Freshening up an organizer

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Sarah in Illinois joins us today with a great makeover that adds a bit of style to an area that sometimes doesn’t see a lot of decor–her garage. This is a lesson in the power of paint. Plus the power of soap and water!

It seems like all of my small projects get set aside during the summer months. We spend all of our time outside and don’t want to be cooped up in the woodshop/workshop.

I have a pile of projects out there waiting for the cooler months, but I did get one thing finished.

I found this old metal organizer that has been hanging in our garage for who knows how long.

I thought it looked handy, plus it looked like something that could be fixed up with a can of spray paint.

I took it off the wall and took the little jars off. They easily cleaned up in a sink of soapy water. I took off the bracket that attaches it to the wall. I thought that I could just run a little sandpaper over it and start painting. But the red paint that I chose didn’t show up well, it just looked like a rusty red color.

See how the red looks flat?

I decided that I should probably have done it the right way from the start. So I started over. I ran the sandpaper over it again and coated it with a light color primer. This helped the red really stand out when I painted it and that was the look I was going for.

I put several coats of paint on it trying to avoid getting much paint on the inside of the caps on the threads where the jars screw on. Too much paint built up would have made the jars hard to screw on.

Unfortunately, after all of the years hanging on the wall, there is a little jar missing. I am hoping I find it stashed somewhere in the garage, but I am guessing it may have fallen on concrete at some point and is long gone. So I will keep my eyes open for a replacement.

My mom and my brother’s girlfriend are yard sale pros so I am going to put them on the case. In the meantime, I am happy that I made an improvement that cost very little and is much more pleasing to look at.

Do you use spray paint very often on your projects? Do you ever try to take shortcuts then have to start over? What color would you have chosen to paint this organizer?

The red brings a great pop to the garage, Sarah. I think I probably would have kept the rust(ic) look just because I can’t be bothered painting it or decorating my garage (if I’m being honest), but it looks so good. Such a cheerful addition. I love the concept of this organizer. Do you think you could DIY something like this? Perhaps with some very strong glue for the jar lids?

Chicken update from Illinois

Posted on August 17, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Sarah in Illinois has made it through her second week of raising chickens. She’s back today to report on what she’s learned and how things are going. See her first post introducing her flock.

So far things with the chickens couldn’t be any easier. Each morning I open the coop, make sure they have water and some food. Each night they return to their coop about 7:30, and I close it back up. That’s it. They are not laying eggs yet. They should be old enough in the next couple weeks so I look for eggs every day just in case.

I will give you a quick tour. We made a coop inside one of our barns.

I have access with both a full door and a lid to lift off of the nesting boxes.

The chickens have a roost with plenty of ventilation. I do plan, however, to add another roost up a little higher.

They have access outside to the pen that was for Treu. I knew from the beginning that they would easily be able to fly over the fence, since there is no top to it. I was just hoping that with all the room and shelter under the trees that they would just prefer to stay inside.

Have you ever seen chickens laugh at you? I am pretty sure I have.

Here they are very clearly not inside the pen!

And the funny thing is, once they get out they don’t always remember how to get back in.

I mentioned in my last post that Toothless may be an issue. And she has been. I don’t think she has any intentions of hurting the chickens. She just thinks of them as her own personal toys. She loves to run right up into them when they are huddled together and just watch them go flapping and squawking away.

Here she is sneaking up on them, you can see one of the chickens has hopped the fence to get away from her.

It was funny the first time, but it is not something I want to encourage and I can tell the chickens are nervous when she comes around.

One night I went to close the coop, and I only counted 3 chickens. I quickly ran outside to see where the fourth one could be. Toothless had her cornered in the bean field.

I knew at that point I had to do something quickly.

I now have a squirt bottle of plain water that I keep out at the pen. Any time I see Toothless lurking around I give her a quick squirt of water and she goes running. Obviously I can’t sit out there all day and keep watch so I am hoping she gets the hint quickly.

Otherwise, I am just enjoying them. I go out to their pen every day after work and watch them peck the ground. I have given them tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden and I love to watch them chase each other and play keep-away.

