Getting Started

Ah, the beginning bloggers first post. What to say? Where to start? How much can I babble on without losing you? I guess there's nothing for it but to hit the ground running and see what happens!


We bought our first property in September 2007 and moved up here in November. Woohoo! I never thought owning my own place could be so fulfilling and so... unbelievable. I walk around the place thinking about things I'd like to change in the house and I sometimes get that thought in the back of my brain that says 'you need to check with the landlord first'. Ack! Maybe the fact that I am the landlord will sink in eventually, but it hasn't yet. The other day I noticed the cats were tearing up one of the window screens in the living room. When they want to come in the twins climb the screen and hang there until we notice them and let them in. No matter how cute this is, it does very little to increase the life of the window screen and the first thought that popped into my head was 'we'll have to replace that screen before the lease is up'. How long will this last??


We've got a fairly secluded 40 acres here and some mighty grand plans, to include huge organic garden and orchard, riding ring and barn for the horses (that's really for me, the horses couldn't care less), milking goats for making my own cheese, a small beef cattle herd, and chickens. We want to tear down this house and put up something that doesn't have two stair steps going into every room and looks like it was all built at the same time instead of a room here and there over the years. And where does all this DUST come from?? We cleaned the house last night and included the dreadful dusting chore this time. Now I remember why we gave up on dusting for the winter. This morning there was a visible coating of dust on everything again. Ugh, the dust battle goes on.


I would also like to dally a bit in bee keeping and the love of my life (because he may read this) wants to go off grid and experiment with solar power. The place already comes equipped with a high-technology spring-fed cistern that uses some new process called gravity to provide water to the house. This is all fine and dandy, until it rains and our crystal clear delicious water that comes out of the faucet turns into brown silt-laden, do I even want to boil pasta with it, mud. This area had a very bad drought in 2007. People had to haul water in big tanks for home use and livestock all summer, and some are still hauling water on a weekly basis. We listen to the locals tell us all about it and just nod our heads like we believe it... it has done nothing but rain or snow since we moved in! Oh to be able to step outside and not sink into 6 inches of mud, or walk thru the grass without water squishing up to your ankles. This whole place is like a big sponge coated in red indian clay - which makes the sponge very slippery! I have hit the ground enough times to permanently turn the backside of my blue jeans brown. But even with all the problems we've run into so far and the ones I'm sure are still to come, we love this place and wouldn't trade it for anything!


Still here?

If I haven't lost you yet, then check back later for gardening tips, horsey talk, canine hijinks's, feline jokes (I'm almost always the butt of these), and home improvement adventures that will probably never end!