House Update

Things have really been happenin' around here lately. The house is moved, the basement is almost done and they moved the addition up to the house today. There's still plenty to be done (backfilling, building the staircase/addition, finishing up the waterline, etc) but each day's work brings us closer to the finish of this phase of the project. It's amazing how much has been accomplished since the end of October. Hopefully we'll be done with the immediate work by Christmas but, if there's one thing I've learned since we decided to do this, is that there are no guarantees and it's best to be flexible. Hoping to get some pics up soon now that we have high speed internet. (L decided it was time to get the faster stuff. We've had it for about an hour and let me tell you, I'm loving it. :P)

House Renovations, and Telephone Lines

Isn't it just like a farmer to leave digging a basement until just before the ground freezes.... It took a summer of anxious waiting (on my part anyway), a bag full of discarded house plans, and watching one project after another fill up my hubby's spare time, but we were finally able to start our house renovations! We broke ground on our basement little over a week ago, the walls are done enough to move the house, and if things went as planned today the house will be on it's new 'home' tomorrow. It seems surreal to be at this point when two weeks ago, I wasn't sure it was going to happen at all. But it is. It's been so exciting to see the basement being dug and the walls going up. V has just LOVED 'helping' his daddy and the contractor "build the house" this last week. And since I didn't want to have the kids underfoot while the guys were moving the house (or deal with no water or electricity while the move is occuring) I took off to my parent's for a weekend. I do want to note that there will likely be few updates after this for a while as our telephone line is 1. a temporary line which usually equals spotty internet connections and 2. we have usually horrendously slow dial-up and it takes a half hour to load a web page...on a good day...(maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but not by much) So I apologize if it seems I've dropped off the face of the earth.

Sometimes Mother Nature is your friend...

The early spring allowed us to get caught up on all the fieldwork from last fall that couldn't get done because it was so dry. Everything is running about two weeks ahead because the weather has been just wonderful lately-hot and humid for the corn, rains almost always when we needed them, dry heat for drying down the small grains, and just enough of a cool spell in between for me to stop complaining about the heat. Also it stayed dry enough for all the small grains to be combined. I hope it holds out. There's still plenty to be done before we can call Harvest Time complete. There's corn to harvest, sunflowers/beans/clover seed/buckwheat to combine, and (got my fingers crossed) our house to move. Yes, it's been decided our house renovation project MAY start in the next few weeks. We have a floor plan L and I can both live with, he called to get our utility lines marked out so we can start digging the basement, and I've already got a good start on boxing up the non-essentials so they can be put in temporary storage. It's starting to feel like this is really going to happen. But just like with the crops, there's still plenty of time for something to derail those plans. The biggest thing is the weather. If it's raining, the crop work can't get done but you can't dig a basement on a rainy day either. So, Mother Nature, please stay happy.

Garden of Weeds

I am, at best, a haphazard gardener. I don’t mind planting the seeds and I certainly enjoy eating my harvest, but everything in between I could do without. This is evident if you wander through my garden at present. It’s taken me a week to weed the garden and I am not even done. About a third of it will need weed whacking it’s so overgrown. It’s so bad I am amazed that I am getting any sort of a harvest at all. Every year, I start out with grand intentions of weekly weedings, regular waterings, and timely harvesting. And every year, those habits last about two weeks before I find other things to occupy myself. The weeds take over, plants start wilting, and everything gets overripe. This year is no exception. I just spent four days weeding my garden. It was necessary since you couldn’t distinguish the potato plants from the pigweed and the only way to find green beans was to get on hands and knees and hunt through the waist high quack grass. About a third of the garden will need to be weed whacked because it’s so overgrown. (At least there isn’t anything planted there this year…) What puzzles me so much is why I let it get so bad. I am aware that weekly weedings would take far less time and energy (and result in less sunburnt shoulders) than letting the weeds get waist high before pulling them. My plants wouldn’t look so pitifully spindly if I would water on a regular basis. I wouldn’t have to deal with the sore knees and aching back. My fingers wouldn’t be pricked by the sticker plants if I were to pull them at two inches instead of two feet. It would be far easier to just get out there and do what needs to be done every week instead of waiting a month (or more). So, as I head back out into my garden tonight to pick the overripe green beans and peas, I vow once again to be a better gardener. Let’s see if my good intentions last longer than a half hour.