the crisp winter air.  In hindsight it probably would have been a little more pleasant if we were drinking hot drinks- like mulled cider...oh well!  We've got plenty of winter left for that.

We were gifted a beautiful, homemade, cedar storage bench that Mom made herself.  It is taking up residence at the foot of our bed and it is just absolutely beautiful.

The rest of the weekend was spent snowblowing (both with the john deere and the wind), shoveling, and staying cozy in the house when we could.  We brought our tree out to May and Chutney on Sunday but that was about as ambitious as we got.  The wind and the snow made spending time outside a little less than lovely.  I had grand plans of working on the guest bedroom but settled for making some awesome breakfast burritos, spicy homefries, and mamosas before spending the rest of the day in sweats with Kyle, watching Psycho and back episodes of Lost online at Netflix.

I did start shopping for our seeds for this year's garden.  We're going to be buying them from High Mowing Organic Seeds just a few towns over from us in Wolcott.  They're a great local company that sells organic seeds at fair prices- we like them.  Now my only challenge is going to be to wait to start the seeds once they arrive...I'm ready but if we start them now we might have a full-fledged garden in our house before Spring even shows its lovely face- not a good idea when you've got cats and dogs just dying to find something new to dig in.  Although, maybe I'll start some herbs and hot peppers just to get my gardening fix...good idea, I think I'll spend my break shopping.

As the year comes to a close I thought it might be nice to take a break from updating you on our home renovation projects to look back over the past twelve months.  Its been a whirlwind of a year and I still can't believe that its almost 2010.

2009 was welcomed in while we were living with my Mom up in Montgomery, Vermont.  We were in the process of trying to buy our house and the loan process was taking alot more time, effort, and money than we were anticipating.  By the end of February we closed and immediately set in to renovations.  Over the course of a few months I had my first business trip to Texas/Mexico, we got all the wiring in our house updated, and we bought our first major appliance: a refrigerator that would be more trouble than it was worth (which we later had replaced).

During our honeymoon-at-home we adopted our two cats, Elvis and Atticus (who, we decided last night, should have been named Laurel and Hardy), from the local humane society.  We'd gone to visit a goat farm in Plainfield where we would later pick up our two does, May and Chutney, and thus began working towards our own little home dairy.

In the fall we slaughtered our broiler chickens- something we found to be hard, but generally a positive experience because we cared for these animals ourselves and saw to their well-being.  Our stand against the commercial meat industry began.

Over the past year we've learned about sheetrocking, plumbing, and wiring.  We've got some serious experience in refinishing wood flooring and ripping down wallpaper.  I can patch just about anything with some spackle and a can of spray-foam but duct tape is still a good thing to have on hand, just in case.

In 2010, I hope to learn how to make cheese, work harder in my garden as another step in becoming self-sufficient and participate more in the butchering of our next installment of broilers.  I want to get out and enjoy more of the stuff Kyle and I used to do instead of spending all of our free time renovating the house:  kayaking, mountain biking, road biking, hiking, and playing frolf.  I'll start beekeeping with the hive my husband gave me for my birthday and hopefully we'll be able to generate some income between the sales of honey, eggs, raw milk, and free-range chickens and turkeys.

A decade ago I was in high school.  Today I run a home and a small farm.  I'm a wife.  Although this past year has been one of the most stressful years of my life so far, I can honestly say that I've never been happier.  Balance is important.  Without the darkness we would never appreciate the sun.

Life isn't perfect, and its never easy. I'm such a stress-case its amazing I can manage at all. My husband grounds me and still loves me even when I'm being a little crazy. I've learned alot over this past year- mostly that sometimes the best thing to do when faced with a problem is just tear into it so you can see what you're really dealing with, then carefully patch it all back together so it will hang in there for the long haul.

I hope you all have a happy and safe new years eve celebration tonight.  We'll be celebrating at home with a bonfire, some snack food and perhaps a margerita or two.  So goodbye 2009- its been a trip.

So last weekend was not only our big APPLE weekend, it was also when we had scheduled to butcher our fifteen broilers that we'd been raising.  This was more of my husband's project as I wasn't sure how ready I was to really actually kill anything.  So, for fear of becoming attached to them as I have with my laying hens (I use that term lightly as they haven't actually started laying yet), Kyle was in charge of the feeding and watering of these chicks during their time with us. 

