On the Homestead

It has been nearly two weeks since we posted. We are really enjoying our new house and have been busy cleaning, and organizing. Dane has been working on all sorts of projects as usual: plumbing indoor and out, planting trees, moving things into the house, cleaning up the camp, working on the 4Runner, cutting paths along the edge of our property in search of an area suitable for a better road, etc. He discovered that a road on the riverside of our property probably won't be possible because of the rough terrain. The children and I began their schoolwork again and we are working to settle back into a comfortable routine with it. Our day is considerably more efficient now that most of our things are in one place (in the house) instead of spread out around camp. Also, Joseph has a lot more freedom to run around since he has a concrete floor in which to walk. We are all very thankful for that.

The weather has been really beautiful. It really doesn't feel like winter at all. It has been in the 70's during the day and in the 50's at night for at least a couple of weeks now. We are enjoying it tremendously.

Things we've found......

Last week Dane found a green snake in the driveway. The chickens thought they would make lunch out of it, but Dane got it first. We have no idea if it was venemous. The snake didn't have any fangs, but it kept trying to bite Dane. I think the chickens had it pretty agitated. He let it go in the garden.

Abby and Sarah found a "siamese" leaf. It was interesting, so we took a picture of it. We put a single leaf next to the conjoined one for comparision.



Last week Sarah found some wild onions and parsley in the forest along the trail to the big creek. It is always exciting to find wild plants that we can eat. We ate them before we could take a picture of them.

On their excursions around the farm today, the children found these beautiful wildflowers.

They also found some mondo grass or "monkey grass" that had some pretty blue seeds. The picture is a little blurry because Elisabeth was wiggly. Mondo grass makes a good ground cover and border plant, so the children planted some of the seeds in the garden for us to later plant around the house area.

New Additions......

Our smallest hen, who had chicks once before, made a nest in the tea, instead of the hen house, and four of her nine eggs hatched. Two of the chicks didn't make it, but so far the other two seem to be doing well. They are so cute when they are brand new.

Good Help is hard to find....

Here is a picture of Sarah carrying in the day's laundry. She had quite a load :) . We are very blessed to have so many little helpers.

Fun Stuff....

Daddy is Joseph's new best friend. He doesn't need mommy as much anymore and has discovered that it is pretty neat to hang out with daddy.

Today we went down to the river that crosses the corner of our property.

Here they call it a creek, but where we come from - this is a river. The name of it is Arroyo Bonito. This is the first time that most of the children and I have been to it on our property. We usually visit the river on our neighbor's property because it is easier to access; however, Dane cleared out a trail for us when he was surveying our property earlier in the week. The part on our property has lots of rocks to sit on and rocks in the water to swim to. There are even a few rapids.

We've Moved

We are very excited to announce that we have moved into the house. A week ago Sunday we moved our kitchen into the house and then the following Tuesday, our beds. The house is not complete, but enough of the exterior walls were done on the ground floor to keep us dry, so we couldn't resist the urge to get out of the tents and into it. We are living in the bottom story until Dane completes the second story and attic. Eventually our bedrooms will be on the second floor.

This is a diagram of our "one room house" right now.

This is the end of the kitchen with Dane's office area. On the right you can see the back door, our washing machine and a refrigerator that we use as a pantry because it takes too much energy for our energy operation.

This is a picture of the kitchen area from where the beds are. At the ceiling level you can see the unfinished second story floor and the gold colored door that will eventually lead to the staircase on the outside wall of the house. And Sarah is in the background and David from the nose up is in the foreground.

This is the sleeping area.

The new living arrangements are wonderful. We are really thankful for the Lord's blessing of this house. For the first time in eight months we can walk around without our shoes and we have a mud free zone in which to spend our time. We also have doors now, so the chickens can't let themselves into the kitchen anymore. However, there is one small catch to that - we have not gotten glass in our front and back doors yet, so occasionally our smaller chicks fly through the doors. Below is a picture of Dane sending one out football style. By the way, he did finish that wall around the front door last week.

