Party time

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I booked a Christmas party. Hosted by us. At the farm.

What’s with the tone?

Well, I’m a bit anxious.

Because, you see, the party is set for exactly one month before Christmas Eve. One month from today.

And my dining room currently looks like this.

Keeping it real, folks. The drawer for the china cabinet was damaged in the move and won’t slide into place until we fix it. The extra furniture tucked in the left corner, the boxes stacked on the right and ironing board that is just outside of the picture will all go into the basement…whenever we finish the reno.

My living room looks like this.

The couch is in the right spot, but the grocery bags and cleaning supplies in the foreground of the photograph are not.

Oh, and my kitchen looks like this.

Our “island” is a metal patio table over which I have thrown a plastic dollar store tablecloth. All of my small appliances and boxes of cookbooks are tucked underneath, as I have no other place for them yet. On the bright side, we have a spot for our stash of Hallowe’en candy.

You may now realize why I haven’t shown a lot of pictures of the inside of the house.

For the past seven months since we moved to the farm, we’ve been living in an increasing level of chaos. And it seems to be getting worse.

Books, boardgames, extra furniture, sports equipment and all of the other items that will someday be in the basement are still packed in boxes and stacked behind the couch between the dining room and the living room. As we buy new things or have to access our packed items, everything gets a little more disorganized (see exhibit A above).

You can see the tracks of our footprints in the drywall dust on the living room floor (see exhibit B above).

I emptied the front hall closet, so that I could fit it out with shelves and rods and racks to actually store things in a somewhat more orderly fashion. That means our ancient vacuum cleaner, shopping bags, hats and gloves are all piled in the corner of the living room (see exhibit C above).

The good news is that we are heading into the home stretch on our basement reno.

The better news is that after exhibits A, B and C were photographed, a couple of tents, an air mattress, a camp stove and assorted Christmas decorations made their way downstairs.

No need for colour, carpet or trim in the closet under the basement stairs. Two coats of prime do the job just fine. Some proper shelves would be nice though.

I’m hoping that by party time carpet will be the floors in the rest of the basement. We may not have baseboards or much furniture by then, but if we can at least put some more things downstairs, I’ll feel a little better about our living environment.

I like hosting parties, and I don’t worry too much about my house being perfect. However, I do have some standards. A basic level of organization and tidiness is required. The current state is not even close.

Here’s hoping a hard deadline makes things move a little faster.

Oh, and to Matt’s family… we’re really looking forward to hosting you next month! Really.

Anyone out there have any tips on how to get organized? Please tell me someone else has tiles stacked in the living room, an ironing board in the dining room, dust tracks on the floors, a makeshift kitchen island and tools sitting on pretty much every available surface? Or perhaps you’re already looking ahead to Christmas. Who’s also in party planning mode already? What makes a good party at your house?

The greatest dilemma of all time

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

The title of this post may be a little over dramatic. I am not the first to face this conundrum or to wrestle with this question. However, the angst, the uncertainty, the pressure of this choice is well known by many.

What paint colour do I choose?

With the conclusion of the drywall phase of the basement, we progress to the painting stage. We (optimistically, as it turned out) bought primer months ago, so last week Matt and I started priming the basement.

Matt priming the long room with the roller

Matt rolls on the primer in the long room

You would think with 5 1/2 months of drywalling (still can’t get over how long it took us), 7 1/2 months of farm ownership, and 9 1/2 months of knowing we were going to be painting the basement, I’d have figured this out by now. But I haven’t.

Most of the time in this project, I was planning on going grey. However, we’re planning on buying a charcoal grey sectional and the carpet will likely have grey tones in it. Painting the walls grey too was starting to seem like a lot. So over the last little while, I started thinking about other options.

The criteria for the colour are

Light – I want the basement to be fairly bright, but, with only one window, pale paint is my best bet.
Neutral – I really don’t want to repaint any time soon, but I may want to redecorate every so often. A neutral colour gives me the option to switch up the other colours in the basement when the mood hits.
Works for the whole area – We have a fairly large basement, and the main room, long room, laundry room, stairwell and hallway are all going to painted the same colour (click here if you need a floor plan refresher).

I ended up buying samples of six different colours. Originally, I bought four, but then I didn’t like any of them, so I went back and bought two more.

Clockwise from top left: Cloud White, Distant Gray, Misty Gray, Mayonnaise, Linen White, White Dove. (All colours from Benjamin Moore).

This is my first time sampling colours on the actual wall. Usually I just trust my gut and go with a paint chip that I think will work. However, this is also my first time painting my forever house (bathroom aside), so I feel like it matters more that I get this right.

