An American Homestead

I totally understand about this lifestyle bringing back memories for people, it does me as well. I am just thankful that I made the choice to live this dream again, just to see if it was everything I thought it would be. It has been and much more. I have been blessed a million times over.

Great gift from Hammer and his lovely wife (an online friend)! I will always cherish it as it says it all!  

Whew! What a LONG, HARD 5 days we have had. I don’t even know where to begin. Friday I got home and we finished the library floor completely. We moved the bookcases in the room and several other items. Everything was cleaned thoroughly and I got a few of the books on the shelf before it got too dark. We had to go get a few things from town and the old place.

Saturday we worked like two crazed over hyper jack russell terriers. We had the truck from work and that was it. No one was able to come over and help us so it was me and Chris…..the entire 4 days off work! We moved furniture and boxes until I was sure I could not lift another thing. Sunday we moved canned foods (remember that we keep nearly a year supply of foods at any given time and most of that is in glass jars). Those things are not light weight. Another thing we discovered was, you have to limit how many you put in a box, else you can’t lift it. We moved more boxes of canned foods than I can count and as we were unloading them, I begin to cringe every time Chris handed a box to me on the porch. The east side of the back porch has 100% shade all day. We stacked all of the canned food there, until we can get the root cellar done. I felt like my arms would surely fall off as the sky grew dark and the whippoorwill came out. Monday, we had no truck, just the car. We went over and boxed up the last remaining items from the house and got it all in the car. Several trips later, the house was cleaned out and I sat down for a good cry. Tuesday was more of the same, we moved items under the house and porches into the car and then to the farm. Again, it took several trips and one was just to haul all of the metal buckets and water containers. We got the clothesline down and the birdfeeders as well. We had to leave on of the clothesline poles because a bluebird has 4 babies in the birdhouse. Maybe they will be gone before May 20th.

This entire truck load is ONLY my sewing stuff. Amazing huh?

I got everything unpacked in the kitchen and where it all needs to be. We have an ant problem and I have never had a problem like that before. Shannon got me some kind of ant bait stuff they take back to the other ant folks and they all should die. It seemed to work in some areas, but not as well as I hoped for. Thank thee Gods it is not fire ants but I have never seen so many of those little creatures in a home. I kill them in the kitchen, clean everything with pine cleaner or bleach, scrub everything down and go back in 30 minutes to find more. So this will be a battle I am not looking forward to. Nothing pertaining to food is left out for sure! It was nice cooking breakfast in the kitchen yesterday morning, country ham, toast, home made jelly and even coffee for Chris. We enjoyed breakfast and got to work for the day.

I am glad everything is where I need it to be, makes cookin’ meals much faster!

The living room is done and looks great. I even managed to get a bunch of the family photos on the wall and it looks rather homey now. Chris began working on the little room beside the bathroom and just painting it white made a big difference. Then he cut out a place for a window in the bathroom. Mind you, we had never even really seen the bathroom as it was pitch black in there and the oil lamp did not light it up too well. So he cut out a place and put a temporary window in there. We were SHOCKED to actually SEE the bathroom. He even got the toilet to flush several times, which amazed Perrin.

Getting the family pics and lanterns up

All of the books, well except two boxes full, are out and organized in the library. The floor in there is just beautiful and the room ended up looking very nice. There is one wall that we will have to put paneling on it has dry wall up and a bad job of it to say the least. So we will cover it with some form of paneling later. The room is nice and I am glad we decided it would be the library. I have the old buffet in there with all of our stones and such on it. We collect rocks and like books, have hundreds. The bedroom is a mess. It ended up being the room where everything was stuck until we discovered its purpose. The bed is crammed in there some where as well, but we continue to sleep in the living room floor. We are on such a tight time line that we plan to leave it as it is and get the clothes organized when the rains come the end of this week. We are not going to worry about it then until we have the house down and everything moved. It is just not a priority. As long as I can find my clothes and know my sewing bins are safe, we are good.

The library floor is done!

SOME of the shelves are up and the books are in them now. Pics are on the camera at home, I will post more tomorrow.

