SORRY FOR BEING SO LAX IN POSTING...WINTER BLAHS HAVE HIT ME

So I'll just post a few pictures really quick. We've gotten a lot accomplished, but it sure doesn't look like much, because it's all things that make a BIG difference, but not really that noticeable...like the wiring is all in upstairs, we're beginning to run the water lines, but I don't think it will look like a lot has been accomplished until the drywall goes up. Which should be soon, as soon as we're done running the water lines upstairs, I guess. We also spent a day just cleaning up around the yard, making a HUGE bonfire pile out of scrap and rotten lumber (Missouri is not kind to lumber not INSIDE a building...even tarps only go so far in protecting it. Jason also spent an evening regrading the driveway and part of the road (we are on a private road, maintenance falls to the homeowners on the road), and filling in potholes with gravel. We really need a few dump truck loads of gravel brought in and spread on the road, but we're not going to do that by ourselves. Oh, how could I forget...we have the shower installed upstairs, the toilet is ready to set (still no water run though) and the tub is set downstairs. It's slowly coming along...

On another note, because we are a "farm", it's time to start thinking of seeds for the spring garden (I won't need many, but I will need a few new varieties to try out) and the 1st of January Shannon & I will be ordering our baby chicks to raise. We're thinking 50, and we'll probably keep at least 10. We need a few more reliable layers, and forget Americaunas, they may be cute, but you can't find their eggs!!!

Okay, enough jabbering, here are some pictures!

And in celebration of our house getting CLOSER to completion, we put the Christmas tree up in the house this year! I also put "candle" nightlights in the windows, it looks really cool at night!

I've also been hard at work for my flea market booth, and I'm happy to say that it's starting to pay off. I have also listed a bunch of finds on eBay, and that's done pretty well for me, too, my "income" has purchased gas, groceries, Christmas gifts, animal feed, and all kinds of other little things that weren't in our budget. :) It's a lot of work, but I'm thankful to still be able to stay home and take care of the family, the animals, the garden, etc.

Why is our farm named "Wayward Pine" many are asking...

As I'm sitting here this morning, enjoying a cup of coffee, watching the rain roll in, and listening to the dog snore (very loudly!) I thought I'd give a little bit of history to our farm's name. A few years ago, maybe five or six, a TV show was airing called The Sword of Truth series. It started out really well, and we all enjoyed it, until we realized it was based on a book series. Being nerdy people, we started reading the books and realized how lame the show really was. I guess a LOT of people felt the same way, and after realizing how badly the books had been ruined when turned into a TV show, the viewership sunk and the show bombed. We kept reading the books. Terry Goodkind is the author, and he puts out a new one every year or two. They're a lot fantasy and magic, a little romance, sword play, kings, wizards & monsters, with a very Libertarian thought process. My whole family loves them!

In the book, early on, is mentioned a type of tree, a very old, very tall pine tree, usually found along a path or trail, the outer limbs of the tree are long and wide, they hang all the way to the ground and they cover each other so well that the interior of the tree is dry and sheltered, a perfect place to shelter for the night or hide from enemies. We don't exactly have a "pine" tree like that on our property, it's a cedar tree, but it has many of the characteristics, and the first time the kids saw it, that's what they called it. The photo in the background of my blog is of OUR Wayward Pine in winter. It's also symbolic of how we view our new piece of property, a shelter in the storms of life, a place to feel secure. I hope everyone's home can be a Wayward Pine in their lives. Enjoy the day!

It's a very rainy day here on our farm

It's one of those days that I would like to just go back to bed and curl up with a book and maybe take a nap! Nope, not happening...although my tired eyes sure seem to be begging for it.

Today is the day I organize myself, get my grocery list together, get another load of laundry in the wash, and hopefully go through our food storage to get it ready to transport into our crawlspace in the new house. My hubby gave me the go-ahead to put it in there. He's pretty sure it's dried out and insulated enough now. This will free up some space on our cabin's porch for shoes...why do shoes take up so DARNED much ROOM? And everyone needs two or three pairs, it seems, plus the necessary muck boots...which were needed this morning from all the rain.

I'm also working on pricing some of my "finds" for my flea market booth and hopefully getting some of my BEST finds up on eBay. It's always fun coming home from a day of auctions and yard sales and researching my goodies. Some of them I am just VERY attracted to and will be putting in my new house and some of them I just think have style & class and figure someone else will think the same...and hopefully pay the price I've researched and found to be the "right" price. :) Happily my booth made money last month...not a whole lot, but it paid the booth rent and I got a check, too, so far, so good.