So far they haven’t found our garden. They can’t see it from the pen. I am hoping it stays that way. I don’t want them to have their own private buffet. But as I mentioned above, have you ever seen a chicken laugh at you?

Anyone else new to raising chickens? Have any advice on getting Toothless to behave? Any predictions on when I will get my first egg?

It sounds like your girls are doing well, Sarah. With our chickens and ducks when I was growing up, my Dad put a mesh roof on our run. Treu’s run looks pretty big, but a covering of some kind would help keep the chickens in and Toothless out. We also put straw in the nesting boxes, even when we had shavings in the coop itself. I’m not sure if that makes a difference for encouraging them to lay or not.

Chickens in Illinois

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Exciting news from Sarah in Illinois. The new additions that she’s been working for all season have arrived!

Last weekend was very busy for me, so I am going to let pictures so most of the work for this post.

They’re here:

I haven’t had much time to spend with them but I have already determined a couple personalities. I keep saying that I am not going to name them, but I am sure it will eventually happen.

This one is the boss. She is the leader and the noisiest. She is the first one to make noise as I walk up.

This one is shy. She is the last one to approach me, the last one to come out of the coop, the last one to try the new piece of food I give them.

This one is the tallest and always has her neck up high and reminds me of a lookout for organized crime.

I haven’t determined what personality this last one has.

I still have a lot to learn, but as I write this, I have kept them alive about 32 hours! So I consider that a win.

I have two outdoor cats and I have been very concerned how they would react to them. One really couldn’t care less about them. The other:

I guess time will tell.

This is so exciting, Sarah! Have you had any eggs yet? What kinds of chickens are they? I think I see a Plymouth Rock and a Rhode Island Red? Shy and Lookout look different from the breeds I’m familiar with. Good luck with kitty. Hopefully it’s just a case of curiosity.

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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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Update and a new adventure in Illinois

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Sarah in Illinois is back today with a bunch of updates on what’s happening at their home. Hint: some new additions are on the horizon.

This may be a disjointed post. I had been working on a project, and I thought I would be done before I had to send this week’s post, but it didn’t turn out how I had planned. (Argh. So frustrating when that happens, Sarah.) I will be sure to include why it didn’t work and I had to regroup in a future post.

This post will be a little bit of an update and share what I have in the works.

Kittens

As of when I am writing this, the black kitten has been reserved and the tiger-stripe is still waiting for a new home. The mother cat has been to the vet and spayed so I will not have to be in this situation again.

The cutting garden

There are about a half dozen different varieties of flowers that are growing. Right now the only one ready to cut is the zinnias.

Future posts

I hinted in one of my comments a while back that I am getting chickens! My neighbor has been raising several chicks and offered four of them to me. They will not be ready to lay until about September, but I can get them as soon as I have a secure place for them.

So my free time has been spent reading and reading about chickens and working on making a secure coop for them. I have never had or really even been around chickens so this is all a new learning experience.

Some of the books I have been reading include (not affiliate links):

Backyard Chickens: the beginner’s guide to raising and caring for backyard chickens by Rashelle Johnson
Barnyard in Your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cattle by Gail Damerow
The Mini Farming Bible: The Complete Guide to Self-Sufficiency on ¼ acre by Brett L. Markham
Dirty Chick: Adventures of an Unlikely Farmer by Antonia Murphy

I think I am ready to start this adventure. I have been told that I am overthinking everything and that chickens are a lot easier than I am making it out to be. I hope so! I will be sure to post about my adventure and in the meantime, any advice would be appreciated.

Cute kitten, pretty posies and exciting news–this worked out to be a post after all, Sarah. Congratulations on the chickens. I confess, I’ll probably take the same approach as you when it comes time to add birds to our farm. Your forethought just might make you a more successful chicken farmer.

Having grown up with backyard chickens, my best advice is to make sure to collect the eggs a couple of times a day. We got a bit lazy and our hens started eating their eggs. That was a hard habit to break!

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Wild raspberries in Illinois

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

Sarah in Illinois is kicking off summer with a quintessential summer activity: a family berry-picking outing.