After moving in, the children and I spent the week organizing and cleaning the mud from all the furniture and appliances. Dane worked on plumbing for the kitchen and shelves for our books and clothes, among other things.

Dane also worked on the plumbing outside. He dug ditches for the pipes and this is a picture of him digging a hole for the septic system.

Dane also started cutting up the wood he got from the sawmill for firewood.

On another note - Check out this huge grub worm that Elijah found. We are always surprised at the enormousy of the insects here.

Also, thanks to everyone who voted in our poll. Eighty percent of the votes were for Dane to install the wood vertically around the attic. Hopefully, he will get to that soon.

We plan to start our schoolwork again in the morning, so we are off to prepare for that before we go to bed. Until next time - we hope all is well with you all.

Jessica

Firewood

Dane went to town this Thursday and bought about $25 dollars worth of firewood from the sawmill. It should last us a few months :-).

We got a little wood from there a few weeks ago to try it out and it burned pretty good, so we decided to get a big load, so that Dane wouldn't have to hunt down fallen trees in the forest right now while he concentrating on the house.




Also, Dane finished the attic floor and then enclosed the attic with a sheet of plastic to protect it from the rain until he gets the attic exterior done. So far so good, three days of rain and no leaks!

Here is a picture of our homesite from the other side. On the far left is the chicken coop, then you can see the house with the plastic enclosing the attic at the top, then the 4Runner, our kitchen tent on the far right, and a wet weather creek in the foreground.

Even though we don't have all the exterior walls or any of the interior done on the house we plan to move our kitchen into it tomorrow and hopefully our beds by midweek. It seems surreal. Yipee!!!!!!! We really appreciate our experience in the tents and the lessons we have learned. It has been a humbling time that has freed us from many of our vain and materialistic ideals. That being said, Dane is really excited about packing the tents up and putting them into the attic until the Lord takes us to....... :-)

The Creek

We have a large spring fed creek on our property about 250 meters from our homesite. This creek runs year round and never drys up. It flows through a beautiful and rocky terrain until it joins the river that crosses the corner of our property.

We pump clean, crystal clear, and great tasting water from one of the large springs that feed this creek up to our camp for our water needs.

We've had a few days of rain and the water level is up a little, so we went down there today to take some video.

Winter in June

The temperatures are definitely getting colder around here, making the days significantly shorter for us. Getting up early in the morning for school work when it is dark and cold to sit around a stove that doesn't warm up fast enough was getting to be really difficult. Our fingers and toes were suffering. As nice as our kitchen tent is, it just doesn't hold the heat enough in near freezing temperatures. So, we are attempting to adjust our schedule a little. Right after we take a much needed break from our studies, we will begin our school days again after the sun comes up.

The days really are beautiful with temperatures ranging from the upper fifties to the seventies. We are very thankful for that. The nice day temperatures and weather have allowed Dane to get a lot of work done on the house. The week before last he got most of the exterior walls, minus the attic portion, trim and other finishing touches, done.

When Dane ordered the wood for the house, he ordered red wood. However, the wood that we received is multicolored. The house is not looking like what we had in mind and we are a little disappointed about that, but nonetheless we are very thankful that we will soon have a house to live in, Lord willing. We still have the option to paint it later.

Also we have been discussing whether Dane should put the exterior wood around the attic in the same direction as the rest of the house (horizontally), or if he should lay it perpendicular to the other wood (vertically) to break up the boxy pattern some. I have seen other houses where the wood is laid horizontally up to the attic and then the wood is turned vertically to break up the pattern. Our attic is very large and we have some crazy color differences in the wood, so we are still in discussion on whether changing directions will improve or worsen the appearance. We put a poll on the right hand side of our blog page, to see what you thought would be nicer. We'd love to hear your opinions.

The picture below is of the attic portion that still needs to be closed in.

