Odds & sods

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

As I look back over April, I feel like it was a full, good month for us. Seeing the eclipse at the farm was a super cool experience. We also had our first patio dinner of the year, five family birthdays, some progress in the gardens, some progress on the coop, a little project in the house, an Earth Day double tree planting, and watched (virtually) my sister run the Boston Marathon.

Oh, and I also wrapped up my first year teaching. Teaching has been a great experience, and I’m looking forward to going back in the fall. But for now, I’m savouring a bit of time off before Ellie finishes school and we’re fully into summer.

As long time readers know, I often gauge the progress of spring by when (and whether) our forsythia blooms. This year, the forsythia was loaded with blooms by mid-April. This is in line with last year, but still later than our first year at the farm when it bloomed by April 2. I’m attributing the blossoms to the mild winter, as I assume temperatures weren’t cold enough to kill the flowers. The timing I’ll attribute to spring, which has been a bit cool so far. The handsomes I’ll attribute to Cigo.

Here are some more links from April.

The perils and puzzle of income taxes

I managed to sew this sweater while it’s still cold enough to wear it (I had hoped it would be ready for Christmas… then Valentine’s Day. It turned out spring was the deadline.)

April is our first 100+ hour month for the 1,000 Hours Outside.

Lessons in Chemistry… and patriarchy, cooking, parenting, rowing, love and life

Simple rain barrel idea

Eight ways to measure wealth – only one is money

“Life moves pretty fast. But it’s gonna be okay if you don’t move fast with it. Slow down. Stop and look around. Don’t miss it.”
Stephen Miller

I’m finishing off the month by reconnecting with a long-time friend and some more progress on the coop. I’m also going to kick off a big barn cleanout project that I am not excited about. Though it will be nice when it’s done.

What was the highlight of April for you? Did you watch the eclipse? Or the Boston Marathon? What projects are you working on at your house? What signs of spring do you watch for?

Not doing enough

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I’ve been trying to think of something philosophical and profound to say about Earth Day, but this year the words aren’t coming (so forgive what may be a disjointed post). This year, my world feels small. I don’t know how to save the world, so I focus on my own family and my own home. I want to say I’m doing what I can or doing my best, but I don’t feel like I am.

Living on a farm brings me closer to the environment and I’m learning more about how much potential this land has to help. We have our wetlands, grasslands and forests, but what should we be doing with them to make them healthier?

The need is urgent. Our potential to help, given this property, is larger than many people. I want to regenerate our land, diversify our grasses, rebuild our soil, dig out invasive species, plant native species, grow our own food. Though I think about tackling one field or one stand of trees or one section of phragmites along the creek or the pond, I don’t.

Not doing enough.

So I think even smaller. I should be eating locally grown produce, free range eggs, pasture-raised chickens, grass fed meat. The farmers are all around us, and they need support. We should be zero waste, palm oil free, off-grid. But we’re not.

Not doing enough.

Yes, we recycle, compost, reuse, try not to buy too many things, thrift when we need things, have geothermal and solar panels, vote for (hopefully) progressive politicians. But none of it feels like enough given the scale of the disaster we are in.

But I keep trying.

Sometimes, my not enough looks like picking up a battery charger someone dumped at the side of the hiking trail and carry it out of the woods.

Not doing enough. But doing something.

Consolidating kid’s craft supplies

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It was the scissors that did it. They tipped the balance from crowded into chaos. To be fair, it’s a whole carousel of scissors. And the living room has been maxed out for a while.

The journey to move Ellie’s play zone out of the living room and into her old bedroom has begun. While I had a vision of it being a one and done undertaking, I’ve come to terms with this being a more gradual process.

We started with the crafts.

Ellie is a prolific and varied crafter. Paper, fabric, stickers, glue, beads, wool, she loves it all. We’ve managed the crafting process and supplies with a small table in the corner of the living room and storage in the coffee table and sideboard. For a while it’s been a tight squeeze.

Then Matt’s aunt arrived for Easter lunch with an assortment of provisions, including a carousel of scissors (she knows what our girl likes). This, just weeks after Ellie’s birthday where she received rolls of colouring sheets, cases of beads, and sacks of needle felting, meant we were overrun with craft stuff.