One of the perks of my husband being a farmer and spending long days driving around backroads and secluded fields is that he finds secret spots.

Like the best mushroom hunting spot. Or like one day this spring when he took us out into one of the fields that he was getting ready to plant and showed us an eagle’s nest. The nest was so very big. We waited for quite a while but never got to spot an eagle.

His latest secret spot came to us Friday.

When he got home he said, “Tomorrow we are going raspberry picking!” In years past when he would see that the raspberries or blackberries were nearing ripeness, we would wait too long and the birds got to them first. So this year Steve said we had to go and we had to go immediately.

Saturday after breakfast we rounded up ice cream buckets and baskets, picked up Steve’s mom and headed to the field.

I think we were still a little too early but we picked for at least two hours.

And believe it or not, after Julia posted about her run in with a turtle, we ran across one in the field.

We ended up bringing home enough raspberries to freeze 3 quarts.

We have given Steve instructions that as soon as he sees these blackberries begin to ripen to take us back! There were even more blackberries than raspberry vines!

What a great bounty of berries, Sarah! Strawberries have just started in our area, so we have a little while to go until the raspberries are ready. I can almost taste the sunwarmed berries when I look at your photos. Enjoy!

June garden update

Posted on June 8, 2016 by Julia at Home on 129 Acres

Sarah’s last post was her final report in our Dueling DIY garden challenge. She’s back today to share how her vegetable garden–and a couple of other things–are growing.

I thought I’d take this time to give a garden update. We have had an unusually cool start to spring and that means several of my plants got a late start. Thankfully though the temperatures have been rising and our garden is really starting to catch up. I will give a quick rundown of most of my crops. (Note: We got 1.5 inches of rain the day before I took the pictures below.)

Asparagus

This is my first time raising asparagus so I really don’t know what to expect. I know that the first year or so I am just supposed to let them grow and that’s what I’ve done. Most of the plants don’t look very good, but maybe next year they will grow back even better. I am just using a wait and see method.

Brussels Sprouts

One of the plants that got a late start. I am hoping they recover quickly.

Carrots

At this point I can say that the tops look really good. Hopefully it is looking just as good underground.

Cucumber

Also got a late start but really seems to be recovering. I planted 4 pickling cucumbers that didn’t make it though. That is disappointing.

Kale

I have planted 3 varieties. And they have all taken off like crazy. I have picked some for salads, but I am ready to make some kale chips this week.

Leaf lettuce

Even with a late start, our lettuce looks healthy, and I have picked a few salads worth so far.

Peppers

We have green peppers, red peppers, jalapeno and several other varieties. The plants are all fairly small at this point so I hope they take off soon.

Potatoes

We have planted both a traditional russet and a thin skinned red potato. Like the carrots, the tops look great. I hope that means good things are happening in the ground too.

Onions

The onions are very healthy. We really need to add them to more of our dishes so they don’t go to waste.

Radishes

Note for next year… plant less radishes. Seriously, we planted way too many and I am afraid they will go to waste. Anyone have any recipes or suggestions other than putting them in our salads?

From right to left: lettuce, radishes, green beans, cabbage and potatoes

Rhubarb

Also my first year for rhubarb. When I first put it in the ground I was worried that it wouldn’t make it. Several leaves died off. But this week I noticed two really healthy new leaves so I think it is on the mend.

Spaghetti Squash

The plants are looking great! I have left plenty of room around them to plant pumpkins hopefully in the next week or two.

Strawberries

The plants look very healthy. This is one crop that Steve really wants to expand on next year, so we may have to add on to our garden again!

Sugar Snap Peas

Probably my favorite plant of the garden. I usually eat them before they even make it into the house. This is one plant that prefers cooler weather so I hope that I see some pods before it gets too hot here.

Tomatoes

Definitely our most used crop around here. Besides eating them straight out of the garden my mother-in-law cans tomato juice, and I plan to make salsa and pico de gallo. So it is a good thing that we have plans for them because I have planted 24 plants!

Actually, the plants that I started from seed are finally looking healthy enough to transplant so we will be nearing 30 plants.

