Taste is more than skin deep

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Our beautiful spring blossoms have become slightly gnarly apples.

Nothing personal, but they’re just not that pretty

The tree appears to be pretty ancient and wild, so I didn’t have high hopes for its fruit. Especially when they turned out all lumpy and dimpled.

However, being the selfless individual that I am, I did pick one for a taste test to satisfy your curiosity.

First bite of my gnarly apple fresh off the tree

Surprisingly, it was really good. Nice and crisp and sweet. The dimples were just dimples and despite the apple’s appearance the taste did not suffer.

The expression on my face is not reflective of the taste of the apple. I think I was still giving photography instructions to Matt at this point. I’m starting to realize why there aren’t more photos of me on this blog. And yes, I did cut my hair, and yes, I am looking exhausted. I think this drywall blitz is starting to wear me out.

Has anyone else gone apple picking yet this fall? What’s your favourite kind?

Morning at the pond

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Over just the last 24 hours, there’s been a change in the air. It feels like the cool fall weather has arrived.

Before I officially move on from summer, though, I want to share some photos from a warm sunny morning a few weeks ago.

Down by the pond

I’ve said before that the pond is one of my favourite spots on the property.

Early morning as the sun is coming up is one of my favourite times on the property.

On this particular Saturday, I had both the pond and the early morning as I began my Saturday outside with the camera. I couldn’t resist these pretty pink flowers on the shore.

Anyone know what these flowers might be?

As we head into fall, I’m already noticing that the foliage is fading and the leaves are becoming sparser around the farm. I now have a better view of the pond from the house, although I can’t see any pink flowers from here.

Is anyone else out there feeling the change in the air? What signs of fall are you seeing? Are you looking forward to fall?

Aliens have landed in the back field

Posted on September 16, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

As you can likely appreciate, it’s pretty dark at the farm once the sun goes down. There’s no glow of city lights. The closest street light is about a kilometre away. The stars and the moon are our only light.

So imagine Matt and me arriving home very late one night last week. It’s a moonless night, so it’s pitch black outside. We can see the glow of the cats’ eyes in the headlights… and some very bright lights circling the back field. We’re a wee bit startled.

It turned out that it wasn’t aliens who had flown over the fence and it wasn’t hooligans who had somehow broken in past our newly installed gate. It was our farmer finishing our second hay harvest of the year.

The finished bales are loaded onto the trailer.

For those wondering how he got past the gate, our fields are gated separately and can be accessed from the road.

Owning a farm but not actually farming the land ourselves creates an interesting dynamic. It’s our land, but we don’t manage it ourselves, so sometimes we’re surprised by what happens when we’re not there.

We weren’t sure whether we were going to have a second cut this year because the summer was so dry and the hay was looking very scraggly to my untrained eye. However, apparently there was enough for a harvest because when I came home from work one evening last week I found all of the fields had been mowed.

A couple of days later all of the hay was baled, and by nightfall it was loaded up and trucked away.

So no alien sightings on the farm. At least not yet. We are however keeping our eyes open for crop circles in our freshly mowed fields.

Help! I have hod claw

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Matt and I put on a push this week in the basement in an attempt to pick up the pace on the pasting. (I love alliteration, but that’s a lot of ‘p’s even for me). We’ve made a lot of progress, but a side effect of all of this productivity (I just can’t stop!) is that we are both suffering from hod claw.

hod·claw

noun

an uncomfortable contraction of the hand, typically occurring after holding a hod for an extended time

For those that haven’t had the pleasure, a hod is basically a big tray that holds the drywall paste (also known as mud or compound) while you’re working.

After a full evening of working in the basement, uncurling our fingers from our hods is harder than you’d think.

Matt holding the hod

It’s not that we love drywall and don’t want to stop. The issue is that our hands have seized around the handle of the hod and returning them to their regular dexterity requires much flexing and massaging.

When it comes to drywall, there are a variety of tools people choose to hold their paste. Some work directly from a bucket. Others use a mudpan. I grew up using a hod, so that’s what we use now.

Once I cross the three hour mark of pasting, I don’t think it matters what’s holding my paste. At that point, my hands have cramped. As long as I keep working, I don’t feel it too much. As soon as I set the hod down, though, that’s when I realize how tired my hands are.

Matt in action

Fortunately, by the next morning, I’ve usually regained most of my range of motion.