Last week, Dane started putting down the wood for the second story ceiling/attic floor and will probably finish that in the next couple of days.

Here is a picture of the wood Dane is laying from the attic view.

This is a picture of the wood from underneath. The second story ceiling view. It is really pretty.

Also, a week ago Saturday, our goat had her kids, two little girls. They are healthy and as cute as they can be. We are very excited about increasing our herd. We really miss having a flock of goats to tend to, as well as the milk and all the good stuff that we enjoy making with it.

Here they are...

The excitement of the kids' birth took a toll on Joseph who fell asleep at the table when I ran out to get a picture.

Furthermore, our garden isn't doing very good, despite our efforts, so yesterday I spread lime on the entire thing. Our soil is just too acidic for most of the garden vegetables that we are trying to grow. Plants sprout up right away, but die off quickly or just don't produce much fruit, so we are hoping the amendment will improve our crop next time around.

I am sure that there is so much more to tell about the last two weeks, but it is time for dinner, so maybe in another post. I thought that I would include a couple of pictures of the other children. The first one is of David who is three now.


This is a picture of Elijah, Abby, Elisabeth, and Sarah chopping firewood.

Last Week's Happenings

We had a nice week last week. The weather was warmer and we had some rain.

Dane went on a marathon sanding and painting streak and got all the exterior wood for the house done, so putting it up should go quickly, Lord willing.

Here is a picture of it as the children were counting how many pieces he had painted on Sunday. At that point he had painted 204 for the day, but he continued on an hour or more after that.





Elijah, who turned seven last week, lost his job painting to his Dad, so he started making the frames for the new bee hives that we hope to establish. He is starting to get good at driving nails.



Our chickens stopped laying eggs a few months ago, and we bought our first store bought eggs last week, a whole 30 dozen of them. Ironically, four of our hens started laying again two days later. Of these, one has insisted on laying her egg in Joseph's bed. The first day I found an egg in the bed I thought it was funny, but it has been a fight to keep the hen out of our tent ever since because the zipper isn't functioning properly. Needless to say,we have found an egg in the tent nearly every day for a week. This has led to discussions on expanding the chicken yard and ending this free ranging bit. We certainly want our chickens to free range, but here in these parts the vegetation is abundant and so are the insects, so a very large enclosed area would work nicely and keep the birds out of our area. My mother always thinks it is funny when we are talking on the phone and I have to excuse myself to shoo chickens out of the kitchen tent. Yes, living without doors can be very interesting.

This is a little video of Abby spinning Joseph on a tote lid on the table.

With the rain this week, Joseph had to spend some time off the ground to keep him from getting too muddy. In the below picture, he had just fallen off a chair and into the mud. Sorry, the shutter of the camera got a little stuck.




Last week Dane took the U-joint off the Toyota to replace it; however, the new one did not fit. We decided to go to town in the big Ford truck to replace the part and to do our monthly shopping. Unfortunately, the truck slid off the road and got stuck in the mud on the uphill just in front of our neighbors' home on the other side of the creek. This is the same spot where the gravel truck got stuck a year ago. As Dane was trying to get us back on the road, the truck ran out of diesel. There hadn't been any diesel in town the last two trips Dane had gone and he had gotten word that there was some that day, so therefore, another reason to take the big truck. We ended up walking home and taking the Toyota without a U-joint or rear drive shaft. This meant Dane had to drive the truck in four wheel drive without functioning rearwheels. I didn't think we would make it, but thankfully, the Lord saw us to town safely.

The next day Dane and I spent the afternoon trying to get the truck out with the little crawler. I steered the truck while he pulled with the crawler. We finally got free after two and half hours when I figured out how to be helpful and not counterproductive (the truck is big and I am little - I can't see which way the wheels are pointing and it took me awhile to figure it all out). It is amazing how strong that crawler is. No tractor could have pulled that big truck out, but the crawler did! Afterward, I learned how to drive the crawler and got to drive it back to our farm as Dane drove the truck. The crawler had left some huge ruts in the road about two foot deep, so Dane returned to the site with hoe, shovel, and pick ax to do some road repairs. All and all it was an exhausting and exciting afternoon!

