2014....New Year, New Goals

Sometime after the interior walls went up in the house we were able to get the kitchen window in (it will be above the kitchen sink) and we've been picking away at other things. It's been a really miserable winter so far...lots of snow, freezing, REALLY FREEZING temps (negative teens a few nights). We're lucky to have not lost any chickens in the bad weather. We have lost two cats. One got ran over warming himself under the car and another has just disappeared. So sad, they were two of our cuddliest kitties with great personalities. :(

While the weather this winter has been REALLY crummy, not much more work has been done on the house. We did have to patch some holes in the tarp this last weekend, because it was leaking. We had to put buckets everywhere downstairs to catch the water. We're hoping the patches hold out til spring, when we can get going on the roof again.

Our roofing material arrived in early January at the supply store. It's currently wrapped up and waiting on us to build the rafters. We are putting up galvanized aluminum roofing. It should sound awesome when the rain hits it. :) The "skirting" for the crawlspace arrived in early February at Menards up in Lake Ozark. We had to wait a week or two before we could go get it. We had a nice weekend last weekend and the guys got the crawlspace skirted. The product we ordered is pretty unique. It's a pressure-treated plywood for below-grade applications. We haven't yet put the fill in around the base of the house, but eventually the skirting will be touching or below the fill line. We plan to eventually disguise it with "rocks" applied all over. It will look pretty neat when it's all put together. I'll try to get a photo of it in a day or so. Right now it's freezing cold and snow covered! :(

In late January I brought out my mini greenhouse, rearranged the cabin furniture, and got some seeds started. My goal this year is to do two farmers markets locally and sell seedlings in the spring, and veggies & herbs in the summer/fall. I also hope to sell some of my homemade sugar scrub and soaking salts. Shannon is hoping to sell flowers and sunflowers. So far she is not doing well, she's not keeping her plants watered and not transplanting them quickly enough into pots. It's her deal, so I'm trying not to say too much, but it's irritating to see her throwing her money away like that. :(

My seedlings, on the other hand, are doing pretty well, all things considered. I was able to purchase a large greenhouse for pretty reasonable through Walmart.com. Everything was flourishing until we got a BAD wind storm a couple weekends ago and it collapsed my greenhouse. I salvaged as many seedlings as I could and took them into the house (new house, not cabin) and set them up on Jason's work bench with heat lamps. Many survived, but I lost almost 20 seedlings of tomatoes, peppers & eggplant. That's so disappointing. Thankfully I still have plenty of time to get them going, IF the weather ever warms up!

I worked pretty hard one morning on repairing my greenhouse and think I have it to where it'll hold up now. It really took some rigging. I had my old greenhouse frame and I basically built it inside the new greenhouse frame in order to keep it from collapsing again. The old frame seems MUCH more sturdy than the new one, but it's MUCH smaller in size...so it will only hold up part of the new greenhouse. Something is better than nothing, though. The seedlings went back into the greenhouse with the heat lamps, and so far everything is doing okay.

This past weekend we had REALLY low temps, down to zero on Sunday night. I wasn't sure my seedlings would survive, but Tim helped me insulate inside the greenhouse with reflective bubble wrap insulation and three 5 gallon buckets of steaming hot water (changed out every 12 hours). I am thankful to say that so far (three nights of wicked temps) I've only lost 10 seedlings! Amazing!