So, in addition to sampling the colours, I am appealing to you for help. What do you think?

Have a favourite colour that’s not covered in my samples? Let me know in the comments what you recommend.

Stick a trowel in me…

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

… I’m done.

We are calling it on the drywall phase of the basement reno. Five and a half months–in case the text version wasn’t clear, let me translate that into numerals 5 1/2 (or 5.5 for you digitally minded folks) months–after we started drywalling the basement, we are finally finished.

Oh the glamourous life of DIYers.

Lest there’s any additional lack of clarity, the basement reno itself is not finished. Only the drywall stage is done.

Some other things that are done:

Bandaging my fingers for my evening sanding sessions.

This is what my hands looked like at the end of a night of sanding. The bandages are pretty much worn away.

I built up calluses on my fingers, of course, but calluses can only do so much. It took me two nights of bleeding fingers to learn my lesson. (Point in my favour: the nights were not consecutive. I’m not that dumb). Before the second incident, I thought my fingers were sufficiently toughened from the first incident to not require protection. I learned that no matter how leathery and rough I think my hands are, I can apparently always do more damage.

Good news is I would make a good spy these days, as my fingerprints are sanded off.

Also done is Matt’s nightly decoding dilemmas as he tries to interpret the pasting instructions I draw on the drywall.

The two circles highlight a scratch and some divots that need to be filled. The U and V markings are supposed to be arrows that point out a ridge that needs to be feathered out with paste.

The division of labour when it came to drywall was I sand, Matt pastes. As I work, I keep a pencil behind my ear, so that I can mark spots that need particular attention.

Additional symbols in my drywall lexicon include lines and once in awhile actual words–that usually still require translation.

The biggest change that will result from concluding drywall work will be no more drywall dust throughout the house.

The partially swept office floor (and yes, I know my work shoes are looking a little worn).

In the basement, the dust was so deep that dunes were starting to form. It took Matt and me a full afternoon to wipe down the walls and ceilings, sweep up the worst of the dust and then vacuum the remaining powder.

Upstairs is also covered in a fine skim of dust, although we haven’t done a deep clean there yet. We have to keep up our glamourous DIY lifestyle, after all.

Starting out on this project, I never dreamed that drywall would take us nearly half a year (ouch, that sounds like a really, really long time). My only excuse is that we ended up having to redo a huge area–pretty much the whole basement, we didn’t work on it religiously every single day and we’re not professional, so we’re slow.

The finish is definitely not perfect, but I’m satisfied with how it turned out, and I’m really happy that Matt and I were able to tackle such a big project together by ourselves (with help from my Dad, of course. Thanks, Dad!).

And now, in the way of DIY, concluding one stage of the project means it’s now on to the next. Painting here we come!

What’s on your agenda for this weekend?

Adventures in babysitting

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

Saturday was nephew day at the farm.

The festivities started with a tractor ride.

The two nephews in the tractor's front end loader

Two nerds in a bucket

Followed by a hike.

Three nerds in the forest

A lesson in talking to turkeys.

Calling all gentlemen turkeys!

And a test drive of a couple of the deer stands in the back forest.

Two deer were actually sighted in the woods

We also took advantage of having two extra pairs of hands around and put them to work on our fall to-do list.

The task of burning up the massive brush pile we amassed over the past two weeks of tree trimming (to-do #16) took pretty much the whole day.

The uncle seems to be putting more effort into tending the fire than the nephew

Also on the list was freeing our trees from rope, twine and stakes that have been tied around them (#10).

I am not sure who had the bright idea to tie metres of binder twine (and hang a plastic plant pot) in this tree, but my bright idea of a solution was an almost 13-year-old and a Swiss Army knife.

And finally picking up metal from the driveshed floor (#7).

Two particularly big bolts snagged by the magnet

We don’t want to be the completely uncool aunt and uncle, though, so we made sure they had time to have some fun too.

Including building (playing with) fire,

There was perhaps more smoke than fire, although they did eventually get it going.

Making new friends,

The cautious feeling each other out phase

The bonding phase

And setting off firecrackers.

Separating some Black Cats

We even enjoyed an alfresco lunch altogether.

Cats and kittens included in the feast.

Pulling out all the stops for a hot gourmet feast.

A mighty pot of KD, kids’ favourite food

So nephew day can be summed up by child labour, knives, firecrackers, lighters, axes, fire and fluorescent fake cheese pasta.

Matt’s brother may never let us have the kids again.

For sale: Woodstove (low mileage)

Posted on October 14, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Item #8 on our fall to-do list is to sell the woodstove that we drove up the stairs out of the basement (hence, Matt’s low mileage joke in the title of this post).