They are all different sizes so I am hoping they ripen at all different times!

I have a few things that I am still hoping to plant, but I am very happy that our garden is really looking great this year.

We do have two more things that we are growing around here:

Jan asked for an update, and I am always happy to spend more time with these two before I find them new homes.

They turned 5 weeks as I write this, so we have another week or two before they are ready to leave. They are eating dry food pretty well and they are definitely becoming more active.

If anyone from my area is reading this, I am still looking for homes for them if you are interested!

Ahh. Super cute, Sarah. Too bad Illinois is a bit far away, because Ralph could use a sidekick. Congrats on the garden growth. Things are looking promising.

Dueling DIY – The Challenger’s Final Update

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

Six weeks ago, Sarah in Illinois and I started a Dueling DIY challenge. Our mission was to get our gardens in shape for the year through some friendly competition. Today, Sarah’s here with her final update on how she did. To see how we got here, check out all of our previous posts.

I have to admit, when I first made my list of things to finish for the challenge, I thought that I made it too easy on myself.

I saw Julia’s list and thought that I was sure to win.

However, what I learned was: most projects take longer than what I plan for, weather does not care what you have planned, and I procrastinate just as much as I did in high school when doing homework.

So as you can guess from what I have written so far, I did not completely finish everything on my list. But I sure made a valiant effort!

1. Make some kind of designated area (possibly raised bed) for annual vegetables such as asparagus and strawberries.

I call this 90% done. Everything is planted. Asparagus and strawberries are planted, rhubarb is in the ground and seeds and bulbs are planted for my cutting garden.

For the borders I used old rough cut barn wood. We have a large pile of old wood out in the barn but I did not find enough long boards. So I am going to have to keep digging to find a couple more boards.

However, I am happy to have the two outside beds defined so that there is no fear of cutting too close with the mower.

2. Neaten and define north flower bed and add mulch.

Nothing new has been done here. Steve and I are debating on whether to buy a couple bags of mulch or dive right in and get a truck load.

Now that he is in the field all hours of the day, we still haven’t made the decision so the mulch didn’t get put on the flower bed. But I am still happy with how this flower bed is filling out.

3. Divide mums and spread around deck.

This is the first thing that I finished, and the mums are really taking off.

4. Make a designated gardening area complete with workbench.

This was my favorite project!

We were tearing out a room in our pole barn and so I had the countertop and the top shelf ready. All I had to do was make the framework.

I say that was “all I had to do” but designing the work bench from scratch was time-consuming. I knew I wanted a top shelf and a shelf underneath. I also knew I wanted a place to hang my tools.

I used mostly older barn wood but a few pieces are newer pine so I used the darkest stain that I had on hand to try to blend the different woods together. I really could not be happier with the finished project!

So here is my final list:

~~Make some kind of designated area (possibly raised bed) for annual vegetables such as asparagus and strawberries.~~
~~Neaten, and define north flower bed and add mulch.~~
~~Divide mums and spread around deck.~~
~~Make a designated gardening area complete with workbench.~~

I won’t find out until Julia’s post to see how I fared in this competition, but I’m feeling kind of good about my odds!

I am so happy that we did this challenge. I guarantee if I didn’t have the constant competition in the back of my mind, I would not have gotten as much done as I did.

I would have made excuses about how I was tired, or how I had so many other things to do, and I would have avoided all of the hard work. But I am proud at how much I got done, and I am happy with my progress whether I “win” or not!

(It would be nice to win though!)

Okay. I’m impressed that Sarah can cross everything off her list. And that potting bench is awesome. I’ll be back on Friday with my final post in this Dueling DIY challenge.

Garden Dueling DIY Week 4

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

Sarah in Illinois and I are in week 4 of our Dueling DIY challenge.We’ve been making slow progress on our gardens (you can check out the progress in our previous posts), but recently Sarah’s attention has been directed elsewhere.

Distractions. It sounds a lot better than: “I am really far behind and worried that Julia may very well win the competition.”

What has me distracted?

