Just a quick note...

to let you know that I'm still here.  Just waiting to sign the papers yet for selling my home in Alabama.  Then I'll be looking for a home in Tennessee.  I've had enough of the cabin.  Will update you when something happens!

Denise

I haven't updated here since August so here goes...

a stray dog showed up, I fed her and she stayed. I named her Duchess.

my oldest cat Roxy went outside into the woods and never came back. I figured the weasel got him.

another stray dog showed up, I fed him and he stayed. His name is Buddy.

my female cat, Penny, went outside into the woods and never came back. I think the weasel also got her.

my uncle Gene was diagnosed with cancer before my husband lost his battle and died in September.

I got my well dug but am saving for a pump.

my aunt Jean died. She was 92 and not the wife of the uncle who died.

I got a propane gas tank and heater installed. Just waiting for my cook stove from Sears.

And that's about all that's happened since August. I think I need a nap LOL.

I'm hanging in there. Each day is a little brighter. It will be hard during the holidays.

I'm still here!

We moved and now I'm on solar power so since I work at home there's not a lot of power left over for blogging.  We will be getting another solar panel and some more batteries so hopefully I will be able to blog more consistently in the future.

Denise

Long time no see

Yep I'm back again.  I've been busy just doing day to day things.  I've been selling things on Ebay and getting rid of other things just to get ready for the cabin adventure.  I've been sewing a lot and knitting a lot too.  Here are some pics:

Some socks for me.

Thought I better start making some socks as ours are getting rather hard to mend anymore what with all the holes :)  Next on the needles are some socks for hubby.  I also have on the needles a sweater for hubby and another one for myself.  Yes I multitask LOL.

Don't know if you can see this but I wanted to show you how to piece batting on something you are quilting.  You line up the pieces and sew them together.   

It's an excellent way to use up scrap batting for small wallhangings or table toppers.

This is the batting all sewed up and ready for my table topper.

And here's the top of the table topper.  I have since finished this.  Need to get a pic of the finished topper for you.  To make this topper you need 5" squares and 2 1/2" squares.  Place the smaller squares on opposite sides and sew from corner to corner (you can mark them on the back but I just winged it).  Cut off the excess triangles.  (Don't throw these triangles away.  I have an idea I'll share in a later post)  I squared them up to measure 5" and then tried out the placement on the table to see how they looked the best and then sew them together.  I used a 5" border. I used two packages of precuts for this and had plenty left over to make another one plus.  The squares I used weren't even from the same designer but I think they look great together.

On the home front, our chickens have started laying again.  Boy did we ever miss our home grown eggs.  We were getting them from an Amish farm but their eggs just didn't even compare to ours.  They keep their chickens penned up and ours have access to fresh grass - big taste difference!  We've been juicing and drinking our green juice every chance we get.  I give the pulp to the chickens.  They do not like carrots and their run is looking a little orange ;) but they do like the greens.  I even had some chard and parsley growing in the garden so pulled some chard leaves for the chickens and juiced some of them for us too.  I picked a little bit of the parsley (left some to grow) and dried it.  mmmm parsley potatoes mmmm.

I started some seeds and the plants are up and just waiting to get bigger and the weather to cooperate so I can plant them.  The weather today is pretty yucky.  It's turning colder and it's raining.  Last week we were over two inches above normal for the year.  Hope it keeps up and we have no drought this year.  I have to wait for a sunny day to hang my clothes out on the line so I did them yesterday since it was so beautiful out but the week before I had almost two weeks worth of laundry.  No fun doing that much laundry.  Took me all day.  

Cabin News-  We burned a lot of brush and small twigs.  We pulled up some rotten tree stumps but need to take our saw with us next time so we can cut some of them out.  The wet weather does help with this kind of job.  It would have been so much harder if the ground would have been really dry.

I guess that catches you up on my life, how's yours been?

I'm BACCCCCKKKK!

Surprise, surprise, surprise!  I've been one busy little person what with canning, the holidays, work and being sick for the past 2 1/2 weeks with this cold crap.  Yes I said crap and I'm still feeling a little bit like that LOL.