This could all be yours

The stove is still living in Matt’s future parking spot in the driveshed, but it is now officially for sale. The ad is live on kijiji and flyers are going up in the post office, feed mill, library and other local hot spots.

If you’re interested in a woodstove of your very own (and are in the Hamilton area), here are the details:

This large freestanding woodstove made in 2003 by top Canadian manufacturer Regency will heat your whole house, thanks to a built-in electric fan. Sale includes insulated stainless steel chimney, wall heat shields and everything else you need to set up your own private heat source.

This stove can be WETT certified.

2003 Regency large freestanding wood burning stove with electric fan
Model CSA B366.2, Width: 28” Height: 34” Depth: 28”
Stainless steel insulated chimney, 12” exterior diameter, 7” interior diameter
Five 3’ long sections and one 16” section (16’ 4”: total lineal feet)
Cast iron chimney, 7” diameter
One 2’ section, one 10” section, one 90º elbow
Two heat shields 22” x 52”
Plus all other chimney sections, connections and caps required for installation

Don’t sit around watching your heating bills soar this winter. Sit in your nice cozy living room (or basement, workshop or cottage) watching flickering flames through the glass door on your very own woodstove.

Winter is coming. Don’t delay!

We’re asking $2,500, although we are of course open to offers.

If you’re interested, contact me at homeon129acres@hotmail.com.

Staking our claim

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

When European explorers first landed in the new world (including Canada), it was customary for them to plant their flag as a symbol of ownership.

I think this latest development means the farm is officially ours.

Please ignore the overgrown mess that is the turnaround. Past owners dumped heaps of dirt and rubble here that made mowing impossible. Landscaping is next year’s project.

This project also means that Matt and I have officially started in on the fall to-do list. Planting the flag pole was #11.

I had bought the pole second hand on kijiji back at the end of June with the idea that we might be able to install it for Canada Day (July 1). That didn’t happen.

We drilled a hole for the pole back in August when we had the auger, and I tried to convince Matt that installing the flag pole would be a good birthday present for me at the end of September. That didn’t happen.

Finally on Sunday morning, we dragged out the wheelbarrow and a bag of concrete and made it happen. It took all of a half hour to mix the concrete, place the pole in the hole and pack the cement around it.

The hardest part was making sure the pole was plumb and holding it in place with ropes and stakes.

Our mini-circus tent… or the bottom third of the flag pole braced in place while the concrete sets.

Our flag pole came in three pieces, so it was very easy to wrangle one 7 foot piece into place, rather than a long 20 foot pole.

By Monday (I love long weekends by the way–we get so much accomplished) the concrete was set.

Set, secure and straight!

While Matt and his dad were working in the back bush clearing the trails, I went to work wrangling the rest of the pole into place. If you’re ever looking for a laugh, watch a 5’4″ woman staggering around with a 12 foot flag pole–to which she has already attached the halyard (or rope)–trying to keep it perfectly vertical so she can set it in place on top of another pole that’s as tall as she is. It took two tries, and the cats were absolutely no help.

Once the pole was fully assembled, it was a simple matter of attaching the clips to my rope and hoisting the flag.

Matt’s comment when he returned from the bush and saw the flag was, “I think we just improved this property more than any other owners. Except for maybe the guy who built the barn.”

So yes, we are both ridiculously happy to be flying the flag at the farm. Sometimes it’s the simple things.

Easter time

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

No, renovation fatigue hasn’t turned my brain to mush and I’m not high on drywall dust and paint fumes. I do actually know what time of year it is. (Groundhog Day is just around the corner, right?)

The title of this post is in honour of our newest family member, Easter the kitten. Remember her?

Today is Easter’s five month birthday, and she’s starting to cross the boundary between kitten and cat.

She hasn’t learned her lesson about curiosity yet and likes to investigate everything–including the camera.

She’s learning to hunt, although her prey predominantly has six legs. She eats grasshoppers, wings and all. We’re hoping she’ll move up the food chain soon.

“Hello. Can I eat you?”

She has caught one mouse, although I think that was only because he was stunned and petrified after Wiley and I unearthed his home, and he made it very easy for her.

I’ll spare you the more graphic images of what happened next

She chased a vole this weekend, but, after running in circles around the driveway a few times, she was frightened into giving up the chase when the vole turned and squeaked at her.

It was a very embarrassing scene.

She’s very rambunctious and works hard to entice Ralph to play with her. Ralph’s been a very good Mom and often obliges, even though a wrestling match between a kitten and an experienced barn cat is really not a fair fight.