More of the library floor

Yesterday I told Chris I needed a clothesline soon. So I picked a tree and he proceeded to cut it down. Well the top was straight up through some limbs on a big cedar tree. When he got it cut down, it would not budge. So he, I and Perrin decided we would just push it over, it was not very big around. Well again, it did not move. So Chris figured he would kick it off the stump and it would fall. So he proceeds to show his manly strength and kicked it good and hard. He jumped right off the stump to the ground, hard, and stayed straight up through the cedar. We had a good laugh and figured it could stay there and season a bit for firewood, we will attempt that battle at a later date. So we chose another one and cut it down. Perrin had a blast and Chris cut it into 11-12 foot sections. We tossed an end over our shoulders and headed up the hill with it. I was not expecting it to be so very heavy going up the rock steps, of course I was in the rear! I did not open my mouth to complain, but by golly I thought my shoulder was going to break into small pieces! Perrin and Chris started nailing the 2×6 to it, dug the holes and filled them in. It is perfect, the perfect height and distance apart. It is in a rare area near the house that actually gets some sun.

Farm :: 0428091655.flv video by BushwhackerJohn – Photobucket

Perrin fills in one hole while Chris digs another

Working together

While we were working on the clothesline, Don and Johnny showed up with some gold fish. There is a large deep hole where the culvert drains into the branch near the road. Chris put a few bricks up in the shallow area to keep them from getting downstream, but the water can get through OK. Now we have five pretty goldfish in the deep pool. Perrin was very excited about this, and just as excited as the snake Chris discovered. I spotted it again when Don got there and watched it for awhile. I was worried about copperheads and rattlesnakes and still do to be honest. But this snake was a harmless, well as harmless as snakes can be I suppose, common water snake. I am not in the process of training Perrin to watch for snakes and will do the same with the other grandkids.

Chris found a pogo stick when he was mowing Monday. We are finding a lot of things when he is mowing to be honest! Anyway, it was bent and useless, but Chris feels a need to keep everything until it has been proven 100% useless to him. Yesterday, Perrin kept inquiring about the pogo stick. Chris then discovered it was not totally useless and as the videos show, it offered a few laughs. That was a much needed break from the hard work.

0428091601.flv video by BushwhackerJohn – Photobucket

0428091605a.flv video by BushwhackerJohn – Photobucket

I checked on the vulture and she has lost one of her eggs. It was broken and the little baby inside did not live. However, she apparently feels it may come back to life as she continues to sit on it and take care of it. Poor thing. So she has one eggs left, it is nice and warm and moves around a little when she is not on it, so hopefully it will hatch soon and be fine. The whippoorwill is a funny little thing. Starts up at dark and stops at daylight. Most of that time, it hangs out near the house and drives Chris crazy all night. We have a lot of owls around as well. We are enjoying the sparrow on the back porch. She has about 4 babies I think and begins feeding them at daylight. If we are on the back porch, she will wait patiently on the clothesline until we are through and then go feed the brood.

Things we have discovered thus far, there is either not enough hours in the day or too much. When I figure it out, I will let you all know. We are officially known as “those waving neighbors”. I have to make every effort to throw things in the trash when Chris is not around, or else I discover those items in a box at a later date. Tired is when you feel like you cannot lift your arm and sitting down actually hurts. Of course, getting back up takes longer and you suddenly feel every muscle, tendon and bone in your body working together to get the job done, once you stand, it actually takes awhile for your brain to convey to your leg that it has to move in order to move forward. Having Chris makes everything worthwhile and I cannot think of anyone else I would want to walk this journey with. I am so very grateful for him and the hard work he does. Women can have way too much junk in their kitchen. I got rid of half of it and could still get rid of more! Freezers hold too much food! LOL I gave Shannon two huge boxes of meat and now the freezer is ALMOST empty. I am checking at work today to see who may need 20 bags of brussel sprouts and lots of squash and blackberries.

