The Garden Gate

Posted on by June 9, 2011



As you might know, we’re working on a fence between the house and the garage, a sort of privacy, decorative, dog-stopping fence.

And we have very limited resources at the moment… summer is a slow sales time for us… and so we are doing what we can, with what we have. I had gotten this bundle of 1 x 3 x 6s for the super cheap price of $15. I believe there was over 50 in the bundle. Nothing really wrong, just culls and a few wonky warped ones… but most were nice enough for our projects. We’ve been using them all over the place, super handy. They are the horizontal cross beams of our fence project.

But I thought they would go nicely into the fancy gate we were going to try and make! And here is the story…

First we measured out the height we wanted it to be, and cut down all the boards we had left. It was about 10 of them I believe.

And spaced them out in the size of the gate… thing is, after we were done, we didn’t have a lot of pieces left to make as cross connectors, you know that cute z pattern you usually see on a fence. But I knew that we had to put some extra support or the gate would sag quickly and fall apart. So we took all the cut offs and made a cool pattern!


We had to get some gate hardware, but it was not bad, only $6. It would have been nice to find it, or use something else, but I wanted this to last a while, so, sometimes you just have to go with new. I am proud of the fact that we’ve been doing a great deal of our remodeling/rehabbing off Craig’s List and found things, and mark downs and deals. It’s really made a huge difference in the cost we’ve spent on the farm versus the Moby. Surprising, really.

I have to say, Jessy is becoming the regular little tool gal! She’s always been willing to try things out, but she did almost all the gate design and construction with just a little input from me. Maggie was off doing something else, as she is my usual tool gal, but Jessy wanted to work on the gate. So I let her! I think the more they do and are invested in their homestead, the more they will cherish it. And I know that Jess will look back and say, that’s my gate! I hope she smiles.



Getting it to hang properly was an art in itself. Thankfully we only had to redo one set of holes! It’s a 3 person job for sure, and there was no way I could take a picture until we got it hung. It’s such a delicate dance, you want it to hang properly and you have to be careful that it reaches the other side where you want and all. Can be tricky. Be sure to take a lot of deep breathes and try not to yell at your helpers.


I forgot to take a good picture, but we do have the gate up and all the fence foundations up. We are just starting to add the filler part, the sticks for privacy and all. It will take us a while, but we’re going to try and get it fuller by this weekend. Just a goal. A plan really. We have a LOT of sticks on the property. I think it will look very interesting and artsy!

I love the design she came up with! It almost looks Oriental a bit. It’s definitly going to be sturdy, all 300+ screws in the thing! (I just guessed… but there is a LOT of screws in it…) Painted up, it’s just beautiful and it works so nicely! It’s not meant to hold in water buffalo or anything, just to be a pretty garden gate for our courtyard. As time goes on, I’d like to add a few flowering bushes out front and some lovely flowers on the other side, just make it nice and pretty. What a great job by my girl children!!! Their mom is very proud of them!


My first batch of Siberian Iris are blooming! They are so delicate and beautiful. I’m so glad we could save them all. Nearly everything we brought from the Moby is doing well. We lost one apple tree, but to be honest, it was already a weakling and I wasn’t sure it would make it through the winter anyway. We have 12 trees and about 6 hostas and 8 iris and a wisteria and a goat’s beard that made it. The iris are doing lovely! Oh yeah and 4 lilacs!


The lilacs are still very young, and I was happy to see them just leafing out nicely and filling in. Two of them just went to town! They are nice and thick, lots of new growth. Next year, they should bloom wonderfully. But I’m so proud of this little trooper… she put out a nice little spray of flowers! Yeah lil’ Lilac! I just love lilacs and I was surprised to find none here on the estate. Lilacs and farm houses just seem to go hand in hand to me! Actually, I’m a little surprised, for a lady that eventually opened up a flower shop in the old house, there are really few plantings of perrienial flowers all over! Lots of tiger lilies and a small patch of purple iris… but that’s about it. No forsyntia bushes, or lilacs, heck not even any snowball bushes! Oh, now there was about 5 or 6 peony bushes and they bloomed rather quickly this year and were done. The weather has just been hard on plants for sure.

I’m making plans to work on the lack of flowers… My friend Jan is bringing me some splits from her gorgeous garden and I’m going to dig up a bunch of lilies for her! Isn’t that the best part of gardening? Sharing with friends? Now I can walk around and think, oh, those are from Jan! And remember her fondly with that memory! I wish I had more to share, but she’s happy, she doesn’t have any tiger lilies and I have about 27,000 of them. Apparently, the lady of the house really loved her lilies!