They arrived and were little balls of fluff, cute and peeping, but after a month they were already the size of our 5-month old hens in the side yard.  We knew this type of bird was bred to grow fast and grow fast they certainly did.  Of course, they required an immense amount of food and water to support their amazing metabolism so I'm not sure that we had saved any money in raising our own chicken for food.  The point, though, was not to raise our own broilers to save money, it was to be responsible consumers.  This was our own little boycott on big commercial poultry organizations that claim to sell free-range birds but in reality keep them crammed in pens above eachother with just a small door allowing a few of them at a time into a slightly larger yard.  No, I did not feel good supporting that.

So the time had come.  Thanks to the hard work we had done with the apples the day before I was able to sleep through the night.  Otherwise I probably would have tossed and turned thinking about the chickens and their fate.  Sunday we woke up to a cool and cloudy morning and got to work.

Kyle created a workbench from some old wooden boards we salvaged from the part of our barn we had to tear down which I wrapped in some plastic wrap to try to keep things a little more sanitary.  He cut a hole into one of our 5-gallon buckets we had kicking around as sort of a make-shift "killing cone" and attached it to the tree next to the bench.  Much to my relief Kyle's brother, Sean, arrived who was going to be helping us with our task.  He is a hunter so we decided his experience and input would be invaluable.  He showed up with his very own home-made, McGyver-estque chicken plucker.  We all looked at it, basically a hand-held drill with a bit made out of a piece of PVC pipe with some pieces of rubber bungee cords attached to it, with a little bit of humor and went on with the preparations.

After some hot coffee (or tea in my case) Kyle and I began bringing the birds outside to keep them in our chicken run that we created for our chicks back in July.  Perhaps it sounds a little silly but I said a quiet 'thank you' to all them as they went outside.  It was an extremely poignant feeling as I looked at our birds for the last time as they laid calmly on the grass.  We had raised these birds from two-day old chicks, tending to their every need to be sure they were healthy and comfortable.  Now they would nuture us in return.

The boys grabbed the first bird and I stood by.  I was not ready to take a hand in the killing, but I wanted to be respectful to the lives that were being taken, so I stood there as a witness.  There were no axes, just a sharp knife and a quick hand.  I watched as the silent bird slowly drifted off into a hazy sleep with a few tears in my eyes.  This was going to be tough.  Just in time, my brother and sister-in-law arrived to help as this was going to be a long process.  My sister-in-law, Viola, is almost always up for a new experience and I think she was, frankly, a little excited to be involved in the cleaning that would come later.  She's a tough gal, that one, and I love her for it.

When the time came for cleaning the chickens we had quite the group- Kyle, Sean, and Viola standing by donning disposable gloves and my brother and I standing by trying to help with the instructions.  No one had any experience in this, all we had was Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens that was lent to me by a co-worker just a couple days before.  But as I am better with visuals I sought after some kind of video.  To my rescue I found the Featherman website which is a company who not only makes some great poulty-processing equipment (too rich for my blood, we were doing this old-school) they also provide links to a few videos on Youtube that are amazingly informative on how to process your birds.  So I brought the laptop out to show to the crew and they got to work.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, that little home-made chicken-plucker worked like a charm!  After scalding the birds in hot water, Sean put his contraption to the feathers and they literally flew off.  It wasn't perfect, mind you, there were still feathers here and there that had to be pulled out by hand, but it was alot quicker, cleaner, and easier than doing it all manually.



At this point my dear mother arrived to help with more of the apples (she wanted NOTHING to do with the chicken activities of the day) so after watching and trying to give pointers (having dissected animals in college during my brief stint as an animal science major) I adjourned to the comforts of the house to help peel and and slice some fruit.

It was a busy day.  I gave the birds a final wash in the sink, packed them in zip-lock freezer bags and tucked them away into our chest freezer.  While I had planned to roast the first-to-go to feed the group in thanks for their help, no one was really up for eating any chicken that day.  While the experience was relatively positive, let me tell you: these birds don't exactly smell like a bunch of flowers.  When I saw my sister-in-law last night at a little birthday dinner for yours-truly she mentioned that she still wasn't really ready to eat chicken, the smell had been that bad.

The "thank-you" chicken we sent home with Sean was the first to be consumed.  His wife, Andrea, cooked it rotisserie-style and they said it was delicious.  Zach and Viola's chicken is still in our freezer until they have room to house it themselves; we have more than enough room.  Mom didn't want one.  We have yet to cook one of ours but with this cold and rainy weather we're looking at for the next few days I might just have to pull one out of the freezer to try it out.

We're already making plans to raise our own turkey next year- probably a heritage breed after reading a blog on Antiquity Oaks- and we're going to raise another group of dual-purpose birds for slaughter next fall.  I would not recommend the Cornish x Rock broilers, they grow too fast for their own good.  I'm thinking of getting a straight-run of Sussex to add to the Dominiques, Black Australorps, and Easter-eggers that are in residence currently.  With this plan we should be able to dispatch the roosters (to keep peace with the neighbors) and whatever older birds that are no longer laying well in the years to come.