It's definitely fall here in the Ozarks now, the leaves are changing or have changed, the black walnuts are EVERYWHERE in my yard. The other day we had a big wind that must've drummed several hundred black walnuts onto our roof and ground, what a NOISE! They sound like hail. UGH! We're all allergic to them here in this house, so while they are an excellent nut, good for you, and easy to grow (we have six trees, I think...and more that would come up if we let their sprouts keep growing), they're useless to us. The rains have come, which is good, it was a dry summer and the creeks & rivers are all very low.

I harvested some of my red bell peppers the other day and now need to get them in the freezer. They are one of the main ingredients in my red beans and rice recipe. I also have loads of habanero peppers. They're hot little buggers and I'm not fond of them, but my middle son loves making HOT sauces and salsas. No tomatoes, though, they fizzled about a month ago. The plants are still trying to produce, but the blight is preventing them from actually making nice ones. I need to get out there and pull them up and burn them, but that involves time I just haven't had a lot of lately. I also need to bring in my dried beans. I have discovered that I'm not very good at picking green beans when they're at their best...I tend to let them get too big, so then they turn into bean pods for dried beans...more seed for next year plus cooking over the winter. I hope I haven't left THOSE too long and they've gone bad from all this rain.

We've been working on the house in bits and pieces, between work and school schedules and the rains. On nice days we're working on the siding, on crummy days, like today, we've been framing in upstairs and we'll hopefully work on the wiring this weekend. On top of all of this we've been helping my in-laws move. They're moving closer to us, they found a cute place at the edge of town that will be perfect for them. So much to do, so little time...

Here are some pics of the upstairs as it's getting framed in:

1st photo is a view of the "sitting room" as you come up the stairs. Now that it's framed in it actually looks larger than what it appeared on paper. :)
2nd photo is a view of the bathroom and bedrooms from the sitting room, note the closet on each side of the main door. When the kids move out and we no longer need it to be TWO bedrooms, the middle wall (temporary, doesn't exist in the photos yet) will come down and it will be one big master bedroom.
3rd photo is a view of the bathroom from the sitting room.
4th photo is a view of the sitting room and bathroom from the bedrooms, you can see the closet spaces a little better there.
5th photo is a view of the sitting room from the bathroom.
Last photo is a view of the staircase from the sitting room. The stairwell will be open from upstairs with a nice rail and grill to prevent falls. :) Notice the "ledge" running alongside the bathroom? Jason did this to make sure the wall lined up with the supports all the way to the crawlspace, and it will make a nice "display" ledge...however I will not be able to put anything breakable up there, because I imagine the cats will make FULL use of that nice ledge for sunbathing, exploring, and just plain being mischievous. LOL! If the rain would ever slow down we might actually get the shower stall put in there, but it's sitting outside and I'm sure it's full of water by now.

It's been a hectic week here on our mini farm

Lots going on, but doesn't seem like anything really got done. My middle son finishes up his job this week, his last day is Wednesday. Thank God! No more driving him into town at 7am! yuck! It also means he'll be home way more to be able to help on the house building. My mother-in-law and father-in-law are moving closer to us, so we've been helping them pack up their home. I've been hitting yard sales to find bargains, not only for my own home, but also for the flea market booth I set up earlier this month (which has thankfully sold enough to cover October's booth rent! Whew!). I am hoping my enterprise really pays off closer to Christmas, when we need the money the most. Here's a picture:

My oldest has been busy with college work and helping his grandparents. He has always been the hardest worker of all my kids! He's also spent the weekend helping Jason work on the house building. It seems we've spent so much time getting ready to get ready to do things on it. We had bought off craigslist some very nice solid wood doors with full windows for a very reasonable price. The only problem (the biggest problem) is that they don't fit a typical door frame. So while we had built everything for normal sized doors, we ended up having to jimmy the front door opening, and the back door opening is still up for debate on whether we'll use these same doors back there and jimmy the opening, or if we'll just resell them and buy prehung doors. While the doors are BEAUTIFUL, being NOT perfectly standard doors, and being that we're not construction workers with all the tools available at our disposal, it may not be the best idea to try to do the back ourselves. On top of the doors not being typical, they are also extremely heavy! We used the 3 hinges typical of doors this size, and have realized we're going to have to go with 5 hinges or purchase super expensive hinges to hold their weight or we'll have problems in the not-so-distant future. It does look wonderful, though.