We got our yearly 1/2 beef and 1/2 a pig this year to go with it so I was trying to clean out our freezer as much as possible (read empty completely).  Surprisingly with all that meat I got it fit into our upright freezer and stashed the bacon in our little freezer.  Boy it was close!  Don't think we will do that again.  At least we could space it out so I don't have such a problem stowing it away.  So we have a lot of meat, a lot.  It should last us a little over a year.  The only problem is they cut the roasts a little too big for us so when I made a beef roast the other day we had to keep eating it and eating it and eating it.  It was huge!  I just put in some salt and pepper and some bay leaves and cooked in the slow cooker. Hubby made homemade noodles to go with it.  Yum.  Then I made some barbequed beef sandwiches today and still I had some left over so I guess I'll be using the rest in a soup of some sort.

So since I cleaned out my freezer I had all these tomatoes, peppers, berries and beef bones (which really take up room in the freezer).  I canned berry jelly since I had boysenberries, blueberries and raspberries; pepper relish; tomato soup and beef broth.  And I had gotten 10 pounds of pig fat to make lard.  I did all that in one week...boy was I tired and so we come to the fact that I got run down and got sick.  Was it worth it?  You betcha cause now we have a whole lot of food stored up.

I wasn't in the holiday mood this year so I didn't even put up our tree.  I did decorate our fireplace mantle and put up the wreath on the front door but that is as festive as I got this year.  But it did save me from having to put all that stuff away too.  It didn't lessen in any way our Christmas though.  We still had our presents to open on Christmas day and we got some Christmas cards too.  Not as many as I sent out but I think it's because it is getting so expensive to mail them.  Postage is going up again in a couple of weeks so I hear.  Hubby got me just what I wanted this year too!  I got an immersion blender (so much easier to do soups with) and a spice grinder which will be nice to grind all those spices and herbs I'm going to be growing this year (maybe LOL).  Hubby was shocked I got him so much but why not, he's worth it.  I got him an old fashioned straight razor shaving kit with everything included except for a sharpening stone which I'll get him later.  He tried it the first time and cut himself all to heck...Geez-Louise.  He said I need your help I cut myself.  I went running and had to put cotton balls and band-aids on each side of his face.  Since he's on blood thinners he bleeds a lot when he gets cut.  He did eventually stop bleeding.  I think a styptic pen is on order for him.  Now he says he scared of it...and hasn't tried to use it again yet.  I think he was holding it wrong and trying to go too fast.  I think he needs to practice.   Cause if I have to put cotton balls and band-aids on him again I'll bust out laughing, he looked really funny.  He even laughed about it.  Looked like a poor man's Santa or  maybe a really weird looking chipmunk :)  I also got him a weather thingy.  It's a tube that is supposed to tell you the weather a couple of days ahead of time.  Don't know if it works yet.  He left it in the package so we can take it to the cabin.  I got him a CD of info on solar power from Mother Earth News and a puzzle.  He said he owed me something else and has decided to get me another gun...not really what I was looking for really LOL.  It will be a revolver cause I really don't like the way the pistol handles that I already have.  I think it will give me more control but we'll see.

The chickens have stopped laying...completely.  No eggs since November.  We have been getting eggs when we go up to the cabin but it's not the same and they don't taste as good as ours were.  I'm still hoping that they will start laying a few when it warms up.  We got a ton of seed catalogs last week.  I love looking through them although I don't think I need any more seeds right now.  Since the world didn't end, I guess I can spend more money on plants and seeds ;)

Hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Denise

New Cabin pics

Well we had the cabin delivered the other day and here are some shots of it being placed on the gravel pad we had made...

These are the guys who placed it and leveled it.  It took a couple of hours to level.  The man in the white shirt is the owner of the truck.  He was quite a trip.  He kept humming the entire time and he had on all this silver jewelry.  The other man is his son.  He's been delivering small cabins/storage sheds for over thirty years.  He did know his business that's for sure.

They tilted the cabin so much it made me nervous about it rolling over but they had no qualms about going underneath it...brave or stupid? LOL.

