The Mobile Home Woman | Our journey from urban homesteading to rural homesteading at Windhaven farm…

Kathy and Bill’s Visit…

Posted on March 13, 2018 by MobymomMarch 13, 2018

The kitties were all happy and ready to visit! Or sleep in a pile of hay, which ever came first!

My friends Kathy and Bill came out to visit us in late Fall last year! It was so cool because I’ve known Kathy since I was in high school! Honest! Like a hundred years ago! Or well, maybe not that long, but it’s sure been awhile. We lost touch for a good deal of it, but then a couple years ago, we reconnected through Facebook! Yes, good old social media! And then through chatting and such, we actually started working together… I’ve been doing her vinyl decals and t-shirt designs for her business… Farago Arts! She has an Etsy shop… you can visit it here…

The goaties where happy to see everyone! They came down to pick up a big order of t-shirts for a Barn Hunt club! If you don’t know what Barn Hunt is… do check it out, google… it’s a fun dog sport where owners and dogs get to compete to located hidden tubes that live rats are in! Pet rats, and no one is harmed in the process. But it’s a lot of fun for all, kind of like a farm based hide and seek.

We are discussing the finer points of hogs and piglets!

Okay, maybe instead we are just handing out treats! Yeah… still, Kathy loves animals and knows a lot about them for a city gal! She’s a dog groomer and has been involved in purebred doggos for EVER! Back in the old days, we even showed dogs! I just had my one lovely Belgian Shepherd lady, Gypsy, but she has had a bunch of sweet Welsh Cardigan Corgis!

Emerald was very happy to see her! She is happy when anyone visits because it means lots of pets and yummy treats. And she smiles…

It was a very nice visit! We had a little lunch and a good long time to talk. And of course, the animal visit was fun as well. Beulah was doing her best impression of a sheep trying to squeeze through a teeny hole! haha…. silly girl.

These are the fun shirts that I made for her club… Kathy designed them and then the girls and I did the cut vinyl and applied it on the shirts! I think there were 30+ shirts! So much fun and I’m glad that they all loved them. That orange was very very bright…

It was so fun that they could come down from Michigan where they live and visit us all! We love when people come to the homestead and see all that we are doing and just visit all our goofy critters… until next time!!!

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Day Three… Ark is almost ready!

Posted on March 7, 2018 by MobymomMarch 7, 2018

By the time that the rain stopped, we really had a big mess. Nearly all the low spots on our property were covered with 6 to 8 inches of water. Some areas were up over muck boots! That is high. All over the county, rivers were flooding up over their banks, whole fields were lakes and many roads were impassable. It was a bit of a challenge to get where you needed to be! We actually thought for a few hours that we would have to move our truck! But finally, the rain stopped and slowly, the water began to go down.

This is what is left from our Halloween pumpkin haul! About a dozen just got covered up with snow and the animals were actually getting a little weary of pumpkins. You know that you fed out a lot of pumpkins when hogs kind of turn up their snouts to another fresh pumpkin!

I am going to be curious to see if we get any little volunteer plants from this all! That would be fun. I will be watching. But in the meanwhile, they will make nice compost. Nothing goes to waste on a little homestead!

You can see, our little drainage ditch really does help. It was just way overwhelmed by three days of steady rain. It’s hard to see but in the upper right hand corner you can see our GIANT lake that was our weed patch pasture! Oh my gosh. It’s been almost a month since this flood and I have to tell you, it’s still pretty much underwater out there. I’m really not sure what we are going to do about that. I just hope we get some really warm sunshine and higher temps before it starts back in the with spring rains!!!

The Quack Pack has really been in their element, though. These ducks are so funny to watch as they parade around and test out the waters. They are very happy!

The hogs are not that happy. Because they are on high ground! I think we have this all turned around. They would like a good mud puddle, just like the ducks, but the pig pen is at one of the highest points on the homestead. Oh well. They sure got their fill of the warm rain and seemed to enjoy the adventure. However, they did like their little house and the warm dry straw to snuggle and snooze in!

Just wet, wet and more wet. Everyone got along nicely and we got through the worse of it. It was sure still flooded over by the poultry barn and the sheep barn. Just a bit mess. Thankfully, it’s mostly gone by now, when I am writing this, the first of March. We hope to bring in a lot of mulch to build up the main pathways this spring. That really helps a TON. If we hadn’t have done that this last summer, I think there would be hardly any dry areas to walk on. As it is, there are a few pathways that are still mulched and a bit sturdier to walk on. If we keep it up, I think we will be able to get around, even when we do flood up a bit.

That is the story of the President’s Day Flood of 2018! A big swampy mess!

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Moving the Workshop to High Ground…

Posted on March 7, 2018 by MobymomMarch 7, 2018

Unfortunately, with the flood, came a flooded workshop. Miss Maggie has so many orders to do and this was just bad timing. She tried moving things up and out of the way of the water, but it was clear that she could not run power equipment while standing in an inch of water. So we moved the essential equipment into the house. We have a room that we call our loom room, or the studio and the decision was made to clear it out and set up shop.

There was some stuff in there, mainly two big floor looms, a pair of spinning wheels and a sewing machine in a big cabinet. We got to moving that stuff out and then shoved everything left into one of the little alcoves of the room. Jess gave the rug a good vacuum before we rolled it up and stashed it away.

We knew this was not a forever thing, but that it might be a week or so. We moved the big looms into the dining room and the spinning wheels went into the two offices, one in each. The sewing machine ended up in the living room. It was all a little snug but we managed. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

The forbidden alcove of weaving! Actually, by tucking everything in there and sealing it up with a piece of painter’s plastic, it all stayed nice and tidy. The saws and sanders make a lot of dust, and fiber crafts love to suck up a lot of dust, so it just seemed like a good idea to make a little air lock and barrier. It worked great!

Yes, the dining room was a little stuffed… but we really don’t use it as a dining room, not really. The kitties didn’t mind, they were busy sitting on some of my weaving because it was suddenly a lot closer to the propane heater!

The little loom was parked in the hallway for a bit…

One nice thing from this all is that I got a good chance to go through some boxes and baskets to really sort through some of my studio stuff! I’ve been trying hard to reduce my personal clutter down and this was a great excuse. I managed to get rid of several large garbage bags and a few boxes of just trash mostly and I took two full boxes to the free store in town! That felt great!

And best of all, I managed to get nearly a whole pick up truck bed load of basket weaving supplies into two big but compact boxes! I am not sure if I wrote about that yet, but I will… I scored this huge collection of lovely basket weaving materials, kits and books from an estate sale for a whopping $50. Easily hundreds and hundreds of dollars of materials. It took me a whole long evening, but I managed to sort it all down and make it nice and tidy. I also got it in groups and took out some of the odds and ends that were old and brittle. It was wonderful to see just what supplies that I do have and buddy, I have a lot. I’ve started to learn how to basket weave and really enjoy it. It is, after all, weaving!

Maggie didn’t bring every single tool and machine over, of course, but she brought all the big guns. It took the girls a couple hours to make the move, so it was not too bad. By late evening, they were in there working away. It’s loud, no doubt. And yes, it’s a lot nicer having all that out in the old garage workshop. But the show must go on and orders need to be finished and shipped. We are not sure how long it will be before all the water goes down. It’s cold and still raining. And still flooding…

It took almost a week for the water to really receed enough that it was safe to go back. Maggie was sure ready! She loves being out in her shop, her little gal cave. And the quiet was nice in the big house after everything went back out!!!

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