• Paint Garage
• Clear weeds from the fences
• Paint two fences
• Remove 2 x 4s from side porch
• Add house numbers to house
• Pick up and buy used wheel barrow from CraigsList
• Measure & count all basement windows to buy glass block for… also found on Craigslist!

Can’t wait, we’re going out early in the morning! It’s supposed to be nice and fairly warm and durn it, we’re PAINTING!!!!

Found a nice used wheel barrow on CraigsList for $15 and the nice lady only lives about 5 miles from the farm! Yah! Most we were looking at were easily 40 to 50 bucks or more, especially decent new ones. Now, yes, we have Maggie’s very fine cart, but it’s not really the best for trotting dirt around. We have found now THREE burn piles on the property and at least two are eyesores and in very lazy places. We intend to dig up the surface layer of garbage, pile in a wheelbarrow and trot out to the far out pile of rubble for the meanwhile. I totally understand the need to have a private “dump” on the homestead, but this is really just lazy piles of trash that I believe the renters used instead of properly ridding themselves of rubbish. Tin cans and other just stupid junk in a big burned area. One burned up the side of a nice tree and it looks as if they killed it. Time will tell.

Got 4 gallons of paint today… 2 of a good weather tough outside semi-gloss for the garage to help it’s appearance and hopefully seal out a bit of the rain and weather to see if we might improve it’s appearance and save it for time to come. 2 gallons are for our kitchen, which we HOPE to start on Sunday!!! Yah!!!! FINALLY PAINTING!!!! We needed some fairly consistent temps of at LEAST 50 degrees to do a good job and let the paint cure properly. Looks like we are finally there! Yeah!!!! Sunday is actually suppose to peak at 78 degrees! My gosh, we’ll need to turn on the air! HAHAHA….

Can’t wait to get out there and get to work. I know we need these days of rest and business work, but they leave me anxious by the evening’s end… I want to be out there working on projects. I am pleased to report that we are not as SORE and worn out by the day’s end as we were the first week or so. We are going into our third week and FINALLY are getting a little more farm girl tough! Of course, we are no speed demons as all, and do take our sweet time, but I believe it is persistence that wins in the end. There would be no good to come of pushing and rushing ourselves and someone getting hurt. That would loose us days and would be no fun! So we take breaks as we see fit, and may seem a bit on the slow side to some, but in the end, I’m just so pleased at what we have accomplished in two week of bitter cold, rain and winds! It’s been a DREADFUL two weeks to work in! We’ve even had SNOW on two seperate occasions! And with the furnace not working, the house is just too cold to paint in and work in.

But yet, even so, we’ve accomplished a LOT and will continue to. It’s persistence that wins in the end… we are happy to report not a single accident, boo boo or hurt! Sore, yes, a few grumpy words, sure… but no one has gotten hurt or too painful to dampen our spirits. And I aim to keep it that way. We have all the time in the world!

Of course, that being said, we are anxious to move in for good, but we have the Moby until the end of April for sure. So, there is no rush until then.

We are starting to talk with a local church that does mission work in the park, to see if they would be able to find a family to live here. I talked with the local moby moving company, and alas, it’s just too expensive and difficult to move her. $2,000 to start, and then all the permits and he is worried about her age… 35 years is OLD for a moby. And even if she got there okay, there would be easily another $500 or more in making a safe place for her to land, and then I’m afraid that once relocated, we would have so many other things that were a priority and she would linger and decay.

So we have made the decision that we will give her free to a good family, so that they can have her as their own. At the very worse, she will be surrendered to the park. I’m sure someone will want her, we’ve done quite a lot to improve her and it’s a great spot in the lot. It’s a hard decision, but the truth is, we just do not have the cash to invest in MAYBE getting her moved safely. We are certain it would easily be close to $3,000. That’s just too much and there is no real guarantee that she will move that distance, safely. And we would have to take her through three counties! It’s almost 35 miles there. No, I think our decision to donate her to the church is going to be the very best blessing for some family in need. We will keep everyone in the loop as it all comes about. It’s sad, but I believe that the three years here were SO wonderful and really, the whole reason our next step has come to be! If we hadn’t come upon this old mobile home, then, we would have never gained the skills and confidence to tackle Windhaven. Nor would we have had the financial preparedness to do so. We owe this old Moby a lot and we are ready to hand her over to another family that will love her! I hope so!!!

Well, night to all… I promise to bring my camera tomorrow! It’s already in the go pile! Not only do I know that others love to see the pics, I really like to see them and to document the changes and hard work going into this project! It’s a great way to ease those sore muscles and tighten our focus on what shall be of our little homestead farm!!!!