This was a difficult experience for me being such an animal-lover.  But I feel good knowing that we gave these birds the best life we could.  We could have brought the birds to a professional to be butchered, there is one just in the next town over, but we are thriving for self-sufficiency; the more we can do ourselves the better.

How you do you feel about raising animals to feed your family?  Have you had any experiences with raising your own food?  If not, do you think you ever could?  Let me know what your thoughts are on this, its nice to hear back from you.  Thanks for stopping in- take care!

Last night I got home and immediately set in to making dinner, it was just one of those days where I needed to keep busy.  I had bought a little broiler at the grocery store earlier this week to roast and make chicken soup from.  It is to be, hopefully, the last chicken we will ever buy from a store as we are set to butcher our fifteen broilers this weekend.

As a recently converted ex-vegetarian this was the first time in a LONG time since I had handled a whole dead chicken, so I had a little trouble remembering how this all worked.  I seasoned it all over with salt and pepper and rubbed it down with a little bit of butter mixed with six cloves of chopped garlic and some rosemary.  I set it in the pot on top of a few chopped carrots and onions and threw it all in the oven for the next 50 minutes.  I set myself to starting the massive amount of dishes that were sitting on the counter when Kyle got home from work.  The wonderful man had not only brought home a bottle of wine but he had in hand a little bouquet of yellow lilies for me.  I do love him so much.  I'd been upset all week about our poor cat, Elvis, who has been suffering from an acute urinary tract infection.  So this little thoughtfulness was very much appreciated.

My darling husband took over doing the dishes while I went upstairs to feed the cats and give Elvis his pills which is getting increasingly more difficult as he is really getting sick of it.  But, we managed and both cats set in to happily eating their new vet-approved cat food.  I headed back downstairs and cleaned up the dining room table which unfortunately ends up being the catch-all for whatever we happen to have in our hands when we walk in the front door.  By the time I had finished I had just enough time to make some garlic mashed potatos to go with our dinner.

I took the chicken out of the oven and it looked beautiful.  Only one thing was wrong; I had put it in the pot upside down.  So instead of the skin covering the breasts being nice and golden and crispy, it was regretably the skin on the back of the chicken that looked so appealing.  Sure enough, I turned it over to carve it and the skin on the breast was cooked, yes, but soft and kind of gross looking.  We never buy chicken with the skin on, so we haven't eaten chicken skin in a long time...so whatever, but it was still a little disappointing.

The chicken turned out beautifully otherwise, it was moist and smelled delicious.  As soon as we had finished carving it up I plopped the chicken carcass into a big pot with salt and water and a few chopped potatos and began my chicken soup (I hate to waste anything).  So now we've got three containers of chicken stock and a big thing of chicken soup in the freezer.  And by the end of the weekend we'll have fifteen fresh, new chickens in our chest freezer...I'll let you know how THAT goes.

ARRGG!!


I am SOOOooo exhausted! We've only got two more weeks until our requirements from VHFA must be completed and I feel like I'm running out of steam. We are so close to being done and I just feel like I'm halfway through a marathon (not that I've ever run one...but I can imagine) and I've hit a wall. We're only a few days away from having the rest of our wiring updated (even though the last few rooms are going to be wired with "electrical molding" aka conduits) and we're pretty close to having a NICE bathroom on the second floor...but I just can't WAIT for it to be over!!!!!


In preparation of this final push of the wiring we have completely dismantled any sense of comfort in the living, family, and dining rooms in our efforts to make all the walls accessible to the electrician. Our television is now up in our bedroom so we can still watch movies in relative comfort but our poor dogs are left to try to squeeze onto the couch between stacks of books and other nick nacks. My dining room table is covered in tools, bags, mail...beer bottles (empty) and an empty pizza box from Friday night.



I am anxiously looking forward to having things back to how they should be. Or at least in a way that I can get home and relax and not have to look at piles of boxes and construction materials.



Along with all the house stuff I've been pushing Kyle to get me the rest of his family's addresses so we can FINALLY send out the last of our wedding invitations! Yeah, we've got a month and a half to go and we are still sending these out. On the up side we've decided to just have Top Hat DJ play music for our ceremony as they are WAY cheaper than paying a musician and I am sick of searching and searching for a musician who can play half-way decently.



So yeah, I'm feeling just a bit overwhelmed. House, wedding...ok...so I guess its just that two, but they are HUGE. And please don't ask me what we're doing for a honeymoon...as we still don't know yet.