Bad weather:

A full day of shopping at an antique/craft market and then shopping at a HUGE garden center with my mom and my brother’s girlfriend:

My purchases: rhubarb, cucumbers, spaghetti squash, rosemary, parsley, fun flowers and a micro cherry tomato plant. (I can’t wait to see what it produces!)

And then finally a surprise litter of kittens:

I mean, seriously, who can get any work done when you have this to cuddle?

I knew that one of my cats was very likely pregnant and when one day she was noticeably thinner, I started searching. She hid them very well and it took me four days to find them. But now that I have, I can’t stay away. I will be sure to find homes for all of them as soon as they are old enough but until then, I get to love on them!

Thankfully I did take advantage of some beautiful weather the last few days of April, and I made great improvement to the landscaping on the north end of the house. I hand washed the siding to remove all of the green that has been building up.

Before:

After:

My mom gave me two of the roses I had planted when I still lived at home and I transplanted to this bed.

However, until I get some mulch, I can’t mark this off my list. So I hate to admit it, Julia, but I cannot mark a single thing off this week.

Make some kind of designated area (possibly raised bed) for annual vegetables such as asparagus and strawberries — Area is tilled and asparagus planted but strawberries need planted and needs border
Neaten, and define north flower bed and add mulch — So close!
~~Divide mums and spread around deck~~
Make a designated gardening area complete with workbench

I am very aware of how few days are left in this challenge. So I am going to dig down and find the drive to make these last two weeks count (between kitten snuggles)!

Okay. Sarah definitely wins in the cuteness category. And some of the shopping and roses are in the gardening category, even if they’re not on the to-do list. I’m ahead for now. Hopefully it stays that way for the next two weeks.

Garden Dueling DIY Week 2

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

Sarah in Illinois and I have entered into a friendly competition this spring to help us get our gardens in shape. We’re now at the conclusion of week 2 of this Dueling DIY. (Week 2 already, yipes!) Sarah is here today to share her first official update. You can check out all of the previous posts here.

Lots of rain and cool weather has continued here, and I was running out of time to work on this week’s challenge. I was getting nervous because I could just picture Julia having beautiful weather and getting ahead of me. (Ha-ha-ha. Be afraid, Sarah. Be very afraid). I was able to do a second till of the garden Tuesday before another round of rain came through, but that was as far as I had gotten.

However, the forecast called for perfect weather Sunday, and I had a list a mile long to work on. Of course at the top of the list were projects on our challenge. I can’t mark very much off of the list yet, but I sure got a great start.

The first thing I did was divide up my two big mums and spread them around the deck.

Splitting mums

I was easily able to make 7 different clumps of plants. I dug holes and planted them and watered them well.

Transplanting mums

While I was doing that, Steve changed the oil and put new blades on the mower. Then I mowed while he tilled the garden for the third time and then we decided where our “annual garden” would go.

We made a few first passes over then new garden, but I still have to make some type of borders and plant it.

The foreground is our new bed for plants that won’t get tilled up every year such as strawberries and asparagus and in the background is our yearly vegetable garden. You can see the fencing ready for the cucumbers and sugar snap peas. And in front of it is the hill for our row of potatoes.

Tilled garden

The beautiful weather also meant it was time to bring out our deck furniture from the barn. I got everything scrubbed and hosed off. I let it all sit in the sun to dry and then we set it up on the deck. We finished our hard day of yard work with brats and shish-kabobs on the grill and ate it outside on the deck. It was a perfect end to a perfect day.

Despite all of that hard work I was only able to check one thing off of my challenge list:

Make some kind of designated area (possibly raised bed) for perennial vegetables such as asparagus and strawberries.
Neaten, and define north flower bed and add mulch.
~~Divide mums and spread around deck~~
Make a designated gardening area complete with workbench.

It may not look like much was accomplished, but I am setting myself up for the kill! So how was your weekend, Julia?

Oooh. See how she throws in that little jab at the end? We’re pretty much tied up right now. Sarah and I have each officially crossed just one thing off our lists. However, I have big plans for both Matt and me this coming weekend. Watch out, Sarah.