Who’s driving this blog?

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

When I first boarded the blogging bandwagon last March, I told myself I’d give it a year and see where I ended up. Well, it’s been a year. Earlier this week I posted some of the highlights from the journey.

Now the question is where to next?

Some of the goals on my year two road map are fairly simple:

Add some new sections to my homepage to set the tone for the blog and feature some favourite posts.
Make sure my About page gives a clear picture of who I am and what the blog is all about.
Add some additional pages, such as a house tour, a before and after gallery or a project catalogue.
Make more connections with other bloggers and readers.

Some of my other ideas are more hypothetical possibilities at this point rather than defined destinations. I may detour from these over the year:

Add some extra functionality to my template–maybe even find a new template or hire someone to make a custom design.
Set up the blog at my own url.
Buy a better camera and improve my photography skills.
Consider participating in a conference or blogging event, such as BlogPodium or Alt, to learn some new skills and also make some connections.
Attract more readers–I think 100 views per day over the next year is an achievable goal.

Excuse me, do you have any friends?

The biggest thing I’d like to do over the next year is decide where I want to go with this blog over the longer haul. I blog for myself and for all of you reading out there. However, I am also trying to approach this professionally, with a regular posting schedule and thoughtful posts that will be helpful and interesting to readers. So I feel like I need to figure out what’s my destination with the blog?

Do I want to sell advertising and make money? Extra income sounds good to me, and right now I think I’d be open to it. However, I’m cautious about how this might change my tone and my overall approach to blogging.
Do I want to take on some side work as a freelance writer? Exploring possible new career paths and considering some independent work is intriguing to me.
Do I want to want to work with sponsors? Seeing bloggers whose renovations are sponsored is obviously appealing. If there’s a company out there that is interested in building an attached garage, converting an indoor pool into a useable room, adding on a front porch, doing some major landscaping, or helping with any of the other projects on my wish list, I’m up for partnering… I think.

Who knows where this blog will end up? Right now, all I can say is I’m open to the bends in the road ahead, and I hope over the next year I can define some directions for myself.

I’d also really like to hear from you. I’m not going to do a reader survey… yet… but I’d love to hear your thoughts. What’s working and what’s not working for you on the blog? What would you like to see in terms of the design and functionality? What are your favourite topics to read about? Are there any topics you wish I wouldn’t write about anymore? From other bloggers out there, how have you attracted more readers? What are some of your goals? Please leave a comment or feel free to email me with your feedback at homeon129acres@hotmail.com.

Thanks everyone for coming along for the ride so far.

Blog-iversary

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Along with it being the one year anniversary of the farm this week, it’s also the one year anniversary of this blog. Today, I’m taking a look back at some of the highlights of my first year as a blogger–and, yes, after a year I am calling myself a blogger.

Here are some of my favourite things that have happened this first year:

Having the bridesmaid dress I sewed along with a link to my blog featured in Vogue Patterns magazine
Talking to the Toronto Star about our experience paying off the mortgage on our first house
Being nominated for One Lovely Blogger Award by Julie at Outtakes on the Outskirts
Seeing my blog listed in another blogger’s blogroll
Experiencing the support and input from the blogging community–Dyson dilemma, where I asked people what vacuum we should buy, got the most comments of any of the posts I published this year
The friendships and connections I’ve made over the past year with people I’ve never met, but who share some of the same interests — Diane, Lyndsay, Mathew and Carly to name a few

In the first year, I published 171 posts and uploaded 652 pictures. At the start, I was posting four times a week, but now I’ve moved to three times a week. I like having a regular schedule for posting, and I find it pretty manageable to think of and write three posts a week

The blog had 16,815 views in the first year. It averaged 44 views per day in 2012. So far in 2013, the average is 57.

The busiest day of the year was July 23 when I had 543 views in one day. This was the day I published Change of pace, the post about the bridesmaid dress I sewed for my sister’s wedding.

Surprisingly, for a blog that’s supposed to be about home renovation and country living, this sewing post was my most popular for the first year.

Here are the posts that make up the top five from the first year and the number of views they had:

Change of pace – 828
The reveal… aka how to strip wallpaper – 363
How to install a pot light – 223
Free furry friends for you – 157
Umbrella-ella-ella, the country version – 114

This list shows some of the different ways people find the blog. Most of the traffic on Change of pace came from Pattern Review, a very active online sewing community where I shared the dress. This post continues to get a few hits every day and got a little boost in the fall when the Vogue Patterns article was published. The second and third top posts are how-tos, which turned out to be popular for online searches. The fourth most popular post was our free kitten promotion, which Matt and I sent to pretty much everyone we knew. Number five, which I posted only last week, was my Pinterest Challenge entry, which got a lot of traffic through Young House Love.

The other posts that round out the top 10 illustrate the interconnectedness of the blogging communities. The Pinterest Challenge is an obvious one, but other top posts got a lot of traffic simply through comments on other blogs.

The posts that have been the most popular have been a bit surprising to me. I expected my geothermal series to be more popular than it was. I’ve now realized that geothermal is a project undertaken by a smaller number of people, whereas lots of people want to install potlights and strip wallpaper.

Probably the biggest surprise from the first year has been all of the different places visitors have come from–94 countries in all.

