Front porch dreaming

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

One of the things I most want to add to our house is a front porch. I think a porch is essential on a farmhouse.

Plus, I dream of watching summer storms roll across the fields, starting my day with breakfast outdoors and ending my day relaxing in a rocking chair.

Until that day comes, I’ll continue dreaming, imagining and planning. I recently wrote about how to create a functional and stylish front porch on homify.

Do you have a porch? Want a porch? What makes the perfect summer porch for you?

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How to build a raspberry trellis

Posted on July 27, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Raspberries are a pretty easy crop to grow in my opinion. Last year I transplanted a whole bunch of raspberry canes from my parents’ garden to ours. The canes have grown and spread like crazy.

This year, the object of the game is to contain the canes–a little bit. Raspberry canes don’t bear fruit until their second year, so the first year is all about letting the canes grow… and grow… and grow.

The taller the canes grow, the more likely they are to fall over. A trellis can help to keep them upright and also keep the row a manageable width.

Here’s how Matt and I made the trellis for our berries.

We started with metal T-posts. We happened to have a large quantity courtesy of past owners–free materials, yay! And I liked that the metal won’t rot like wood.

The posts were about 7 feet long. Matt hammered them into the ground leaving about 5 feet sticking up. We used six posts, three on each side, for our rows, which are about 18 feet long. The width of the rows is 2 feet.

Then I strung wire through the holes on the T-posts. There are three rows of wires, each about 16 inches apart.

At the final corner I doubled the wires back and twisted them around themselves.

The raspberries grow between the wires staying nice and straight. About once a week, I walk along the row and make sure all of the growing canes are tucked inside the wires.

Any canes that sprout outside the row can be transplanted to inside the boundaries.

So far, we’ve had just a handful of berries, as we only started our canes last year. Our plants, though, have become thick and lush. With our trellis in place, we’re set to have a great crop of raspberries next year.

Have you picked any raspberries this year? Do you grow raspberries? Have you ever built a raspberry trellis?

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Beating the heat

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I don’t know what the weather’s like where you are, but here in Southern Ontario we are having a serious heatwave.

So what do you do if it’s mid-July and the forecast is showing hot and sunny all weekend? For many Ontarians, the answer is head to cottage country where you can be by a lake. In fact, that’s just what my husband did.

However, if you’re me, the answer is, “Why don’t you go by yourself? I’ll stay here and tape the drywall.”

What?

Yeah. I dunno what’s wrong with me.

Thanks to our basement waterproofing (I promise I’ll share more details on this project), we have some drywall to repair. We also are building an extra closet in our laundry room, so we decided to do all the drywall at the same time.

We spent last week on framing, insulating and drywalling. Matt and I hung the last few sheets on Friday before he left. We’re a little rusty at drywall. Measurements were off and gaps between sheets were large. Fortunately, paste covers a lot.

By the time Matt got home, I had finished the first two coats, and things were looking much better.

Plus, the basement was cool. Not quite lakeside, but not an altogether terrible way to spend a weekend.

What did you get up to this weekend? Do you like the summer heat? I love it, honestly, and would have been quite happy to spend my weekend outside versus in the air conditioning. Would anyone else have prioritized drywall over a weekend away? Did you see the temperatures from Basra? I think that’s a little hot even for me.

The benefit of neglect

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I haven’t shared much about the flower gardens this year. Mostly because I’ve done nothing in the flower gardens.

In life we have to make choices. And my choice this year has been to focus on the vegetable garden. That means I haven’t done anything in the flower gardens… at all.

Most of the gardens have filled in enough that they still look somewhat presentable, but here and there are weeds that are taller than me.

I try not to pay too much attention and remind myself that there are only so many hours in a day and I’ve made my choice about where to spend my energy.

However, this week I received another reminder: sometimes leaving things alone isn’t such a bad plan.

Look at this mini sunflower. There are two of these volunteers courtesy of the birdfeeder.

Had I been weeding this year, I would have pulled these out long ago. I never would have seen their sunny blooms.

Sometimes neglect isn’t such a bad thing.

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Summer progress in Illinois

Posted on July 20, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Sarah is back today with more news from Illinois. Like me, she has a long summer to-do list, and she’s made some good progress recently.

Things have been pretty busy around here.

This past weekend Steve and I spent over 4 hours trying to get the garden back in shape. Weeds had really gotten ahead of us.

It’s crazy how a good rain and warm sunny weather for a couple days can turn weeds from “manageable” to “out of control,” because that is exactly what happened. But we do now have a handle on things, and I need to work on it every day, even for just a few minutes, so that we stay on top of things.