A typical day at this point in a life on a non electric farm: No need to set an alarm clock. The birds start singing at 6am and the whippoorwill stops at that time, you just naturally wake up between 530 and 6am. After venturing out to pee, you wash your hands with the water you hauled in the night before. I light the oil lamps in the kitchen and start breakfast. Usually coffee for Chris, eggs, country ham, toast. I put the jelly out on the table and get my medicine from the cabinet. The cats get fed and watered. Chris gets up and feeds the dogs and spends time with his beloved Cletus. We eat breakfast by the light of the oil lamps and I wash the dishes just as it starts getting light outside. Chris heads out to do some of his many tasks for the day. I wipe the kitchen down and then we work until midday and have lunch, which is usually a sandwich made from the leftover meat at breakfast. Back to work for several hours and then your stomach tells you when it is almost time for supper. I light the stove, cook supper, Chris carries in two buckets of water. We eat, the dishes get washed, we talk about when needs to be done that night or the next day. I lay out whatever needs to be laid out for breakfast the next day, get my skillets and pots ready. Chris puts leftovers in the Spring, like the jar of pickles we munch on with supper. The cats are given water and food, the dogs as well. We brush our teeth and wash up. We get the bed items out and make the bed in the living room floor. We laugh about things until we finally fall asleep, usually around 9-10pm.

This will change as time goes by, there will be laundry and chickens and wood cutting and more, but I will try to update it as we go along. We generally go through two buckets of water a day. One I use to wash hands and such with and to give the cats to drink. The other I use for cleaning and dishes. I have a ladle hanging near the buckets under the sink and dip the water as needed. We re going to have to do some work on the Spring a little. It is hard for me to get down to it to get a bucket of water or get food out of it. So we will figure something out with that soon. Again…it is not a big priority right now.

The rest of this week, we are going to just play it by ear, as it is scheduled to rain some, and not much we can do outside when it rains. During rain, we will work on the house, unpack boxes and such. IF no rain, I will drop Chris off at the old place before work, with Perrin, Shannon will come over in case there is an accident (which we are just hoping and praying there will not be one). Chris will begin taking the tin off the roof and the house down. When I get off work, we will load it onto Don’s wagon and get it to the farm, because we worry someone will steal the stuff if we leave it unattended. This weekend it will be strictly focusing on tearing the old house down and moving the stuff to the farm every day. We will put everything into the barn for now, other than the tin. At some point, we need to work on one of the stalls in the barn and turn it into a good chicken coop and then get the chickens moved over. I will be glad to be able to walk to the barn for eggs and not drive to the other place. So we will be busy and…..

We have all those plants to move still! As of today…we have 21 days left!

I took lots of pics over the past few days, but I forgot the camera at home today. I took some cell pics and had them up online, so I will post them today and will try to post some other pics tomorrow.

My little wonderful grandson, Perrin, taking a break and stealing a sip of unsweet tea

One of the folks who lives between here and there has buffalo and I love seeing them eating in the field.

Hey everyone, I have tried to catch up on things here and check in, but don’t have a lot of time to post right now, due to our 30 day time contraint. She deposited the money into the trust acount on the 20th, so we have until May 20th to get everything moved, including the house. I am taking off Monday and Tuesday again next week, so we can finish up moving our personal things this weekend and start taking the house down Monday.

As stated before, I think, the living room is done other than the baseboards. We will get them up much later. It is just not a priority right now. The library is painted and we got all of the hardwood floor taken up from the other place yesterday. We did not have a truck so we moved it all in the car. It was not an easy task, but we managed to get it done. Today, Chris and Shannon are working on the floor while I am at work. Tim is off today as well, so we have a truck available for the day. Last I heard, Chris and Tim were going to move the wood heater, pipes and the 30 or more boxes of books. The house has 3 rooms, the kitchen and the bathroom area which is two small rooms. We only need one bedroom, it is only Chris and I, the grandkids come over a lot, but they can sleep in the living room or with us. One thing we do have is literally hundreds, possibly over 1000 books. We are HUGE book fans and have them for every subject imaginable and I would say 95% are non fiction. We have lots of bookcases and we decided that, since that is a passion of ours, turn one room into a library/family room. We will get all of the bookcases in there and the books, plus an antique table we have with 4 chairs. That will be used as a puzzle table or for board games (which we do a lot), chess, studying, writing or crafts. We have a few other pieces of furniture that will go in that room, but its main focus will be the library. We eventually hope to turn at least 2 walls into ceiling to floor built in bookshelves. For that room, it has a fire place that has been blocked up with bricks. We plan to use the wood heater in there this coming winter, because it has been turned into that use. The chimney outside is half down and in bad shape. But eventually, we want to get the chimney re-built and open the fireplace back up for use.

