Well…  today’s plans are changing somewhat.   It’s only 20 degrees right now… and that is way tooooooooo cold to do any painting in a house that has no heat at the moment.  I have a call in to a friend that used to be a heating and cooling/plumber man and I am hoping that maybe I can convince him to come out and see us tomorrow…   it we could get the gas turned on and the furnace running, we’d be perfectly set.  But right now, the high is only supposed to be 35 degrees… and that means the house inside is not too much higher, and everything I read says that it’s just too cold to be painting.  It won’t set good or dry up nice.

So I guess that means trips out to the farm for the next few days are going to be yard work days and move in boxes of odds and ends!  Which is okay, I know we don’t want to be away from the place too long.  And moving and walking about tends to make you a little warmer.  We have SO many big branches that fell over that ice storm about 3 weeks ago, that we could just concentrate on big branches and all for a few days!

Our plan is to move them to the permiter and bundle them up in the little hedgerow we have.  About 3/4 of the property line has this wonderful little tree and scrub windbreak and trust me, it’s needed.  With our neighbor around us having acres and acres of flat farmland, the wind is just whipping off that land!  I feel like we’re on the moors of Scotland or something!  We SO named our little haven properly.  I can see we are going to want to encourage that windbreak to totally fill in for sure!

Bringing some of our favorite yard decorations and all really sealed the deal for me at least.  I walked back to the windchime tree and added a few to kick off the whole christening and it was sure a good location because they started right in with their tinkling and clanging…  not too overpowering, but just neat.

Walking out in the back we found the remains of the family’s old burn pit, sectioned off with big concrete blocks and filled with all sort of china and bottles, cans and such.  Really weird, actually, a lot of decorative items and many not burned up.  There were a stack of old magazines from 1965 that were all wet and frozen, but I can’t imagine they were left there very long.  I suspect that this stuff was from the barns or maybe in storage?  We dug through a wee bit of it, and Maggie is already starting a small shrine of found treasure to display in her room!  Once it gets a little warmer out, I suspect my kid is going to be outside ALL DAY LONG, digging and collecting and ferreting out the history of our new homestead.

Jessy is excited, there is no doubt and I think she’s more excited about the house and decorating it and all.  But Maggie is just over the top…  she has had 200% more energy and enthusiasm then I have every seen her.  She is smiling and making eye contact and just so happy, it just makes me want to cry!  There is a spark in her that I remember when she was littler, and you can just see that she is over the moon about all the things to do and fix and experience.  And she is right in there with her Dad, when there is anything to work on, or puzzle out.  I think she unloaded the car in about 28 seconds!  HAHA… she was so excited.  This is going to be such a wonderful year for her, and she is just soaking it all in.  She asks me SO many questions and she retains the answers to a fault.  If I do something contrary to my first conversation, she always catches me at it!  I have to be careful!

One thing I have been very aware of and trying hard to give is the sense of ownership of the place to my girls.   Jessy and Maggie are the owners of the farm.  We set it up that way.  Since it was a cash sale and a generous amount of the funding came from their father, it was only right that we set it up this way.  I still have some complications from loosing my home 7 years ago, and we didn’t want anything to hinder their home purchase.

As a result, I want them to be the final say in their decisions, of course with wise council.  And they are happy with that, truly.   Maggie has been given total dominion over the old garage, it is her new workshop and Chick Cave, as they are calling it.  I thought she was going to burst with pride when I told her, within reason, she can do anything she wants to it.  She immediately was digging out a flag holder and christened her new Christmas drill to get her American flag up on the side.  Our only request was that from the road, it needed to be presentable.  And not tooooo whacky.  She totally agreed.  Inside?  She can do whatever she wants!  haha…

We got a little trolly line and dog runner system out in the back temporarily for Evee.  Without good fencing in the front, she just can’t be off leash yet.  Her recall is not solid enough to risk something dreadful happening on that road.  If there was anything that was not as desirable about our little homestead, it is the fact that the house sits so close to the road.  It’s really only about 15 or 20 feet max!  I will feel much safer when we get a nice barrier up there between the road and the pets.  Even the kitties will respect the fence a bit more when they have the whole backyard acreage to roam.

