We’ve had some long, hard days here on the farm. We’re taking on a couple of projects that would have been easier to just call a contractor to take care of, but we’re here to live a simple, self-reliant lifestyle, so we’ll take care of them ourselves. While it means long, hard, exhausting days, it comes with a great deal of satisfaction when we can look behind us to see what we’ve accomplished.
One such project is the final grading of our yard. When the excavator was here almost two weeks ago to dig out all the stumps that punctuated our yard (eight dump truck loads to be exact), not only was there a lot of there was a lot of damage from digging out the stumps, but also from driving a 25 ton excavator around the property. After digging everything out, he was able to shake off enough dirt from the stumps to even out the yard to some degree, and after packing with the excavator, and running a power rake around on a small track-drive skid steer, the yard was mostly leveled out with little settling. That said, before seeding with new grass, there was still need for the yard to be raked over by hand to take out any roots and rocks that were near the surface, and put a final finished grade around to eliminate any unevenness. We spent three full sunup-to-sundown days working on the front side (which is actually the side of our house), which included the inside of our circular drive. This area had been full of overgrown lilacs, forsythia, mountain ash, and vinca vine, and also included some hemlocks and a couple of huge old maple stumps. While we don’t have a lot of traffic on the road alongside our house, the plantings made it difficult to see if there were any cars or trucks approaching. We also wanted to expose the boulders that were there, and then add back in some plantings to accentuate the rocks, which will then eventually grow into a smaller-scale screen to block some of the road without impeding visibility when pulling out of the drive. After clearing the remaining rocks and roots, smoothing the final grade, and adding back in some plants that we relocated from other areas (lillies, irises, vinca vine, and some bulbs we found), we also planted some rhododendrons, and a crabapple tree we’ve been carrying around since our last house in Medina. There was a beautiful crab in our front yard back on Pin Oak Road. Jenny took a new little baby tree that had sprouted from a seed, stuck it in a pot, and we’ve been caring for it ever since, with the intent of planting it here. We’re not sure what it will be, as you never know what you’ll get from a grafted (not the actual) tree, but it appears to be some kind of crabapple. Hopefully it can live in this zone.
While digging around, we also found many little treasures, such as a few horseshoes, a handful of old forged nails, spikes, a wood dog, the head of an old hammer, garden trowel, silverware, shards of pottery and glass, and some old bottles. We still need to have our tree guy drop us a load of wood chip mulch, then we can seed grass around the bed, and come spring, we’ll have a beautiful little side yard. Here’s what it looked like before vs. what it looks like now:
We also smoothed the grade and prepped for seeding over in front of the old shed (to the left in the large photo above), as well as began the final grading going around to the front of the house. We’re in a few days of hot weather here, so when it cools down later this week, we’ll get back out there.
Another large project we’ve wrapped up (for the most part) is our main bathroom. We were going to completely remodel this room, taking out the tub to add a tiled walk-in shower, but with the rapidly deteriorating condition of our barn, we’ve had to hold off on a major remodel for now. All those funds are now going toward saving the barn and shoring up urgent structural needs; any interior/cosmetic work will be up to us. Our intent was to just repaint the bathroom, but things tend to snowball here, especially when you touch the paint brush to the window sill and it break off and falls into the yard, due to rot. We ended up taking out the window completely (see photos in the previous post), milled ourselves a new sill, reglazed the old sashes, and built new exterior trim. We stripped the paint from the wall behind the vanity, exposing the original planks, demo’d the partition around the tub and toilet, and used some of the old bead board to trim out the tub. Another thing that snowballed a bit was installing a new bath fan, as the old one just didn’t seem to move much air anymore. While the fan was small and old, it was more likely the wasp nest we found completely blocking the old ductwork (Jenny had long-since “encouraged” the wasps with Raid to search out a new home). The new fan box was quite a bit larger than the old, so some modifications of the ceiling were in order. In a house this old, you’re never certain what you’re going to find when you open something up, and the ceiling in our bathroom was no exception; layers of sheet rock, plaster, lath, and insulation. This quickly snowballed into an all-day job, and created quite a mess in our freshly painted bathroom. We are, however, very pleased with the results of our “refreshment” of our bathroom, and in a few years, we’ll eventually change out the tub for a tiled shower. We ordered some towel bars, so when they get delivered, that will wrap up the renovation for now. Here are some before, during, and afters:
We’ve also started chipping up the maple that was recently taken down in our back yard. We’re chipping up the smaller branches and leaves to use as a base for our deep mulch garden, then the rest we’ll cut up for firewood. As we take out more of the trees in back, the view of the pasture below, and the hillside beyond, is beginning to reveal itself, and our garden will be able to enjoy full sunlight all summer long. We’ve learned that trees are not hard to grow here, and while we still have plenty on our property, if we wished, we could let this area return to being a forest very quickly. After we clear this area down the hill, it will get planted with fruit trees, various berry bushes, and other crops, and will be our “food forest”.
Since our last post, we also brought Allie over to Durham and moved her into her dorm. It wasn’t as traumatic an experience as you often hear about, but we’re only an hour-and-a-half away, and we text daily. Allie was ready to begin this next chapter, and we had all long prepared for the day, so it went off without a hitch. She found her roommate through a group chat after she committed, they both requested each other when applying for housing, and so far, they get along great. She’s since had her first week of classes, and is enjoying her new life. We did have to run over a few things that she needed during the first week, but not from lack of preparation, but from necessity due to extraordinary temperatures there (highs in the 90’s and no AC). It was so hot the first week that many classes were cancelled, and many students were suffering. We brought over a redneck air conditioner (a bucket with holes drilled in the sides and a small fan on the top, into which she can place frozen water bottles, and the fan blows the cooled air out the holes into the room – thanks YouTube!), and a few other things to help out with the heat. We’re supposed to have a couple more hot days in the upper 80’s, but then things will get back into the lower 70’s for highs. Allie’s still excited about her chosen major (nutrition), enjoying her classes, and has been finding UNH to be a perfect fit. One of the things UNH excels at is their dining program, as most everything is grown right on the campus by the Ag program, and most everything else is sourced from the campus itself, or through the local area. There are many healthy options available, so it’s been easy for Allie to practice what she’s learning in her nutrition classes. She’s made friends with a bunch of active girls that are much like her, so they’ve been going to a lot of the classes at the rec center, such as Zumba, Cardio Kick Boxing, and others, or just swimming at the pool.
After we finish up a couple of smaller projects we’re working on, such as making a bench for our mudroom, as well as a kitchen table, we’re going to clean up and put away our tools for a bit. We’re going to take a well-deserved break to explore the area, enjoy the oncoming fall weather, and to get our old cars out on the road before winter. Hope you’re all well, and thanks again for following along!
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