Here it is just being set down on the cement blocks you see underneath.  

Here it is totally in place and ready for occupation.  Not that that's going to happen any time soon though. ;)  We love the porch.  Hubby wants to live on it LOL.  We will be moving a table and chairs up to sit on the porch while we make some improvements to the inside.  We have the bracing to take down in the inside and the side door needs a little work on it too.  It looks like we made the gravel pad too long but actually we wanted it longer so we can drive the car right up to the porch to unload groceries.  We'll have to get some steps for the side door so we can use it.  All good things take time right?

Cabin pics

Well the cabin is finished, here are some updated pics of it for you to see.

 It has four windows and two doors.  I didn't take any pics of the inside since I already took some last time and the inside really didn't change yet.  We are getting it moved to the site soon and then the real work begins!  We need flooring, electrical work, walls, ceiling....you get the picture ;)

On a sadder note, we lost another chicken, Shirley.  She was egg bound.  I went out and petted her for a while and told her it was OK for her to go.  I could tell she was in pain.  She died a little while later after I went in to make supper and we buried her with the other chickens, Lucy and Lettie and our beloved cat, Molly.  We are now down to 5 chickens and only getting 1 egg every 3-4 days.   Since the Golden Comets are made to lay large numbers of eggs in such a short period of time, they seem to age very quickly.  We'll keep the five we have until they die naturally but the next batch will only be with us for two years and then we will take them to a butcher to process.   It's not easy being a homesteader/farmer...

Some news...

Some good and some not good.

First the bad news.  We lost a chicken last Wednesday.  She hadn't been feeling good and wasn't eating or drinking much and had taken to sleeping all day in the coop.  We were concerned as she seemed to be going downhill fast.  Since she seemed to be cold, we brought her out in the sunshine for some warmth and talked and petted her.  Lucy passed just a few minutes after we had gone inside.  We buried her beside Molly underneath the butterfly bush.  She was the most tame and my hubby's favorite.  She was three years old and actually we weren't as upset as we thought we would be about her death.  She had a good life.  We'll miss her but this is farming...

RIP Lucy 

Now for some good news...cause life goes on.

We made the final payment for our little cabin.  Emanuel was putting on the roof this week and wanted to get the windows and doors in too that day.  Looks like he might be finished next week.  We'll need to go look at it and call the guy to move it.  We finished cutting up the limbs and stacked the wood last week and got the pad for the cabin all leveled out.  Next up, saving money for the well...and then the stove and then......well you get the idea ;)

Pictures of the cabin

Remember this?  Well guess what we chopped down a persimmon tree.  Didn't realize it until the following week when we went back and saw the little persimmons on the branches we had stacked...Oh well, there's still a couple more persimmons in there.  Does anyone know whether you can burn persimmon wood?  Is it considered hardwood or soft wood?

Here is our little cabin two weeks ago.  This is the porch on the front.

Here is the inside looking from the front door.

Here you are looking from where we are going to put our bed to the front door.  Kinda looks small huh?  It's only 12 x 26 with a 6 foot porch.  I think we might have to add on to it...:)

Here is the gravel we had delivered.  This is the spot where the cabin will go.  It slopes a lot in the back so hopefully the gravel will even up the grade a little.

And here is the other half of the gravel load.  We got 28 ton of gravel and will have to get another load later on.  This is the road that will lead to our chicken and sheds and later on a barn.

Love those trees!

This is a shot of the cabin last week.  He had started putting on the siding.  He'll stain it and then put on the roof.  His farm is in the background.  They use a gas powered generator to cut the wood.  No electricity since they're Amish.

Here is a shot of the front porch and on the side you can see the back door.

Here is the inside looking from the front door to the back.

Here's a shot from the back to the front.  DH is trying to figure out where we'll put the hole for the wood stove.  Is it me or does it seem to be getting smaller?  Remember we still have to put in a kitchen and bathroom in here...

I'll post more pics as the weeks go by.  We're hoping to have the cabin in place before the snow flies.