Even more fortunately, thanks to our concentrated efforts this week, we’re nearing the end on this pasting odyssey and will soon be setting down our hods. Hopefully, our hands recover from their case of hod claw shortly thereafter.

Any other DIYers out there who use a hod for drywalling? Have you ever been afflicted with hod claw? Or do you have your own unique DIY injuries?

I’m missing my front-end loader gene

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

You know when you see those large machines working away, effortlessly moving large piles of dirt, easily scooping massive rocks, bopping along over the roughest terrain? I’ve discovered there’s a lot of skill that goes into this mechanical ballet.

Skills I apparently don’t have.

Wiley’s been getting a workout over the last little while, cutting, hauling, scooping and carrying. He’s a great partner when it comes to managing the property. Me, however? I’m not such a good teammate.

My specific issue is with the front-end loader.

I just do not find the front-end loader intuitive.

I raise when I want to scoop, I dump when I want to raise. It’s all kinds of awkward.

Please ignore the long grass and the basketball net. Landscaping is next year’s project.

The front end loader is controlled by a joystick. Move it up to raise the bucket, down to lower the bucket. Move it to the left and the bucket curls up. Move it right and the bucket tips to dump.

Maybe it’s because I never played video games growing up, but I just can’t master the joystick. I’m forever moving it the wrong way and end up digging the blade into the ground or prematurely dumping my bucket.

We finally got the new waterline trenched into the driveshed last week, and I decided to backfill the trench. While the job did go quicker with Wiley than it would have with a shovel, I was not efficient by any means. Poor Wiley must have been so confused. “Why is she dumping the dirt here when the hole is over there?”

Yeah. It wasn’t pretty.

Every so often I’d hop off the tractor and grab the shovel or the rake to deal with a random pile by hand.

Matt, Mr. I-love-video-games, has no such issues with the loader. Allow him to demonstrate.

This is how you position the bucket to carry a load. This one happens to be one of the many piles of rocks that exist around the property.

This is how you dump a load out of the bucket.

So is my lack of front-end loader ability an actual genetic deficiency? Or do you think front-end loader manipulation can be learned? Should I hook up Matt’s old Jump Man game for some joystick practice?

Degree of dustiness

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

If you zoomed out on Friday’s photo, you would have seen something like this.

Matt and me after sanding drywall

No, we did not have a baking accident and we’re not 18th century aficionados who powder our hair and faces.

We’re renovators and these days drywall is on the top of the to do list. Actually, it’s probably more the “please can we just get this done already” list, but I’m trying not to sound too desperate.

The photo that I posted on Friday was a thick layer of drywall dust coating Matt’s arm. Even though I teased her at the time, Catherine was actually pretty close with her first guess on last week’s post of “really dry skin.”

Skin and arm hair with a heavy dusting of drywall. Yum.

The sanding stage of drywall installation is usually the time I start to reconsider my affection for DIY renovations.

This is a lot of work, and sanding drywall is really not fun work.

Pretty much every single surface in the basement has new drywall or at least a patch of some kind. That means I’m sanding more than I’ve ever sanded in my life. My arm muscles are toned like they’ve never been before, but my nails and fingertips are rubbed off in some places. Ow. And I’m sure the amount of dust that has entered my body through my nose, eyes and mouth can’t be healthy.
We’re not pros, so we’re slow. Therefore, the drywall and sanding stage take a long time.
Even though we’re only working in the basement right now, dust is everywhere. Good news, you can slide around easily on the floors upstairs which makes getting around quick. Bad news, don’t set your black clothes down anywhere, or else you’ll have to choose a new outfit.
We’re not pros, so there tend to be a few more bumps and ridges that we have to sand out… meaning more time, more sore muscles, more dust.

Matt uses the pole sander, but I have never been able to master it. I also feel like I get a better finish by hand. So that means I get up close and personal with every single square centimetre of drywall.

It’s a good look, wouldn’t you say?

The good news is that the basement is looking really good. We’re at the third (and final) coat of paste pretty much everywhere, and a few spots need only touch-ups.

If we can keep up the momentum, I’m anticipating being covered in paint spatters instead of drywall dust in just a few weeks.

That will be a nice change of style. I’m ready for a makeover.

Guess what

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Our Friday guessing game returns.

What do you think this is?

Tune in Monday when everything will be revealed. Mwa-ha-ha-ha.

I live in a gated community

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

It’s a very exclusive enclave we have here in the country.