How you move things without a truck!

Library almost done!

We managed to get the last cat over there yesterday evening. It was Pole Cat. They all seem to be adjusting well, Squirrel and Tree Cat are always exploring, Drop Dead Fred is about ready to pop with the little ones, so I will be bringing her into the house soon. We had 7 in the house the other night and almost went nuts, so they are all out now except for Cutie and Azrael. Cletus was happy to see Tree Cat, his best friend and SadieMae was thrilled to give Drop Dead Fred a good bath!

I got all of the lanterns over there as well. We grabbed some more lamp oil. HUGE, major mistake made yesterday that will NEVER happen again. Our life has been torn upside down for six months and the routine is not normal. I lit the lamp in the kitchen yesterday morning and Chris thought I put the lights out when we left and I thought he did. I came home yesterday evening and discovered the oil lamp in the kitchen had been burning ALL DAY! I am so thankful there was no tragedy and that we put all of the cats outside when I left for work. One of them could have gotten on the cabinet and knocked the lamp over and our new home would be history. It scared me to death and it took awhile to calm down when I realized out mistake. So now…we double check and make sure itnever happens again.

We have not quite perfected our water system yet either. We are used to the double barrels being right outside the backdoor and I just trot out there and fill whatever container I need to fill. We don’t have such a system hooked up yet, and have to venture down to the Spring for water. Well, if you wake upand need to wash your face, or the cats need water before bed, or you need to wash something suddenly, and you forgot to carry some water up, you end up making a short trek to the Spring and carrying the water back to the house. So now we are working on a system where we make sure there is a galvenised bucket of water in the kitchen with the ladle so we can use that as needed and another 5 gallon container full under the sink for use as well. When one goes empty, we can use the other if we need to, but we try to keep them both full. I discovered how much we were use to the water containers out the back door the other night when I needed a both before bed and got my bowl and rag out, only to discover there was no water, it was pouring rain and I did not want to make my way to the Spring after dark to get water. It is amazing how one can get so use to a certian thing, like always having easy access to water and when it gets messed up a little bit, you are just worthless until a system gets in place. LOL

We hope to get a roof on the cellar this weekend and get the food in there. That will take care of tones of boxes from the old place. That and the books (well and all of my sewing bins) takes up most of the space in the old house. We have the sink in place, but we have not put the drain and pipes in it yet to drain the water into the bucket, so we will do that this evening before dark. I have been washing everything in buckets and dish pans. We continue to sleep on the floor and to be honest, I am sleeping better and am more comfortable than in the bed we have. I suppose we should look into getting a new mattress, but right now certainly cannot afford it. I don’t mind the floor, actually like it.

Not that great cell pic of the living room

and why yes….that would be a chamber pot in the corner for night time
uh….use! LOL That little LED lantern thing on the table is quite an amazing invention. That sucker was given to Chris as a gift at Yule and it has the exact same batteries still in it! It has a radio on it, but Perrin broke the antenna. It makes too much noise for me but I think Chris might listen to it once in awhile while I am work and he is working on the house. The coffee table is one we made when we were bored one Saturday, out of some cedar pole ends that I stripped for the house and some cedar planks Jimmy had given to us.

When I think of everything that needs to be done, and then what all HAS to be done on a daily basis, plus him having a 4 year old all day and me working all day, and not having too many other people to help out other than Shannon, Tim and Amanda. It over whelms me. If we make it through this 30 days and can successfully get this house moved, I will have officially amazed myself and will then at least take a one day break! Maybe pack a picnic and explore our 15 acres for the day, There is about 13 acres I have yet to see.

I was heading to the farm yesterday with Pole Cat and the load of flooring and spotted this beautiful double rainbow on the way to the farm. You can barely see the second one, but it was so pretty.