I had the idea to shuffle some things around. As I said in my home goals post at the start of this year, this shuffle becomes like a row of dominoes. I reorganized and relocated some of Matt’s things. That freed up a cabinet and a bookshelf in the basement. More of Matt’s things moved into the cabinet and the bookshelf came upstairs.

After a quick coat of paint, the bookshelf moved into the playroom and became craft supply central. The first item to move in? The carousel of scissors.

While we were stocking the bookshelf, we made a few other changes to the room. (Though we obviously did not clean the mirror.)

Her little table and chairs moved from the living room to the new (soon-to-be) playroom. I also used my knock-off DIY Eames hang-it-all to arrange a little dress-up area for her with all of her costumes and a bin for accessories such as hats, crowns, scarves, Minnie Mouse hands, or an inflated pink dolphin wearing a fluourescent green legwarmer (???).

This is just the start (and it’s definitely not Pinterest-perfect), but now Ellie has most of her craft supplies in one spot, clearly visible and easily accessible.

Anyone else have a crafty house? How do you handle craft supplies? Who else feels like home tweaks are like dominoes?

Cooling down the bathroom

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

A couple of weeks ago, I broke down and arranged for a plumbing repair… before our bathroom had a break down.

As I’ve written several times before, our main bathroom is in rough shape. For the last year, the tub’s cold water tap has been barely functional.

I’ve cooled Ellie’s bath with jugs of cold water carried from the kitchen. I’ve showered downstairs when I couldn’t adjust the temperature beyond scalding. Usually I resorted to turning the tap on and off with a screwdriver.

I hate the idea of fixing the bathroom when I’m going to renovate it (hopefully, relatively) soon. But the renovation is probably still a year away, and I was concerned the cold water tap wasn’t going to make it.

So I called the plumber.

Fortunately, he’s a plumber who worked with my Dad, and he (a) understood I was looking for a band aid solution not a fix, and (b) he’s a big believer in the friend and family discount.

He arrived with an assortment of parts to see what would work, gave us a new cartridge and a makeshift handle, and ended by saying, “How about you give me $40.” (I gave him $80 happily.)

It’s not pretty, but showers and baths are much more comfortable now, and our bathroom will limp along a little longer.

Anyone else have a makeshift solution at your house? What’s your fix versus renovate philosophy?

Firewood restock

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Our fieldstone fireplace is a huge feature in our home. Often through the winter, I would set up in the living room for the day and work in front of the fire. Ellie has come to love the fire as much as me. If it wasn’t going when she came home from school, she would usually want to start one (and she’s become very good at lighting it herself–with supervision).

(Flashback to fluffy baby hair. She still loves to line her toys up on the hearth.)

Our fireplace is just for atmosphere. It puts out a bit of warmth, but our geothermal heats the house. We usually only have fires in the winter. Fire season for me is November to Easter.

This year we didn’t quite make it to Easter because we ran out of wood. I didn’t think this would ever happen. Before we redid the fireplace we had a huge stockpile of firewood (starting just one month into owning the farm and added to again and again).

Moving the wood pile so we could build the garage took two days. Restacking it was also a big job. I think that made me cautious about adding to the woodpile, so I haven’t for the last few years. Matt’s Dad would come out, cut trees, ask if I wanted any wood, and I always said we had enough.

Well, we could have used one extra trailer load this spring.

As of a few weeks ago, we had a small pile of apple wood too fresh to burn and a bunch of punky logs. So this year’s fire season ended for us.

Now we are onto rebuild-the-woodpile season. Matt’s Dad came out last weekend to start spring clean up–trees always come down over the winter, and I want to clear them out of the fields before the grass starts to grow. The first trailer load stayed at the farm. The second went to his house.

When Matt’s Dad came for Easter lunch, he brought his splitter with him and he chopped all of our new firewood with an assist from my nephew. Isn’t he a great person to have around?

(In my journey through the archives as I was writing this post it appears that previous Easters have also been about firewood.)

We’ll need to do this a few more times–I estimate we’ll need three or four more trailer loads to get to my ideal state of three rows–but tree maintenance on the farm is ongoing. We’re on our way to a new fire season later this fall.