“Don’t you want to play with me, Mom?”

She’s even started to grow into her head, which as a kitten was her most defining characteristic. We only occasionally slip up and call her by her baby name.

Easter’s not-so-big-anymore head

Being an only child, Easter is a wee bit spoiled. She’ll come when Matt whistles, but that’s because she knows he’s a soft touch who’s good for a cuddle, a scratch and even a treat. I’m still working on training her that she’s not allowed in the house (she made it as far as the kitchen one day) or on the patio table when we’re having lunch outside.

In the family roles, I’m the enforcer and Matt’s the enabler.

Ahhh, the challenges of parenthood.

Fall colours on the farm

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Matt and I took full advantage of all three days of the Thanksgiving holiday to catch up with family, food and, of course, work around the farm.

In between all of the visiting, eating and working, I went for a wander. The autumn leaves were at their peak everywhere I looked, so this means I have lots of pictures from all around the property.

The reds, golds, browns and greens of autumn foliage under a moody fall sky, with my favourite tree on the whole farm in the centre.

Looking up into the underside of my favourite tree

Up in the canopy in the back forest

Fallen leaves down on the forest floor

A bright orange maple on the shore of the pond

Coloured leaves on the border of the marshland at the back field

Matt hikes along the trail on the east side of the back forest

My favourite tree all dressed up for fall

What’s fall looking like where you are? Have you gone for a hike in a fall forest yet? How did you spend your long weekend?

Animal farm

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

I remember just a few months ago when I used to window shop for shoes. Apparently, moving to the country has changed my priorities slightly, because when we were at the fair I viewed it as an opportunity to window shop for animals to add to the farm.

How my life has changed.

It turns out, if you have feathers, you’re on my list.

At the very top is geese, specifically Embdens.

Someday I will tell the story of a very special Embden gander.

Sticking with the waterfowl theme, next on the list is ducks. The funnier looking the better, apparently.

This very friendly (or perhaps aggressive) Muscovy duck actually pecked the camera just before I snapped this shot.

Indian Runner ducks look like bowling pins when they’re not being so shy. These two get bonus points for being spotted like cows.

Chickens. I would like meat birds and egg layers, please. Oh and probably a brave handsome rooster to look out for everyone.

Isn’t he a pretty boy? No wonder he won first place!

Turkeys. I think this guy would come in handy right about now.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow Canadians! (This guy is probably not very thankful it’s Thanksgiving).

We’re still a little ways away from expanding our family to include these fine feathered fowl, so for now I truly am just window shopping. Hmmm… maybe in the meantime I can find a pair of feathered shoes, thereby satisfying my apparent affection for feathers along with my undernourished appetite for fabulous footwear. Two birds, one stone, y’know?

Fall fair fun

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

My family always attended fall fairs when I was growing up. This year, as new rural residents, it was a lot of fun to be part of this annual celebration of rural culture.

Farmers big and small exhibit their harvests, everything from fruits and vegetables to hay and grains. People show off their preserves and baking. There are crafts including knitting, sewing, quilting, painting, photography and wood carving. The school fair showcases special projects by local elementary students.

There are historical exhibits, such as this threshing demonstration we watched.

I believe the machine is from the 1930s. With all of the belts and wheels and pipes, it looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie.

Modern equipment was there too, including ATVs, UTVs and tractors.

My dad, Matt and I check out the massive Case 350, just in case we decide to upgrade (Love you, Wiley!)

The fair is also a time to celebrate and let loose after all of the hard work of the summer. Look beyond all of the equipment, and you’ll see the main attraction of the fair: the midway.

The zipper was my Dad’s favourite ride growing up, and now it’s mine. This one was the best zipper I’ve ever been on. The centrifugal force was amazing–I felt like we were going to fly off the track.

An integral part of the midway is the concession stands. My favourite fair food is the fresh cut french fries.

Piping hot, nice and crispy, doused with gallons of vinegar and buckets of salt

And then there are the animals.

Obviously, dreadlock here was the camera-hog (or sheep), but take a look a ringlet’s lovely locks on the right

And there are the kids exhibiting their animals.

Every single one of these cows had their own kid. Impressive.

And the birds.

This iridescent beauty is a (napping) Cayuga duck.

Including some I’ve never seen before.

This was a type of peacock

In addition to being a lot of fun, the fair did help me to solidify the animals I’d like to add to the farm. Tune in Friday to see who made my list. Hint: one of the species, but not the exact breed, is above.

What animals do you think I chose? What animals would make your list? Any other fall fair fans out there? What’s your favourite ride? And most important: how do you like your fries?