This morning, I was on my way to work and when I pulled out of the driveway, I thought the fog rising was just perfect. So I snapped another pic.

I will be off work 4 days and am not sure if I will have the chance to update before Wednesday.

It is gonna be a beautiful weekend everyone, get out and enjoy! Play with your kids outside, take a walk with the person you love or find a secluded spot and spend some alone time relaxing!

Do you know that Connecticut makes it mandatory that you have electricty? I cannot imagine living in a state that does not allow one to live without electricity. That is so sad and I think I would lose my mind. Luckily I grew up in southern Appalachia and well, poor was the norm and I guess they figure since there are still folks living like their great grandparents lived, why put the burden on them of getting electric and all that. 

The toilet does work, but the seal may need to be replaced on it. We will work on it when we get things a bit more settled there. We have not cleaned or painted that room, but plan to as soon as we get the chance. We will hook up our rain water system outside the window, that we will have to put in, and run it through the wall directly to the tub and toilet. We can have running water in there that way. I am not sure if or how often I will use it, we mostly are hooking it up for company. We are bringing the outhouse over, as Polk County allows you to have them. I prefer the outhouse, but will have the toilet for company and such.

I hate painted bricks, but the last folks painted them a hideous green. I tried and tried and could not get that paint off of those bricks. It made it look even worse! I had no choice but to paint over them. I cannot figure out why they did it to begin with, they were beautiful bricks!

The wallpaper strip on the fireplace in the living room is driving me crazy! I was going to leave the thing green, but the wallpaper needs to go. I tried getting it off and it was impossible. I may just paint the entire thing with primer and then pick a color and repaint it. I cannot afford a lot of new paint right now, so I am limited on colors to choose from and it has to match the curtains from the old place, I spent 200 bucks on the other curtains and don’t want to change to another color (because I cannot afford that for sure!) So I think maybe this week I will prime the fireplace area and paint it something!

We certainly had a very busy weekend. I got off work on Friday and we headed straight over to haul the 4 truckloads of hardwood flooring to the farm. It was stored in Hazel’s garage. She was on the porch when we pulled up so I briefly told her we were getting the flooring. She went into the house and Chris and I started loading. I was already tired from work. When we started loading the truck it seemed that something felt wrong. The more I looked at the situation, the more wrong it felt. Finally I asked Chris, “does it seem like there is a LOT less of this flooring that what we hauled in or is it just me?” He had noticed the same thing. When all was said and done, we have about one truckload of flooring in or at the old house. So we should have had about 3 in the garage. We hauled out ONE and all of the new stuff still in the boxes was gone. But whoever used it was nice enough to being the cut ends and scraps back and pile it on top of what they did not take! I was furious but nothing I can do about it. I just want OUT. Hazel cam outside and asked me where we were moving to. I told her way over past the county line. (I am trying to be civil until we can get all of our things out.) I was not however, going to tell her where we moved to. She sat down in the swing and said, “there sure was a good friendship ruined because of all this”. I was floored, I just looked at her and said, “uh yeah, it sure was” and she then said “I would have never thought it would happen”. I wanted to say “Just what did you think would happen when you went back on your word, continued to take our money and then tried to evict us? We are going to lavish you with love and gifts? I mean seriously!” Chris could not even speak a word to her, he is so hurt by all this. I sais “Yeah me either Hazel, I never would have thought for a second this would happen” and walked back into the garage. A little while later she came back out and said “Cyndi what made you change your mind about the flooring?” I was confused and told her so. She was under the impression I wrote in my last letter to her that I would leave her all of the wood flooring. We finally figured out that in my last letter I said we would take this this and this and leave this this and the wood flooring already installed in the house. She figured I was going to leave her all of it. Regardless, we got what was left and took it to the farm. We then had supper and grabbed a load of things from the old house as we headed home late.