Here is a picture of what the house looks like today (Tuesday). Dane finished the exterior wood on the northwest facing side except for the attic at the top.


This is a picture of a huge cockroach. For a roach, it was pretty. It had an armor-like shell and neat colors. I can say this because Dane found it outside on a piece of wood, not in the kitchen.

Still Learning

Well we had a good week here. The weather was colder, so it was hard to get up in the mornings. I think it was in the lower thirties most nights and mornings, but warmed up to the sixties in the day. We slept very cosily in our tent under lots of blankets and in the morning we all crowded around the wood stove while I made breakfast and the children did their schoolwork. A couple of mornings we woke up to lots of frost.

The frost looked kinda like snow.

It was on the clothes on the laundry line too.

Early in the week, Dane finished putting cyclone fence around the goats' corral, so that they would be more secure as they learned the electric fence.

We have gained the confidence of the pregnant goat. She comes running up to us now when we take her something to eat. The other goats, the momma and her kid, are still pretty skiddish, despite us milking the mother every day. And for this reason, we lost her and her kid yesterday just as we lost the first goat when Dane brought them home. We turned the goats out into the other fenced area (the three acres of jungle that Dane fenced) in order to give them more grazing. Well, we discovered right away that finding not so friendly goats in the jungle was going to be a problem (this isn't Texas - no wide open spaces on this farm). We all manned a post as Dane searched through the brush looking for them. After a while, I spotted them and hollered to Dane which direction they were headed. He saw them just as they jumped through the fence and into the tea tree jungle.

This is a picture of the fenced in area from the outside looking in. It is all jungle in there. Coming from west Texas, we thought it would be great to give our goats such a nice place to eat weeds without us having to buy and haul food to them all the time.

This is the tea tree jungle.

We have decided that the tea tree jungle is some sort of black hole because goats disappear in there without a trace. We have about five acres of old black tea trees downhill from our camp that have grown to about twelve feet in height. In between the tea rows, there are pine tree tops that were chopped down and left to rot and intermingled with this are vines and other brush. Dane and the older children covered two treacherous miles of it, going up and down rows, a week ago in search of the first goat and never found a sign of her. Elijah said that in one of the rows he was walking up an incline covered with pine needles and he started to hear a bunch of crunching below him. He suddenly crashed through a pile of brush that had been hidden by the pine litter only to find Sarah, who had fallen into the same trap in the adjacent row, at the bottom of it. He said, "I fell through and Sarah was in there!" We are sure that the goats are in there, but we have not seen or heard them since they entered. They have plenty to eat and drink and are at little risk of being taken by predators, so I guess we will be searching for them from now on every time we go down there.

In the search for goats we found lots of berries. These berries are all over the place in clearings around the forest. They aren't very sweet, but we still enjoy snacking on them when we find them.

This is a picture of a giant spider web along the trail to the spring. It is hard to tell from the picture just how big it is, but it spans nearly a four foot by four foot area. I haven't seen the spider that lives there, but judging from the size of the web, it might be a big one.

Dane continued to work on the exterior walls of the house this week. It looks very nice.

Our chicks are growing and are doing very well. Our other chickens have started laying again too! We are very excited about that.

Dane just got back from moving the three bee boxes from the neighbors property to Jim's property. He said it all went well and he feels a lot more comfortable working with the bees now.

Also, I forgot to mention in the last post that we finished taking all of our corn off the cob and bagging it to feed the animals in the future. We ended up with about 150 pounds of corn from our small corn field. Not a lot, but it gives us an idea how much we need to plant the next time. We are also using the husks in our wood burning stove as a source of fuel. They burn very well.