Jason also purchased one of those storm doors that has a built in, hidden screen. The screen comes out of hiding as you push the window down. As often as we will use it, it was worth the extra money. :) Now that the front door & frame is all in the guys can work on trimming it and then get back to siding the house on that wall. We also heard from Menards that our foundation coating will be in on Monday or Tuesday this next week. Yay! We can finally finish THAT part of the house and begin working on the front and back porches. View of our new doors from the outside (I still need to wash them).

This week was also homecoming week for our local high school, so my daughter was busy with that. She has turned into an excellent photographer and was tapped to take the pictures for her FFA chapter. She did a tremendous job on the float, too. :) And my middle son took his girlfriend (who is still in high school) to the Homecoming dance last night, so that was more running around. They looked great, though.

Let's see, what else has been going on around here, I've been trying to get back in the swing of food storage. It seems I'm using a LOT of our food storage lately, first because all our extra money is going into my flea market booth right now (you have to spend money to make money) and because I don't really have the time to go to the grocery store to shop. Seems odd, I know, but with all the running around I've been doing lately, the last thing I want to do is drive an hour round trip to grocery shop. So it's been pizzas and tacos, and I think today just may be chicken on the grill. :) Oh, and eggs, we've been eating a lot of eggs lately. Our hens have slowed down their laying, but we still have far too many, so thankfully I have some faithful friends & neighbors who keep purchasing our extras. Have I mentioned lately that duck eggs make the BEST baking eggs?

I suppose I should stop chit-chatting and get busy with other things, like laundry and giving the animals fresh water. Enjoy the pictures!
And here's a photo of the pony...still at our house:

Here are some better pictures of the front door. :)

When all the stars are in alignment...

or maybe more accurately...when all the kids are home and have no other plans (this seems to be a rare occasion here lately, since the kids are all over 17 now), we get a lot accomplished.

Thursday we had another load of gravel dropped off, we'll keep plugging away at the French drain area, and whatever rock is leftover (we should have a small pile at least) will go on the driveway to fill in where the rain has washed it away. We had quite a rain this past week...3 inches!

Friday my husband took the day off work and got things organized, parts lined up, and the first row of siding started. That was a little trial and error on his part, since this is the first time he's worked with Hardy Board, a fiber cement siding...should last the rest of our life-time, though. Once he had everything figured out he and the kids really got some work done. Here are some pictures of the siding going up on Saturday:

And the last photo is of the last window finally installed on the front of the house. YAY! After the siding gets finished on the current side they're working on I think they have decided to tackle installing the door frames. This is also a first for my husband, as he couldn't find the correct sized door frames for our house (honestly, WHY do stores locally not sell six inch door frames...everyone these days are framing their homes in 2 x 6 studs! ugh!) So he's making his own. He's going to start with the small door on the front first, as that will be his practice run. The french doors on the back will be tough, as we want BOTH doors to be able to open, and open OUT onto the back porch, so we can fit BIG stuff through without killing ourselves trying to get it through a small opening. The back porch will be screened, so no worries about having to put a screen door on a six foot doorway.

In other news around our little farmstead, our chickens are molting and the ducks are backing off on laying for the winter, so the egg production has gone from about 14 a day down to six. My daughter and I spent the early morning yesterday cleaning the fence row out, seems some vines decided to climb our electric fence and ground it out. Thankfully our horses won't go through it, even when it's not on. It's been off for about two months. Yep, two months and the horses have stayed right where they're supposed to be.

Then we got busy cleaning up the north side of the house, construction mess is unsightly. After about six hours we had it pretty cleaned up, all that's left is a big pile of tarp pieces. The south side is going to take longer than that...that's where we have our tub & shower stall sitting for now, and they're on top of a big mess. I don't even want to talk about the mess behind our tool shed. Yuck!

Speaking of horses, we had a stray show up a few days ago. First it got through into our neighbor's calf pasture. When they couldn't chase it back through to its own side they chased it out of the pasture and it headed up here. I can't stand to see an animal just running loose, so it went in with our horses, after a day of introductions (ever heard horses get to know each other? It's NOISY!) they all seem to be settling down. Turns out it's a miniature horse...and it's a stud at that. Sigh...at least it's too small to breed with our mares. I'm not up to dealing with pregnant horses...not that our old girl even needs that added burden, being 29 in people years. Poor old girl, she may not make it another winter.

Anyway, we know where the little horse belongs, but it's not overly friendly to people and the owners just pasture a bunch of animals and don't even live around here. And of course no one around here knows their name...just say hi to them when they see them in the neighborhood. I guess we'll be leaving a note on their gate that their horse is up at our place. We wanted a cow or a goat, not another horse out in our pasture.