It’s a priority for sure.  But right now, the ground is really hard and frozen still, so digging too much is going to be rough.  I’ve seen quite a bit of good cheap fencing on Craig’s List and that is going to be coming out to the farm soooon!  We need a little time to recover a bit from the cost of buying the place, so all in due time.

But Evee was fine with the run line, and it only took her a few minutes to figure out how to pull the little zip line out and around.  It’s 60 feet!  And a bit low so she has about a 5 foot either side of the line area to explore.  She is in heaven!  And of course, she gets to go on walkies with the old dogs on her zippy long leash.  I think in a way, the walkies are very good training for her, because she has to stay with us, but still gets to explore.  And she sees the old dogs sticking within a wide circle around us.

Dingo is so funny… he’s loosing his sight, but he didn’t let that stop him from just exploring and rolling in the grass and digging and drinking out of a ditch… haha…  all sorts of happy dog boy experiences.  Gypsy was a little more dignified and stuck with us a bit more…  But Dingo was Lord and Master of his new spread.  He was the one to adjust quickest.  He had a little issue with the mudroom stairs, but that was his sight issues.  We gently helped him up and then he was fine.  He wandered about the place and checked out all the rooms and then found a little sunshine spot and laid down for a nap.

Gypsy and Evee on the other hand, were a little bit on the anxious and whiney side.  Gypsy did not like the mudroom stairs, nor the kitchen floor and did a lot of panting and whining.  She eventually calmed down and took a little nap as well with her buddy Dingo.  Evee was a bundle of excitement, running all over the house like a crazy girl.  She actually went up the tight staircase to Maggie’s dormer room and then didn’t want to come back down.  To be honest, I’m not sure she’s really experienced more than three or four stairs in a staircase like that.   Jessy had to go and spend a little time teaching her how to handle it.  By the evening’s close, she was getting MUCH better.  In no time, she’ll have it down good.

I thought it was good that before we left, Gypsy and Evee were playing in the big office room.  They have LOTS of room now to practice their Big Dog Wrestling Federation moves on each other and play.  They will get the hang of the place in no time.

Gypsy is going to be my main dog concern, and I can see we are going to have to watch her carefully.  She is not used to a lot of walking, as her knees are very arthritic.  And I could see she was easily tiring.  We might have to ease her into the whole farm experience and just make sure she doesn’t over do it too much.  As we are working on the place and not quite moved in, I’m not sure we are going to be bringing her or Evee every day.  They take up a good deal of our cargo space and they require a bit of worry and such.  We’ll probably bring them every couple days instead of every day, just so we don’t have to keep track of them or try and keep tails outta wet paint and such!  And also as friends come to help, I would hate for someone to accidently let Evee out or something…  I think the doggies won’t mind tooo much hanging out and protecting the Moby for us!

Once we get a good fenced area for them, and the weather warms up a bit more, then oh yeah, they are coming out every day.  We get to the railroad tracks, in the car, and they start whining and wiggling with excitement.  They love the farm!  And why not…  it’s just so fun!

Well as soon as the girls get up, I think we’re going to go out for a little shopping and window shopping for the farm.  We were going to get paint, but I think now, we’ll pass.  Instead I think we’re going to go to Savers and look for “barn coats” and warmer boots, perhaps a few used hoodies that will help as we work.  We’ve got a set of locks to return, because the bank rekeyed the house for us!  And we need to get a few odds and ends, like a set of door pins for the kitchen door, it’s just laying in the mud room!  We have two good rakes, but we could use a pair of branch lopers, to cut up some of the fallen branches a bit and to trim back a few trees, that sort of thing.

I’m going tonight to a concert and dinner with some friends, so we won’t be going out to the farm today.  It’s about 40 minutes out there and 40 minutes back, so that makes it a little bit far for just a short visit.  Plus we have a little shopping to do, and I know both my daughters are going to sleep in!  All the excitement of yesterday was showing about 10 o’clock last night when both of my night owls were dragging and finally conceded to go to bed early!  I was in bed early too!  I think a day to relax and plot and plan a bit will be okay.  Especially when it’s only 23 degrees out!

We’ve got all the time in the world now that Windhaven is ours.

Pin It