Saturday morning we got up, had breakfast and went straight to the old house. Chris and I, all by our little selves, took 3 truckloads of stuff to the farm. I was exhausted! We even caught Hazel gone and was able to get the cedar slabs from the workshop that Jimmy gave to us. It is about 10 planks of cedar, some over a foot wide and 14 feet long. He wanted us to build a closet in the old house with it. I am going to get Don to assist me in building a nice cedar chest to sit at the foot of the bed and give to Lakota as a hope chest when she gets older. So we unloaded wood and got Mam-maw’s table, the Hoosier cabinet and many other heavier than I should have been lifting items. Tim, my son in law showed up a little after 2 and we got the grill, picnic table, couch, chair and lots of other things. Almost everything went into the bedroom of the farmhouse until we get the other rooms done. We needed to get the stuff out of the old house, because it was due to rain on Sunday and when it rains, there is no chance in getting a truck up the hill to the house. Tim went on to work at 530 and Chris and I continued to haul things. By 9pm we were exhausted and when the whippoorwill started outside the kitchen window, we headed on to bed.

A few of my favorite things

I was up at 5am on Sunday and it was starting to rain. I went over to the old place while Chris slept. I got another box of items. I also managed to get Cutie and Azrael, the two house cats. They did well on the trip down and adjusted pretty well to the new home. I went back and fed chickens, got more things, made a trip into town for things we needed and then Chris started building pantry shelves while I started the floor in the living room. Shannon came over at about 230 and then Amanda. We had a tough time on the flooring around the fireplace because apparently my brain is tired and I could not comprehend how to measure. I was cutting pieces with a hand saw as well and that was taking me awhile. Then we discovered that we are going to have to change the type of flooring in the middle of the room because there was not enough left of the kind we were using (Thanks Hazel!). It is almost the exact same color though, so it should be OK. Before we realized it, it was 730pm. Chris and I headed to the old place and got 3 more cats, Flat Cat, Drop Dead Fred (who is very pregnant) and Butters. So YAY…..we only like 3 more, Tree Cat, Pole Cat and Squirrel. We got more boxes and I grabbed the 5 gallons of black walnuts. We got the babies to the house at dark, lit the lanterns and got things settled for the night. Chris grabbed a bucket of water from the Spring for us to take a bath, I got out clothes for work and we spent some time with the dogs.

The floor has begun!

Fireplace

We have started leaving a lantern on the porch that Chris’ mother got him for Yule. It has LED lights in it and runs off of a battery. When we plan to be gone until after dark, we cut it on. The rocks leading up to the house are hard to see at night and I am scared one of us will fall and nothing will get done with one of us injured.

We have the oil lamps in place in the kitchen, but have to carry lights through the rest of the house after dark. I don’t like this as there is always the risk of tripping and the dangers of dropping a lit oil lamp are too high when it is carried around after dark. So I plan to get all of the lamps in place the next few days so we can light there where they are and not have to worry about carrying them around. I am also going to do a little work on the clothesline that goes around the roof of the back porch, so I can get some laundry done this week and hang it on the line. It is piling up fast and will take forever to do it if I don’t make some attempt to catch up on it soon.

Today Chris is working on the rest of the flooring in the living room. Him and Shannon are going to start painting the library. We have not ran across any major problems with the house so far. We had to replace 2 joists that we were expecting to replace. All of the floors are slanted, one way or another, lol. The supports under the house are good and stable, but I guess after 100 years, settling takes place and things tend to slant. It is not big deal to us, just reminds me more of my childhood and such. They make little pieces of wood that fit nicely under cabinets and things to make them level (at least I assume they make them, Chris always shows up with them from somewhere as needed LOL). A piece of wood needs replaced on the side of the porch roof and the outside painted as soon as we are settled. We are trying to figure out the best way to do the roof on the root cellar. Any ideas are appreciated! We got a window screwed up over the one missing on the side of the house. It is far from a perfect fit, but since they sawed the 2×4 into to install an air conditioner, we are going to discuss what to do there. Whether widen the hole and replace it with one of the windows from the old place, go to the old woman on 68 and see if she has a window to match or what. For now, we screwed a large window up form the outside to prevent critters, especially human form, from getting in.

So the weekend was productive, we are adjusting to the new place, working like crazy and after 6 months of laziness, I am already tired! But things are coming along and still my favorite room in the house is the kitchen.