Population: 2 (plus 1 cat and 1 kitten)

With our new gate in place at the bottom of the driveway, farm living has become quite chi-chi.

Open sesame

Actually, setting aside my new pretensions, we installed the gate for security. We’re far enough from civilization that neighbours or police really wouldn’t be much help to us in the event of a break in. If we’re home we can keep an eye on things, but when we’re not the gate may just be enough of a deterrent to people who are thinking about trespassing.

I’ll admit that I was initially pretty resistant to having a gate. I don’t like the way they look, and I didn’t want the inconvenience of opening and closing it when I was coming and going.

However, I actually like the way our gate ended up looking. It’s still a bit of a pain to stop, open the gate, drive through, park and close the gate when you’re leaving or arriving, but it’s a small price to pay for feeling secure about our house.

It’s a simple set up: just a chain and a padlock

If you want in, you have to have the key

My Dad and Matt made some metal hooks to support the gate when it’s closed and when it’s propped open.

The hook supports the gate to ease the weight on the hinges and also secures the gate in place.

We do like having visitors at the farm–at least from people we know. So if you’re planning on dropping by, let us know, and we’ll open the gate for you!

Welcome to the farm

Anyone out there live in an actual gated community? How do you deal with security at your house?

See my earlier post for the story of setting the posts for the gate.

Six month review

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Some days, it seems like we’ve always been here at the farm. Others, it still seems unreal that all of this is ours. However, it is true that this is our new life. In fact, Sunday was our 6-month anniversary of farm ownership.

Looking over the hayfield towards the barn

My backyard

I thought it might be interesting to look back and see what we’ve accomplished so far:

Energy Audit, both the initial inspection and the post-retrofit review
Install new geothermal heating/cooling/hot water system
Have all of the ducts cleaned
Drill a new well and install completely new pumping and treatment systems
Buy and install new washer, dryer, dishwasher, fridge. We were also given a new-to-us stove, so all of the appliances have now been replaced.
Upgrade the insulation in the attic
Remove woodstove from the basement
Brick up two old windows and woodstove chimney hole in basement
Reframe all of the exterior walls in the basement
Rewire the basement and do minor electrical upgrades upstairs in the house like a new exhaust fan in the bathroom and a dimmer switch in the bedroom
Reinsulate the basement with spray foam
Install new drywall throughout the basement (pasting still in progress)
Reframe and replumb basement bathroom and install new toilet in upstairs bathroom
Choose tile for basement bathroom (we’ve taken delivery and just need to get moving on installation)
Paint basement bathroom
Reroof the house… I feel like this point should somehow be bigger to show the magnitude of this job
Recover the chair seats of our newly refinished dining room set
Cut down a huge tree that had a split in it and was dangerously close to the house (and cut and split all the wood)
Find homes for three kittens, adopt one kitten ourselves… oh, and have Ralph spayed
Get internet service
Get telephone service
Get satellite TV
Remove the old TV aerial
Make numerous repairs to the barn, including adding a door where there was just a door-sized hole, relocating another door, rehanging a third large sliding door, installing locks, fixing the broken staircase, installing lighting and plugs on the main floor, cleaning out many, many piles of garbage, scrap wood and bales and bales of loose straw
Rehang the driveshed door so that it will now close
Buy a tractor
Install a gate on the driveway
Sell the paddocks fencing, gates and run-in shelters (removal still in progress)
Watch our first hay harvest
Trench new waterline to the driveshed
Clean out and clean up the house and property
Move in (we’re waiting to finish the basement before we completely unpack)

We’ve had a lot of help over the past six months mainly from my Dad and Matt’s Dad. We also hired professional help for several of the jobs listed above, so it has not all been DIY.

It’s been a lot of work and at times I’ve been frustrated that we don’t seem to be accomplishing more. The to-do list is still very long, even if I just look at what we want to complete over the next six months. Looking back at what we’ve accomplished makes me realize that we have done a lot over the last half-year.

In the review that I posted when we were two weeks into farm ownership, I wrote:

This is definitely where I want to be. I feel very privileged that we were able to make this happen and that we’ve found the property for us. It’s very special. Tiring and a lot of work, but still special.

This statement still completely reflects my state of mind. We are so happy to be here, working together to build our forever house.

Signs of September

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

On Friday I got all sentimental… and metaphorical and poetical… about the sun setting on another summer. I realize officially we have a few weeks left, but here we are the start of September (already!) and things are starting to feel a bit different.