See the wisteria? It’s behind the iris in the left hand corner. That is my true hard luck case for sure! It was a nice big beautiful wisteria, that was getting busy and starting to send out some nice tendrils and all at the Moby. And then one day the puppy was bored and she chewed it down to a NUB!!!! Honest! In one short afternoon, she had reduced this 4 foot plant to about 9 inches of nothing. Oh my gosh… I almost killed her! Haha… okay, just smacked her around a lot… okay, I was very upset with her and sternly talked to the little wort.

Anyway, it was trying to come back, so I dug it up and poped it into a bag. A little white kitchen trash bag. Which I might add were a great way to transport most of everything we moved! But being just a stick in a bag, it got set aside in the SHED and forgotten! Well about two weeks later, we were looking for something and I found this poor little thing and it had like three little pale leaves on it, trying hard to grow. So I popped it into the garden space by the garage and hoped for the best!

Now look at it! Only three weeks later and it’s hopping! I can’t believe it. Apparently it loves the spot it’s in. Good rich dirt here at Windhaven, for sure. It’s got lots of little tendrils coming out and I think I will have to give it a nice trellis sooner than later! Perhaps I’ll have Jessy design me something that matches her gate nicely! It’s not toooo far from the fence!

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Jessy’s in Her ROOM!!!

Posted on by June 8, 2011



I can’t believe it, but it’s true! Jessy has officially moved into her own room! After a bazillion hours of scraping and cleaning and removing old carpet and pad and all that stuff… the kid is FINALLY in her own little gal cave! We are so happy for her. She was camping with Maggie for almost 5 weeks… Not that they minded, they have been sharing a room for like ever, they do like it that way, but still… she has finally finished!

Well, finished the prep and painting and all. She still has stuff to arrange and decorate, needs drapes and she’s going shopping for her “big girl bed” this weekend with her Dad. She’s going to buy a real bedroom set, a nice new queen sized bed and all, hopefully a nice dresser. She’s never really had that.




Evee helps to supervise the painting of HER room. The dog has granted Jessy the privilege of sharing it with her. Haha… Well, her room has definitely been the most challenging, and the most expensive of the bedrooms for certain. Over 6 gallons of the texturizing primer, 3 gallons of regular primer, a gallon of trim and a gallon of her fancy decorative color paint. The flooring we brought from their old room at the Moby, which was nearly only 6 months old and fit really nicely in the finished room.





Here’s the first real wall with PAINT on it… though it’s not the final color. She used up some of our fancy mistints to act as expensive primer, and at $5 a gallon, it was much nicer than the $38 dollars for the fancy primer. And it’s nearly the color she wanted, so it worked out nicely.



She wanted to get it done in time for the visit of some of our oldest friends! We’ve know Donna and Brian for ever! Heck since our kids were little babies! God brought us together as young mothers in a strange town in Michigan, in apartments across the street from each other. They were trying out a new job in the fancy city, having moved from a 300 acre family dairy farm in upper lower Michigan, and we had just moved back from San Diego after being in the Navy! We had so much fun those times and though we went our seperate ways… them back to the farm and us to the Toledo Ohio area… we have stayed in touch and visited and talk on the phone and computers all the time.



We forgot to take pictures of the visit… haha… silly us. Well, we shot like two. We were so busy visiting!!! They were passing through and only had a little time to visit, but that was just fine. We were SO excited for them to see Windhaven and all that we’ve done and all the dreams we have! I think they liked the place! And we found out that we live pretty much on the same highway, just oh 200 miles apart!!! So it will be easy to go visiting back and forth and it’s definitely something we will plan soon!!!




Well, now she’s busy fixing it all up and getting it all organized how she likes it. Our storage room is slowly getting more and more empty as the days go on. Once I get my office done, that will help as well! There’s no real rush, but I do admit, I’m missing some of my stuff.




Once she gets it all done, I’ll take a few shots and update the world. I’m just so happy that she’s finally in her room. And of course, now Maggie has more space in her little evil lair upstairs, which she has been busy rearranging and fixing too! A lot of activity going on here at the ranch… it’s part of the reason we’ve been a little quiet the last couple days… getting things ready for our friends to visit, a festival gig for me, and just trying to get a few things done after the awful month of May and it’s wonky weather!!! Of course, it’s like 96 degrees today, but we’ve got the place comfortable with a few well placed air conditioners! So we’ve been working inside for a while too!

More posts to come!!!

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Chickens is FUN!

Posted on by June 5, 2011

I gotta tell you… if you’ve been thinking about chickens… even just a few hens and you are on the fence about it, you just better hop off and get you some birds!   They are just the most delightful things!

Everything they say about the ease of care is correct.  We have had our birds now for two weeks.  And I have loved EVERY single moment.   They are super easy to take care of.  They require a safe place to roost at night.  But that can be just about anything!  A couple hens can roost in an old dog house!  I was thinking that one of those Little Tykes playhouses would work!  (How many of those I see at garage sales for like $25 bucks!  Yikes!)  An old shed or anything really.  And you don’t need super fancy nest boxes… heck, when you gotta lay an egg, you lay an egg!  Our girls love this plastic storage tote that we cut a hole in the side of.  $6 at the dollar store.  And they also like laying in a little pile of hay in the corner of the feed room.  $0.