Well, that's about it around here. Hopefully I'll have pictures to post later of more progress on the house.

Sometimes we spend more time getting ready to get something done...

than we actually GET anything done. This weekend was one of those weekends. We are waiting for the stucco coating (tinted tan) to come in at Menards. We could go with gray from Lowes, but that wouldn't match our house, so we're waiting...and waiting...and waiting. Meanwhile we have the french drain needing another layer of rock, but can't get that in until the stucco goes up. We have a back deck that we could be working on, but we need to bring the level of the ground up back there, and yet we can't get it going until the stucco goes up. UGH!

Meanwhile we picked up the lumber needed for the covered back deck, removed the ramp (oh, this is SO not fun getting in and out of the house now!) and did a lot of clean up around the yard...lots of scrap lumber was burned this weekend. I think we had those two burn barrels blazing red hot for at least 10 hours! Thankfully the weather cooperated and it wasn't blazing hot out, as well.

We moved the ramp over and made it a deck in front of the tool shed...Jason's plans in the future are to put a little roof over it and dress it up like a boat house or an old cabin in the woods. Either way it's going to look CUTE! At least we were able to repurpose the materials. So really, it doesn't look like we got much done this weekend, and that last window still needs to go in, but when you consider that we are READY to get the foundation stucco on whenever it finally gets here, the flooring for the interior is ordered and on it's way here, and we have everything READY to begin the back deck, and the yard is looking a LOT better...I guess we were pretty productive. Oh, and I made lasagne yesterday for dinner...a family favorite and a special treat. Yep, it was a good weekend.

Upstairs windows are going in!

As of today we have three installed of the four. The last one is going to be a doozey because it's going above our staircase, so we have to make a scaffolding inside to get that one in. I thought we'd be tackling it this weekend, but so far the guys have been working on the foundation. They have all of the flashing installed, which Jason made by hand. Everything he looked at in the stores (and even the few he purchased) just didn't hold up. They were flimsy and dented easily. Thankfully he works where he was able to use all of the tools to do the metal bending himself.

Here are pictures of the windows. The ones without mullions are going to be facing the barn, they were on clearance at Menards and an excellent price. The ones with mullions will be facing the driveway, so they match the rest of the house's windows and don't look weird to those driving up the driveway. The 3rd window was finished just as it got dark out. Boy it makes me nervous seeing my guys so high up ladders! Sorry for the poor quality of the last photo, it was really dark out.

The places where you see tarps still on the back of the house are where we plan on putting in french doors and a big covered back deck, so it's still a tad ugly to look at, but once we begin to tackle those tasks the tarps will come down and it will look pretty. For now we are using a generic exterior door (which will probably go on the chicken coop when we're done with it) so as not to damage our pretty and expensive doors. Although they didn't cost near what we might've paid for them new...they were left over from someone else's building project and never used and we paid about 1/4 of what they could've cost new! I love Craigslist!

The spray foam company will need to come back out and hit some low spots on the 2nd floor. They sprayed the insulation on one of the hottest days of summer and once the foam had cured we noticed spots that need to be deeper in foam. We told them to come out when the weather cools (and it has been doing that here this week).

Last night we started burning off the scraps of wood that have accumulated from building recently. We have a HUGE pile of wood and downed branches tarped over, just waiting for more rain to soak the ground so we can burn them, however what we've been burning is what has recently been added to our mess, and Jason decided burn barrels were the way to go last night. While the night air was quite chilly last night, we were pretty toasty warm about 10 feet from the burn barrels until they died down to a few inches of embers. We'll work on burning them off again today, too. We have quite the accumulation and our back yard is looking trashy. I'm not a total neat-nick, but I really don't like my yard to be trashy. We have so much to deal with! We also have an ash tree that didn't make it through last winter that will need to come down. It was really big, and we will miss its shade. I think the plan is to plant an autumn blaze maple in its place...eventually.

I'm not sure what the next step is going to be on the house. Maybe running electric upstairs? We did get our flooring ordered and we got it for an EXCELLENT price! The flooring is 2nds, so we ordered plenty of extra, just in case we have to cut a bunch off. The worst looking stuff will go upstairs. Flooring is really still a ways away, but it's always good to get what you can when you have the money and you find a great deal! (Literally saving thousands by purchasing this lot!). I guess I should get in gear and get some more laundry out on the line and get my dishes done. I'm making a lasagne for dinner tonight. I guess we'll see what the guys get accomplished today. :)