The rain and sun has been great for the kale though. I have added it to my salads, and I have made some kale chips. But truthfully I really needed to find a way to use more of it and quickly.

I was listening to Young House Love’s podcast, and John mentioned that he blends his kale with just a little bit of water and freezes it in ice cube trays. Then he uses a cube or two to drop in his smoothies. Wow! That was such a simple idea and I had never thought of that or read that idea anywhere. So I cut a bunch of kale, rinsed it and did exactly what John suggested.

I used a lot of my kale. It only took a few minutes and now I can add it easily to my breakfast.

I will have more to harvest. This is AFTER I made my kale cubes.

The other thing that we worked on over the weekend was the chicken coop.

We had just been using wood that we had laying around, but we got to a point where we had to make a run to the home improvement store and get more supplies.

We are basically making a small room inside one of our barns. The exterior wall and the roof will be insulated.

I am still kind of designing and redesigning things as we go, but I have a pretty good plan in mind. I am hoping we will be ready for chickens by the end of this upcoming weekend.

This summer seems to be flying by so quickly. We have gotten so much done, but I feel like I have so much more that I really want to get finished.

I don’t want another month to go by without checking so much more off of my to-do list!

Oh, I know what you mean, Sarah. Summer is the time to get things done. I’m glad I’m not the only one with an ambitious to-do list. You’re doing a really great job, though! I can’t wait to see the rest of the coop–and its occupants.

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Dry fields hoping for rain

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Last week our farmer harvested our fields. It’s been an incredibly dry season. As the tractor rolled across the fields dust plumed behind the wheels.

The fields had been planted with oats. Our farmer was not happy with them, but it looked like he got a good quantity of bales.

He was hoping desperately for rain in the next couple of days. Underneath the oats, he had also planted hay. We needed rain or else we were going to lose all of his seeds.

On Wednesday night, just a few hours after the harvest, the skies opened up. We had rain off and on for two days.

Hopefully that means good things for his seeds.

It would be nice to have another harvest yet this year.

What’s the weather been like in your area?

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Snapshot

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Finally finally yesterday we got some rain.

So needed by the garden and the fields beyond it.

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Gotcha Day 3

Posted on July 13, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Last week marked three years since Baxter came to live with us.

Inspired by Tracey at Oh Melvin and Yo Jake, I have a tradition of writing a letter to Baxter on the anniversary of his gotcha day. Now that I’m writing for ThatMutt.com, I decided to share my letter there this year.

I invite you to visit ThatMutt.com to share in the love.

Want to look back at how we got here? Here are my letters from year 1 and year 2 and Baxter’s adoption story.

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Our new summer project

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Last week I mentioned that we’ve added a new summer project to our to-do list. Unfortunately this project is driven by a problem. You got a bit of a glimpse of the problem in this photo that I shared on Friday.

This is the drywall in the long room in the basement. And in case there’s any confusion, it’s not supposed to look like this.

We’ve had water issues off and on ever since we finished the basement. This spring was the worst.

In the unfinished space just beside the long room, this was the scene. Water seeping in at the joint where the foundation wall met the concrete slab.

We surmise that this happened along the whole wall, including in the finished area. The baseboard swelled and stained. The carpet was damp. And behind the baseboard mold grew.

We had some water-proofing contractors come in a few weeks ago and give us quotes to fix the problem. Work starts today. So our formerly finished long room now looks like this. And it’s about to get worse.

With the drywall removed the studs don’t look too bad. Yes there’s mold, but it doesn’t go too high on the wall, and the wood isn’t rotted at all. Even so, I’m not sure much of this will be salvaged, as our contractors are doing the waterproofing from the inside.

The other area of focus outside of the long room is the cold cellar. The cold cellar is an addition, and when it was added, the concrete floor was poured just up to the old footings. In the spring or even on rainy days, the whole perimeter of the cold cellar leaks.

This area isn’t as worrisome, as it’s unfinished, but nonetheless we’d rather not have water in the house at all.

Our contractor is also going to redo our sump pump pit and put in a two new pumps–one on a battery back-up. During a power outage in one big storm this spring, Matt bailed the sump pit for four hours. We’d prefer not to repeat this situation… or worry about the power going out if we’re not home.

Waterproofing is one of those projects that I’m not super excited about. Cutting into our drywall was a bit heartbreaking after all of the work we put into finishing the basement in the first place. Plus it’s a lot of money just to get us back to where we were when we first finished the basement.

However, it’s a very important project. Knowing that this is our forever home, we want this problem solved.

Have you ever waterproofed your basement? Do you have any water leaks?

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