And feeding them is super easy.  They eat just about anything!  Here is a picture of them enjoying a bit of Chinese take out!  So far our girls loved mashed potates, pound cake, bread crust, and spaghetti.  ( I think it looks like worms to them! Haha)  They also like the little crushed bits in a potato chip bag!  They love leftover corn on the cob, but they don’t like green beans.  Or oranges.  You find out pretty quick what they like and don’t.  They will turn their beaks up if they are uninterested.  We don’t feed our ladies meat products, although I guess it’s okay for them.  They get a ton of bugs and wormies, so I think that’s enough protein for them.

Now, we did go and get them some nice premium layer feed, but even that is so reasonable!  We got 150 pounds of the stuff for $26!  And just to give you a bit of perspective… 150 pounds filled a 30 gallon steel trash can to the top.  And our feeder we have is a one gallon feeder and they have only eaten one feeder full in almost two weeks!  At this rate, they won’t need much more for months!

We let them free range all day long.  From around 9 or 10 in the morning till about 8 or so in the evening.  And they stay very close to the barn where they roost.  It’s rather amusing to find them close to the house but they only visit a bit and then mosey back to the barn.

Maggie was washing out a brush at the pump and all the sudden Bucka Roo and Eleanor come running down the pathway!  They LOVE to drink water out of puddles.  They have a full waterer in the barn, but for some reason, drinking water in the wilds of Windhave just brings out the call of nature to them.  It’s so cute to watch.

Aren’t they a cute couple?  It’s like a chicken date.  Eleanor is our fiesty little explorer.  She’s the bravest of the girls and will start out on her own if she wants to.  Bucka has a hard time keeping her in line.  But just about the time I think he’s going to give up on her, she will tow the line and behave.   I think she’s just plotting out her next adventure and earning a few brownie points with the Roo Dude.  He has his hands full keeping the ladies safe.

And speaking of Roos…  Roosters to us all.  We just got super lucky.  Bucka Roo is just a perfect example of roosterness.  He is cautious and protective, and keeps very good watch over his ladies.  He doesn’t pester them continuously with his need for amour.  He sounds the alarm and they pay attention.  He has yet to bother ANY of us, nor attack or being mean.  I did a LOT of reading about roosters and as I understand, some breeds are better than others.  The Marans are nice and easy going roosters.  He is a Blue Copper Maran.  And having only one makes it very nice.  He doesn’t have to fight and prove himself against another roo.  And we routinely handle him at night when they are groggy and getting ready to roost.  I’m sure he’s not happy about it, but he has learned to accept it.  And I always bring him a treat and single him out for a goodie.  He sees me coming in the morning and cackles his hellos through the barn door crack!  And he waits patiently, right by my side to get the first treat hand fed.  I’ve told the girls that no one is EVER to yell or get angry with him, even if he ever attacks.  Everything I’ve read seems to point to that being a HUGE problem with roosters.  If you confront them or yell and scream at them, they can get very defensive.  It’s their nature.  But if you just turn away and retreat, they will come to see you as no threat.  Especially if you always bring goodies!!!

Inclimate weather, they head for the roost.  They’re no dummies.  They seem to know a little early and will start to tottle off to the barn and gather up in a corner to chill out and rest.  And at night, as soon as it starts to get a little dim out, they are in the roost, picking out their night time spot.  They are so funny at night, they get all dull and lethargic.  It’s a great time to give them a little check over if they need it.  Of course, we’ve only been at this for 2 weeks but I gotta say, it’s been super duper easy.  Someone goes out about 8 or 9 and does a head check and then closes up the fence and the big barn door to protect them.

We’ve been getting about 5 or 6 eggs a day with our 10 hens.  Now I’m pretty sure that two of them are not laying, and possibly a third.  Because the two French Maran hens are supposed to lay very dark eggs and the little Ameracuna should be laying green and blue tinted eggs.  They might be just in a molt period or coming out of one.  Or they are old.  It’s very possible that they are not going to lay any more eggs.  But that’s okay, I knew getting older established hens might mean that I was getting someone’s spent hens.  But I love them not only for their eggs.  They are some mighty bug hunters.  Already we’ve seen a noticeable drop by little bugs around the barn!  Those girls work hard.  They will go after anything they can hop up and get.

I guess I’m just letting you know… if you ever thought about chickens… don’t think anymore!  They are about as hard to raise as a stray cat, for sure!  Set out a little water and food, provide a bit of shelter at night and a place to lay and you’re done!   With the waterer and feeder, the nest box, the feed and the hens, I have about $100 invested.  And they have already given us easily over 70 eggs!  And of course, HOURS of entertainment!!!

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