Click Here to See Large Version of this Panorama Shot

Jessy shot this neat photo montage of the east yard of Windhaven. This is the area we are going to put in our HUGE garden! I just have been talking to a fellow that is going to come out hopefully and mow it all down and till up the area that we’re selected is ready for our biggest garden ever! We are estimating the area to be about 90 feet by 50 feet! The poultry barn and the tractor shed is a total of 90 feet long. The orchard is going to be up at the front, near the fence and the left of the big tree there. Already there are about five or six pear and apple trees up there, but they are in pretty bad shape. We are going to have that area mowed down good and add our 12 trees into the mix.

I have about 3 to 4 weeks to get this area ready to get a good start on our garden for the spring and summer. I found a local fellow through Craig’s List and he seems really ready to do a good job and at a very reasonable price. He said he would come out next week and give me an estimate. He had lovely pictures of his work and he seemed even a bit excited to get started on it. It’s the largest family garden he’s done!

I was thinking about it… we grew 200 pounds of produce on the Moby lot last year and it was only 600 square feet of gardening area. This garden will be 4,500 square feet!!!! Oh my! If we can hold that record, we should see 1,485 pounds of produce!!!!!

Hmmm. My friends are going to run and hide from us! Too many tomatoes! Hahaha…

Thank goodness we are planning to plant ALL sorts of things… and not just tomatoes this year!

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Today, we did a short day out at the homestead. The girl’s Dad, Steve, wanted to come out and see how they were doing and to lend a hand on some bigger limbs that were just a bit out of our league with the little hand saws. He brought a small chainsaw and that made a great difference for sure! Taught Maggie how to use it safely and hacked up a about 6 or 7 big limbs that were giving us a bit of a tough time. Several were caught up in the canopy of the tree they fell from, one had fallen from another tree and landed in a different tree! All from this ice storm about a month ago.

We tugged and cut and hauled all the big branches in the whole property! We are done with the BIG ones! Yah! He managed to cut loose most of the weight in one up front, but will need a ladder to get it cleaner. But at least 3/4 of the weight is off it now, and it is less likely to just crack and rip off. That is a good thing. Curtis said he’d come back next week with a ladder and a bigger saw and start to work on the downed pine, and also a few other higher up pruning jobs.

But, it was awesome to reach our week end goal… to have all the really big downed branches cleared to the property side lines. We actually managed to get that big gap on the east property line filled up with all the big branches. I know it won’t totally stop a determined dog, but it was doing an awesome job today of keeping the two elderly dogs within their yard. And it helps to define the property edges for them.

We did have a terrible scare though. Evee got loose off her long leash. Jessy was walking her and she managed to get off the leash somehow. We think her leash was clipped to her tag ring instead of the collar ring by accident. Oh my gosh, that little wort. She just took off running around like a idiot on speed. She is SO fast! At first we were trying to keep her to the back of the homestead, but then she takes off for the road, our worse fear. Zips around the house and heads back to where Jessy was shouting for her. Steve tried to head her off, but she did it AGAIN and then took to running after a TRUCK! Oh my gosh. Scared us just something awful. Poor Jessy was nearly in tears. Evee ran back towards her and managed to zip around the far back pasture a loop or two before she came running over the Jess, crawling on her belly to beg forgiveness when she saw her mom so upset.

She’s not coming back until we get the front fence up for sure. Just don’t want to repeat that experience again.

Steve’s coming out for two whole days next week, Thursday and Friday and we are going to put up fence, hopefully, as well as a long list of other things. The ground is still a little hard frozen deep down where the t-posts will need to be driven, but I’m hopeful that we can do it. I’m pretty sure that Steve is ready to do whatever needed, he sure doesn’t want to see his little girl upset again! Me neither! Evee is banned from the farm until further notice, I’m afraid.

The old dogs are perfectly happy to tag with us and frankly are about as fast as molasses in January. But Evee is just a carefree FAST pup still, only just turned one year old. And oh, does she love to run. Given the chance, she will run like the wind! We will definitely have a dog yard up within a week, as well as the protective front area, too.

Well, we’re taking tomorrow off, we have orders to fill and some client work to catch up on and of course, a bit of sleeping in! We’re trying to become good farm gals, but we’re not quite accustomed to too early outings! And to be honest, it’s been pretty cold when we do go too early. I think until it warms up consistently, we will spend the mornings at business and then head out about 11 or noon and kill two birds with one stone! Our local paint store is having a sale on Friday and Saturday… 40% off many of their popular brands!!! So we plan to go and check that out as we do need a good deal of paint! If the sale is as good as they claim, we will clean up!

I do have one little bit of advice for anyone taking on major rehabs or big projects around their own homes. We have found that the best thing is to only have one or two projects in the works at a time. We usually have an indoor and an outdoor project. And only buy things as you need them. It might be a bit inconvient, but it seems to really work for us. We accomplish far more this way and don’t overspend and have expensive materials and tools laying about, waiting. So often before, we would buy too much and then our budge would be tight for some emergency need or just daily functioning money. But just buying the materials for a project at a time, you can shop around a bit and get a good deal. And you aren’t tying up precious funds in things that might be weeks until needed. Just a little thing that works for us.

I wish I would have brought my camera today, to see some of the branches and such, but I went and left at home!!! Darn! I’ll be sure to take more on Saturday… we are going to paint the garage!!! Yah!

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