Here are the top 10 countries and the number of visitors from each:

Canada – 8,870
United States – 5,951
United Kingdom – 390
Australia – 241
Switzerland – 156 (hallo to Matt’s relatives!)
Germany – 120
India – 95
France – 54
New Zealand – 48
Philippines – 44

Search is of course a common way visitors make their way to the blog. The most frequent searches were for home on 129 acres (obvious), kioti cs2410 (our lovely tractor Wiley), pyjamas and snow boots outside (???), benjamin moore wrought iron (the paint colour I chose for the basement bathroom), wallpaper newspaper (I didn’t like it, but apparently a lot of people do), and carpeted stringers on stairs.

Most common searches are one thing. The best ones, though, are the ones that come through much less frequently:

tile saw spraying me in face — Yup. That’s how it goes.
why was well drilled by barn and not house — Who knows? I’d really like to understand that myself.
how long will dry wall dust stay in my nose/drywall dust in my mouth how do i clean/basement drywalling how to not get dust upstairs — Answers: a long time/spit, rinse & repeat/not possible, sorry, deal with it
we bought a farm now what — Good question. I’m working on figuring it out.

As we work on figuring out this farm living thing, the blog has been a great way to capture all of our adventures–both for myself and for all of you out there. To all of my visitors, thank you very much for reading. I like knowing you’re out there. Year one has been a lot of fun. Stay tuned. There’s more to come.

Year one theme: Go big

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

For me, our first year of farm ownership can be summed up in two words: big and more.

Everything we’ve done, every experience we’ve had has been bigger and more than I expected. It’s been amazing, frustrating, awful, exhausting, expensive, testing, uniting, surprising and wonderful–all to an extreme degree.

As this week is the one year anniversary of the farm becoming ours, I thought it would be a good time to look back at some of what we accomplished and a few of the lessons we learned over the first year. Click here for the two-week and six-month wrap-ups.

We started big, installing the new geothermal system the very first week. The excavation was bigger than if we’d been digging a foundation for a new house.

Upgrading one central system for the house was quickly followed by another, when we decided to redo the entire water system, including a new well.

Our original plan for the basement to patch the walls, move a couple of things around and redo the bathroom quickly grew to a full gut job that involved reframing, rewiring, reinsulating, redrywalling and recarpeting.

Eventually, we did get to painting, furnishing and decorating. We still need art and furniture in most of the basement, but the TV area is done. And it’s awesome. We spend every night here–if we’re not working on one of our other projects, of course.

So far, the basement has turned out even better than I envisioned.

The bathroom, which was the most disgusting room in the whole house when we moved in, is now one of the best thanks to new plumbing, marble tile, dramatic dark paint, extra storage, a shower bench and a big mirror. After breaking the concrete floor, running all new waterlines, marathon tiling and grouting sessions and, oh yeah, the snake, we ended up with a bright, clean, shiny, functional and modern space.

While the basement has been our longest project and most dramatic transformation, it wasn’t our most difficult. The hardest project was definitely the roof. Over five days in the middle of the summer with average temperatures around 30ºC, Matt reshingled our house. For him, this project is his proudest accomplishment for year one. For me, this project taught me my most memorable lesson: roofing is not a DIY job.

Away from the work and the projects, there’s been a few other big developments in our lives over the past year.

First, the property came with other occupants already living here: most notably, Ralph the barn cat. Sticking with our theme of everything being more than we expect, Ralph kept things interesting by turning out to be both female and pregnant.

Her four kittens were a fun addition to the farm for the spring.

Gratuitous kitten cuteness

Three went on to new homes in suburbia, but one, Easter, stayed on at the farm. Learning that I’m a cat person–as long as they stay outside–has been my most surprising lesson from year one.

Ralph and Easter pay a visit to the dining room window sill. This is Easter’s “meow–let me in!” face. Ralph knows better.

In addition to our feline family members, our family expanded with the addition of Wiley, our tractor. He’s been quite handy for the various jobs we’ve had to do, from mowing the grass to blowing the snow. Tractor maintenance and how to use the front end loader are lessons we’re still in the process of learning. Lesson from last weekend: a hairdryer can be used to get a tractor to start.

Outside, we’re still learning how to manage a large property. We’ve had the paddocks and run-in shelters removed from all of the fields, added a gate to the driveway, cut down a few trees, put in a flag pole and cleaned up the property a bit. We’ve eaten apples and raspberries from our own land, and watched two hay harvests. We’ve spent hours walking the fields, admiring the pond, hiking the woods and even managed to go tobaganning on our own hill and skating on our own pond.

When I imagined living on a farm, I envisioned lots of friends and family around, fun parties and big gatherings. This vision has absolutely come true, whether it’s the fun days we’ve spent with nephews, the relaxing nights we’ve had with friends, or big family parties we’ve had for Christmas, Easter and just because. Most rewarding of all, though, has been all of the help our friends and family have given us to make the farm ours over the past year.

We’re still in the process of putting our own stamp on the farm. We know there are more projects and more lessons to come.

Between rural living, a farm, a large property and DIY home renovations, we’ve chosen a somewhat unique lifestyle. And it’s exactly the life for us.

The first year has been more than I ever expected. I’m excited to see what comes next.